Dearly, Beloved Part 12

I turned. He was pushing himself up, but not as quickly as I'd have liked. In fact, after a moment of exertion Michael fell back onto his rear and stared incredulously about the room, as if he couldn't remember how he'd gotten there. His suit was rumpled and covered in mysterious stains, his sandy hair a mess.

"Nice room. Is that a holographic training piano?" He waved his hands in the air like a barmy wizard. "Piano, on!"

Sure enough, a handsome tuxedoed instructor flickered into being at the keyboard of the black baby grand. "Accessing program. Please wait ..."

"No, piano! Off!" I yelled, striding across the floor. The hologram obeyed, and soon the piano stood alone, just like the harpsichord, the wall-mounted rows of violins and violas and cellos, and my polished harp in the corner. "Allister, get up."

Michael pointed at my feet. "You cannot tell me what to do, Miss Mink. Not tonight. Not ever. I'm in control, see?"

"Oh, yes. In control of your liquor, too."

"That!" He struggled upward and once more fell. "Is an unfortunate side effect. I think I'm going to need lessons from Coco." He started to giggle like a schoolgirl. "Coco. How on earth could you ever keep a straight face while making love to someone named 'Coco'?"

I moved right up to his side. I had no idea who Coco was-a wh.o.r.e? Was Michael already following in his father's footsteps? Everyone knew about Lord Allister's revolving door of trollops. "A side effect of what? What are you doing here? Do you not realize that half of society is just beyond that wall? That if they see us, we are done for?"

"No, no. We're not." Michael managed to grab my hand after several attempts. Who knows how many hands he currently thought I had? "I would never hurt you. You're the only girl I can trust."

I took my hand back, distaste burning my throat. "Trust, yes. But nothing more. You shouldn't be here."

"Bah, you think I want you? What is it with girls thinking I want them?"

I struggled to maintain my cool. "That's not what I'm saying."

"It is, too." Michael started digging about in his coat pockets for something. I hoped it wasn't a flask. "You're all put out because I still want Miss Dearly. It's understandable. I don't judge you for it."

"What?" We'd met along the border between our country properties several times since the Siege, and our short conversations had always kept to the topic of that night-the things we had seen, the horrors we'd been through, and our mutual hatred of almost everyone else who was on that filthy airship, regardless of the fact that we owed them our lives. "You said she's a worthless, pro-zombie loser! Those were your exact words. I know, because I remember agreeing with you, and I'd never agree with anything else!"

"Well she is, as long as she's got that deadmeat on her arm. But I think we can ... I think I can ... fix that. Fix her."

"Why did you even come here? You don't have permission to be here."

"If I don't need anything, it is permission. Er ... you think of a prettier way to put that." Michael's eyes were far too bright. He continued to search through his pockets.

I tried one last time. "Allister, get up. Or I will kill you where you sit, and tell my mother that I came upon a body, rather than a boy, in our music room. Lord knows it'd be less scandalous."

Michael's response was to find what he was looking for and fling it at my feet.

It was a severed finger.

I screamed and danced back before the hem of my robe could touch it. He started laughing again. "Oh, the look on your face! Hot potato! Hot potato!"

"Wh-What ..." I kept walking backward, unsure what else to do. "Where did you get that? Oh G.o.d, Allister, what did you do?"

"Calm down. Women!" Michael finally managed to climb to his feet. "I didn't cut it off. It was another Brother's turn to kill one, and he made me take it as a souvenir. You have to kill one in front of the others. Give your number and kill one. So they know you're serious." He held up a finger, and I noticed he was missing his glove. "I? I will not do that. It's vulgar. I need privacy for mine."

"They? Who's they?"

"The Murder. Stupid name, right? I didn't pick it."

I didn't know what to say. I'd never heard of such a thing before. "Is it ... it's some sort of anti-zombie club?"

"Not a 'club'!" He reached out and caught the edge of the piano to keep from stumbling around. "You make it sound like we get together and build models or something!" He pointed at his trophy. "We get together and kill them. Make their supporters run like mice."

I looked at the finger, and fought the urge to vomit. Every lushly curved instrument in the room, every bit of filigree on the ceiling, every painted flower on the walls, seemed calculated to make that half-rotten finger look all the more horrific.

"Got an invitation about a month back. Don't know who sent it. They use an old-fashioned letter system. Masks. No one knows anyone else. The only thing I know is we're all upper-cla.s.s." He knelt down to retrieve the finger, studying it. On it, something glinted. Gold.

A wedding ring.

"I don't understand," I tried. Oh G.o.d, what was Michael doing?

He looked at me as if I were an incurable idiot, then back at the ring. What he went on to explain was not what I wanted to hear. "Brothers who brought the corpse man tonight said he was walking with his wife. 'Till death do us part,' right? Said she screamed and cried till she puked. Then they knocked her out, took the zombie into the sewers. Kept him tied up, waiting, in an old underground livestock tunnel. Chopped him to pieces." Michael took off the ring and shined it with his bare thumb. "I'm going to wear this, I think. For good luck."

