Glancing up from the time on his wrist, Shaw watched O’Connor’s drab reverse pass into the drawing room from the entrance hall, moving through the house like a bird of ill omen amid the disaster it had foretold.  Around them, at distant points both outside and within the abandoned building, he could hear the evidential team walking back toward the vehicles parked along Commoriom Drive; with their saturnine guards they wore the casual guise of a grounds maintenance crew, their thick black plastic bags bulging with collected materials.  One pair paused to pitch a shovel under a damp tiger print dress lying in the long grass amid a strange, shallow mound of ashy refuse, lifting both garment and a sample of the surrounding matter into one of the bags and tying it off. 

“With all due respect, no one could have anticipated this... it was chaotic the whole time I was here.  Leaving was as random as every other damn thing they did.” Shaw assured his bespectacled critic.  The drawing room retained a definite suggestion of the unsettling perfume that had once pervaded the entire dwelling; he had thought it dissipated until confronted by its dappled, darkly myrrh-like presence as he stood amongst the gutted packing crates of unmarked pine.  “What else could I have done?”  The query drew a long, glassed-over glance from his superior.

“Your regard for your own safety is... it's touching, really.  It's just a shame it was a subordinate objective.” 

In contrast to the dissonant exotica abandoned by her companion, Susan Christabel’s forsaken belongings were so strongly suggestive of her person that Josephine had initially battled her flickering imago in William’s suite.  Her summer dresses hung in the darkness of the little anteroom and in a thick scatter across the naked mattress, her makeup and costume jewellery lying amongst them in a shiny, intimate constellation.  She stepped back against the french doors, photographed the arrangement and stooped to dump the contents of the bedside rubbish bin onto the floorboards.  The latex film gloving her hands caught on the wrinkled paper of the receipts she flattened out upon the lamp table, smudging the printout, and she smoothed the next one more carefully.  

The bathroom, gleaming like the chamber of a glacier in the slanting afternoon, offered nothing more than towels and bathrobes that had dried upon the tiles, a half-smoked cigarette and a pair of curious silver pliers lying open in the basin beside a pair of scissors.  On the marble beside them she discerned the faint glitter of some dry, almost micaceous substance, a hueless powder, as fine as talc and as cold as glass.  To her knowing eye the passage of some shrewd, unfailing hand had swiftly stripped the rooms of their most informative indiscretions, clipping the chain of circumstance into arbitrary fragments like the scrambled elements of a shipwreck disgorged by the sea.  A huge black Afghan coat lay on the floor beside the french doors; she hoisted its lax weight onto the mattress and removed the debris from its pockets.  The smell of blood shook loose from its heavy black staple along with that of cigarette and dope smoke, dry ice, exigent sex and exhausted perfume, of places she had never been except as an intruder.  Money fell from the lining and pockets like something imperfectly understood, French francs and American dollars.  Josephine stowed it with her other souvenirs in an evidence bag, along with a heavy brass lighter in the shape of a carp, its surface figured with a multitude of fingerprints.   

In contrast, if not in direct opposition, the suite at the far end of the hall might have belonged to anyone by the time its last habitué had quit, leaving a low black bed and a silver clothes stand to testify to the bare fact of occupation.  Knowing she would find nothing, she walked between them to the window and stood in the sparse shade cast by a neighbouring branch, attracted by the sounds of conversation in the porch below.  Foreshortened by her vantage, Shaw turned back toward it in the midst of his departure, his gaze upon the grass as he received an addendum to O’Connor’s uncharitable review, its flattened vowels working with his authority to cripple any rebuttal it might have deserved.  He glanced up and she stepped back from the window.  

O’Connor called her from the house before she could document the room.  In the shade of the porch he wore his thinly-contained rage like disfiguring hose pressed to the face of a thief.  She took out her camera and began to review her pictures.

“Lilian Frost didn’t run with them, but the British girl did.  She’s new to this so they’ll pick a soft landing... white, Indoeuropean, nothing too challenging.  She went out and bought what she needed, left all the pretty on the hanger, so they’re going off the grid.  We should be hitting the informants hard for anything feeding into that pattern... money trades, safe passage deals, clueless white girl...”

“Shaw has just implied that you broke protocol and invited yourself along, the night the auxiliary sub dissected the Rutherford female.” he told her, watching her eyes find the back of Shaw’s head as the latter walked between the distant gates.  "Is there something else you think he should have disclosed?  I did get that feeling, looking over last night's logs."  She made no reply to the conjecture.  “It’s really not the overpersonalized approach you’ve developed that disturbs me, per se, though I can see how others might... recoil from that kind of investment... it’s that you’re like a cul de sac, Ms Jones.  A dark little pit where information goes to die, and I can’t have you swallowing all the light during regime change.”

She spoke through a stock smile intended for the gazes studying their exchange from the vehicles parked on the road.

“I'm not here to pick up a cheque.  Let me scrub in, give me access to the capture... in thirty days I’ll kick everything you need back up to you.”

His laugh scratched at her face, lasting well into his reply.

“You’re asking for participation... I can give you that.  You and Shaw can both hit the bag run to wherever these subs show up first.”  

“Under who?” she demanded, following him out onto the drive.

“At this point, it wouldn’t be fair to keep Trent from the kind of active authority he craves, so as far as I’m concerned, you can all head out together.”
​

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

A padded squab cushioned her place at a round, dark-timbered supper table, heavily laden with parochial silver and warmed Dresden china.  She was grateful that Gideon had eschewed the grander rooms in favour of an intimate parlor, set back from the duck-egg hall and densely furnished with everything pertaining to a convivial repast.  A stout bombé sideboard groaned behind her under the weight of a massive silver epergne wrought as thickly twisting vines, its bowls carved from Russian nephrite into leaves loaded with persimmons and fat liqueur cherries cloaked in chocolate.  The walls, papered in figured cobalt, were festooned with journeyman portraits; of local nobility, the women clutching roses and smiling as though recalling secrets, the men wearing a heavy ancestral compliment of her host’s assertive features, and of livestock, including pensive, elongate sheep and proud bovine sires with their sinister black heads and tiny hooves.  Even a cat had earned posterity, a brindle beast with belled collar and championship whiskers splaying from its nose.  The glassed doors offered a view of the unlit parterre, but it was the prospect of the meal to which the lavish trimmings were but an allusion that absorbed her, proving almost more than her empty stomach could endure.  The kirsch cherries suggested a speedy visit to the sideboard, cancelled by the smell, if not the sound, of her host’s approach along the hall.  She sat down quickly, smiling as he entered.

