Velveteen (17 page)

Number thirty-three, Rachel Snable.

She’d died in a car wreck, and her soul had somehow gotten trapped within the twisted wheel well of a Dodge Charger. The car was a complete mess and in a wrecking yard when Velvet found it. A group of misdirected kids in black robes were worshipping it as a prophet. Something about the construction of that particular make and model had a tendency to capture souls more than others. No one knew why, exactly. Rachel held it together pretty well, stiff and businesslike all the way through her debriefing with Manny, but then, on the way to the dorms, she broke down into great buffoonish sobs. Velvet had almost been embarrassed for the woman. She’d never, herself, been a fan of emotional displays, and Rachel’s had been so loud. So. Loud.

Nearly everyone had been watching her, gawking.

But then the oddest thing happened. Rachel’s light went out and she turned to dust.

Just like that.

Manny hypothesized that Ms. Snable’s remainder, her leftover import, that thing that keeps souls in purgatory
until it’s resolved, whatever you wanted to call it, had been the ability to express emotion.

And boy had she ever. You could hear her wailing all through the Latin Quarter, sobbing and heaving her shoulders one minute, and then, poof, they were all standing there alone, picking ash off their tongues. The fact that she’d broken down on the railcar meant that Velvet and her team had been responsible for cleaning and collecting the ash and delivering it to the local ash pot.

Yes. Those ashes.

The greatest form of respect was to wear them. It might have been disgusting, but it was tradition. Try having hot dogs at Thanksgiving and see how that goes over. People don’t like change, and neither, it turns out, do souls.

She was pretty sure that expressing emotions wasn’t Nick’s remainder, though she wasn’t great at prediction.
Maybe
, she thought.
Maybe I just hope it isn’t
. Either way, he was bound to have another breakdown soon. It was inevitable. A teenage mind processes things so quickly that they get bored and start to remember why they’re here, and then … boom!

Another meltdown.

She shook away the idea and focused on the door. This meeting had very little to do with Nick anyway. She’d be explaining to Manny the banshee they’d collected, or the all-out brawl with the revolutionary downstairs—but probably not the effigy. That would really hurt the station agent’s feelings. There was lots of business that didn’t have to do with hot boys. She didn’t have time to worry about someone who probably wouldn’t be around long anyway.

Velvet pressed her shoulder to the doors and shoved. They
shuddered and split in a crooked zigzag instead of a straight line, as though an earthquake had cracked the carved mountain at its center in two. The hinges screeched loud enough to cause a hush to fall over the crowd below. Luisa and the boys rushed over to the rail, and Velvet saw them framed in the aura of the angry mob’s emotive glow.

A whoosh of warm wind spilled from the gap, flooding the air with powdery notes of jasmine and orange blossom, tussling Velvet’s hair and making her nose crinkle.

Disgusting
, she thought.
Where the heck does she find that perfume?

“It’s Arpège by Lanvin.” Manny swept out, seemingly alive with pink powdered skin and a tight-fitting sweater and skirt to match. She tapped across the stone floor on dangerously high heels. “Don’t you love it?”

“Something like that,” Velvet lied, wondering if the station agent had added mind reading to her varied and substantial talents. The question didn’t hang in the air long, as Manny sped around the balcony misting from a small brown atomizer.

Velvet choked back a gag.

“It was my favorite. My signature scent. Thank the good Lord for the Collectors.”

“It’s
really
something.” Velvet didn’t care to thank anyone for Isadora, Connie, Isadora’s mother, or their team of Collectors. Their job was to steal castoffs and lost things and bring them across the veil between purgatory and the daylight. Their taste level was suspect. Half the crap they brought through was complete butt.

Velvet followed the woman into her office, a vast and lavishly appointed Hollywood set of a room lit by the same glowing orbs of gaslight that filled the station hub with columns of light. She flopped down into the armchair next to the davenport, which is what Manny insisted on calling the couch.

“So, what happened out there?” Manny asked in her breathy old-fashioned way. She swished around the settee and settled into it. She crossed her legs elegantly and popped her ankle like a signal flare. “I heard a ruckus.”

Velvet hesitated and looked over her shoulder. Sure enough, the others had wandered in, Logan’s mouth gaping, as usual. Thankfully he’d gained some control over his normally lolling tongue. The station agent definitely had Nick’s attention too, but not all of it. His eyes darted in Velvet’s direction.

