Indexing: Reflections (Kindle Serials) (Indexing Series Book 2) Page 23
“Don’t talk like that,” said Sloane. “You’ll be here a long, long time.”
Hiram smiled. There was bitterness in his expression, but there was fondness too, and I found myself wishing the story hadn’t skipped so far ahead. Who had they been to each other? Friends, uneasy allies, lovers? Sloane deserved some happiness. I hated that her memories seemed intent on skipping it.
“Mayhap,” he said. “But you, I think, will be here a great deal longer.”
The story shifted again, to Sloane standing stone-faced and silent by an open grave, while two men in broad-brimmed black hats held her arms, preventing her from running away. She didn’t cry, but I knew her well enough to see the sorrow in her eyes, and in the hard line of her jaw. The men who held her took a step backward, forcing her to go with them.
She looked back once, long enough to see the tombstone. Hiram Rogers—He Fought For All, it read. His date of birth was given as 1678; his date of death was 1740. A long life, by the standards of the day. And Sloane still had so many years to get through before she’d reach the day we met.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, everything had changed.
Sloane was standing in front of a large oak desk, her back ramrod straight and her hands at her sides. She was wearing a tailored dress and a feathered hat. I couldn’t place the year—fashion has never been my strong suit—but I guessed that we’d jumped forward a century, maybe more. The man behind the desk supported my guess. He was wearing a suit, and his mustache was groomed in a fat handlebar.
“Miss Winters, you have been the responsibility of this agency since its schism from the outdated Council of Librarians,” he said. “I am offering you a choice. Be a part of our new Bureau, answering to the United States Government, or be one of the first occupants of our new prison. Childe is supposed to be a very pleasant facility for individuals like you. You could be happy there.”
“No, thank you,” said Sloane crisply. Her accent had faded; she sounded almost like the Sloane I knew. “I prefer my current living conditions.”
“Then you must accept processing according to our new guidelines. The story structures as described in Aarne’s Verzeichnis der Märchentypen will allow us to better detect and eliminate these foul acts of witchcraft.”
“With all due respect, sir, none of those stories is mine,” said Sloane. “I am not a Cinderella. You cannot hang my sister’s story on my shoulders.”
“Ah, but you see, we’ve found the story for you!” The man sounded smugly pleased with himself. “Number three-fifteen, ‘The Treacherous Sister.’”
Sloane frowned. “Sir, I’ve read every book of fairy tale and folklore I could find, from all around the world. I have sponsored translations. The story you reference has nothing to do with me. It’s about sisters who are untrue to their brothers, usually through the crime of falling in love inappropriately. I want to poison people. I want to feel murder on my fingertips. You can’t give me a label that doesn’t fit. It serves as no true warning.”
“The stories will be what we say they are,” said the man. “That’s the point of this exercise. We’ll remake them in the image that suits us best. Accept your designation and become an agent in our new bureau, or submit to imprisonment.”
Sloane’s frown became a glare. “Live a lie, or live no life at all? Is this to be the foundation of your brave new world? Lies are a form of story. Will you give them this much strength?”
“Choose,” said the man.
Sloane glared for a moment more before she turned away. “I will serve you,” she said.
The man smiled, triumphant. “Welcome to the Aarne Management Bureau, Agent Winters,” he said.
The scene turned cold, freezing in place. Then it shattered, and I was falling through the dark, bits of broken glass spinning all around me.
“The fee is paid,” whispered the voice of the mirror.
A piece of glass caught me in the heart.
Everything stopped.
# # #
I jerked awake in a hospital bed, machines screaming on every side of me. The hands I raised in front of my face were long-fingered and too small, with skin as white as snow. I had done it. But where was I?
Removing the catheter from my new body felt like an invasion—even more than stealing it, since I didn’t intend to be here for long. I stumbled out of the bed, ripping IV tubes and monitoring wires away with every step. My legs were weak, like they hadn’t been used in years.