Gideon bore an ashet in both hands and set it down in the midst of the table, lifting the lid to reveal a large, fuming joint of wild game, glistening in a treacle-brown glaze and accompanied by mounds of chestnuts, trembling apricot chanterelles, ruby onions wearing garlands of rosemary like conqueror's heads, and roasted potatoes, en echelon, anointed with thick curls of melting butter.  Susan stared, mouth half-open, as he began to carve.

"Thank god you’re a carnivore.” she exclaimed.  "I could just plonk my face in this and suck it off the plate."  His smile altered slightly at the artlessness of her remark.

"Moi aussi.  Strange to have company, I know... I don't allow the jeunes in here, and when Sachiin was with me I dine alone so many times I give up my cook an put my tables in the attic.” he sighed, serving them both and taking his seat.  He had shaved carefully, the razor leaving his proud face soft, combed his hair into grudging obedience and wore a fresh white shirt beneath his jacket, his thickly-timbered shoulders comfortably accommodated by the bespoke garment.

“It's so depressing eating pot noodles like a bloody leper while they sit up in the bedroom and moan about the smell.” she agreed.  "Lilian lived on drugs and cornflakes, so she wasn’t much better."  Another silence threatened the infant momentum of their exchange, and she once more regretted the low cut of her black dress.  Her eyes followed the embroidered meander that ran beneath her plate toward his hand; it rose from the stem of his glass to pour a silky black syrah.  The quantity of heavy talismanic gold in his ears and on his fingers absorbed the molten colours of the fire buried in the small grate at their feet.  

“La Lune.” he said, by way of a toast, sinking a draught.  “Lilian... Kala'amātya's woman?”  She nodded again, mouth full of the many delights heaping her plate.  “A brave soul.  He leave her in America?”

“I think she left herself there.  This is deer, isn’t it?” she inquired of the roast mounded on her fork.

“Oui... some people don’t like to eat them, but they are prettier than cow.  So... you don’t want to talk about Kala'amātya an this girl... c'est bon.  Some things are best left to themselves.”  Gideon patted the pocket of his jacket, its sleek, silk-wefted cloth closing into soft folds in the crook of his elbow.  It was easy to accept his putative antiquity; his skin gave him away, stained a stubborn, golden, Assam brown by numberless campaigns beneath the staring eye of summer.  The same rough passage had beaten the small, susceptible elements from his features, like the weathered masks that guarded the eaves; no glowing vacancies brightened his eyes, the crowded, occult colours crammed and overlaid, permitting no intrusion.  He set something small on the linen halfway across the table, letting its gold chain slip through his fingers.  “Stupid of me to forget.” he conceded.  Her Mughal pendant lay like the final flourish of a magic trick.  “Wear it... life is short.  All I ask, is that from time to time, you put your hand to it, like this, an stare out of the window.  He won’t ask, but it will make him crazy.”  She grasped it tightly, transfixed by disbelief and gratitude, which he waved back at her, looking once more to the hearth.  “Certain people offer me doux fois what I pay for this, to give you over to them.”  The chain stalled as she turned it round her neck.  “An I thought about it for a time, you know... old people, we are not so romantic.  But, difficult enough these days, to look into the mirror.  So don’t offer me your firstborn.”

His admission was confessional without undue apology; Susan looked down at the jade plaque in the palm of her hand.

“William trusts you.  I wasn't sure.” 
“You must, because I give my word, an my word is good no matter what you hear.  Sachiin listen to some stories... I listen to story... des conneries... by now, we should all know better.  Diviser pour mieux régner." he muttered while she puzzled over the shallow inscription carved into the pendant's reverse.
"Do you know what this means?"
"Agar ferdows dar jahan ast hamin ast o hamin ast o hamin ast... if there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here... Farsi, from a palace, dans le nord de l'Inde." her host replied, recalling the haunting declaration and observing its effect on her.  "Even the things we do not say, they have a life in silence."

Susan returned it to her breast, stilled for a moment by his remarks, then revisited her meal with exclusive intent, her teeth cracking through potatoes crisped in duck fat into their warm, powdery hearts, sopping up the juniper-scented gravy with thick, peppered hanks of venison.  The wine slid easily from her glass, elder-purple, sharply sweet like tamarind and blackberries, leaving its burning ghost behind.  Gideon ate restlessly, as though humouring both haste and hunger, then set down his knife and fork and leant out from his chair to lay another piece of willow on the fire.

"You have seen this?”  He nodded past her, referring to a portrait beside the door in a plain oak frame.  It was a brief thing, a hasty, almost harried committal, eschewing surrounding detail in favour of the central figure standing in a tunic of sullen madder red, worn golden handwork banding its long sleeves.  He regarded the artist from a belligerent remove, the white hand upon the Levantine saddle beside him equidistant from the dagger at his belt, dark head bare but for the length of his braid.

