Page 29 of Odder Still
“They should be cooled shortly, sir, if you’d like one,” the cook with the buzzed hair puts in.
“Aye, thank you.” Tavish’s awkward smile turns his handsome face into something almost laughable.
I clamp onto his arm, preparing to make him sit at the counter to eat, but one look at the nervous staff changes my mind. “I bet we can take these delicious bundles to a more private location?”
Tavish sighs. “I’ve had enough dinners in my room of late. The closet park would be a nice change. It even has a bolt now, for privacy.”
“The closet park?” I ask.
But Sheona is already stuffing five of our golden meat-filled pastries into a fancy basket, along with a pair of glasses and a few embroidered cloths. “Only if we’re quick about it.”
As she returns to us, Tavish holds out his palm. “Don’t you have a few of those pesky perimeter scouts to run?”
For some reason, she looks between us. Her throat bobs, and she hands over the basket. “Don’t take too long.” She casts me a scowl. “And don’t get too cozy either.”
I have the wildest feeling that I should know what she means by that, but then I think of how cozy the rug in Tavish’s room is, and how he looked at me when I pointed out that there was only one bed, and there’s something different about that memory beneath the swirl of the liquor, something I still can’t quite place.
“Aye, Nana.” Tavish’s voice holds a teasing edge. He brushes his fingers over mine, just once, as he leads me out of the kitchen without another word, the cats following at their usual, free-spirited pace.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Man Behind the Aid
But fading or falling, we want all the same.
Magnitudes and black holes coming to align.
Do we have, together, enough to sustain?
Can we each be a sea or must one fill the sky,
dragging the other to their own incline?
INSTEAD OF TAKING US back up to his own floor, Tavish bypasses the staff’s stairs entirely, ducking into a tight, low-lit passage of small, simple doors. Closets, I assume, though my brain still struggles to fit the idea of a park into one.
“This place is meant to be a secret—the architect wrote ‘storage closet’ on the designs, but someone put in a sheet of glass beneath the pool like it was meant to have an ocean viewport. When the staff found it, they decided it was too beautiful to leave bare.” He stops at the last door and slips a key off the top of the frame, finding the opening of the lock with his fingers before deftly sliding it in. It clicks, and he puts the key back after. “I stumbled across it while trying to memorize the estate—I was twelve, I think?”
When he pushes open the door, I’m hit with a rush of warm, humid air, dense and floral, like the Murk made miniature. The rippling glow of light through water tumbles along the silhouettes of five lush trees and bundles of flowering plants, all wrapping around a small cobblestone walkway which leads to a patch of grass with a folded blanket.
My eyes linger on the glass-bottomed pool in the ceiling. A line of perfectly groomed lily pads floats on top of it, giving us a direct view of their undersides. The water around them shifts the light into swells of wrinkles and puddles, a sign that even in this foliage-filled paradise, we’re truly a hundred feet underwater.
As Tavish bolts the door behind us, I close my eyes and breathe in, letting the garden fill me so thoroughly that I feel it might take root in my lungs and grow flowers up through my rib cage. The rough stone presses between the wrinkles of my bare feet, reminding me that I’m alive. I can take up space in this place. All I need is a wine bottle and a jaguar nuzzling against my leg.
This is what I’ve been missing, here in this city of metal and diamond. How do the selkies not suffocate from its lack?
Tavish drops onto the patch of grass, leaning back on his palms. His unfocused eyes ease to one side. I settle on the ground with him. Lavender hops onto the folded blanket and curls herself into a circle, her paws on her nose, while Blue clambers up the nearest tree.
We eat in a relaxed silence. The bridie tastes like the most delectable thing I’ve ever consumed, but with the whiskey still working its way through my system, anything more or less edible would fit that bill. By the end of the meal, we’ve torn the final one in half and finished it off. Little crumbs coat my lap. I give up brushing them off and splay my half-bent legs out, leaning my elbows onto my knees. My ankle bumps against Tavish’s. He doesn’t move away.
“We’ve had no luck with our contacts so far.” He speaks softly, as though anything louder might break the peace we’ve acquired in this tucked-away place. “Everyone is too afraid of my mother’s wrath if she finds out. And I understand, I suppose. The Trench scientists are concerned that she’ll fire them, and they’ll have to leave Mara to find anything close to the aurora research they’re doing now. And Dr. Druiminn worries my mother will raise the interest price on the ignation meant to power her medical equipment in the new lower-city hospitals we’re constructing, which will mean cutting back on their quantity, leaving more people without care. We still have Greer as a potential option, but only because their people haven’t replied to my message yet.”
“Ah.” I try not to think of what that means for my future existence in this parasite-ridden body. With the alcohol still burning bright in my chest and painting my emotions in shimmering hues, it seems a waste to mar the moment. I shove the whiskey bottle into Tavish’s hands. “Perhaps you need this, too.”
A little laugh follows, too stale for the lush freshness of this place. He tips up the bottle to his lips, then farther, slowly lifting it until he can sip the alcohol. The swells of light from above shift across his bunched nose. “Good fuck, Rubem, how much did you drink?”
“That’s none of your business, it’s not yours any longer.” Grinning, I grab for the bottle, bumping shoulders with him in the process.
He holds it away from me with a chuckle. “No more of that unless it’s in one of those glasses Sheona packed.”