And before she could stop herself, a small smile escaped.

“Oh!” Manny shot up and skittered across the room. “This must be your fifty-seventh soul! Congratulations!”

She gripped Nick by his biceps and let out a sharp, “Ooh! Strong, this one.”

Velvet grimaced.

“I’m Nick, ma’am.” His cheeks glowed dimly through the ash.

“Oh, my. So formal and polite.” She raised her index finger to his chin and tapped it playfully. “You can call me Manny, doll.”

Nick jittered a bit, grinning nervously. “Um, okay … Manny.”

“Good boy.” She pivoted and sauntered back to the gray
knobby davenport, and flopped down near Velvet. “How are you adjusting there, Nick? You don’t seem at all bothered by your …” She paused as though pondering her words. “Change of circumstance.”

“You know, doing my best to stay calm. Soldier on. That kind of thing. Coach would say—”

“Coach?” she interjected. “A sporting man? Athlete?”

“I play basketball.”

She clapped deliriously—everything Manny did was peppered with a flair for drama. The actress in her never died, just the body, she’d told Velvet once.

“He’s assessed as Salvage.” Velvet watched Manny carefully.

“Well, then, kid.” She beamed at the boy. “You’re in luck, because Velvet and her team are the absolute best. And you’ll want to watch them very carefully. Learn everything you can for when a spot is found for you on another team.”

“Oh,” Nick said, sounding suddenly morose. “I thought …”

“You thought what, darling?”

He glanced from the twins slowly to Velvet, then tilted his head downward.

“Are you sulking?” Velvet prodded.

“No!” he snapped. “I just thought I’d be on this team. It just feels right.”

“Really?” Luisa’s smile spoke uncomfortable volumes. Her stare all but poked Velvet in the forehead.

“Really,” Nick replied.

“Oh. Well. That’s not likely.…” The words falling away along with her smile, Manny turned toward Velvet, suddenly
stony and serious. “What caused such a severe shadowquake? I suspected a collection of souls. I am surprised that Nick was the only save from this operation.”

Velvet glanced at Nick, who looked as though he weren’t sure how to take the comment, an expression between hurt and curiosity at play on his face. Though he could have been confused by Manny’s schizophrenic change in direction—God knew Velvet was.

Manny noticed, too. “Oh, dear. No offense, young man. You are certainly both large and strapping.”

“Uh … none taken.” He puffed out his chest.

“There
were
two spirits,” Velvet said.

“Oh, my. I was afraid of that.” Manny slipped out of her shoes and curled her legs up under her, getting comfortable to hear the rest of the tale. “Go on. Go on.”

“Nick was imprisoned in a glass cell. A crystal ball. That was no surprise, but when we tangled with his captor, we found her to be possessed.”

“Yeah!” shouted Logan. “Tell her what it was!”

Velvet shot him a glare and continued, “It was no ordinary soul engineering the woman. It was a deformed one, all bansheed out and screaming and stuff. Logan and Luisa were quite valiant in their battle with the beast. Quentin’s timing was spot-on.”

The little girl pushed Velvet’s leg to the side and scooted in next to her, balancing on the edge of the chair. She beamed at the acknowledgment.

Logan was more demonstrative. “It grew to, like, seven feet tall, Manny!” He stretched up onto his tiptoes to indicate the size discrepancy and his own fearlessness. “I tore—”

“We!” Luisa interjected.

Logan nodded. “
We
tore that thing right out of this old fortune-teller woman. Bear traps!” He brought his hands together like the jaws of the phantom machines and shouted, “Snap! And it was real pissed, Manny.”

“Mind your language,” Manny scolded.

“It was very angry,” he corrected quickly. “Twisting and turning like a tornado.” He reenacted the struggle with the banshee, rolling on the floor and grunting like a pro wrestler.

“Heroic!” Manny clapped her hands and grinned at Logan’s display.

Luisa rolled her eyes.

Nick chuckled.

Velvet took over. “The flies took it.”

She pivoted toward Nick, and stifled a giggle. He quivered uncontrollably, and completely on purpose, presumably at the mention of their insect saviors. Hamming it up for Luisa’s and Logan’s benefits for sure.

