Page 80 of Odder Still
I step back, tugging him forward, just a step. A single step, putting him fully into the elevator. The polished silver walls reflect back our haggard outlines, our anger blurred and our fear intensified. The doors automatically close behind Tavish.
The sound of their locking hits him like a physical blow. His face hardens, his edges growing sharp. His fingers shake.
Guilt hits me like a handover. He may be entitled, but I am worse: I’m justified.
I wait for him to cut me to pieces with his diamond voice, but instead, a set of sirens roars to life, piercing through the quiet of the elevator in the same rhythm as the signal for the closing of the gates. My stomach twists. “Lilias must have convinced the bar to do it tonight.” I realize what I’ve said a moment too late, and realize, too, that I had forgotten—forgotten I couldn’t tell him everything.
Tavish’s brow goes from furrowed to pinched, from confusion to pain. “Lilias? She was there?” He strangles his words just as he does the top of his cane.
I cringe. “She and Ivor are running the rebellion together.”
“You didn’t tell me!”
“You would have wanted to go after her, like at Glenrigg,” I object. “Then, where would we be? She would have killed you, and I would never have made it here!”
“I might have been willing to let her go if you’d asked.” He shudders. “But that—that’s not—you hid it from me. You didn’t even respect me enough to—”
“I’m sorry!” And I mean it, but I also know I wouldn’t change what I did. He would have left. He would have left if he’d known, and then Lilias would have put a bullet through his head, and Ivor would have likely let her do it, and I—
‘I think I'm justified,’my parasite whispers, but it sounds like my voice, feels like my thought. A cringe runs through us, formed of my guilt and our shared disappointment.
“Maybe I didn’t tell you, but I had good reason.” I add softly, “At least, I thought I did. I’m sorry, Tavish.”
“You say that as though it can change something.”
“And you said I was more important!” I realize it only after the words come out:Your life, he’d said.Your life is more important.Not me. Maybe never me—the me that was always temporary. That understanding twists into me like a row of thorns, piercing me painfully in place when I should be falling. I feel as though I bleed bitterness and breathe humiliation. As though either the man standing before me isn’t the person I’ve thought him to be, or else I’m not that person. “Iamsorry I dragged you into this. You’re right. You should not be coming with me.”
“Well, I’m here now.” He says it like a threat instead of a promise.
As we rise, he fiddles with his brooch, rubbing his fingers along the ornamental waves, his lowered brow casting heavy shadows over his detached gaze, and his expression unreadable. He seems like the same man I pulled into bed this morning, the one I moaned with. The one I laughed with. The one who wanted me back.
And I still, despite it all, want him too.
Hesitantly, I reach out. The moment my fingers brush his shoulder, he withdraws. The recoil feels no less painful than a punch, a brawl without the release of physical contact. I wish he would truly hit me instead.
As the elevator comes to a halt, I feel no relief, not even hope, my raw heart beating a little too fast. I burst out of the opening doors, carrying myself into the empty Findlay tower on ghostly feet. I trip over a cat.
Lavender hisses and pins back her ears as she scampers out of range of my flailing limbs, her silver fur fluffed up. The sound of her anger carries down the hall.
“Can no one catch that damned cat already?” Raghnaid shouts, the click of her heels following.
A click that comes steadily toward us.
Lavender curls herself beneath the nearest ornamental end table. I am not so fast.
Raghnaid’s blue dress mimics a stormy sea, swathes of sheer grey fabric curling off it and swirling behind her in ringlets as she enters the hall. She wears all ten strands of her pearls spooling downward around her neck until they are buried in the lace of her high bodice. Her silver hair streams in majestic waves, and her heels click like a pair of champagne glasses. She sees me, and her brow shoots up.
I yank Tavish’s ornamental knife free of my belt, but she draws her own weapon with the same speed. The pearl-studded pistol must be a recent addition to her outfit, but she holds it expertly. Her manicured nails fit perfectly over the trigger.
“I didn’t suppose you’d be the one to return,” she says, her Findlay voice piercing even now.
From the corner of my eye, I can just make out Tavish standing in the elevator. As he steps forward, his cane bumps my boot. He tips his head toward his mother, and with three assured strides, he plants himself between us.
I want to shout at him to go back, to let my parasite and I take our chances. We ate bullets in the pulse of Glenrigg’s ignit, maybe we’ll be strong enough still. Even so, Tavish’s dedication stirs something in me, fierce and full and warm, edged in guilt and torn by shame. Maybe I’m not the most important thing in his life, but mine is still worth something to him. And that’s better than I can say of most anyone else.
The sight of him removes all trace of Raghnaid’s shock. “Ah, my son.”
Tavish spreads his arms, making himself larger. “I don’t know if you care enough to listen to me, not after the murders that I’ve been wrongfully levied with, and perhaps not even before, but whatever you do to him, let it be done to me first. If he dies, let it also be the end of the Findlay line.” He speaks with her same crystal edge, every inch a Findlay as she is, every inch as determined and beautiful and dangerous.