I'd never heard Michael speak so cruelly before. Everyone I knew flung knives made of words at each other, cut one another off at the social knees to remain on top of the metaphorical heap, and I happily played along with such games-but I'd never attacked someone. Ever. Not like he was talking about-had done.

Because he had done this. He wasn't just talking. He was holding the proof.

"Why, Mr. Allister? Why would you do this?"

Michael pocketed the finger again and slid the ring onto his right hand. "Because I have to. Because Miss Roe and Miss Dearly drove me to it. I don't care a fig about the Murder, but the way they're doing things, they're very useful. Somehow they've got underworld contacts like you wouldn't believe. They're my chance to do what I need to do. Then walk away, no one ever the wiser. Dad never the wiser."

I wasn't terribly close to Michael-he was a boy, after all, and went to a different school-but I'd met him often enough, before the Siege, to think of him as a very quiet, boring individual. He followed the rules, or at least appeared to. He never called attention to himself, and he was rarely the subject of gossip. The other boys I knew seldom talked about him, never seemed to go out of their way to include him in anything, but he had his friends. His father was so powerful, he had to have friends.

So I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This was entirely unlike him. It had to be the liquor talking, the liquor making him act bombastic and brash and bold. I'd never seen any evidence for the idea of "in vino veritas." With boys it was more like "in vino bullitas."

Some confidence restored, I said, "This is about Miss Dearly, then? Are you going to do something to her?"

"No!" Michael laughed, the sound off-kilter and eerie. "I would never hurt her!" His voice hardened. "But she'll learn. And Roe. Someone has to pay for the plague."

"I agree with that, Mr. Allister." And I did, but right now I was prepared to tell him I owned property on the moon if it would get him out of my house. I tried to steady my face, my voice. "Look, there's a party going on outside. Is that what brought you here? Surely your driver isn't drunk."

Michael squinted at the curtain-shrouded windows, faded from without by the party lights. The silhouettes of the revelers outside were superimposed one over another, a congealed beast with many heads. "No. I thought of you after I got out of the city." He flung his arms out. "This morning I was down, but now I am up! Dad's got me pushing paper at his office, my bank account is full again-do you know how expensive drinking has become since December? Maggot-men pickling themselves, must be ..."

"How did you get in here?"

Michael scoffed. "I knocked at the door. What do you take me for, a lout?"

I breathed a sigh of relief. My mother hadn't seen him, then. "You need to go before anyone sees you. Come on, I'll show you out."

Michael nodded, and allowed me to take his arm and lead him forward. He reached out his free hand as we neared the doorway, strumming the strings of the instruments on the wall, stirring up a set of notes that almost seemed frightened of one another.

When I got him to the foyer he turned to me and said, voice suddenly cold, "You won't tell anyone."

"No. But you have to stop giving me things to tell."

"I have to tell someone. I think that's it. I'm tired of not telling. Not acting." He tried to touch my cheek, and I thrust his arm away. He caught mine, pinning me. "I'm going to cut Griswold's heart out and show it to Miss Dearly. So she can see it's dead. That it never beat for her. And then I'm going to put a bullet in his head. And I need privacy for that. Can't do it in front of the others."

"Please." Disgust aside, my patience was wearing thin. "I don't want to hear about what you're doing, or what you think you're going to do. Once you sober up, you'll look upon all of this with regret. You're going to find that filthy thing in your pocket and-"

Michael gripped my cheek with a sudden pa.s.sion, and I couldn't help but cry out. I felt my face flush with shame-he had no right to touch me. I should hit back. Roe had once hit him! More than that, I should tell him how utterly insane he sounded. I should threaten him with the police, the asylum.

"Listen," he said. "Just listen."

"Let go of me and I will," I whispered.

He did, slowly. His eyes were bright, his cheeks red. When he spoke, I could smell the whiskey on his breath. "They embarra.s.sed you, too. Put you in danger." He leaned close to me-far too close. "So you want to hear. Don't you, Vesper?"

My chest tightened. "No, I don't. I don't want to know anything. And you're drunk. You won't re-"

At that, Michael actually slapped me. Shock froze my higher brain functions. I had no idea what to do, save to cup my cheek. I just wanted him gone.

"Drunk or not, I'm going to win. Like my father. My father's even got doctors from Dearly's side jumping ship, begging to work with him. One was at the office today, telling us how stupid Dr. Dearly is, how Dad can help. He always wins. I always win."

Michael let me go, bowed, and staggered out into the night. His blue carriage was parked outside, and no driver seemed to await him. For a minute I thought about calling him back, taking his keys from him-but then I recalled his hands on me, and I stopped caring. Instead I shut the door and sank to the gleaming marble floor, gripping my head in my hands. I desperately wanted to unsee what I'd just seen. Not just the finger. Michael.

I should tell someone what he'd done.

I also knew that to do so would be pointless.