It was a private room, with a private bathroom. I fumbled until I found the switch, and turned it on, revealing a face framed by straight, bed-rumpled hair as black as coal, with lips as red as blood. The eyes were green. Our story doesn’t dictate our eyes. My new body looked to be in its early twenties. I let out a short breath of relief.
I was back in the world, and I didn’t recognize her from the wood. She must have been one of the mirrors, or one of the girls who never wanted to go back, and so hid to prevent people like Adrianna from taking her over.
“I will give it back as soon as I can,” I said, and walked away from the mirror.
I had to find my friends.
I had to warn them.
FELINE COBBLING
Memetic incursion in progress: tale type 545B (“Puss in Boots”)
Status: ACTIVE
The cat had promised him such wonderful things. Such magical, magnificent, wonderful things, and in the end, the cat had been able to deliver. That was the most incredible part. The cat had said “do this, and you will have a beautiful home,” and he’d done it, and suddenly he’d been in his very own mansion. The cat had said “do this, and you will have a beautiful wife,” and he’d done it, and suddenly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen had been telling him she was his, that he could do whatever he wanted to her. It was a miracle from top to bottom, from beginning to end, and he never wanted it to stop.
But he couldn’t find the cat.
His wife had been missing since morning. He’d found her robe in the hall, and the ropes he’d used to tie her to the bed—not to hurt her, no, he’d never hurt her, and besides, the cat assured him she was here willingly, the ropes were for her own protection, because she was a restless sleeper, that was all—the ropes had been lying in the foyer. He’d made it as far as the front yard before the sunlight had driven him back inside. That was when he’d thought to ask the cat. The cat could tell him where his wife was; the cat could tell him how to find her and bring her home, hopefully without leaving the house.
He’d searched the whole place, from top to bottom, and he couldn’t find the cat. His wife must have taken it with her when she went out, no doubt to buy some trinket that had caught her eye. He reached for his hat and his sword. He was the Marquis de Carabas, after all. The cat had told him so. Now all he had to do was find it, and everything would be all right again.
# # #
If I were to make a list of “shit that is so clearly a terrible idea that I shouldn’t even have to explain to people why I’m not going to do it,” walking into the hedge maze behind a mansion full of dead bodies would have been right up there. Not top five, maybe, but high enough that I wouldn’t have expected people to make me do it.
Ciara stopped at the mouth of the maze, giving me an expectant look. “Well?”
“Well, what?” I shook my head. “I don’t want to go in there. I can go help Andy and Demi question the woman who escaped, how about that? That’s a much nicer, less murder-y way for me to spend the afternoon.”
“Henry and Jeff are already inside,” said Ciara, like that was going to make some sort of difference.
I looked at her flatly. “Something is seriously wrong with Henry. You know it, I know it, Andrew and Demi know it—everyone knows it except for Jeffrey, and the only reason he’s so far behind the rest of the pack is because he’s still all fucked up about the whole ‘true love’s kiss didn’t work this time’ bullshit. He’s going to snap out of his mopey fugue soon and realize that he’s foll
owing a wrong thing into dark, creepy places.”
Ciara opened her mouth. Then she caught herself and stepped closer to me, lowering her voice as she said, “Then it’s all the more important that you come into the hedge maze with me.”
“Come again?” I raised an eyebrow. “I realize you think of me as a villain, but I promise, I’m not interested in following wrong things into dark, creepy places. That’s part of how I’ve managed to stay alive as long as I have.”
“I’ve seen your records, Sloane. You’ve followed plenty of wrong things into plenty of bad situations.”
I glanced away, uncomfortable. She was right, of course—my career was practically one long succession of wrong things, creepy places, and dark alleys where a sensible person would never go—but I’d always done what I’d done because someone I had trusted had asked me to. Henry, and Dan before her, and Marian before him, going all the way back to Hiram and Jack. I was fully capable of risking my own neck for someone who I actually gave a damn about.
