Page 1 of Odder Still
CHAPTER ONE
The Other Voice
We are all a complement of things:
of wants, of needs, of memories.
Past and future built into a single moment.
We are many made one.
THE PARASITE FUSED TO my neck appears dormant.
Parasite.
That’s the best word for the immortal, fungal creature my homeland calls ancients. When Lilias chained me here, she rattled off her own name for it—an aurora. The pretty term slips in and out of her conversation as she sits at the wall phone beside this little house’s curtained window, absently tapping the knife at her hip. Her gaze bounces to me, eyes fixing on the parasite like she’s imagining what it might look like severed from my neck. Or perhaps what my neck might look like severed from my body.
But I fear the mess of black that clings to me like a second skin more than I fear my old blackmailer turned kidnapper. She’s mortal, predictable: all anger and impulse and ambition. This parasite, on the other hand, has already defied everything known of its kind. When Lilias first claimed it as her pet, weeks ago and hundreds of miles south, it should have done as every other aurora has and latched to a nonsentient host to quietly begin producing the ignits our societies use as fuel. Instead, it decided to cling to me: a human. And for now, it only clings, not trying to wind itself into my body and seize control of it the way the creatures do to their usual hosts. Not yet, anyway.
I just have to remove it before then.
Somehow.
I give my chain an experimental tug. The hearth it’s locked to holds firm, and my cuffs slide across the raw spot where they’ve rubbed through my fishnet gloves. The red sores make the skin around them look a dustier brown by contrast, as though the warm undertones are being drawn out.
The sight of them makes me crave the pop of a cork and the slosh of wine drunk directly from the bottle. Everything about this situation does. After the nauseous, anxious hell that was my first week in Lilias’s brig, maybe I should be glad to be rid of the built-up alcohol in my system, but right now I would eagerly trade my health for the joyous release of a long drink and a good buzz.
Lilias glances up from her lopsided stool. The frizz of her bright orange hair swirls a little, barely visible in the gloomy morning light. She twirls the telephone cord around one finger like she might yank it in frustration.
“I don’t care if we have to kill him in order to remove it,” she hisses into the box. “I did not spend a whole damn year traipsing across the South to abandon this just because you’re squeamish. Besides, he’s a worthless recluse I set up as a cartel figurehead in Manduka when I realized he knew the region well enough to find me an aurora, and even they didn’t want him. You’re the one who said a single decent life is nothing if the population suffers, and this fool’s life was, at best, a wreck of his own making.”
My own making, my ass.
My mother’s early death was not my own making. The way her homeland, the Murk, rejected me was not my own making. Neither was Lilias bursting in, making me work for her by threatening the humble, rural life I had scrounged for myself just beyond the Murk’s edges, nor the chaos and betrayal that followed. The way I tore the parasite from its home as a bargaining chip to let me return to mine… thatwasmy fault, even if it had been on Lilias’s orders.
A lot of good it did, now that the very thing Lilias wanted from me is stuck to my neck.
The rap, rap, rap of her nails fills the quiet.
“Fine, I’ll come to Maraheem,” she snaps. “But I’m leaving him in Falcre for now—he’s safer here at my brother’s house. I’ll return for him once everything’s arranged.” She slams the receiver down so hard the whole phone box creaks, her cheeks aflame beneath her freckles.
I give her a smile that’s all teeth. “Trouble?”
Lilias curls her lip. “Fuck yourself, Rubem.”
“This is your brother’s house, then? Shame he’ll never be coming back for it.” It’s a terrible sort of consolation, knowing that if I have no one, at least she’s in a similar boat.
She storms toward me. Her fist rises. If I dodge, she’ll throw two in its place. I take the punch across my cheekbone. Beneath the aching black and white stars, the door opens and shuts again.
I let my pain stoke the tiny fire in my chest, making it sharp and bright: get rid of the parasite, get home, never get mixed up in anything ever again. The thought seems to pulse through my face along with the throbbing. My neck twitches.
The parasite warms, its rock-hard exterior going soft as silk. My heart slams into my throat, and I twist my head, peeling back the dirty fabric of my collar. A rainbow gleams across the parasite’s black form.
It brings a flicker of hope. If the creature is finally awake, then maybe, just maybe, I can nudge it free of my skin. Maybe what I’ve been calling a parasite has been as trapped as I, awaiting its chance to escape with no Lilias to claim it. I prod it gently, trying to push the lip of it up.
Its dark, rainbow-strewn body peels back. It feels weak beneath my touch, each action shaky. The colors dancing along its body flicker.
“Hold on there, little friend. You can do this,” I mutter at the parasite, employing the offhanded tone I take with my pet crocodile, and apply more pressure, trying to tug it away by force.
