Velveteen (28 page)

“You guys are really morbid,” Nick said, and finally broke the intense stare.

There were nods of general agreement all around.

The boy shrugged and went right into the story. “All right, then. You’re lucky I remember it at all. When I first came through the crack there was nothin’.” Nick rapped his fist against his skull, adorably.

Velvet was certain actual swooning was occurring among the girls and a few of the boys.

“I was in this coffee shop with my friend Joe the day I died,” he began.

Velvet rested her chin in her palm as she watched Nick speak. He was a natural storyteller, and the residents seemed to be rapt. Velvet supposed that was a good thing. The Salvage team could use a spokesman who didn’t rouse people to reach for their pitchforks.

He told of a killer in a brown hoodie, a man Nick called the Mad Monk. The man stalked him from a coffee shop near his high school through the New York City subway system before chasing him ultimately and finally into the path of an oncoming train.

“I didn’t die right away, though,” Nick said, holding up his hand. “I lay there in agony. Screaming in pain. Slipping away even as the Mad Monk bore down on me. In his hand, the crystal ball, glowing as brightly as the Mad Monk’s eyes.”

And with that, the crowd exploded with applause. Logan and Luisa whistled bombastically, and even Isadora’s crew graced the boy with a standing ovation. Velvet found herself shaking her head incredulously. Nick wasn’t just pretty; he was actually kind of fascinating.

How had that little tidbit slipped past her?

Stilling her attraction just kept getting harder.

Damn him
.

After salon began to clear for the night and she was sure no one of any importance would notice, Velvet padded down the stairs, crossed the courtyard, slapped her palm into Nick’s, and dragged him out into the square.

“We have to talk,” she said, avoiding the sappy look on his face in favor of not tripping on the cobblestone and losing her power position publicly. There was no way to regain the upper hand while wallowing on the ground. The heels on her boots wouldn’t help her out any with that, either.

Nick tagged along behind her, caught up in her wake like a leaf in the breeze.

“We do,” he agreed, shouting over the bustle of night shoppers and bellowing vendors. “I mean, I know we do. I’ve definitely got some things I need to say, but I just didn’t know you had things to say, too.…”

“You’re rambling,” Velvet snapped, and tugged at his hand.

Ahead, black wrought-iron gates cut a gap between two other dormitories, both housing paper workers, if she remembered correctly. Velvet slammed her palm against them, and she and Nick spilled inside. In a space no larger than a small house, trees made of bent wire and wrapped in crepe paper and hung with newspaper leaves provided a dense canopy around the garden. Newspaper-print bushes were set off with bright pink origami flowers, and beneath them, from a low creeping vine of bound paper, sprang lavender buds that smelled of memory.

Velvet sat down on a little bench at the far end of the garden. Nick slipped in beside her. She glanced at him and shook her head. The boy confused her; there was no other word for it. She waited for some calm to find her, for some epiphany to wrap her up in its understanding arms. It was times like these that she longed for her mother. Regina Monroe always had an answer. It wasn’t necessarily the right answer, but it was something. A direction.

And she always paired it with a visual aid.

Velvet could use a movie with a moral right now. Something that suited the situation. Something dark.
Harold and Maude, Heathers
—a movie that would validate that she wasn’t wrong to think that being in a relationship was bad
for you, made you crazy. Well, crazier than she already was. Velvet stared at the wall on the right side of the garden, waiting for an imaginary projector to start whirring in a booth that wasn’t there.

And then she felt Nick’s fingers lacing between hers, and cocked her head to find him smiling that crooked beautiful smile of his. Velvet almost melted and gave in. He could have done anything, but he just sat there.

Like he was happy just to be with her. What was worse was that she was starting to think she was happy, too.

Velvet jerked her hand away and stood up. “Jesus! You’re making me nuts.”

He smiled again. “And that’s bad?”

“Yeah, it’s bad. I’ve got too much going on for this.” She waved her hands around wildly. “Whatever this is.”

“What is this? I’d kind of like to know, too.”

Velvet started pacing. “It’s nothing. It’s … well, I don’t know. But things have changed since last night. You’re on track to take Quentin’s place, and that makes this a non-thing.”

