“Hello, sir,” I whispered. The will to be polite, to maintain civility and normalcy, is fearfully strong. I wonder sometimes how much evil is permitted to run unchecked simply because it would be rude to interrupt it.
He smiled in what he must have believed was a charming, friendly manner. “I was just starting to suspect I’d missed you, and you were already gallivanting off God-knows-where.”
“No, sir.” The jagged tip of the pen pressed into my palm.
“How lucky. And—good Lord, child, what have you done to your arm?” He squinted. “Tried to copy Daddy’s tattoos using a butcher knife, did you?”
The next No, sir caught in my throat and refused to come out. My eyes had fallen on the weedy, mostly vanished circle of ash that had once been my blue Door, and standing before me was the man who had burned it down, betrayed my father, locked me away—and I didn’t owe him good manners. I didn’t owe him anything at all.
I unbent my shoulders and raised my head. “I trusted you, you know. So did my father.”
The joviality slid from Locke’s face like clown paint washing away in the rain. His gaze on me turned watchful and narrow-eyed. He didn’t answer.
“I thought you were helping us. I thought you cared about us.” About me.
Now he raised a placating hand. “Of course I do—”
“But you betrayed us both, in the end. You used my father, lied to him, had him locked forever in another world. And then you lied to me, told me he was dead—” My voice was rising, boiling up from my chest. “You told me you were protecting me—”
“January, I have protected you since the moment you came into this world!” Locke moved closer to me, hands outstretched as if he intended to place them on my shoulders. I stepped backward and Bad came to his feet, hackles rough, lips peeled back. If Mr. Locke hadn’t been firmly on his Please Do Not Ever Bite list, I think his teeth would’ve found flesh.
Locke retreated. “I thought Theodore had that animal dumped in the lake. Drowning doesn’t seem to have improved his temper much, does it?” Bad and I glared.
Locke sighed. “January, listen to me: when you and your father crashed through that door in Colorado just as we were closing it, my associates were all for smashing your skulls and leaving you for dead on the mountainside.”
“From my father’s account, you gave it a good try,” I said coldly.
Locke made a dismissive, gnat-swatting gesture. “A misunderstanding, I assure you. We were there because your mother had raised quite a fuss in the papers. Everybody made fun of the madwoman and her ship in the mountains, but we suspected there was more to it—and we were right, were we not?” He cleared his throat. “I’ll admit my man was a bit, ah, overexcited about your father, but the poor fellow had been tearing down a doorway when half a damned ship sailed through it! And anyway there was no lasting harm done. I had the two of you well taken care of while I consulted with the others.”
“The Society, you mean.” Locke inclined his head in a genteel bow. “And they all advised you to commit double homicide, did they? And I’m supposed to be—to be grateful, that you didn’t do it?” I wanted to spit at him, scream at him until he understood how it felt to be small and lost and worthless. “Do they hand out medals for not murdering babies? Perhaps just a nice certificate?”
I expected him to shout at me, perhaps even hoped he would. I wanted him to abandon this pretense of goodwill and good intentions, to cackle with glee. That was what villains were supposed to do; that was what gave the heroes permission to hate them.
But Locke merely looked at me with one side of his mouth twisted up. “You’re upset with me. I understand.” I sincerely, deeply doubted it. “But you were exactly what we’d been striving so hard to prevent, you see, exactly what we’d sworn ourselves against: a random, foreign element, with the potential to instigate all sorts of trouble and disruption, which ought to be stamped out.”
“My father was a grieving scholar. I was a half-orphaned baby. What sort of trouble could we cause?”
Locke bowed again, his smile gone a little tight. “So I argued. I brought them all around, eventually—I am very persuasive when I wish to be.” A small, black laugh. “I explained about your father’s notes and papers, and his particular and personal motivation to seek out additional fractures. I suggested I might foster you myself, watch you carefully for any useful, unusual talents, and turn them to our purposes. I saved you, January.”
How many times had he told me that, growing up? How many times had he retold the story of finding my poor father and taking him under his wing, of giving us fine clothes and spacious rooms, and how dare I talk to him like that? And every time I would wilt with guilt and gratitude, like a pet whose leash has been tugged.
But now I was free. Free to hate him, free to run from him, free to write my own story. I turned the pen in my hand.
“Listen, January, it’s getting hot.” Locke mopped the pearled sweat from his forehead theatrically. “Let’s you and I head back into town and discuss everything in a more civilized setting, hm? This has all been nothing but a series of misund—”
“No.” I had a suspicion he wanted to get me away from here, away from the susurrating green field and the black remains of the Door. Or maybe he just wanted to get me back to town where he could call the police or the Society. “No. I think we’re through talking, actually. You should leave.”
My voice had been so emotionless it could have been a conductor’s announcement on a train, but Mr. Locke threw up his hands in defense. “You don’t understand—you’ve suffered some personal misfortunes, I admit, but try not to be so selfish. Think about the good of the world, January! Think about what these ‘doors’—fractures, we call them, or aberrations—promote: disruption, madness, magic… they overturn order. I’ve seen a world without order, defined by constant competition for power and wealth, by the cruelties of change.”
Now he did reach for me, resting his hand clumsily on my shoulder and ignoring Bad’s snarl. His eyes—colorless, glacial—stared into mine. “I wasted my youth in a world like that.”
What? My fingers around the pen went slack.
He spoke slowly, almost gently. “I was born into a cold, vicious world, but I escaped and found a better one. A softer world, full of potential. I have dedicated my life, and the better part of two centuries, to its betterment.”
“But—you—two centuries?”
Now there was pity in his voice, syrup-sweet and rancid. “I traveled in my youth, you see. Happened to find a fracture in the middle of Old China, and a very special jade cup—you’ve seen it, I’m sure. It has the property of extending one’s life span. Perhaps indefinitely. We shall see.” I thought of Lizzie saying he hadn’t aged a day; thought of my father’s silvering hair, the lines framing his mouth.