“Looks like a terrorist.” she murmured, smiling at the whispering lure in William’s green stare in the midst of his figural resistance.  Gideon nodded at her conclusion.
“So much worse than mujahadeen, because they don’t believe in anything.”
“Edward doesn’t believe in anything.  William believes in forgetting his wallet when you go out to dinner and lying on his face until two in the afternoon.  And jam... he believes in eating all your jam.”  Her assurance prompted him to snort in the midst of a chuckle. 
“Also in eating all your tulipe noire and drinking your Margaux.  But then he look at you like Venus smiling from the shell, an your underwear, it go foof.” he smirked.  “When he come to this place, he was already idle an arrogant, like all wild things... too long in the mountains an then too long in the desert.  He bring his horses, his dogs, his Persian whores, with the plague marks on their arms, an their black teeth... they shit in the fountain when I tell them don't burn my lavender... he lay his tents out there on the grass, because he did not like a roof that weigh more than he did, an would not sit for my painter.  He swore that he would cut the hands from any that tried to make his likeness.  Both the Arab an his own tribe, they frown at such frivolity, calling it an insult to their faith.  But ha ha... tout n'est que vanité.  I flatter him, bring him slowly... slowly... into the house, an soon, he is complaining about my wine an linen, an sitting for this picture like any fille de joie.”  The memory of his artful conquest still amused him, even if its subject’s expression did not perfectly support his account, and he turned his smile back toward Susan.  “He did not love me... lying is the only thing they don't do well.  But in my old age I ask, what is love?  When it is amicable an commonplace, it is only huile de cul, something to smooth the little things, an when it is dément, et formidable, you are its bitch an not much more... a slave.  I think, when you cannot look without touching, it is a fine thing, an so it was... I throw down my colours an made his breakfast an pour his brandy an was pleased to do it.”

She shook her head, philosophical.

“I just can’t.  I probably should be nicer to him, but he’s such a lazy, annoying shit.” 

“When you an I first met, I look at you an wonder, what does she have?”  The envious sentiment was affianced by a long, darkened glance across the table in her direction.  “Then Petrouchka tell me that you say no to him an curse all of his bad habit.  Of course... for this he loves you, more than all of us who would indulge him.  Kala'amātya himself say to me of him, one time... nai naga nya ala'il si'at'nae... there are no snakes in his simplicity... an I agree, there is no art in him, no sophistique... he is simple.  I could not see this, an you do."  She could not help but affirm the generous sentiment.  "That is not to say I have not thrown a chair at his head from time to time... trés bien, eh?  But these days I am a lecher, not a romantic.  If I am to sin, it must come to me with a bottle of something, an make its own breakfast.”  

His teeth were thick and well made inside his smile, their double canines laid neatly against each other.  She smirked back at him, the expression developing a blush when he extended the reference toward her.  

“I know he like to dream that aprés Sachiin, I only raise the flag for the exotique, but ah... I can still give you a good night’s sleep, mon chou, if you don’t mind dark meat after so much... white bread.”  That he intended every word of the invitation was underscored by his implacable machismo, its presence leaning on the table between them in support of it; Susan looked to him again, steeling herself against it and the increasingly pictorial speculation it inspired.  Shadow lay in the hollows of his broad and staunchly-formed hands, the same deep colours shaded in the vales of his face, the darkness beneath his eyes conferring an expression of habitual skepticism that continued in his brow.  “Say no to me, Sussan.  I won’t kick down your door...”  Amusement widened his smile as he returned to his meal.  “Pas ce soir.”  
"Do I have to decide right now?" she asked, working her fork under a potato.  He shrugged.
"I am patient."
"It's not that I'm not tempted..."
"But of course." he chuckled.  Susan speared an elusive mushroom and studied it closely.
"I've never actually thought of myself as a slapper, but lately... it's almost as if there's a bad influence coming from somewhere..."
"L'accident était inévitable." he assured her.  "An the woods, you know, they work on you this way.  Everything baiser something else."
"Did you ever... meet Rana?" she asked.   

Gideon coughed into his hand and set down his cutlery, pushing his plate away and reaching for her own when she declared it superfluous.  

“Ah, oui... an I hear of her retour.  Looks like she’s no stranger to you.”  He nodded down at the scars that crept over her wrist from her arm.
“She tried to pull me through a third floor window.”
“When he was here, she would come into the garden at night, sneaking in to cut the womens' throats an kill the dogs, an then to beat him... which he would endure like a Roma bear, believing there was a chain, you know, in his nose.  I grew tired of this, an kick her back to the Seine.  I think now that he came to me because I would do this for him, when his brother would not.”  They glanced in unison at each other.  “ Kala'amātya, eh?  What do you think?”

“I try not to.”  

He shrugged his brow, and then his shoulders.

"I have to say, myself, I prefer sal to sucré.  But you don’t come to this way of thinking overnight.”
“I’ll probably be a very old woman before I stop thinking of him as caustic soda.”
“I won’t argue.  His tribe, they kill his heart, an we have had bad times with him ourselves... he is violent, an you cannot predict him... when you have no love for yourself, how can you trust?"  He gazed about himself, wrestling with the depth of his own sentiment.  "There is a lesson in him, I think.  The bad things, they are always with us, but beauty she is as strong as any evil.  Some people give her up, and I myself have come too close to this."  He directed his stare at her unexpectedly.  "Don't be that way, ça va?  You will be dead while you are living."  Satisfied, Gideon sat back and drained his glass.  "You like pie?  You have the derriére of a good country girl so I think yes.”

A brief lacuna settled while he returned to the kitchen to fetch dessert, bringing back a sweetly-perfumed tart in one hand and a plate of slouching cheeses and suede-like, sun dried apricots in the other, a bottle of fruit liqueur beneath his arm.  

“Flambé... gauche, I know, but I don’t care.” he confided, dousing the dish and striking a match over the pie to produce a high blue flame that wafted backward with him when he sat down.  Its simple, effusive beauty spread her toes inside her rabbit slippers; she slumped in her chair and sighed, leaning an elbow on the table.

“You’ll have to give me a minute.” she warned, patting her stomach.  “I’m bogged.  Can I ask... you are french French, aren’t you?  Are your family from here?”
"Not ah, Gévaudan... I buy this place, a long time ago.  My family are Provençal.  Basque, before that, my mother’s people.  An you?  Anglo-saxonne?"
"Boring, I know."
"Don't be modest, Sussan.  I see some armada in you.  Perhaps we are cousins."
She laughed, beating down the apricot that jammed in her throat.
"Well that takes care of one thing for me."
Gideon put a hand to his chest in dismay, then resignation, at her scruple.
"It was good enough for our grandfathers.  Eh bien..." he conceded. 

