Page 27 of Odder Still
Tavish should be back by now. A vision of him in the next room over with his throat slit and a red fish painted at his side knocks into the exuberate high of the alcohol. My emotions run a flimsy battle, up and down like a leaf in the wind. Stay or go. These four walls feel smothering. And I need to know that wasn’t Tavish.
I creep from his room on bare feet. The bottle of whiskey comes with me. His door nearly slips closed behind me before I remember the way his brooch had to trigger it to unlock. Stealing a few little gems out of a nearby vase, I tuck them between the door and the frame and slink down the hall, whiskey raised like a club.
Out the vast sea windows, the ocean has turned from a sapphire pool to a dark mirror, hiding its secrets behind our own reflections. White lights along the ceiling glow dimly, adding to the shimmering ignation effect, silver and rainbow overlapping. Every color cast by the ignation holds an edge of darkness. I try not to glance over my shoulder in search of the fear I feel climbing inside me. It clings to my periphery, but I won’t find it, no matter how many times I turn. I will never be fast enough to see inside my own soul.
The parasite warms and sputters, launching its own worries at my monstrous cobbling of fear. It points me toward the light streaming from the crack in Ailsa’s library doors. I hold my bottle close and peek through the doors.
Shelves of whitewashed wood rise along all sides of the room, enveloped by backward-facing and half-toppled books. Ailsa shuffles through the corpses of flayed manuscripts beside a pile of fallen boxes and a broken vase. Her cloak of silver feathers lies over a dress so sheer and luminous it could be made of light itself. She pushes her pink-tinged waves away from her face, revealing the edge of her lip caught between her teeth. A bead of blood slips from it, but she doesn’t wipe it away.
Her pencil tears through the paper of the dissected book she’s writing in. She curses. As she tugs at the rip, her chin comes up. Her gaze flickers toward me, then sticks, and her expression goes from specter to poltergeist.
“Ah. That’s why he wanted you.” Her eyes crawl over me. Me, clearly wearing her brother’s bathrobe. She nods. “He has good taste.”
“What? No.” But I feel his fingers on my neck, and the shudder it brings isn’t fully unwanted. Not even half a bottle of whiskey can make me tell Tavish’s sister any of that, though. “I heard a scream.”
“My books fell.”
“Oh.” All my panic for nothing. That’s a weird kind of relief.
I step back, a single, silent motion. Footsteps from down the hall seem to echo it, not in the soft, courteous patter of the staff’s occasional crossings, but with the loud, purposeful planting of boots. No click of a cane accompanies them.
The parasite sparks fear down my spine, repeating the very first memory it dragged up: ‘Go, Ruby. Run.’
But Tavish’s room is all the way down the hallway and around a bend, and I may be too drunk to get there in time, but I’m not drunk enough to think that I can. The boots keep approaching. They round the corner.
I slip into the library, spinning like a ghost between spilled papers and decimated books. My whiskey bottle sloshes. I set it quickly on the desk, like its sound might be infectious, and duck between the library door and the shelves, out of sight from the hall. Through the crack of the door, I catch a fringe of straight, red bangs and a bodyguard’s dark outfit. Malloch. What are they doing here? Oh, right, bodyguard. Hiding seems silly now.
But when Malloch stops, a sliver of their arm just within my view—black sweater, black gloves, black vest plated in black armor—I stay quiet. No matter how certain Tavish is that his mother won’t make any moves to grab me yet, I can’t take the chance.
Ailsa watches Malloch with a bug-like stare and brings her pencil down on the nearest scrap of a book. Her writing digs into the document. The paper breaks, the torn piece scrunching up in a tiny worm as she continues to push. Not once does she blink.
“Dammit, Ace, would it kill you to act normal for once?” Malloch scoffs, but I can hear a shudder in their voice. Their heels squeak as they continue to Tavish’s room. The retreating sound makes my bones feel wilted, like I used up all their strength holding myself in place. I remind myself to inhale.
“Are you okay?” I hiss at Ailsa.
Her shoulders bounce, making her feathered coat flutter. “Should I not be?” she replies, equally hushed. “Why were you hiding from Malloch?”
“Your mother wants to dismantle me. I thought maybe they’d come for that. It sounds a bit ridiculous out loud, though.”
Ailsa taps the end of her pencil against her other wrist. “Maybe not ridiculous. They’re my bodyguard, but I don’t leave the estate much, so Mother and Father always send them on errands. No one cares if I’m murdered.” It’s such a blunt statement that I almost miss her abrupt transition. “Also they’re Sheona’s cousin.”
“Does that mean they might ignore orders if she asked?” Hope unfurls in my chest.
It closes itself right back up when Ailsa shakes her head. “Oh, no. They kind of hate each other.”
Malloch seems to have paused somewhere beyond Tavish’s corner. Ailsa and I go quiet while a pair of half as squeaky, half as loud, grey-clothed guard types pass the library. Malloch’s disgruntled voice greets them.
“Keep moving.” It turns to near a growl at the end, so reminiscent of Sheona that I wonder how I could ever have not known they were related.
Ailsa’s hands creep out over her dismembered books, reaching like a pair of ethereal spiders. One of them stops. “There’s kitchens through the sitting room across the way and along the little staff hall and down the left stairs. No one will look for you there, not even Malloch.” Her nose crinkles. “Especially not Malloch.”
“Right.” I can just go back to Tavish’s room, but I suppose she doesn’t know that. “Thanks.” I sneak back to the desk to grab my whiskey bottle. But I pause, my fingers around its neck. “Why are you trying to help me?”
“The cats like you. Cats are the best judges of character.” She says it like it’s a scientifically proven fact.
Blue rubs against the back of my legs, and Lavender plops down in the doorway, delicately licking one paw. They must have followed me out.
“The cats,” I reply. “So, this has nothing to do with Tavish?” I mean,Are you trying to help Tavish by helping me?but she seems to pick up something entirely different.