Henry hadn’t asked me to come with her this time. She had just started walking, trusting I would follow, and something about her was so wrong that it set my teeth on edge. Standing too close to her was like biting into frozen tin foil. The smell of apples was getting stronger every day. Even Jeff had started noticing it. He was sneezing and blowing his nose more, a look of perpetual confusion in his eyes. He was going to realize how wrong she was soon.
“If you really thought there was something wrong with Henry, you could have let her fall back in the factory. You didn’t. You must have seen something in her that didn’t seem off-kilter. Jeff and Demi, they’re both active in their stories, and they’ve both accepted her.”
“But you haven’t, have you, Ciara?” I turned back to her, making no effort to conceal my frustration. If anyone was going to understand how I felt, it was going to be her. “You know something’s wrong. You’ve been hanging back.”
“She’s your leader. I was only temporary.”
“And yet they haven’t reassigned you. It’s almost like someone sent a report to the higher ups telling them that Henry couldn’t be trusted with her own team.”
This time, it was Ciara who looked away. She didn’t say anything.
I snorted. “Oh, like you’re fooling me. You know she came back wrong, and you know following her into that maze would be pure stupidity on my part. So give me one good reason why I should do what you’re suggesting.”
“Jeff’s in there.” Ciara turned back to me. “He’s your friend, right? I mean, I’ve heard you describe him in friendly terms, and you only threaten dismemberment when you’re talking to him. That seems to be a sign of affection, coming from you. Jeff’s in there, and he thinks there’s nothing wrong with Henry. He won’t see it coming. If what you’re afraid of happens, he’ll just stand there and take it, because he loves her.”
I glared at her for a moment before I started striding toward the entrance to the maze. “I hate you,” I said.
“I know,” said Ciara, following me.
“I’m going to play jump rope with your intestines.”
“Won’t that be fun for both of us.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
On that last, smug rejoinder, we both stepped out of the sunlight and into the shadows of the hedge maze.
# # #
It had started as a fairly normal call. A half-naked woman had been found stumbling down a residential street in a wealthy neighborhood, wearing nothing but the torn remains of what had once been a fairly nice peignoir, screaming for help and telling anyone who came in range that a madman had killed her parents and tied her up in the guest bedroom. It would have been a matter for the police, under normal circumstances, except for the part where she called him a madman because he kept taking orders from an invisible talking cat. Even that might have been thin enough to keep the case out of our jurisdiction, had she not given his name.
According to the woman, she had been kept captive by the Marquis de Carabas, and she was terrified he was going to come and take her back again.
Dispatch had picked up the call when the police had reported the man’s name, and the Bureau had taken the whole thing over before anyone knew what had happened. It was always awkward when we had to sweep in and claim custody of a case like this, and Henry, who was normally our main source of diplomacy and tact when it came to liaising with the mundane cops, was no help. The officer in charge was an old acquaintance of hers, Marcus Troy, and she’d swept past him like he was nothing, leaving Ciara to make awkward apologies. I’d considered getting involved, and decided it was a bad idea. Officer Troy didn’t like me. I couldn’t imagine why, but well, there it was.
Henry had sent the police packing, and we’d secured the site. She hadn’t been herself lately, but at least she still had a modicum of common sense: she’d assigned Andrew and Demi to interview the woman, who was too upset to give a linear accounting of what had been done to her, before starting the search for the missing “marquis.” Which had really meant telling me to go find him, since tracking down the missing stories was my job.
I had gone. I had tracked. I had followed his trail and the vague but unpleasant smell of wet cat all the way to the mouth of the hedge maze, where I had—quite sensibly, I felt—balked at the idea of going any further. Who the hell kept a hedge maze on their property, anyway? It wasn’t just extravagance, it was virtually an invitation to the evil spirits of the world. “Come possess my property and rend me limb from limb during my next garden party, it’ll be a good time for all concerned.” Rich people were fucking weird. And there were crows all over the lawn. A full murder never meant anything good.