“Were you able to extract any information from it during its possession of the fortune-teller?”

“Yes,” Velvet said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

“Don’t worry about what I’ll like or not like, Velvet. This is business. We deal with what comes our way, now, don’t we?” The station agent’s voice was as sweet and childlike as ever, but underneath it was the strength of generations of body thievery as the head of her own Salvage teams.

Velvet considered it and then opened the floodgates. “It said something about the departure. That it was coming. That we couldn’t stop it.” She edged forward in the chair.

Nick spoke up, “What are you guys talking about?”

Velvet’s and Manny’s heads jerked in his direction.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he added.

Velvet pulled the wadded flyer from her pocket as she watched Manny’s reaction. The woman stroked her neck and stared at the ceiling. “No, Nick. We don’t mind.”

I do
, Velvet thought.
Who does this guy think he is? Being hot and all doesn’t give him carte blanche to horn in on my investigation
.

She handed the crinkled flyer to the station agent.

Manny sighed as she perused it, set it down on the couch between them, and continued, an empathic expression on her face. “Purgatory isn’t the happiest place you could have ended up, kid, and I’m sorry for that. We’ve got our share of problems. Chief among them is a small group of revolutionaries who don’t care for how the system works.” She stood and paced the room, stocking feet padding against the stone.

Nick followed her movement intently.

“The City of the Dead is no different from anywhere else; we have rules. People don’t always like them. Are you aware of the principal rule, Nick?”

“No haunting?” Nick offered, looking to Velvet for approval.

Velvet tilted her head in agreement.

“That’s right. No hauntings, Nick.” She used his name like a punctuation mark, a warning. “Hauntings are wrong, terribly wrong. They can be addictive and disfiguring, as you’ve no doubt seen tonight. Trapping daylight-bound souls.” She shook her head, eyes dark with worry. “What a
horrible thing. A soul who has taken to haunting is not likely to deal with their remainder, their unresolved life issue, the reason for their presence here rather than …” She paused. “Elsewhere.”

“Um …” Nick bit his lip before continuing. “But isn’t that what Velvet, Quentin, Logan, and Luisa were doing when they saved me? Haunting?”

Manny prickled. “No. I realize it seems like there’s no distinction, that it seems contradictory to the message, but Salvage missions are controlled, targeted. The time spent among the corporeal is intentionally brief. The problem with hauntings is they tend to linger, and with uncontrolled roaming comes repercussions here in purgatory. Sometimes quite awful consequences.”

Velvet had heard this speech before, and her mind wandered.

She was unable to divorce her thoughts from Bonesaw as Manny’s measured voice filled the space. She imagined him sharpening the knives, lining them up on his shiny metal workbench, polishing the fingerprints off their blades. Getting ready for the worst kind of things imaginable. The more she thought of it, the angrier she became.

Oh, haunting serves a purpose, all right
.

As a matter of fact, Velvet planned on
serving a purpose
as soon as she could slip away, and she didn’t care what could happen. After a reasonable amount of sleep, of course.

She wasn’t crazy, after all, just antisocial.

“The punishment for haunting is a revocation of your ability to dim and move on to somewhere else.” Manny
crouched next to Nick, made eye contact. “Dimming is going to sound scary to your human brain, but it’s not at all. Not in the slightest. Dimming is a wonderful thing. It’s the best thing that can happen to you. The best thing of all.” She glanced up at his hair and brushed it away from his forehead. “And you don’t want to mess that up, do you?”

Nick’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. His eyes focused on Manny’s, and he licked his lips. He did everything but pant.

Velvet shook her head.
The guy is captive to his groin. Just like any other boy. Nothing special. Pathetic
.

“But what does it mean?” Nick asked, cocking his head.

“It’s when you move on. Do you remember the lights passing above you through the glass dome of the station? I’m sure you saw them, looked like shooting stars?”

Nick nodded and glanced at Logan, who cocked an eyebrow knowingly.

“We believe those are souls from Earth passing on to another place.”

“Heaven?” Nick suggested, shrugging as though it were an obvious assumption.

“We don’t know, really. But we … The Council of Station Agents is able to prevent it from happening, if we need to. It’s really the only punishment we can effect here. Of course, it’s a deterrent only if the soul believes they’ll be moving on to a better place when they dim.”