“We could be there for him,” she bit out.
“For Schiller? You saw it yourself; Schiller’s not in there anymore. He left a vacancy, and something else has taken up residence.”
He saw the shudder run through her. Her eyes flitted to his. “What is it?”
It was a loaded question, but he couldn’t lie to her anymore. He couldn’t lie to her, but he couldn’t tell her the truth, either. Not all of it. Instead, he carved himself up a little more and settled on “It doesn’t have a name.”
“Adya saw it.” Tears fractured the cypress of her stare. “That day in the meadow, she said something big was coming. This is it, isn’t it? This is what killed all the boys on that wall.”
He swallowed. His throat felt tight. A mouthful of truths sat packed behind his teeth, big enough to choke on. He could give her a piece of it. Bone-whittled honesty, paid for in a deep, sutural ache.
“It was incredibly naive of Whitehall,” he said, confessing what he could, “to think we could pass freely between worlds and not expect something uninvited to follow us home.”
***
The room they’d rented was very sparse and very blue, the eastern wall framed in a window that overlooked a tight concrete garden. The furniture was mass-produced fiberboard, the walls adorned in framed geometric abstracts. He set their bags on the blue tufted couch. She dropped onto the blue paneled bed. Quietly, she began unstrapping her boots. She didn’t say another word.
In the bathroom, he let the sink run until the water was piping hot. He rubbed the thin bar soap into a white lather. He scrubbed and scrubbed at his skin. Over and over, his brain replayed the sound Lane’s head made as it slammed against the glass. The scream that cracked out of her.
When he looked up, she was standing in the open door. She’d changed into a sweater and a pair of shorts, so that she was all knit wool and bare legs. Her hair fell around her in a loose lavender spill. His chest laced unreasonably tight.
“You’ve been in here a while,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if she’d meant it as an accusation or an observation.
He took his time with the towel, refolding it when he’d finished. The smell of bleach clung to his skin. “Hospitals are full of sick people,” he said, and reached for his watch. “I don’t want to get smallpox.”
“I’m pretty sure that was eradicated.” She watched him fuss with the watch clasp. His hands shook, his fingers stiff with an arthritic ache from all the truths he’d chiseled free. On his left hand, his little finger was beginning to bruise.
“Here.” She moved through the bathroom on black-stockinged feet. “Let me do it.”
He relented with a muttered curse. The feel of her fingertips crept through him as she clicked the metal deployant into place and asked, “Is this part of your germ thing?”
His laugh came out in a disingenuoushah-hah-hah. “I don’t have a germ thing.”
“You do too have a germ thing.”
He leaned back against the vanity. “Practicing good handwashing isn’t indicative of a germaphobe, Wednesday.”
“I don’t know.” In the mirrored lights, her pupils were reduced to pinpricks, black ringed in incandescent white. “You know who else was obsessed with cleanliness? Patrick Bateman.”
“A fictional character.”
“A serial killer.”
“Fictional serial killer. Come here.” Taking her chin in his hand, he angled her face toward the light. “You have a bruise.”
“So do you,” she said, indicating the purpling swell of his knuckle.
“This?” He flexed his fingers. “It’s nothing.”
“Same with mine,” she lied. “I can’t even feel it.”
His jaw gritted hard enough to hurt. “You know my name,” he’d heard her say. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like the thought of what lived in Schiller’s bones having a piece of her. Chewing on it.
His hand moved in direct defiance of his head, knuckles skating over the bloodless curve of her cheek, the underside of her jaw. Gently, he drew up her chin, baring her throat. Her neck was pocked in angry marks, the ghost of Schiller’s chokehold already deepening to violet.
He thought very seriously about leaning in. About pressing his mouth to each bruise, one after the other. Licking clean her wounds. Instead, he settled on “Can you feel these?”
“Not even a little bit.”