“I know.”

That stopped her in her tracks. Velvet craned her neck toward the boy, who didn’t seem to get that he’d said something upsetting.

“And how, exactly, do you know?”

“Kipper told me.”

“Oh, my God. You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

Nick scoffed. “Of course not. Not after everything he said.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that if we were caught, I’d have to move away from you. I don’t think I could stand that, you know?”

“Jesus! How did he know something had happened?” Velvet snatched his collar threateningly.

“He just … we were talking … and he just knew. Said he saw me looking at you or something.”

“Great. That’s great.”

Nick stood up and touched her arm. She didn’t pull away this time but instead let him speak his piece. It couldn’t hurt, and who knew, maybe he could say something to relieve her oncoming breakdown.

“Kipper won’t say anything. He just thinks I’m into you—which I am,” he added, eyes going suddenly sad. “Hopelessly.”

Velvet let out a long sigh and tried to think, tried to get a handle on the situation before it spiraled out of control. But try as she might, she couldn’t pull together a coherent or helpful thought. Kipper. Bonesaw. The departure.

Nick. Nick. Nick.

Her brain was scrambled. Fried. Over easy. No. Not easy. Over hard. She tried taking some deep breaths. When her head started to clear, it was too late to avoid Nick’s incoming lip bomb.

He swept in close, pressing his body to hers. His fingers curled behind her neck as he drew her toward him. A shudder rolled through her, and even as she was certain that letting him kiss her was a mistake, she couldn’t resist letting it happen.

Nick’s lips were feather light. Nothing more than a whisper at first, but so electrifying that she felt the weight of his intentions course through her. And then the kiss became more forceful, his mouth parting and releasing the softest of moans, before lunging more passionately, touching his tongue to hers, sucking at it gently.

Velvet couldn’t stop herself. She’d flung her arms around him like any number of idiot girls who knew better, and kissed him back. She ran her fingers through his wavy hair, which was softer than she’d imagined. It sparkled like the night sky. His skin was on fire beneath the ash.

Before she knew it, she was off the ground, her head thrown back and Nick’s mouth whispering promises against her throat, professing his …

“Love …” The word was no more than a sigh.

She pushed him away, and he dropped her to the gravel floor of the garden. She had to stop him. She couldn’t hear it again.

Velvet stared at the boy, her jaw hung open like a Venus flytrap. “Snap out of it, Nick! We’re not having a secret affair. That’s. Not. Happening.”

“That’s the part that makes it okay. The fact that it’s secret. It’s a stupid rule anyway. Any rule that says two people who are clearly meant to be together can’t be is stupid.” He reached for her, but she slapped his hand away.

“It’s not love, anyway,” she said. “It’s just your out-of-control hormones. It’s lust or something.”

“What’s the difference? Lust is like a gateway drug for boys.”

“You’re ridiculous.” She stared at him, furious and excited at the same time. And certain they were
not
experiencing the same emotion. “You will never be my everything. My job is too important to risk.”

He smiled, reached for her again.

Velvet glanced toward the gates and thought she saw a shadow. Someone was close. Someone who’d question what they were doing.

“Hide!” Velvet spat.

Nick dove behind a tree. At the very least, the boy could follow directions.

She planted her butt on the bench and tried to look calm, look normal, look like anything other than the girl who’d been thinking vile sex thoughts just moments before.

“Velvet?” a familiar voice called from the gate.

Luisa’s face was pressed between the bars, stretching her expression of concern into a weird grimace. Velvet relaxed a little. Concern was better than shock.

“Are you all right, Velvet?” the girl asked.

“Of course,” she said, and jumped up from the stone bench. She wound her way through the rows of paper box hedges until she stood before the little girl, feigning nonchalance as best she could. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seemed like you were deep in it, you know. Really depressed or something.”

Velvet shrugged. Changing the subject seemed to be her best option. “Did you come looking for me special? You know how I love to feel needed,” she said.

Luisa laughed. She knew Velvet too well to buy it. “Yeah, right. You could give a crap.”

Velvet shifted her weight to her hip, blocking Luisa’s view into the garden, and tried to cock her head in the most light, casual way possible. “Anything for you. Though the rest of them …” She waved her hand at the passing shapes in the square and scrunched up her face like she smelled something nasty.