“William said you met overseas, that you... what was it?  Joined up to something together?"

“I served the Catalan cartel at first.  It was quiet when I was young, my god, like you would not believe.  My family they were quiet, the towns, quiet... the countryside... you could hear a Corsican whore fart from an épicerie in Toulouse.”
“I tried to get him to explain how you go from that to killing random people in the Middle East, but I didn't have much luck.”
“It's hard for people now to know those times.  The south, she was full of religion an nordistes... we were young an bored, an oui..." he shrugged.  "Quite stupid.  Sans méfiance.  One time, a big goat, he come into my uncle’s house an ate the pages from his bible... we don't follow this book, it was only for appearance... for weeks, this was the only talk for a day's walk all around.  The only talk."  Susan pulled a grim face at the prospect and he nodded to it.  "Then you know, Urban the pope he make his speech an the whole world lose its head an took the cross.  Outrémer... she sound like discotheque.  I go with the Catalans to Ascalon, a trebuchet show to me the taste of sand, and voilá... from that moment, I was a slave to le guerre.”  He laughed again at his venality and cut her a wide wedge of pie, shuffling it from the silver slice.  “What can you do?  Alujha were born for it.”

“How can you be born for something like that?” Susan scoffed.  "That's the sort of thing William says when he can't think of an excuse for whatever Edward's doing."

Gideon set down the slice and lifted the little glass-bellied salt and the silver pepper shaker, both standing on tiny lion’s paws, from their retirement at the edge of the table and poured a little of their contents into adjacent piles upon the cloth.  

"To the east of here, by the Pont-d'Arc, there is a cave... na Avájir... the Grave, we say.  In the oldest times, le invocateur, the shamans, witches... they share their dreams with the wolf in these places, an they trade the flesh with him.”  He pushed the salt into the pepper with the end of his finger until they were inextricably combined.  “We are brother an sister with all things.  In na Avájir, this union was painted on the walls, an from this comes my tribe, born as they were made.  The girl, with the stars in her head, an the boy, with the moon in his heart.”  Gideon passed his hand over the mingled grains.  "These caves, they are so beautiful, but they are silent now and I cannot look at them.  All they hold has passed away.  In them you can see that most important thing forsaken... that moment, when the first man turn from other beasts, to tell his children they did not have to share.  From this moment come the fall... come croisade, the abattoir, the gas chamber... na Avájir is the grave of us all."

The unctuous mouthfulls of sugar-glazed plum lost their sweetness in her mouth and she swallowed slowly, prompting him to smile briefly to himself.  

"Déprimante, eh?  Never mind.  Sachiin et Kala'amātya, they too are born as they were made.  You and I, we have a difference, but we are Rome’s children, an we sit by the fire.  They stand before the window an dream of the massif in winter.”
“He's told me some of it already, where they came from.” she admitted.  "More than I thought he would."

His sigh betrayed the volume of his ruminations on the subject.

“One time, we wait in the Krak for some Syrians to pound us into dust, an some dancing girls from the north... Azeri, perhaps, I don’t remember, but they say to us... in exchange for everything we own, some jinn would come from beyond Samarkand and murder all our enemy."  He rose, and brought the epergne from the sideboard, turning a chocolate-laden leaf toward her.  "Their grandames told of an old cabal, witches from the East who fashioned these jinn to serve them, but these creatures, they were not so comme il faut... lustful, they said, an disobedient, an they run away.  Now, who does this sound like?”  The almost pornographic beauty of the cherries monopolized her gaze.  “If you don’t eat one, I will have to call a priest.” Gideon warned her.  He reached across and took one for himself, leaving the shadow of his chair and leaning into the glow effused by the pale table linen.  It lit the two blank circles of silver white in the back of his eyes, canceling the perspicacity of his conscious gaze.  “I take pride in these tales, now I am the only one who know, more or less.  It is said also that in their mountains they wear their truest form, an go about like this... monstrueux.  When they are moved by some desire, when they seek rendez-vous galant with other creatures, they descend, an on their way, pass through a river... this water paints a face on them, comme par magie... one pleasing to us, an when they return, the river washes it away.  It is said too, as they grow older they look, day by day, more like the altérité, an less of you an I.  Something to keep you awake at night, eh?"  

Susan glanced up from her plate.

"It takes a bit more than that these days."

"I feel I should apologize, for this...” he confessed, touching his hand to his neck to indicate the shallow concave on her own where Siobhan's assault still glowed pearl white and unreconciled.  “I don’t know why.  Vampyres... they disgust me, even Belyaev, sometimes.  Not one in a hundred escape as you have done." he assured her.  "Someone look out for you."  
“It was Edward.  I’d probably be heaving up chicken blood somewhere if he’d decided not to bother.”  He laughed and crossed himself.  “The downside is... now I’ve got vampyre goggles and I can see the mingers everywhere.”  He seemed perplexed by her terminology.  “It’s like having a lot of really horribly ugly naked people standing round you on the beach.” she explained.
"Quelle chance.  You know now, never to trust them, nor anyone who serve them.  If they have not sold your blood to a friend while it is still in your vein, it is because this would be sharing you.  Easy to become confused by the cape and fangs and all the movies, but that is theatre.  They are not."  
“What about Petrouchka?”
“I love her, but I don’t trust her.  Alujha... trust them, love them, let them buy dinner, but don’t wear your best négligée an ah... don’t run, you know?  Never run.  Witches... ingénieux, amusing, as long as you don’t talk politic or religion.  Vampyre... don't drink their wine.  That’s everything you need to know.  Now you have a nice big scar and it is, how you say... c'est hardcore, and people will take you seriously... no bad thing.  I would still have you, after all.”  Gideon's smile wandered to the glassed doors behind her, and he excused himself, walking around to pull the curtain closed, the thick sound of the drape upon the carpet overlaying that from the lawn outside that had prompted him to tactfully occlude the view of the garden.  “You know something?  Never mind what I have just told you... at the heart of everything, there are only two people... the one who love order, and the one who love freedom.  For a happy life, you must know which you love best, and go always in this direction.  C’est facile.  Prends ton courage á deux mains.  Take courage in both hands."

