Page 23 of Odder Still
It watches me. With another flick of its tail, it trots up and sniffs my fingertips. I brush gently against its face. When it leans in, I scratch harder, following its body language to knead in the places it wants most. The cat releases a purr like a steam car, much too rumbly for its slim frame.
I chuckle. A meow responds, but it comes from a second cat, a fluffy, far more rotund beast whose silvery coat fades to a grey around piercing blue eyes. It places each paw like a dancer. Neither its chin nor tail come down as it paces near the door, watching me with obvious suspicion. I offer it my other hand.
It tips its nose up.
“I respect that,” I say.
Its sleeker friend steals both my hands and the better part of my calves, rubbing against me like there’s no tomorrow. Animals are genuine in a way people never will be. They say exactly what they mean, every time, if only we would learn to listen. They stay as long as we offer them what they need, and when they hurt us, it’s only because we ignored those needs. I close my eyes and smile. The rest of the world seems to melt, blurring all the fear and anxiety beneath the soft, natural thrum of the creature pressing into my hands.
Tavish’s voice shatters the peace of the moment. “The cats were Alasdair’s—‘his girls,’ Ailsa calls them. The only companions he ever found worth keeping for long.” One edge of his lips tug. “They don’t usually like strangers. Or anyone, really, with the exception of Alasdair.” He holds out his hand, but both cats ignore him, accepting and perpetrating his insult in one fell swoop. His smile turns sad. “They probably miss him. Last night was the first time he didn’t come home to them since they were both tiny things that fit in my palm.”
That thought twists my heart like a physical blow. Most of my own pets haven’t seen me for weeks. Poor Sheila might still be watching the sea where Lilias’s ship carried me away. I won’t make her wait forever.
The sleek tabby nibbles on my hand, nearly catching her teeth on my fishnet gloves.
I massage the sides of her face in retaliation. “Do they have names?”
“Likely. I’ve only heard Alasdair call them by outrageous epithets, though, never the same thing twice. Except ‘you dashed fool.’ I believe that is reserved for when the smooth-furred one knocks things off his nightstand.” He pauses, his voice going hollow. “Wasreserved, anyway.”
The sorrow in his tone makes me stand, but I give both cats one last, long look. If the grey fur of the sleeker one appears almost blue, then the fluffy aristocrat’s darker points hold hints of lavender. Blue and Lavender, I dub them, though I doubt I’ll be around long enough to use the names.
As we try to leave, Blue lets out a positively offended yowl. She springs herself up my back and lands on my shoulder—the side opposite the parasite. Her slight form just barely fits. I scratch her head and vow to find both her and her friend treats later.
Tavish looks like he could use a treat now. His eyebrows press together, each step dragging a little as he continues down the hall. Lavender follows us at a distance, her tail in endless motion. She keeps looking back, as though she expects someone else to come with us. Someone who will never come again.
“I’m sorry about your brother.”
“Aye. Me too.” A bubbly laugh leaves Tavish, augmenting the grief that lines his features. “He was shite, you ken? A real proper dobber, arrogant and selfish. It’d probably have been better for the city—for the whole damn sea—if he’d retired to some wee fishing village. But dead? He shouldn’t be dead.” The final word cracks, trembling through the air like a snap of electricity.
It buzzes my bones. I focus on petting Blue, trying not to drown in the sensation, but the grief creeps in, a different sort from Tavish’s, old and dark and deep. It flows in the same shade as my mother’s dried blood. I press a thumb to the corner of my eyes, even though those tears have long since been drained. I want to tell him that I know sorrow the way a child is supposed to know their parents, but I can’t bear to leave the crust of my mourning in Tavish’s home. Instead, I say, “I never had siblings.”
“Some days, I wished I didn’t. But other times? When I was a bairn, he used to ruffle up my hair.” The admission flows from Tavish like his emotions, leaping and spinning with the urgency of rapids. Whether they charge toward a waterfall or a lake, I don’t know. “Mother hated it. She loved him, though. He had her ambition and her strength, and, oh, she loved him. Alasdair, her shining boy. Alasdair, who no one was good enough for, not even the other company heirs. Alasdair, the only opinion in this family that mattered. Now look at her: dry as a desert and half as sympathetic. I’d pity him if he could see how little she mourned.” He doesn’t sound pitying but vindicated, as though he and his brother are closer now that their mother has left them both behind.
I don’t point out that mourning looks different on each of us. Raghnaid doesn’t deserve my defense. “What about Ailsa?” I’m not sure what I’m asking—was he close with her, is her grief genuine, would their mother weep if she died—but I know that this moment feels like an exhale, letting me simply exist without thinking of where I’m headed or where I’ve been, and I want to cling to that.
“Once, I would have sworn that even if everyone else in my family turned on me, I would still have had her. But now…” His brow pinches, and he runs a hand through his hair, chin still tipped toward the ceiling. “The past few years she’s been caught up in her library more and more—it’s that one we just passed, ten paces back and three to the right.”
The silent, closed room seems to lack anything that should have alerted Tavish to its location. His cane barely even taps the floor. It’s how well he knows the estate, I realize. This is his home. He was raised to it in more ways than one.
As we round the next corner, Sheona waits for us in front of an elegant doorway, iridescent inlays curling up the sides. “The floor looks clear. I’ll go deliver those messages to Dr. Druimmin and Greer O’Cain, but for fuck’s sake, stay put until I get back.”
“Only if you hurry,” Tavish grumbles. He turns to the door. Ignation pours through a box around its handle, and a light comes on, targeting his brooch. As it shuts off, the lock clicks. He smiles as he leads me inside. “Welcome to your home away from home.”
CHAPTER NINE
Ghost Grime
The hole in my chest is black; it has its own gravity now.
If I say to you, “Reach in,” I also pronounce:
“Be entrapped.”
I TAKE IN THE room slowly, all too aware that this space does not, and will never, belong to me. Smaller and blander than the magnificent chambers behind us, everything sits exactly three steps away from everything else, all in silvers and blacks and blues. A massive, pillow-strewn mattress presses against one wall, competing with a pair of clutter-free dressers and a desk so wide it could almost be a second bed, dozens of paperwork piles scattered across it.
The plush carpet covering most of the marble floor makes me yearn to kick my boots off and let the fibers slip through my toes like the clay-heavy mud at a jungle river’s edge. Two half-curtained windows on the far wall look out on a scooping rock barrier, streams of light pouring between gaps in the coral. An eel winds through the base. Blue hops from my shoulder, scampering over to watch it swim. It bares its teeth at her.
An archway leads to the bathroom, and another to the closet. A proper undersea bedroom, except for a distinct lack of mirrors and lights. That’s when it hits me.
