“She’s mine,” hissed the tiny Vivienne, who’d grown visibly impatient. “I claimed her.Me.”
The Not-Thomas smiled. It was the patient sort of smile adults used when dealing with petulant children. Vivienne had the sense that whatever ancient thing had taken up residence in her bones was very young, while the entity before her was very, very old.
“It must have been tiring,” said the Not-Thomas, with no small amount of sympathy, “to carry this within you for so many years. I can take it away. I can make everything go still.”
She considered the being’s offer.
“What will it feel like?” she asked. “Dying?”
“Like nothing at all” came the answer. It emanated from above and below. Cocooning her, as though this thing that stood before her, shoved into the ill-fitting skin of the boy she loved, was only a portion of the vast, sleeping Charybdis.
“Close,” it said, rumbling the ground beneath her feet. “You are already inside me.”
She became aware then of the wide bend of ribs underfoot. The protracted bellow of something breathing. That hard, osseous formation overhead became suddenly evident.
She was standing beneath a spine.
The faintpingof something metallic reached her ears. Like a penny dropped into a well.
A lone coin rolled out of the darkness, wobbling to a stop at her toes. Following behind it was a man—or maybe a boy, she couldn’t quite tell—with eyes as dark as obsidian. At first, Vivienne thought it must be her father—that he’d somehow followed her here. But as he drew closer, his features softened, turning boyish beneath a head of dark curls. His mouth was a mess of ruin, a corner of his lips elongated by a scar that stretched nearly up to his ear.
It was the boy from the church. She couldn’t remember his name.
“You,”said the Not-Thomas. It sounded displeased.
The boy peered drolly at the Charybdis. Finally, after a pause, he said, “Do I know you?”
“No,” it said, “but I know you. I gnawed on your bones for years, before you clawed your way back to the sun.”
“Oh,” said the boy, as though it had been an entirely normal thing to say. “Is there a reason you look like Lane?”
A bulb lit in Vivienne’s chest. “Lane?”
“Yes.” The boy was still studying the Charybdis, looking at it first out of the corner of one eye, and then the other. “Don’t you see it?”
“It looks like someone else to me,” she said. She tried again to remember his name. What had it been? What had itbeen? It seemed like eons had passed since that fateful day in the sanctuary. She felt both a hundred years old and as little as the sharp-toothed Vivienne still fuming beside her. “I can’t remember your name.”
His eyes dragged to hers. His familiarity nearly bowled her over. He looked at her for a long while, disturbingly at ease for someone inside a veritable stomach.
“It’s Colton,” he said at last. “Price.”
“Price?”
“Unfortunately.”
“But that means— But you—” She struggled to string the proper words together. Her head was spinning. The ribs contracted around them, the Charybdis’s breathing beginning to quicken. The floor tipped, and she staggered, pinwheeling her arms.
“I think I’m your sister,” she finally said. “Well, half.”
“So I’m told,” said Colton.
“Well,Iwas told you were dead.”
It came out blunter than she’d meant for it to. It was a ridiculous accusation, in any case. Whatevershewas, it wasn’t alive. The floor tilted again. The little Vivienne let out a sibilanthissas Colton glanced overhead. The ceiling had begun to drip ominously, ropy stretches of sputum sliding down the arciform bend of bone. Vivienne had the faint sense they were being digested. Apparently, so did Colton.
“We can’t stay,” Colton told the Charybdis. “Although it’s been nice.”
“Youmay go,” said the Not-Thomas. “I’ve taken all I want from you. You’ve spent so long turning on the spit of hell, there’s nothing tender on your bones.”
