Velveteen (21 page)

Velvet stood up. The religious connotations of the station agent’s words weren’t lost on her, but it seemed that, like everything else in purgatory, good and evil, the righteous and the sacrilegious, all the big issues were less black-and-white and more gray.

Mind-numbingly gray.

She’d never been a religious girl, and she still wasn’t. Until there was proof that anything existed beyond purgatory, Velvet would simply do her job—Salvage souls that didn’t have any business in the daylight, and that would be that.

It didn’t make her a good person.

Just a good worker.

The railcar jerked forward, jarring Velvet from sleep. The platform on the square appeared on her right, along with Quentin, Logan, Luisa, and Nick, crammed together on the single bench, their heads tossed back in sleep, mouths open and spewing light in columns like modern art sculptures. The twins’ feet dangled above the cobblestones, and Nick’s arm lay across their laps like the lap bar of a carnival ride, the posture protective rather than creepy.

She slipped from the car quietly and watched them a moment. Truth be told, she wanted them to rest, even if she never seemed able to get the chance. They deserved it. Deserved whatever they wanted. They were the best Salvage crew in the world, and she didn’t tell them that enough.

Of course, if she did, there’d be plenty of eye rolling and “whatevers.” But that was beside the point.

She was about to bite the bullet and express her admiration, when Quentin twitched, his knee jumping slightly. Then, as though some unconscious language existed between them, Logan and Luisa responded; the boy by brushing away an invisible fly, the girl by emitting a gentle moan, nearly a whisper.

And then, from the other side of the bench, Nick’s long leg flopped absurdly. Talk about some fast bonding.

She glared at it. At Nick. And then all of
them
. Leave them alone for an hour and look what happens, cozied up like BFFs. Stabby thoughts were swimming all around her. What did they see in the guy? And Luisa! What could she possibly think might happen between Nick and Velvet?
Like
him? She didn’t even know him.

Velvet cleared her throat, but the sound came out a pathetic choking gag.

Quentin yawned loudly, stretched, and peered up at her through squinted eyes. “It’s like the next day, right?”

“Try the next night,” Logan muttered, reaching his arms over his head and belching.

“Ugh.” Luisa groaned and stood, tossing Nick’s hand to the side brusquely. “That must have been some interrogation.”

“It was. I’ll tell you about it … later.” Velvet planted her hands on her hips. It was going to take more than shoptalk to distract her. “You’re all looking pretty cozy.”

Quentin nodded. “Yeah, Nick’s almost got me talked into approaching Shandie.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she turned her gaze on
Nick, gawping in disbelief. “Seriously? What are you, a wizard?”

Nick shrugged like it was no big deal.

The most girl-phobic boy ever had been completely cured by a few minutes with this guy? Really? Velvet wasn’t buying it. She stomped down the ramp, waving them off. “You guys are fucking with me.”

“Oh, no. It’s true. Yeah,” Quentin said, heading her off. He straightened and puffed out his sunken chest as far as it would go. “I’m gonna get my girl.” He let the word “girl” stretch on with swagger, and Velvet felt her stomach turn.

“You certainly seem to think so.”

“Well, to be fair, in a roundabout way, it was sort of Shandie’s idea,” Nick said from behind her. “The guys were showing me around the square, and all the weird paper stuff for sale here, like I’d died and gone to Office Depot. And I noticed this girl hanging around in the background. Giant Mickey Mouse hair, expensive clothes, smirk.”

“That’s Shandie,” Velvet agreed.

“Yeah. The same one Quentin was drooling all over back at the station.”

“You mean the one he was
stalking
?” Velvet asked, glaring at Quentin.

“Yeah!” Nick materialized at her side. His elbow brushed her upper arm as he bounced on the balls of his feet with pride. “Only this time, she was the one doing all the stalking.” He swatted Quentin on the shoulder and winked smugly. “ ’Cause our man here is smokin’. Right? Right?”

Quentin beamed. There was no denying it: he was pumped
up on whatever crack-fueled advice Nick was pushing, and was itching to throw himself at the enemy. Bile rose in Velvet’s throat.

“No way.” Velvet stepped aside, putting a little air between her and the boy throwing a monkey wrench at her team. “That’s sort of awesome, Quentin.”

“That’s what I said,” Luisa quipped, strutting past and down the center of the main street. The rest of them followed her.

