Page 28 of Odder Still
“Oh, no. Tav sees the best in everyone, even, on occasion, our mother.” She stills, and I think she actually blinks for the first time. “But if you hurt him—”
“You’ll have to battle Sheona for any remaining pieces of me,” I grumble.
Without a hint of emotion, Ailsa nods. “She could step on me.” She slides so easily into her next question that it takes a moment to register. “Your name, what is it?”
“Rubem.” It’s a relief to say, as though I hadn’t realized I wasn’t quite real without it.
“Rubem. You can go now. They left.”
As I listen, I realize she’s right. I give her a quick salute with my whiskey bottle. “See you around.”
The hallway is deadly silent but for the light padding of the cats. When I reach Tavish’s door, it doesn’t budge. Locked. I swear I’d made some kind of adjustment for this, but it takes a moment to realize the little gems I’d stuffed between the door and frame have come out of place. I take another drink of whiskey and knock. My fist makes no sound against the wood. I call out instead. There’s no response.
Kitchen it is, then.
I feel as though I’ve already forgotten most of Ailsa’s directions, but the parasite slams the blurry memory into me so hard that my feet carry me into the tight, unfurnished staff passage and halfway down the equally neglected steps before I even realize what I’ve done. I wrench back control with an aggressiveYou can fuck off now, thanksand slow for the cats to catch up.
‘You’re welcome,’ it spits back, piling a dozen different voices on top of each other. The effect shudders up my brain stem.
But as the sensation dies out, my shoulders loosen and my heart rate steadies. I take another swig from my bottle, letting it soothe the rest of my tension, and all but topple into the kitchen.
If the rest of the estate is fancy, so is the expansive galley, but its wealth comes in the form of technology, not décor: wide sinks and chopping machines, walk-in iceboxes and ovens large enough to cook an orca. The extreme quantity of ignation flowing through the appliances casts the whole room in cascades of rainbow. Five cooks lounge on a wide island counter. They bounce to attention at my arrival, wobbling in their grey chef’s uniforms.
A woman with hair buzzed down to a fuzz slips into half a bow, but her hand creeps toward the phone mounted on the side of the counter. “Excuse us?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” I think all of those words came out in the proper order, but the chefs still stare at me as though I have their boss’s prize possession stuck to my neck and her dead son’s cats sitting beside my heels. “I’m staying with the Findlays—with Tavish.” Tavish, who should have been back by now, right? But my wandering through the estate didn’t seem to help with that, and Tavish is supposed to have Sheona with him anyway. Besides, I’m supposed to be here, not there, to stay away from Malloch. And here is where they have food. Genius. I’m a genius. “Do you think I could whip up something delectic-leta-delishable—something to eat for Tavish and me?” I smile and toss the woman a wink. “Unless I’m intruding?”
She shuffles, glancing from the phone to her fellow cooks and back at me. Slowly, her tight expression loosens. “Well, um—no. No, sir, of course not. The kitchen is always open. What would you like us to make? There is a lamb stew brewing on the stove, and there’ll be steak pies for dinner in a few hours. We could whip up some potato scones or mince and tatties?”
“A friend of mine was making something called a bride or a birdie or some such?”
“A bridie?” The corners of her lips turn up. “We can do that, sir.”
“Nosirs here. Just a tipsy disaster.”A wasted disaster.The words sound like my own, but the parasite’s warm presence feels much too mixed with my nerves for it not to be an accomplice. I set my whiskey down and fish an apron off a hook. Apron, bathrobe, fishnet gloves: I am every sort of disaster tonight. “Right, where do we start? Onions?”
The kitchen staff bounce around the room, pulling forth supplies. They start out stiff, cautious to let me lend a hand, but by the time we’re folding the mix of onion, meat, and spice into half circles of pastry, they’ve broken into kindly chatter, nudging me around and correcting my technique with the nonchalance of old friends while the quietest of the lot lays out little meat scraps that Blue gobbles down before Lavender can overcome her arrogance-cloaked anxiety and creep up to them. I plop Blue onto my shoulder to give the rotund princess a fighting chance.
I lose track of the cooks’ names in the alcohol still slurring my world, but most are level-nine workers, while the last takes back-to-back shifts to keep his family within the upper’s outrageous income cutoff. When they have the time, they all pile into his apartment, which they jokingly call a mansion, and listen to a radio program about a cursed boy from a small beach town searching for a magical shark eye shell. Only three of them actually prefer onions in their bridies.
“And then, when the third scan still gives him my level-nine authorization, he clears his throat and asks which spa my face mask is from, like I’m not absolutely covered in street grime from head to toe!”
Our laughter cuts short when a series of soft clunks travel up the hallway across from the stairs. Click, slide, step. Click, slide, step. Blue hops from my shoulder, and Lavender’s ears perk. I pick up my whiskey. Tavish appears in the entrance.
The chef with the buzzed hair pulls the bridies out of the oven and snaps into a line with the rest of the staff standing along the counter as precise and lifeless as the technology around them. In unison, they say, “Good evening, sir.”
Tavish ignores their display. “Has anyone come across a man with a deep, honey voice—”
“I’ve spotted him in a mirror once!” I interrupt, giving Tavish just enough time to startle near out of his skin before I continue. “Brown skin, long black braids, kissable lips, stunning facial structure. And yes, he’s here now.”
“Thank the Trench! Why aren’t you in my room?” There’s a bite to his voice, but the crunch of his brow screams of fear not anger.
“I was worried about you, too, thanks.” I grin as I detach myself from the counter and make my way toward Tavish. “Ailsa dropped some books, and I thought maybe you’d died.” The reasoning doesn’t seem quite sensible, not when it lacks all the worry it contained for some fantastical, imagined version of Tavish. “But then I figured you’d have Sheona anyways, and I’m a glass past punching straight, I think. It’s a bit harder to tell when you aren’t drinking with glasses. You do have Sheona, right?”
As I ask it, she arrives down the hallway behind Tavish like an incoming storm, grumbling under her breath.
Tavish smiles. “Perhaps I should have locked you in.”
“I might be a little drunk, but I don’t think that’s how deadbolts work? And if you had, I’d never have made the bird-brid-iedies. Brides. Those ones.” I waggle my whiskey at him, the remaining quarter of alcohol sloshing pathetically in the bottom. The world keeps swirling around the edges. Either it shines or I do.