Susan shook her head at the fresh bottle he suggested.

“If I don’t sleep, I think my face will fall off.” she admitted.  
“I will walk with you, make sure there is no Luc under your bed.  He is a devil.”

In her suite, the fire had been replenished and the quilts turned down, her dresses ushered into a vast armoire and the candlestick she had snatched from Commoriom Drive set on the bedside cabinet, considerations prompting her to frown as he assured himself of their commission.

“You don’t have to make them hide.  I like Étienne.” she insisted, perplexed by the reticence of his retainers.  Gideon appeared unmoved.
“The discipline is good for them.”
“I was a bit worried about coming here.” she added.
"Don't worry.  The future is for seers.  We don't share their curse."  He came forward and, with a hand on each of her bare arms, pressed a measured kiss to both her cheeks, his grasp drifting to her elbows.  His scent, of hot-blooded skin, syrah and sage-green vetiver, stayed with her when he stepped away; Gideon made a small bow in the doorway.  "I won’t be here tomorrow, so if you would like something in town, I can bring for you...”

She shook her head.

Against the drunkenness that flushed her face, she pushed open the window and leant out, into the cold blown in from the parterre.  It shouldered its way past the brocade and wandered through the shallow little chandelier over her bed, leaving a cool, wet clatter in its troubled glass and pushing the door against its frame.


CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce
​

Björk's The Gate.  The video is shiny, and my draggy parts applaud that.  But the other parts of me are like not this shit again.  It looks like something Heston Blumenthal rubbed out after a dry spell and that's... that's not an unreservedly good thing (do you, like me, want to bludgeon virtually every vapid hominid he invites to those heinous staged theme dinner thingies?  We've been bingeing on them recently and have come to regret it.)  I'm a bit angry at the boring paucity of the song, tbh; just bleating the same lame phrases over all this tinselly visual winsomeness is getting on my fucking tits.  It's called poetry, and I can get that shit anywhere.  Tunes: look into them.

Am I being unkind?  Björk got publicly kicked in the heart by a third tier fuckboy.  Painful?  Hell yes.  Humiliating?  Certes.  But unexpected?  Come the fuck on now.  Guðmundsdóttir, we've all been there, so stop fronting like that frankly icky amalgam was something for the ages when your average hedge sparrow could've plotted that trajectory in advance with a fucking crayon on some butcher paper.  Being shit on by someone never worthy of you anyway isn't character building and you won't find much worthwhile pawing through the debris.  Dickbags will get their pound of needy, gullible flesh any time we hand them opportunity.  Most of us have, at one time or another.  Everyone's time is a wasting while you flush that sludge and grope for your creative centre.

Though she had devoted little time to speculation on the long ride south, Susan found the Auberjonois demesne far larger and less quaint than she had imagined.  The antiquated oaks that overloomed its single road had thriven and extended into the prodigious symmetry permitted by the valley's secluded footprint, the giants amongst them a credit to the unwavering esteem of their protector.  Greening, overgrown Roman stone declared an entrance manned by two armed veterans of Gideon’s circle, as of the forest as lions were the plain, saluting the elderly limousine from their stations on the weathered masonry.  The vehicle crawled slowly over the uneven ground on thick springs, its mirror polish assuming the enclosing wood; she wound down the window, blinking at the sunlight fluttered through the butter yellow leaves, the colour heaped over the black roots that spanned the mould like veins.  Their deep, insistent conjugation with the willing earth seemed like something unimagined by the stately boles and canopies, their sustenance traded mutely in the elements beneath, their fallen foliage granting a careless, partial modesty.  The smallest clockwork creatures wore their fur amid the mottled drifts, the rapacity of their preparations for the coming season expressed in flicking tails and lightning beats across the road.  Susan smelled, and thought she heard, a river lying in the depths alluded by the descent to the east, but could make little of it between the trees, those dissociated from the trail standing as though with their faces turned, concerned more with one another than any passing intrusion.

They rode on until the oaks relented suddenly, exposing a broad shoulder clothed in open meadow, its exhausted colours beaten down, vigor spent in expectation of repose.  A scolding flock of jays scattered into the air before their vehicle, flashing turquoise, planing away over a low line of yews that divided the meadow from a parterre garden, its dramatic, finely-demarcated textures like figured embroidery in lavender and sage, its bib of felt-green lawn pressing right up to the house itself.  

The structure's two modest stories had been raised from the granite of the surrounding gorges and topped with a sloping hat of stern blue slate, reaching into eaves that were the equal of the region’s winters; arches of the same native stone framed narrow windows set with blinkered wooden shutters.  Her face had lost its dour incomprehension as she glanced at her companion, and Gideon looked up from the newspaper in his lap in acknowledgment of her appreciation.  

A short stone bridge spanned a ditch trickling with a stream that pushed through nodding grass, the long car easing on through gates pinned against the stout walls of an arch into a yard enlivened with topiary conifers; two baroque bronze dolphins spouted a pattering stream over their own flanks in a shallow black plane of water.  Gazing upward, she saw the walls wore carven masks that had lost their rudest features to the rain and snow, so that their malevolence seemed subtle and considered.  Over the kitchen door a weathered viper grasping its tail had been worked into the frame.  Gideon smiled at her notice of it.

“I love the snake.” he admitted.  “It is so blameless.”