“You don’t mean that,” Luisa said, deadpan.

Velvet relaxed as the girl’s attention drifted off to somewhere past the cathedral that studded the opposite end of the square. “What’s up, Luisa?”

The girl squinted, bit her cheek, and wrung her hands. “It’s really not a big deal, but …”

Velvet mimicked Luisa’s behavior, exaggerating the girl’s nervous fidgeting. “It’s nothing, I’m sure. That’s why you’re super calm.”

“Could you come with me?”

She glanced back into the garden and saw Nick peering around the bottom of the paper tree. “Where to?”

Luisa shook her head, the disappointment etched into her frown. She hesitated and then spilled it. “Logan’s down at the gas chamber, again.”

Velvet sighed and shot a glance in the direction of the square’s most infamous alley. Men stood at its entrance, slapping handbills onto the chests and palms of passersby and promising unspeakable pleasures. She rankled. “Really?”

“I know. I know.” Luisa turned and stomped off, weaving through the street vendors, stragglers, and wanderers. “Let’s just deal with it.”

Velvet trotted along behind the girl. “He can’t keep doing this, Luisa. You hear me?”

“I said ‘I know.’ Are you deaf?”

“I’m just saying, if we had a shadowquake right now, we’d be so screwed.”

Luisa spun on her and snapped, “You think I don’t know that? Why don’t you save your guilt-trip for him?”

Velvet winced. “Sorry, Luisa. I’m having a bitch attack.”

The gas chamber was at the bottom of a steep hill, and getting back up the hill was a chore without a railcar. But Velvet figured, if nothing else, it might take her mind off all her recent dramas.

Gas Chamber Alley wasn’t nearly as awesome as you’d expect. Once you braved the gauntlet of perverts hawking prostitutes and peep shows, there weren’t any actual gas chambers, or electric chairs or hangman’s nooses. The street vendors didn’t even sell those little guillotines that chop off the ends of cigars. There were, in fact, so many missed opportunities for parody that it made Velvet a little sad. Velvet had, of course, been on this exact same journey alongside Luisa a few times before.

Logan had the same problem as lots of souls; he was chronically bored. Most of the time, that was cured by relieving unsuspecting poker players of their pressed paper coins, books, or whatever else he felt had some value. But sometimes, like tonight, he needed something else. Something stronger.

Trippier.

“Look at that,” Luisa said, pointing at a block of grimy citizens surrounding a man on a raised dais.

The alley had opened into a wide square big enough
for an open-air theater to spring up. The speaker, a grim-looking man, was framed by a slash of red, a banner of some sort that draped over the flat roof of the building. An image of a black crack was painted down the banner’s center and disappeared into a big iconic letter D. It didn’t take an art teacher to figure out that the crack was both a metaphor for the fracturing of purgatory’s populace and a literal depiction of the results of the shadowquakes. And the
D
went without saying.

It was a different type of depravity going on down here. Departurists.

The guy towered over a wooden lectern, a tattered black top hat stretching him taller and not quite shading a face as pointy and pinched as a rodent’s. His hand gripped the sides like claws. Velvet had never seen the man before.

“Your time is coming!” he shouted cheerfully. “The tyranny of the Council of Station Agents
will
come to an end, good souls! Never fear. Our departure is eminent.”

The thirty or so men and women gathered raised their fists, wooted, and shouted their approval. One voice, blisteringly tenebrous, cut through the rest, “When? When do we depart?”

“Soon, brother!” The man’s voice bellowed across the space. “The Departurists are hard at work for your benefit. Your days of waiting, of toiling in this grimy cesspool, are coming to an end.”

Velvet couldn’t take her eyes off the crack in the banner. She thought of dams and how they fail and flood out from the smallest crack, and she couldn’t hold back the feeling
that something horrible was going to happen. Something worse than Bonesaw, worse than a few shadowquakes, a few banshees.

The scariest part was the religious-like fervor with which the crowd cheered and stared and clasped their hands together reverently. Some fell to their knees and held their hands aloft, not skyward but directed toward the banner.