Redlisted (7 page)

“It’s,
uh... Well, I know it’s macabre, but...” He puts a hand
between his mouth and the rest of the restaurant. “A severed
head,” he tells me in a whisper.

A severed
head?!

“Yes. It,
er... belonged to Julian’s mother.”

What the fuck
are you fighting over a severed head for?

“It’s
actually a powerful artifact,” he says. “Julian’s
mother was called Mnemosyne, and she was—still is, in a
sense—the oldest of us, or at least the oldest one we know of.”

The oldest
revenant?

He nods. “And
arguably the most powerful. And now, even though she’s—”
he makes a slashing motion across his neck—“members of
our line can still communicate with her, channel her power, even
learn some of her... techniques from her.”

And you didn’t
want Mirabel to be able to do that.

“Exactly.”

That’s all
he says. The waitress is coming with my food.

Adam sits quietly
as I eat. At first I feel so hungry I intend on finishing the entire
spread of eggs, bacon, pancakes and hash browns the waitress sets in
front of me, but after just a few bites my hunger fades, and before
long I feel like I’m stuffing myself. I keep picking at my
eggs long after they’ve gone cold, taking tiny bites, but
eventually I give up. I’m not going to be able to finish even
half of it.

Do
you want any?
I think at Adam.

He shakes his head
no. “Are you sure you’re done?”

I nod and put my
napkin on top of the plate.
You
don’t eat food, I guess?

“I could if
I wanted to, but... well, it’s a waste.”

After a few
minutes the waitress returns with our check. Adam hands her a
twenty-dollar bill and stands to leave.

We walk out to the
car. I take shotgun; he gets back in the driver’s seat.

What’s
it like?
I ask as we roll back to the supermarket.

“What?”
he asks. “Being a vampire?”

I nod.

He thinks about it
for a moment.

“It sucks,”
he eventually concludes.

I snort.
You’re
hilarious.

He smiles.

///

The back entrance
to the supermarket is a dingy white door labeled only with a street
number. Adam knocks on it twice. After a minute Haruko pulls it open
and gives the two of us a look I can’t decipher.

The darkness
inside is unwelcoming. The high shelves of the stock room have been
cleared out, but the interior still smells of rotten food. The air is
heavy with dust and mildew.

Aya is leaning
against the exterior wall of a meat locker, holding a flashlight
under her chin. As she sees me, she smiles pleasantly. “I made
you up a place to sleep,” she says. “We found the old
store manager’s office. I set up a sleeping bag for you in
there.”

I follow her down
a narrow corridor to the office. It’s empty, save for a pillow
and an unrolled sleeping bag she’s placed in the middle of the
floor. A single window outfitted with Venetian blinds allows tiny
slivers of lamplight to filter in from outside.

“I wish I
could stay in here,” she says. “Do you think it will be
okay for you?”

I nod, smiling
through tight lips.

“Do you just
want to go to sleep now?”

I keep nodding.

“Okay. You
know where we are if you need anything.” She hands me the
flashlight and slips out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Alone. Finally. I
sit down with my back to the wall and pull off Haruko’s
sneakers and socks, recalling the conversation I overheard between
Haruko and Adam back in the cabin. One minute she was saying I was a
liability, the next she was throwing me a change of clothes. I guess
they decided not to kill me. I mean, they probably would have done it
by now otherwise. I hope.

Someone knocks at
the door.

I pull myself back
to my feet and open the door. It’s Adam. Holding a knife in his
hand.

I slam the door
closed and scramble to lock it from the inside.

“No!”
he shouts. “Jesus Christ. I’m not going to hurt you, I
swear.”

Then what do
you want with that knife?

“Remember
back in the woods, when you took the blood from my neck—“

Yeah. I’d
rather not think about it.

“Right,
well... you had a flashback, didn’t you? A memory vision.”

I frown. I guess I
did. Although I only really remembered things I already knew.

“You don’t
have to let me in,” he says. “But if you do we can try it
again. We might recover something important.”

I chew on my lower
lip. Once again I try to reach back past the attack: preparing for my
appointments, putting on my makeup. I see nothing before then.
Nothing at all.

“Your
memories have been sealed,” Adam says in a quieter tone. “But
they’re not gone. Even Mirabel can’t completely erase
them, not permanently.”

I unlock and open
the door. Adam steps inside.

“All right,”
he says. “Why don’t you sit down?”

I sink down onto
the floor.

He crouches next
to me. “What would you prefer? My wrist, or...?”

Sure,
I
think, grimacing.
Whatever.
That’s fine.

He nods and brings
the blade to his wrist.

I look away. I
can’t watch him make the cut.

You
didn’t give me a choice last time,
I
remark.

“You needed
a lot of blood fast last time.”

Right.

“Okay. I’m
ready whenever you are,” he says, extending his hand.

A wide lateral
gash now extends across half of his wrist. Blood seeps out slowly,
rhythmlessly. I take his hand and forearm in my hands, and, feeling
fantastically awkward, I bring his wrist to my mouth. I swallow just
a tiny bit of his lukewarm blood, and then I feel a floating
sensation, a falling sensation, the feeling of being swept away by
the ocean, of being pushed under, of drowning...