The servants' kitchen was full of thick scrubbed pine and bright, mismatched Ardéche chairs, the impression elevated from agrestic simplicity by artful arrangement, continuing the graceful, almost unearthly standard of luxe that had enfolded her since their association, as though at the insistence of some lavish national divinity.  It had lightened her mood en route, but the prospect of inhabiting a stranger’s house returned the frown to Susan’s face.  Intramural formality began in the adjoining hall, almost a room in its own right, molding picked out in three shades of creme and duck-egg blue; away from the deep-set windows the rooms lost all touch with the world outside and became an insulated refuge.  A large suite had been readied for her deep within the southern wing, its plastered walls framed with gilded gesso, deeply-buttoned fauteuil standing in the corners dressed in bloomy tearose silk, the cloth repeated in the plump quilts asphixiating a bed headed with riotous rococo boulle in the forms of swans and banners.  An enormous blaze lapped willow slabs and pine cones in the open grate, betraying the presence of servitors that she had not yet espied.

“I cannot tell you how long I take to choose the colour... my decorator tear out his hair.” he told her, setting her pack down on the ottoman.

“It’s... lovely.” she assured him, placing the only bag she had been permitted to carry beside the others.  “But I would have been happy with the couch.”

Incomprehension crossed his features, and he shook his head, as though politely disregarding some unwitting insult.

“Sussan, first, I must say something to you, an I don’t want for you to be alarmed.”  He swept her toward an adjoining bathroom with a gesture.  “I don’t know what Sachiin has told you, but, this place it is a hahdri as well as my home.  You know this word?”  He nodded with her.  “Good.  It's okay right now... you could sleep on the parterre, pas de probléme.  But the moon, she make the rules... respecter les régles, eh?  Your friend has his teaspoon... I don’t like him to kick my ass from here to Lyons because someone stand downwind of you.”  Gideon nodded toward the garden.  “Don’t go outside at night, not ever.  Your room is on fire, okay... but if you want to walk, I will come with you.  Never alone.  An I cannot let you leave this place until Sachiin send for you.  You are in my hand now... this is an old rule, an we keep to it.”  She nodded again, more slowly.  “Sometime, I must go for business, an then Luc will look after you... en cas d’urgence, you must leave everything an go with him, Étienne, or myself, whoever come first.”  He shrugged, smiling.  “That’s all.  Now Sussan, you must be frank with me... what do you think of this?  It is not, how you say, ah.... mauvais goût?"  A long curtain of pink and gold toile hung over an enormous oval tub of rosé marble veined with vanilla inclusions, its steaming water topped with jasmine-scented froth.  

"Tacky?" she suggested, smiling as she scratched at the back of her head.  “I'd call it... happy.”  

He lapsed into a chuckle and nudged her with his elbow, pronouncing her name so that it sat proud, like a sunlit isle amid his observations.  

“Sussan... elle est tout á fait ridicule."  

“William would say it looks like a dead duck’s guts.” 

"Such exquisite vulgarity.  Maybe the soap should be white, who can tell?”

“Well, a few weeks ago I had to burn furniture in the back yard to get hot water, so I’m just happy when the taps work.” she confessed.  He shuddered in sympathy.

“Maison Bucket, eh?  Quelle horreur.  People ask me, why don’t you stay with them, Auberjonois, but ah... if you must ask, you haven't had the pleasure.  So, now, you must excuse me... my cook he has the pox, an I wear the apron tonight.” he explained.  “I like to dress for dinner.  Perhaps you have something to wear?”

He watched her transfer the contents of her pack onto the quilt, keeping it in tidy piles as she sought out her cocktail dress.

“Everything I own has bloodstains.” she confessed.

“Leave them outside for Étienne... he is like Jesus casting out the spirit into the swine.” her host advised, touching her arm with another of his ingratiating smiles, before leaving her alone.  She left the bed to stand before the fire, lifting her dress to warm her bare legs.
​
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

My love for Bloodstone is utterly unqualified and wish I could have bought another hundred tubes.  Delicious.

To summarise Jasper, I say: a difficult shade, well done.  Deep, stable, grown up and semi-wearable.  It's an updated, non-basic plum, really.  The closest thing in my collection is probably MAC Fixed On Drama- that is redder, a lot warmer and contains brown tones.  Look into it if you're one of those 'can't wear red' people bored with tamer neutrals.

Felix has always been a beautiful dog with elegant proportions which amplified the already janky dissonance between the necessity of the procedure and the potential psychosomatic fallout (for everyone involved).  If that sounds like vanity, it really isn't; all animals rejoice in the power and efficacy of their own symmetry and taking that away from another beast is no small consideration.  Taking him in to the clinic on the day of the operation was one of the hardest things I've had to do.  It goes without saying that seeing him in a piteous daze on a mass of blankets in his vet cage post-op was a horrible, chest-crunching impact, and I didn't consider myself squeamish.  But Alison at Humanimals Dunedin did a thorough, careful job of this awkward, late-stage procedure and the result is neat and utile, for which we are very thankful.  Thanks also to our friends who ferried us back and forth from the vets, and to everyone who gave a shit and wished him luck.

This pathology was able to sneak up on two relatively well-informed people who were very engaged with their dog, so don't be like us and dismiss the warning signs I will enumerate in a forthcoming post.  Seek a medical opinion of any change to your animal's condition that persists for more than a week.  Just fucking do it.  We didn't, and all of us paid for that dismissive attitude, especially Felix.  We feel a lot of shame and anger at ourselves for that.

To anyone trying to decide between subjecting their furred friend to such a major procedure vs euthanasia- don't let your own negative presumptions get in the way of a good decision.  Keep your head where it needs to be- in your knowledge and best interests of your animal instead of buried up the arse of your own speculative fears.  Sometimes you have to let your friend go because it is best for them.  Sometimes they aren't a good candidate for a change in their physical status and you must weigh the pros and cons.  Felix is intensely physical, lives for his motility and we were deeply concerned about his post-quadrupedal morale.  Would his new condition be enough for him?  

We hoped yes, and I think that was a good decision.  All of these images, bar one, are of Felix after losing a leg.  Within two weeks of losing that leg.  I know not every dog will (literally) bounce into their new state like he has, and he's not out of the woods by any means.  But he really is a happy little fellow, far happier to be pain-free than trapped in some malfunctioning idea of 'entirety'.  Our fears are not their fears.

​His joy is our solace.  Long live Foofie.