“So, you’re ready, then, Quentin?” Velvet asked, gearing up. “Sigmund Freud here has cured your panic attacks in one session?”

“Aw. Come on,” Nick wrapped his arm around Quentin’s shoulder as they walked. “Fear of rejection is the killer of many romantic teen scenarios. It’s the scourge of adolescence. All I told him is to embrace the possibility that Shandie won’t like him and go for it anyway. She is, after all, pretty hot.”

“Yeah.” Quentin beamed. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

She could tell you to eat shit and die
, Velvet thought, but kept her mouth shut.

But it was Nick who said, right after, “She could tell him to eat shit and die, right? Words. Just words. That kind of stuff never lasts. People are fickle; they may laugh at you and stuff, but they always move on to the next tragedy as soon as it happens. In the end, it’s more about Quentin than it is the girl. It’s about courage. The act of talking to her. Exposing himself.”

Logan busted up laughing.

Nick rolled his eyes and crammed his hands into his back pockets. “Not that way. I mean, being vulnerable with her. That’s what’s gonna make you a man. It’s going to kill that fear and bury it as deep as the bodies he thieves are kept.”

“What are you, some sort of guidance counselor?” Velvet asked.

Nick nodded. “I’m the fucking Geek Whisperer, dude.”

Quentin slipped past them and joined the twins already nearing the main entrance to the Retrieval dorm. Velvet snatched Nick’s arm and stopped him dead in his tracks.

“You think you know him? You’ve been here for thirty seconds.” She tried to hold back her anger as much as she could, stay cool, but a threat was looming, and she wasn’t going to be able to hold her temper back. Nick’s brow furrowed with worry. “That’s my friend, Nick. Quentin’s not just my undertaker. He’s my friend. You don’t know how he struggles, what he goes through about this stuff. He hurts, dude. And if you just sent him off on a crash and burn, you’ll be lucky if I don’t kill you. Got it, sport?”

Nick stood there nodding his head, mouthing silent apologies.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, her eyes drifting to the lanky kid jogging toward the dorms. There was something charged about him, and Velvet realized there was a possibility this could actually work. “I hope so.”

She turned back to the boy and found that he’d followed her gaze to Quentin. There was a wan smile on his face and a wistful look in his glowing eyes.

“Me too,” he said.

And despite her initial impression of the boy—“dumb jock” came to mind—and the weird, almost tumbling effect he had on her moods and thoughts, she believed he really did have Quentin’s best interests at heart.

Could he actually be a decent guy?

Hard to imagine.

He was pretty to look at, though, she thought. Boys weren’t objectified nearly enough, and turnabout was
always
fair play. Velvet trudged off through the dwindling crowd to the Retrieval dorm door.

Nick stumbled forward. “Is this the dorms?”

“Yep.” Luisa grinned devilishly. “You get to meet Miss Antonia. You’re going to love her.”

“Who’s she?”

Velvet reached for the doorknob and swiveled back to face him. “She’s the Salvage mother, and Luisa is messing with you. No one loves Miss Antonia. Respects, maybe, but never loves.”

“Why?” He scanned the tall doors, nearly the height of the first floor.

Velvet’s chest heaved with laughter. “You’ll see.”

Velvet swung the doors open and bounded through the short breezeway and into the bustling courtyard full of gabbing cliques of gray souls, and a few powdered white instead of ashed, as Isadora occasionally was. The souls played games set up on bistro tables. Tiles and cards. Music billowed about them like a cloud, eerie and tinny-sounding from the gramophone. The place had completely recovered from the shadowquake.

Even Bethany, recovered fully from her run-in with the
shadow tentacle, gabbed noisily about her horrifying experience. Something about a carnival ride and clowns.

Whatever.

Velvet glanced skyward to where even the burn marks on the upper walls had been scrubbed and the gaslight globes replaced. Miss Antonia ran a tight ship; there was no doubt about that.

At one end of the courtyard, a pair of children sat amid the risers of the wide stone stair, one reading to the other from a book the size of a Christmas ham. Nearby a couple of girls in flowing, vibrantly colored saris twirled and gyrated to the music.

Velvet’s approach signaled a change in the crowd. Some souls gasped audibly, games were tossed aside, and the music ground to a mopey halt. They left their conversations and gathered around, applauding wildly, pumping Velvet’s hand and shouting congratulations. Other souls merely hated and crossed their arms belligerently, chatting among themselves the way the entitled do.