Henry hadn’t seemed to care about how weird this all was. She had just gone in, Jeffrey sticking close to her heels, leaving Ciara to convince me to follow.
Now that I’d been convinced—now that the walls of the hedge maze were actually rising around me, green and silent and too tall to see over—I was even more certain that I’d made the right decision in the first place. We shouldn’t be in here.
“This is a bad idea,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere else. Somewhere that isn’t actively preparing to swallow us both alive.”
“Not an option,” said Ciara. “We need to find the others.”
“See, this is what gets you killed,” I said. “It’s not splitting the party. It’s trying to reunite the cursed thing.”
Ciara didn’t say anything. She just kept walking, and so I followed, trusting her to have some vague idea of where we were supposed to be going.
My trust was misplaced. Our corridor ended at a T-junction, with paths stretching off to the left and right, and no way to continue straight ahead. Ciara stopped briefly before she turned to me and said, “We’re going to have to split up.”
“No.”
“It’s necessary.”
“No.”
“It’s the fastest way to find our people. If we head straight down our respective paths, we can’t get lost, and—”
“Are you hard of hearing, or is this a Bluebeard’s Wife thing I didn’t know about? I said no. I’m not going to leave you alone in here just so we can find some assholes I don’t like all that much five minutes faster.” I shook my head. “Not going to happen.”
“I thought you said splitting the party wasn’t the problem,” said Ciara.
I shot her a baleful look. “There’s a limit.”
“Yes. Let’s limit how long we’re in here without the rest of our people. I’ll come back for you if I find them first.” Ciara turned and started briskly down the left fork. I stared after her, scarcely believing what I was seeing.
“This has to be a side effect of this asshole’s story,” I said. “Because if it’s not, we’re dividing and subdividing ourselves into a slaughter. You can come back now.”
Ciara didn’t come back. I considered going after her, and maybe shaking her until she recovered a small fraction o
f the common sense she must have possessed. If she’d been this foolish the whole time she’d been associated with the Bureau, she would have been dead by now. In the end, I decided the candle wasn’t worth the chase and turned to walk deeper into the maze.
There are those who would use me as a form of narrative bloodhound, and they’re not entirely wrong in that: I’m a dowsing rod for active stories, shaking them out of the fabric of the world one sentence at a time, until they’re pinned to the page before me. The trouble is, any dog can be confounded by a strong enough smell, and any dowsing rod can turn its holder in circles when there’s too much water to be found. The entire maze reeked of damp cat and freezing winter snow, thanks to the combined presence of Henry and our wayward marquis. I was running as blind as anyone who had never been touched by the narrative.
I hated it. My life has been a long series of surrenders disguised as open doors. I ran from the story that was trying to claim my stepsister, surrendering my place in the narrative in order to save us both. That should have worked—did work, in its way, since my dear Gabrielle had been allowed to live and die as a member of her own family, and not a prize for some rich man to win. Belle had recovered from the narrative’s hands upon her heart. She’d taken a pig farmer to husband, and had borne eleven children before she died peacefully in her own bed at the ripe age of sixty-three. Seven of those children had lived, and I kept tabs on her descendants. It was hard, sometimes, keeping myself from seeking them out, pretending I was a distant cousin who’d tracked them down through some genealogical site. It wouldn’t even have been such a stretch, but it would have been a risk. The trouble with open doors is that they can be walked through in either direction. I was a bomb waiting to go off, and I needed to stay away.
The narrative had done its best to destroy everything I’d ever cared about, and the one consolation I’d been allowed to keep was that I could root it out in others, crush it under my heel and laugh as it squirmed, looking for an outlet I wasn’t going to offer. Those few moments, like this one, where I got to feel like a normal person? They weren’t a relief. They were just one more surrender pretending to be an open door. See, you could still be normal, whispered the narrative, in the small place at the back of my mind where it was always lurking, looking for a way to turn me into the weapon it had wanted me to be for so very, very long.