​courtesy the Lovely R

A group of pale shapes standing in the darkness of the drawing room defied Shaw's attempt to identify them through glass, and he looked to the creature on the balcony overhead.  William waved his phone toward the sky and redialed, so deeply invested in the process that he barely saw the figure on the grass below.

"Mind if I grab a coffee?" Shaw called, to which he did not reply, returning to his rooms with the phone to his ear.

The house itself seemed, suddenly like something mauled as Shaw stood in the entrance hall and looked around himself, leaning out to peer into the garage, frowning at the indiscretion of his footfalls upon boards stripped of their rugs and kilims.  While some larger works remained upon the papered walls, many had been taken down, the panelling arrayed instead with a piled and tottering assortment of émigré effects, the tenuous order they had so recently attained dissolved as though by the click of fickle fingers.  The drawing room was crowded with a low henge of packing crates, rolled rugs and thick, blanketed stacks of plaster frames.  He pushed a hand down into the neck of his sweatshirt to lift a tiny camera by its lanyard, snapping a quick shot of the scene, the uninspired precepts of his training imposing priority upon his impulses, leading him to conclude that fresh intelligence would serve his interests as well as any other course of action. 

The very silence prompted him to pause inside the passage outside Edward's library, though he had circled the property twice over in an intimate regard for his own safety.  A large portion of the bibliographic collection still occupied the shelves, but it was the slim black laptop that relieved him with its presence on the ebonized desk in the beam of his torch.  Pulling out the chair, he pushed a silver drive into its flank, resting his hands on the edge of the table as the software he had introduced began to dismantle its security.  The burnt, ashy black scent of ancient ink and handmade paper was married to the smell of warmed-through plastic arising from the computer; he flashed the room with his camera and slid it back into his pocket, looking back down at the screen.



Wind flattened Susan’s hair, whipping it across her cheeks as she sat in Edward's car with its windows yawning open, the battering almost a solace to her, the smell of Siobhan’s revenant gore rising from her collar firing fluttering red images against her lids.  Her gaze wandered to her companion's hands upon the steering wheel, their strange beauty gloved almost entirely in blood cured black by the night that roared and whistled in her ears.  That he was hardly more than the glacial stranger of their first encounter impressed on her the distance at which he still lay, and that she might not live long enough to improve that shallow perception.

"It's when you're angry." she admitted, prompted to answer her own question, and fully conscious of its ironies.  "It's better when you're angry."  Edward looked back at her, wearing the darkness as he did the blood, and she felt the same black union on her own face, shadow and streetlight drawn in turn across their faces by their passage.

Commoriom Drive passed by without attracting her notice until they slowed between the gates.  Even to Susan the house seemed complicit in Lilian's absence, appearing almost diffident, as though attempting to make good the loss with its material constancy; they coasted along the wandering slope of the drive to a standstill before the garage.  Easing herself from her seat with the grubby drawstring sack, she refused his attempt to relieve her of the stinking canvas as the hallway door flew open at them, William whipping the cigarette from his mouth and exclaiming at her harrowed demeanour.

"What the fuck is this?" he demanded of his brother angrily.  "She's supposed to be recovering, not going on satanic fucking rampages, you sadistic prick!"
"I am recovered." she sighed, sitting down on the bundled loot she had dumped at his feet and drawing hard on his cigarette.
"Call Aubjerjonois.  Get his ETD." Edward instructed.  William resisted active compliance until his brother demanded to know why.
“You’re always bitching me out about him playing both sides... the cartels are looking to jump him, he's got neckfuckers on him every other day... it’s not a good time."  They argued the point in their own tongue until Susan raised her own weary exception.
“I'm not going to France.”
"You have to go somewhere, Christabel, right now, thanks to superfuck here... you don't have the papers to run with us." 
“Leave with Auberjonois or go home on your own passport." Edward told her from the door.

She looked up at her remaining companion.

​“You said you trusted Gideon." she sighed.
"Yes, okay...” William confessed.  "I trust him.  I just hate admitting it."  She threw away the cigarette and hoisted herself to her feet.
"Then call him."

Susan trailed the stench of violence on her clothing along the corridor, frowning dimly at the randomized clutter through which she was forced to thread until she came upon the library, the room's dim, ensconcing isolation as sympathetic as she had hoped.  She sat down in Edward's chair, stroking the heavy lid of her left eye, staring so long at the telephone in her hand that the number she recalled became a droning mantra.  The sound of her parka sleeve moving against her side seemed more decisive than it was; she lowered her arm again, the appliance resting on her thigh, sniffing hard.  Almost without deciding, she began to dial the international code, dismissing the price of the call from her considerations.  It rang for a long time before it was answered by a voice half-shouting over music.

“Hello... is Fergus there?  Fergus, or Jules?” she asked, listening to it echo at the other end of the line.

“Fergus... he left, what... three months ago?  Got work in Oz... he’s gone love, sorry.” replied the male respondent.

“What about Jules?  She’s still there, isn’t she?”

“Nah, she’s well out of it.”

“Jules is fucking the landlord!” someone called in the background; the remark provoked a round of jeering laughter from those within earshot.  

​“Sounds long distance...” the other assured them.  The music was turned down.  “Who’s this then?”

“It’s Susan... Can I just...  I...”  She could hear him turning back to his companions, the rough sound of his palm against the receiver as he passed her name over his shoulder.  Someone else began arguing over possession of the telephone and the call was disconnected, the music and the voices replaced by a dead grey buzz.  She set it down on the desk and slid her hands beneath her arms, her nose dripping onto her sleeves.  She could not have named the cue that lifted her head and turned it; glancing past her elbow, Susan slid down from the chair, drawn to the slender plane of darkness behind the half-open door.  It creaked softly on its hinges as she pulled the handle toward herself.

Shaw’s left hand cradled the heel of his right, his pistol staring a black eye at her forehead.  He was surprised by her battered state, her dusk-blue hair both rucked and pasted down over her head, the grime smudged over her cheeks darkening the demi-lune shadows beneath her eyes.  She brought her hand up to wipe her nose.

