“We have to celebrate, once we’re back home,” he says, “Find a restaurant that’ll let us bring Onix and buy him a steak.”
“I’ll put him in his Sunday best for the occasion.” I’m trying to stay strong, but watching Julian leave reinforces the gravity of our situation: he’s returning to our home to negotiate for my life. He’s also agreed to inquire after Brandon, but when I requested he give Winona an update on my whereabouts, he hesitated.You don’t want Leila to suspect that Winona knows anything about us, he insisted.It’s best if we remain a bit distant for now.And he’s going alone. No Ritika to watch his back, no Aditya because that might put the Ghoshals at risk. Just my Jules, walking willingly into a lion’s den.
“Stay safe,” I tell him. Dread is building in the pit of my belly, theharrowing feeling that this goodbye might be our last. He leans down at the same time that I boost myself up, and even though I know he doesn’t have time to spare, I hook my hands under his jaw to bind him to me. Tears I’ve been holding back trickle between my fingers, and he puts his bag aside to return my fervor. I can feel the warmth of his other self hovering just above us, see him behind my closed eyes like a prism.
“I love you,” Dream Julian says as his counterpart kisses me. “More than life itself. I hope you know.”
“I do,” I say out loud, against his lips. “And I love you too. So make sure to come back to me.”
“I always seem to manage that,” my Julian says, pulling back, and against all odds, we both grin.
Then he lets me go, gives Ritika a nod, piles into the SUV, and drives off.
The first twenty-four hours without Julian are the worst. Physically, I’m almost instantly sick as shit, with pounding headaches and a stomach that refuses to settle. Mentally, I’m worse. I knew, rationally, that I would have to reckon with the trauma of what happened in Ulrich Corridor and what is currently happening now, but I didn’t realize how much I’d been distracting myself with my anger with Julian to avoid confronting the horror of the last few days. Ritika tries to help, baking us a sumptuous cardamom pear upside-down cake that leaves the house smelling like the inside of a patisserie and asking me strategically safe questions about my past to avoid triggering a meltdown. We stay up late watchingDirty Dancingon VHS, laugh when she asks whether Baby’s dad accurately represents most cardiologists. She doesn’t ask questions when I start crying during the famous lift scene, just pauses the movie to bring me a mug of chamomile.
By the next day, I’m feeling as well as I can be, under the circumstances. I wake up early to a steely gray sky and light streamingthrough my window, change into one of the tracksuits that Julian bought for me. I grab the Walkman I dug out from Alphonse’s daughter’s dresser alongside an old Enya cassette, then step out into the living area. It’s eerily quiet; Ritika is still asleep upstairs.
It’ll be a short jog, I tell myself as I step out into the cool, fresh air. Just around the perimeter of the cottage’s two-acre property. Close enough that I can run back for help if I need it. Movement after so many days of cramped car rides and heavy meals feels like a luxury, and I sigh with relief as my muscles stretch and contract. Out here, it’s so peaceful that I can almost believe that I’m living in a snow globe, my world starting and ending at the rim that I circle over and over before calling it quits and heading back inside.
The moment I reach the door I sense that something is amiss. I almost certainly locked it before I left, but when I reach for the knob, it turns. I step back, study the grounds. There are no other footsteps in the snow, no cars idling at the base of the driveway. I’ve circled the property multiple times; I would have seen someone come in.
“You’re being paranoid,” I tell myself out loud, even as my stomach twists itself into knots. “No one is here.”
A familiar scent assaults my nostrils as I enter the cottage. It’s sharp, metallic, so overpowering that trepidation freezes me in place before my mind can label it for what it is.
Ritika.
I force myself to take one step, then another. And then I see her. Her body sprawled brokenly on the floor. Blood pooling under an unseen wound. It’s coming from her head. Her expression isn’t twisted in pain, but slack, oh god—
“Hi, Sean,” a saccharine, sweet voice calls from the kitchen. “How was your run?”
Thirty-One
Leila is sitting, legs crossed, at the dining room table. She sips from a large, hand-painted pink mug that says “#1 Mom” in chicken-scratch lettering and flips idly through one of Alphonse’s photo albums. Dressed in a chunky baby-blue oversized sweater and leggings, with her tawny hair secured in a ponytail by a large cream scrunchie, she looks every bit the picture of the kindhearted girl next door who hand-delivers her neighbors tins of gingerbread for the holidays. It’s this air of innocence, I think, that makes her most terrifying. When she looks up from the album to smile at me, I can almost convince myself that she’s happy to see an old friend. I watch as she slides a photograph from its sleeve: one of my favorites, of an elderly Alphonse and Mary holding hands across the space of their corresponding rocking chairs on the back veranda.
“Can you imagine giving up immortality forthis?” she says, disgusted. “He used to be so beautiful. I don’t get it.”
I spring to Ritika’s body. I feel for her pulse. Weak, slow, but still there. She’s alive.
“Relax, she isn’t dead,” Leila confirms, annoyed. She beckons to the table. “Sit.”
It’s a command that might be followed by a consequence if I don’t obey. I collapse bonelessly into the chair across from her, my heart leaping into my throat.
“Ritika doesn’t know anything,” I say quickly. “There’s no need to finish her off.”
Leila sneers.
“Please don’t insult my intelligence,” she snips. “And don’t worry. She’s too useful for me to kill right now. I’d love to learn a bit more about her, when she wakes up.”
I focus on my breathing. Keep it steady to keep my panic at bay.
“How did you find us?” I ask.
Leila’s smile is self-satisfied, like she’s been waiting for me to ask.
“Julian’s smart, but he’s so sentimental,” she says. “He’s got all these properties, but he justhadto take you to this one. Like I wouldn’t know about it? Guess he didn’t think Alphonse’s wife would send me an invitation to his funeral.” Rage flashes across her features, there and gone between blinks. “He hid himself from me, you know, when he chose this human life. Cut me out entirely. Didn’t even let me say goodbye. It was very kind of her to try to correct my brother’s cruelty posthumously. I didn’t go, of course, but it came in useful.”
I swallow. My whole body shudders with existential fear as Leila appraises me, her gaze sliding from the top of my head down to my trembling hands.