Wrath and Bones (24 page)

“My Master,” Harry replied.

“We will dine together this evening when I wake, just you and I and Carole Jeanne. Until that time, Jane and Tara will see you settled into adjoining rooms. The item you requested from storage has been placed there; Carole Jeanne was happy to lend it.”

I Felt Harry warm happily at the mention of this name, and could not hide my jealousy; it spilled, unwelcome, through the Bond, and I wrestled it away as best I could. Harry shot me a troubled, guilt-laden look that I ignored.

HARRY DIDN’T NEED TO BE
shown to the room — after all, it was
his
Felstein bedroom — but Tara insisted on dragging the girl Jane with all of us and chatting my ear off about life at the stronghold. She yammered on about the banner, and the falling raven symbol and the never-closing eye, and the dress that she had fetched. I pretended to ignore her completely, feigning indifference; she was attempting to prick me, and I wasn’t going to allow any more of that if I could help it. She was playing sneaky, plausibly-deniable games. If I called her on any of the unspoken bullshit she was dropping, she could easily sidestep and claim she hadn’t meant to bother me. Jane radiated discomfort. The Blue Sense also reported Jane’s
awkward relief;
perhaps she was normally the target of Tara’s bile. When we arrived, Harry interrupted her with a wave of his pale hand.

“Please do show our brawny lad to the next room, ladies.”

Batten cast me a questioning look when Jane invited him to follow Tara and her. I nodded that he’d be fine. Seeing Kill-Notch clingy was tiring but understandable.

“Ah, there it is. Come, angel,” Harry said.

I approached the bed with a mix of dread and wonder. Palest blue velvet parted to reveal cream silk, and gold and silver metallic thread. At the wrists were three angled layers of frilly lace, the trim embroidered in a small, off-white floral pattern into the light blue. The dress had an unusually high, starched collar that would no doubt stand straight up like wings on either collarbone. This, too, was trimmed with soft, floral lace accented with gold and silver threads. The boning along the V-shaped bodice would no doubt thrust my chest upward and choke me with what little boob-flesh I had. This was a genuine rococo court dress for a lady; I felt completely unequal to the task of wearing it. How would I pull it off with my black braids shot through with a turquoise stripe? Would it be long enough to hide my red berry Keds? Without a fashion intervention, I was going to look ridiculous. Harry started laying out pieces of the dress like a puzzle on the bed.

He practically giggled as he began sifting pieces of the dress into piles. “Now, let’s see if I remember how this all goes together… so many layers. I do hope the stays fit well. These ties are so delicate, I’d hate to pull too hard and snap one.”

“Whose dress was this, Harry?”
Who is Carole Jeanne, and why am I wearing her dress?

His hand only paused over a bit of lace on an undersleeve for a split second, and if I’d blinked, I’d have missed the flicker of sadness across his brow. “That should in no way concern you.”

“It does. Harry, you know that even after all this time, there could be emotional remnants from the past owner on this garment. If I put it on next to my skin, I could psychometrically Feel her. I’d like to be prepared for what that might entail, that’s all.” I looked at the style, the cut, the fabric. I put the clues together. “It’s… is it French?”

“Please do not press the matter. I think you shall find there are no emotional remnants attached to this particular article. It has been stored for a very long time.”

“It’s not from Mary-Perry?”

“I have asked you not to call her by that ludicrous sobriquet,” Harry reminded me gently. He had, many times, asked me not to call his first DaySitter, Marie-Pierrette D’Elissalde, by anything other than her name, but I found it difficult to do so; maybe it made her too real to me.

“And it didn’t belong to your mother, because your parents were simple people and would not have had a need for so extravagant a garment.” I studied the velvet, the intricate embroidery. “Even still, you kept it, so the owner must have been important to you.”

“You must allow, this is one mystery that shall go unsolved, my pet,” he insisted gently but firmly, whisking the dress away in a clumsy shuffle that was not at all like him. My jealousy had him flustered, but he was not prepared to discuss Carole Jeanne. He flicked a piece of velvet upside down, squinted at it, then turned it the other way and fastened a button.

Tara returned with Jane, who had a tea tray. I smelled the rich scent of coffee and was suddenly more tired than I’d been in a long time. Tara had changed into a navy sheath dress and pearls for dinner, looking fresh and elegant.