He was right. He would win. I'd be labeled a s.l.u.t for having a boy in my house, unchaperoned; my reputation would be sullied. His actions, on the other hand, would earn a collective shrug. Even I, had he submitted everything he'd just said more soberly, would have shrugged. I didn't care if a random dead man died or lost a finger or two. And no one would believe he was scheming, dreaming grand, violent dreams-because I certainly didn't. The Murder? Please. Most boys I knew could barely dress themselves, much less organize an anti-zombie conspiracy.

I forced myself to think logically. Liquor obviously made him act completely out of character. He and his fellows were just playing rough and drinking too much. Probably just beat up a pa.s.sing dead man on the street. That's all. Such things had become commonplace since December.

Yes. That had to be it.

I returned to my room.

This time, I locked the door.

11.

BRAM.

Late Friday night, I approached Samedi about helping Dog.

He and Beryl were in the study, as usual. The opulent, wood-paneled s.p.a.ce was now overrun by power cords, computers, crates, and stainless steel machinery. Beryl was seated on Dr. Dearly's desk, listlessly bobbing a tea bag in and out of a mug. Samedi stood beside her, his head off and positioned upside down on a spidery bra.s.s armature. He held up a bag of medicated saline c.o.c.ktail with his left hand, which connected to a valve on his neck hardware via a long plastic tube. Talk about feeding your head.

When he heard me, Samedi's eyes opened. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Charity." I sat down on one of the crates, resting my elbows on my knees. "Remember the zombies I told you about, the ones we had to take on the Christine?"

"Mmm?"

"One of them was a little boy. Mute. Evola had to amputate his hand."

Beryl stopped moving her tea bag, sympathy filling her eyes. "Poor thing."

"And we told him maybe you'd make a replacement for him."

Beryl held up a hand to preemptively hush Samedi, who'd started to pick up his head. "Of course we will." She peered at him over the top of her mug, wordlessly challenging him to disagree.

Sam put his head back down and tipped it so he could fix me with bleary eyes. "Fine. Schedule every second of my rapidly diminishing time on Earth. Lord knows I get into trouble if I'm left to my own devices too long." He extended his right arm, as if he expected me to pa.s.s him something. "Do you have the hand?"

My lips separated a second before I actually formed my reply. "No. The kid was like, ten. What was I supposed to do, tell him I was going to borrow one of his body parts and get it back to him later?"

Samedi snorted. "Well, yes. What am I supposed to do, guess at his measurements? Guess where Evola aimed?"

I offered, "We could go see them in person. Find out."

"See who in person?"

I looked over and saw Nora standing in the doorway. "The zombies I told you about. The ones on the ship."

"Are you sure we can trust them?" Samedi asked. "Like I said, I can't exactly go skipping merrily through New London."

"Fairly sure, yeah. The woman leading them is kind of s.p.a.cey, but she also seems understanding. A couple of them lost it on the docks, attacked the living. Living started it, though."

Nora made a contemplative sound. As she turned from the door, she noted, almost absently, "You've got Sam, then. Leave the other old codger to me."

"You kiss our young, pure Mr. Griswold with that disrespectful mouth?" upside-down Sam shot back.

"Baldwin, honestly," Dr. Chase admonished.

I held my tongue and tried hard not to smile.

When Dr. Dearly came home on Sat.u.r.day night for a shower and a few spoonfuls of food, we circled the wagons. After managing to corner him in the kitchen, Nora started out by preparing his dinner for him while he put his remaining biological foot up. The moment he hefted his fork, she got to the point.

"If Dr. Chase and Dr. Samedi come along, can I go with Bram after church to help some zombies in need? I'm ungrounded tomorrow, and things have calmed down a little. It's not in the Morgue." She didn't resort to sweetness or cajoling-her tone was direct.

Dr. Dearly looked at her, then me. Having promised to let Nora see how far she could get on her own, I said nothing-but mentally I reviewed the various arguments I'd collected. Sir, we both need direction. We want to be of use to you, we respect you, but we'll make our own way if we have to. And honestly? Sometimes, I need her with me.

The doctor continued in heavy silence. Before Nora could bolster her argument by going into further detail, or I could open my mouth, he put down his silverware and said, "Yes."

Nora held still for a moment, surprised-but then moved to hug her father around the shoulders. He patted her elbow. "I promise, we don't want trouble."

"I believe you. The others will be with you. And the dead need all the help they can get." Looking at me, he added, "Give me an hour alone. Then, Bram, if you'd accompany me to the ships?"

I agreed, but something in his tone suggested he was going to rehash the conversation we'd had following the hijacking. That'd been a mess of safety and etiquette concerns-so half reasonable, half stupid-and it worried me to think that he might wander back there, maybe get bogged down in the mud of his own mind. He'd given in so easily.

So a little more than an hour later, when we got into his nondescript coffee-colored carriage, I decided to take the bull by the horns. "Dr. Dearly, about the trip. We're going to go help-"