Kipper rounded the stair and trotted across the courtyard to hoist Luisa and Logan each onto one of his broad shoulders and parade them through the cheering crowd. Quentin, his previous enthusiasm turned to a driven focus, scanned the room for Shandie, but he couldn’t maintain his focus in the presence of such a homecoming. The clamor of the crowd swept him in, and soon enough his intensity turned into uproarious laughter.

“Velvet!” a woman’s voice bellowed above the din.

Velvet watched Nick get his first glimpse of Miss Antonia.
He peered over the heads of the crowd as the tall rail of a woman descended the stairs. Her robe was thick and matronly, as gray as her ashen face. She wore her hair up tight in a bun held together by two dangerously long divining needles.

Nick shuddered beside Velvet, slowly massaging the palm Mrs. Allerdice had pierced. Velvet resisted the urge to lean over and say, “Yes,
those
needles.”

The crowd parted, and she shuffled toward them. Her face was as severe as her apparel and hairstyle, narrow eyes sunken in above a thin spindle of a nose. Her lips were a mere shadow around the gash of her mouth. She greeted Velvet with a brief but brutal hug, hoisting the girl off her feet. Since it was useless to struggle, Velvet merely went limp, combat boots dangling in the air an inch above the courtyard pavers. She heard her own pained groan squeak from between her lips.

And then she was set back down, surprised and relieved at the same time. She hadn’t expected any appreciation from the woman, and buoyant declarations weren’t in the woman’s toolbox, by a mile. The two were alike in that sense.

Velvet nodded a quick “You’re welcome” before either of them felt the urge to vocalize any niceties. “This is Nick,” she said instead.

Nick stepped forward. “Hello, ma’am.”

“Number fifty-seven, eh?” She reached for and held Nick’s arms out to his sides, assessing his frame. The boy’s face registered the appropriate degree of shocked embarrassment. Miss Antonia could have said, “Look at this pretty
dress. Isn’t it adorable.” But what actually came out was less complimentary in tone. “And he’s meant for Salvage … I assume?”

“So I’m told,” Velvet said, her eyes drawn to a thin break between Nick’s shirt and the waist of his trousers; the tight flesh of his belly glowed there like a smut beacon. Velvet found herself wanting to touch it, before shaking off the idea as being completely inappropriate and, frankly, bizarre.

What the hell was wrong with her?

When she glanced back up at his face, he was grinning at her, and she spun away, flustered.

“How did you do that?”
she wanted to scream. He had some kind of magical magnet or something to know when girls were looking at him.

Every single time.

“Well,” Miss Antonia muttered noncommittally. “We’ll figure out a place for him. If anything, he can sweep.”

Nick scowled.

Miss Antonia snapped her fingers. The sound cracked through the courtyard like gunfire. “Attention! These are your heroes.” She swept her bony arms toward the quartet of Salvagers and Nick. “Do something special for them, as they’ve saved your lazy butts from the shadowquake.” She paused, sighing thoughtfully. “I know what you are asking. You are asking, Whatever could we do to show our vast and immense appreciation?”

The faces of the gathered souls sunk into grimaces, but their groans were met by a harsh sneer from the Salvage mother.

“You may take on their chores! For starts, clean up this
courtyard and restring the lanterns! It’s far too dark to have a proper salon, so we’ll postpone it until tomorrow. But until then, your heroes can’t be expected to live like filthy animals, can they?”

There were some shrugs, primarily from the groups on the opposite side of the room. But mostly the tenants of the dorm nodded in agreement.

“Then,” Miss Antonia continued, “you may go back to enjoying yourselves!” She snatched one of the needles from the bun in her hair and held it out. It glinted in the dim light, menacingly. “But not before. Or else.” She drew the weapon across her throat.

Miss Antonia smirked, her lips disappearing into her mouth, eyes glowing rabidly.

The tenants of the Salvage house stared at her, eyes skittering around at each other, and then as the Salvage mother lurched forward at them, they scrambled wildly away, scuttling like cockroaches caught in a surprise flick of a light switch.

“Wow,” Nick muttered.

“She ain’t always that nice,” a deep voice spoke, thick without any accent at all, like a newscaster or something.