“Boy, these Felstein DaySitters have it made,” I said. “This is their life? Dressing pretty and hanging around? Do they get Netflix up here? I could get used to this.”

Harry’s gaze was inscrutable. “Oh, dear, is that what you think? Bless.”

“So, what have you guys got to eat around here?” I asked Tara. “They do feed you, yes?”

“Of course. We eat nutrimatrix every single day, as much as we like.”

I shot Harry a questioning look and saw his lips twitch upward in a miniscule smirk. “Did she just say she ate
The Matrix
? Because I really hope that’s what she said. Just not the pureed-baby part of it; the imaginary Filet Mignon, I could probably deal with, though.”

“Perhaps my MJ would like to try nutrimatrix for herself and get a taste for perks that accompany the life of a Felstein DaySitter. In fact, I insist.”

Tara had a half-eaten bar in her pocket with the end of the wrapper folded over. She opened it to reveal something that looked like a maroon granola bar and snapped me off an end. “What are the, uh, ingredients?” I asked warily.

“It’s super-nutritious. The dietary requirements of humans up at Svikheimslending are wildly different than others. Near the Arctic circle, we need a lot of calories to maintain our weight, and we need to make a greater amount of blood to support our companions, so, lots of iron and Vitamin D and stuff like that.”

I put the piece tentatively to the tip of my tongue and tasted copper and turnips and butter and something that was distinctly asphalt-like. At her encouraging nod, I slipped it between my teeth and chewed. This wasn’t food. It was like masticating a slippery vitamin that had been soaking in pig’s blood and dirt. I couldn’t even decide if it was hard or soft. It crumbled like granola… at first. Then it melted. Then it turned the consistency of gelatin. The more I chewed, the stronger the copper taste got.

“Half a bar has about…” Tara squinted one eye as she tried to remember the number off the top of her head. “I think about three thousand calories? I eat about three of these before lunch. Not that I feed full time anymore, since Agethon passed away, but I’m a primi, so—“

“Uh huh. Primi, right.”
Whatever that is
. I smacked my tongue on the roof of my mouth and it nearly stuck there. “Say, this needs something. Salt. Pepper. Hot sauce. There’s a kitchen here, right?” Tara nodded as I backed away and pointed down the hall. I said, “Fascinating, do continue. I’ll be right back!”

I needed to get the taste out of my mouth as fast as possible. When Harry found me, I was trying to force my mouth around a soup spoon full of sugar. “I enjoyed your impromptu show of physical fitness.”

“Fitness? I’m only concerned about fitn’is sugar in my mouth.”

“Tasty?” he enquired.

“I could never get used to that.” I spluttered and spat into the sink.

“But of course you would,” Harry corrected. “You are a DaySitter of House Dreppenstedt. Should your companion be relocated to Svikheimslending, you would be expected to remain here at Felstein with him and to enjoy all the joys and benefits of his life at court.”

“I do so enjoy when you talk about yourself in the third person, Harry.”

“One does one’s best.”

“Thank the Lord and Lady we won’t be relocated here in my lifetime. I’d die without pizza and my espresso maker.” I wiped my tongue on a nearby dish cloth, balled it up and threw it in the sink. “How old is Tara?”

“She’s not quite as old as she’s going to end up, but very nearly so.”

“Why do you have to talk like that? Just answer the bloody question.”

“Indeed, I can readily appreciate your confusion,” he admitted, “only, it keeps a mind sharp to draw the blade across the stone.”

“She lost her revenant,” I said. “Is that who Agethon was?”

Harry made a soft little
mmhmm
noise, watching me clean my tongue off with a wet dishrag.

“But she’s not ratshit crazy like Danika Sherlock was. How come?”

“Our Young Aggie was at Felstein when the accident occurred. Quite unfortunate. He did not make old bones; he was barely a decade older than myself. We at House Dreppenstedt take care of our own, and Tara was kept on as a primifluous feeder for the crowned prince.”

An appetizer
. She who bleeds first. “And that keeps her Weebles from wobbling?”

“As you say, my charming chatterbox.”

“Saw her checking out Kill-Notch. She better not steal him from me. I’ll never find another guy like Batten.”