...and then I am
sitting in a metal folding chair, in a white-walled room, at a table
across from a familiar woman an unfamiliar man. There is a door
behind them that I know is locked, a mirror behind them that I know
is a window on the other side. In front of me is a list of words,
mostly monosyllables.

“Read the
words for us, please, dear,” the woman says.

I don’t want
to read. I can’t remember why.

“Read the
words,” she repeats, her voice like the edge of a knife.

I strain against
myself to ignore her command, but I’ve already begun.

“Pit. Bit.
Tin. Din. Cut. Gut. Cheap. Jeep. Fat. Vat. Thin. Then. Sap. Zap. She.
Measure. Loch.” I pause for a breath. “We. Map. Left.
Nap. Run. Yes. Ham. Bang.”

Once I’ve
finished, the man cuts his finger with a penknife. He stands and
walks over to my side of the table, his footfalls echoing against the
bare walls. He gathers my hair into a ponytail with one hand; with
the other, he draws a line of blood across my throat. He places his
hands on my shoulders.

“Good.
Again,” the woman demands.

I feel my throat
tighten and the sides of my mouth swell. My tongue feels unwieldy, as
if my mouth were full of peanut butter. I start again at the
beginning of the list. “Bit. Bit. Din. Din. Gut. Gut. Jeab.
Jeab. Fat. Fat. Sin. Sem. Zab. She. Measure. Loch. We. Mab. Leff.
Nab. Run. Yes. Ham. Bang.”

“Again.”

The swelling
worsens; my lips feel bee-stung. My chest flutters with fear.
Nauseated, I continue. “Bih. Bih. Dih. Dih. Guh. Guh. Zheah.
Zheeh. Hah. Hah. Sih. She. Savv. Savv. She. Eazhah. Ach. We. Bah.
Leh. Hah. Ruh. Yeh. Ham. Banh.”

I shake my head no
pre-emptively, anticipating her next demand. I want to cry.

“Yes.”
She pulls her hair back. “Again.”

“Ih. Ih. Ih.
Ih. Uh. Uh. Eah. Eah. Ah. Ah. Ih. Eh. Ah. Ah. Ee. Ehah. Ah. Ee. Ah.
Eh. Ah. Uh. Eh. Ah. Ahn.”

She pauses. “Good.
Now the other side.”

I pretend not to
know what she means.

“The other
side of the page, dear.”

I leave my arms by
my side and stare at her with silent defiance.

“Read the
words for us, please, dear,” the woman says.

I look up at her;
her face is my own. Her auburn hair is pulled back in a loose
ponytail.

I don’t want
to read. I can’t remember why.

“Read the
words,” she repeats, her voice like the edge of a knife.

Adam pulls his
wrist away from my mouth, and I find myself back in the abandoned
office. His wound heals instantly.

“All right,”
he says, his voice wavering. “That’s probably enough for
tonight.”

I bring my knees
to my chest and wrap my arms around myself. I don’t want to
think about what I’ve just seen. I don’t want to think
about anything.

Adam pauses. “If
there’s anything I can—“

No,
I think with force.
Please
just go now.

He stands up.
“Well,” he says after a long pause, “try and get
some sleep.” He turns to leave, shutting the door behind him.

I slowly uncurl
myself, crawl over to the sleeping bag, and wriggle inside. I fall
asleep seconds after I close my eyes.

{Adam}

Aya and I walked
back to my rooms in silence. The surge of emotion quickly dulled,
leaving a deep chasm, grey and featureless, in its absence. By the
time we arrived at the suite I was perfectly calm once again.
Wretchedly calm.

Aya opened the
door to my suite for me with a polite smile. “Please call me if
you need anything. There’s a phone in your office. My extension
is twenty-one.”

“Thanks,”
I said, avoiding eye contact. I slipped past her and locked the door
behind me.

What now? I had
come back here to be alone with my grief, but now I was just alone. I
didn’t want to sleep; I didn’t want to risk having
another vision of someone else’s memories. I had no desire to
look at my textbooks or look through my desk. And I couldn’t
call Alison again, not with the way her mother had reacted—

I brought a hand
to my forehead. Again I was thinking about her like she was alive. As
if I could call and talk to her. After all, I was dead too, wasn’t
I? Apparently death was a mutable quantity.

I walked into the
office and sat down in the desk chair. I picked up the photo of
myself and Alison and tried to recall what happened. It had been a
car accident, apparently. Had we been hit or had we hit someone? Who
had been driving? Why couldn’t I remember any of it?

I needed to talk
to someone. I wanted someone to explain to me what happened in plain
terms. Maybe then it would start feeling real. But anyone who knew
anything about the accident would know I was dead. Who would take a
call from someone whose funeral they’d just attended?

If I wanted to
talk to someone, it’d have to be someone who wouldn’t
have attended my funeral. Someone who wouldn’t have heard about
the accident, either. No one in Baltimore would do; probably no one
in New York either.

That left only one
option. I’d have to hope she wouldn’t hang up on me.