“Good heavens, but when it comes to your brawny meat-puppet, you do squawk like a covey of grouse. I assure you, Tara does not intend to steal anything. She has a comfortable home, here.”

“Some people have a wacky definition of comfortable. This place is as much a home as a park bench is; cold, hard, and dangerous,” I said. “I’ll take our cozy cabin any day.”

Harry gave a chiding cluck of his tongue but smiled, and hooked me closer with one arm. “As would I, my angel. Let’s get you settled for a nap.”

I rummaged through the supply crates and swiped a wrapped brownie. “Nuh uh. I couldn’t sleep in this creepy old place. It’s like a dungeon. There are weird noises, squeaks and squawks.”

“Mice,” he said with a tsk, frowning at the brownie in my hand. “And possibly an owl or two. Some of the DaySitters keep pets. Now, I would like you to fit into your court dress without any worry of tearing,” Harry said, pinching the brownie from my fingers.

My dress?
Her
dress
. I thought I blocked the jealous flare better this time. “I’m ten seconds away from punching you in your four hundred-year-old schnoz, dead man. Gimme that brownie.”

“I will lavish you with as many treats your little heart may desire,” Harry promised, “on our voyage home to our little cabin in the woods.”

“Where the hell is the coffee?” I snarled.

Harry removed a bowl of undressed salad from the cold cellar and noted, “Provisions have been laid in for visitors who might not be accustomed to their diet, but that does not mean one can completely ignore one’s healthy eating habits.” Before he left to change, he handed me a bottle of water and I nearly lost my shit.

When Tara tracked me down, I might have been in the kitchen sobbing into a handful of romaine lettuce. I used a leaf to wipe my eyes.

“There you are. You ran off. Agent Batten says you do that.”

“Don’t believe everything he says about me.”

“Agent Batten says you're a crazy bitch.”

“That’s just a pet name. Like yours. What was it again? Ballsucker? Fuckturd?”-

“You guys are so much fun.” She said it like it was all one word —
somuchfun!
—as she wrapped both of her hands around my arm. I did my very best not to shake her off. Golden was right: I didn’t have girlfriends because I didn’t enjoy being around other women. Maybe having five sisters had made me wary and skeptical. This was a smallness that I should probably address if I wanted to have any sort of life outside of being a hermit. So, Tara was poisonously friendly, so what? I couldn’t dance around the toxic splashes to enjoy a little niceness?

She gushed, “I wish you could stay.”

“I don’t,” I admitted. “This place gives me the bonecreeps. My lady-nuts are shriveled up like prunes in a snow bank.”

Tara laughed too hard at that, and I caught her glancing around, probably looking for my sexy Second. I heard Batten in my head:
Maybe she’s just a nice person
. Or maybe, I thought, she’s a straight-up lunatic. Who ever heard of liking me? I’m not fun. I’m certainly not “
somuchfun!
”

“There’s a back door,” Tara said abruptly without any segue. “Another exit from Skulesdottir to the coast.”

“Harry told me to never use the back door.”

“Of course he would. He loves you.” She checked her exaggeration; DaySitter to DaySitter, there was no need to embellish. She corrected, “His concern for your well-being is immeasurable. The rear exit of Skulesdottir is dangerous, and not something they’d recommend you use, but I just… I feel like
you
might need to know.”

House Dreppenstedt did not create clairvoyants, so her feeling wasn’t based on any sort of precognition. Had she overheard some plot to confront me? “Just me?”

She didn’t answer that. “You take the hallway behind the throne. Go past the king’s collection room. Don’t let anyone see you leave that way.”

“Why not?”

“The path from the rear exit to the coastline is usually safe, but the coast itself is rocky and treacherous for Captain Rask.”

I suspected the coast was treacherous
because
of Captain Rask, but held my tongue.

She continued, “He won’t retrieve you at the old pier there. If you needed to use that escape as a last resort, you’ll have to come south around the coast to the regular pier before Rask will meet you. And do
not
fall in the water.”

“Well, I should think not,” I said. “It’s freezing.”

“It’s more than that. There are things living in the deep. Things that hunt based on movement, splashing, vibrations of something struggling in water. The larvae stick close to the surface, and they’re always hungry.” She battled a quivering chin for only a second before confiding, “That’s how I lost my Agethon. He slipped. Who would have thought an immortal could be so clumsy?”