“It gets harder, the longer you wait.” she said quietly, the moments paying out like silk behind a spider and proving the wisdom of her postulate, until he could neither fire nor lower the weapon without material concession.  “You wouldn’t make it to the front door anyway...” she added, still unblinking.  "And you know what they'll do, once they get you."  The rolling yaw engendered by her observation stole mass from the gun in his hands, rendering it in useless outline as though she had snatched it from his grasp.  Susan let him suffer as long as she could enjoy that pallid satisfaction, then stepped back, her hand still on the door.  "Just go.  I've had enough for one night." she murmured.  His instincts seized the bitter clemency before he could confuse it with argument; she nodded down at his waist and reached out, palm upturned.  “Phone, gun... keys... everything.”  

When he hesitated, she took a breath as though to call out, looking to the ceiling, and Shaw pressed the weapon into her hand, a quick inventory of his pockets yielding the other items she’d requested, and she stepped back, allowing him to conclude their transaction with the swift, inglorious discretion of a decamping felon.  She sat back down in Edward's chair and counted him out through the front door, along the driveway and down the road, then pushed back from the desk.



Lukewarm coffee slopped from the flask Josephine dumped on the seat beside her as she lifted her infrared visor, striking the windscreen with its rims in her haste to resolve the pale shape of Shaw's private vehicle.  Stepping out into the darkness of the clearing, she kicked her way through dead grass to the edge of the level ground; the four wheel drive parked at the foot of the hill jerked forward across the verge and turned a tight circle on the seal, planing sideways in the mud by the overgrown wall and spinning its wheels.  She flipped open her phone and dialed Shaw's primary line, then the car itself while it sped away, lampless, along Commoriom Drive.  The second call was accepted as the vehicle became a blur through the honed glass.  

"What the hell are you doing, Shaw?"  The open line crackled dimly but she heard movement in the cab before the call was terminated.

Josephine threw her visor into the car and slammed the door after herself, dialing another number and demanding immediate priority over the sounds of ignition.



William sat on the foot of his bed with her bag and the new pack that Edward had chosen for her, phone pressed to his ear by his shoulder.  A few larger pieces of furniture had left dusty voids amid the chaotic remainder of his belongings, but precious little had been uplifted.

"Everything's still here!  What were you doing all bloody day?" she cried.  

“Auberjonois’ waiting for us.  Does this look like everything?” he asked, inviting her to examine the bags.

"I don't know... what do I need?"  She shrugged off her dirty parka as she ransacked the adjoining bathroom, returning to stuff handfuls of toiletries into the lid of the pack.  Having discharged the impulse, she made herself still and pressed her eyes closed.  "Just... be quiet, for a minute." she insisted, grasping the tail of her departing nerve.  "I caught Shaw doing something... in the library."  He let the phone fall.  "He's a nark... I let him go.  I'm sorry."

His reaction encompassed something more than the dismay she had expected, extending past her toward the footfalls that bore his brother down the hall toward them; she grasped her face in her hand while they regarded one another over her head.

"I said I'm sorry, alright?" she told Edward.

"How long's he been gone?" William asked.

​"Maybe... ten minutes... I don't know...  I took his phone..."  

The brothers consulted one another in brief terms; Edward disappeared the way he had come and William hauled the pack onto his back while she stared at him, struck by the accord  effected so swiftly by the exchange.  

"We're not coming back here... if you need it and can carry it, get it now." he told her, tearing out the drawer from the bedside cabinet and dumping its contents onto the mattress.
"Not coming back here?  This is everything you own!"
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes it does!"  She stared around herself in desperation, kicking into the pile of clothing on the floor beside the bed and tearing free favourites that she wound into a ball and stuffed into her tote.
"Christabel... vite!  Grouille-toi!" he urged, returning from the door to take her wrist and drag her down the stairs.

Out in the garden, he stood listening with his head bowed and his eyes closed.

"What is it?" she whispered, scanning the parterre. 
"Rotor blades."

The implications escaped her momentarily.

"Coming here?"  He was forced to go after her as she marched back into the house.  Defeated utterly by the sight of so many hapless possessions, Susan seized a battered silver candle stick from one of the crates in a despairing gesture.  William dragged her out through the drawing room, forced to lift her from the ground when she planted her feet against the removal.  "You can't just leave it!  Where are we going?" she cried, tearing free of him and turning to stare up at the house.  It loomed pale and stoic through her flooded gaze.  William held out his hand to her.

​"Somewhere else." he promised.  "A'ma, avai'sahdi."

Imagined or not, the wind rolling in from the south conveyed proof enough to sweep her resistance aside and they moved as one, breaking into a run halfway across the parterre.  The pool lay tranquil in its midst, their empty bottles standing around the sun lounge from which her towel hung in a thick drape.  They rounded the corner of the orchard, ducking and pushing through the walls of the magnolia lane into the tangled stand beyond.  It had overgrown all plans and paths in its wild dominion, weaving the dead and living into a dense, dew-dripping thatch that left the boles and lower branches bare.  Nettles struck her calves as she fled through the yellowed smell of decay, leaping curling roots and fallen timber, breathless by the time they found the boundary wall.  Where a rotten trunk had crashed through half its height William climbed up and offered his hand, but she had already tossed her burdens over the barrier and scrambled up a limb, leaping down into the wet, thigh-high grass and the bitter scent of the dock crushed underfoot in the neighbouring lot.  The thudding she thought she had heard became an undeniable reality, still distant but closing as it sifted through the branches; she snatched up the candlestick and jogged backward past the oaks leaning out over the wall, panting as she searched the darkness yawning overhead. 

"Your brother..." she whispered.  
"He'll be fine." he told her, walking her back to the wall where the narrow stripe of clear ground at its foot left no sign of their direction.  The unfamiliar yard was as enormous and neglected as their own, the distant house long-empty; at its corner they scaled the brick and came out in another cul de sac, its clipped verge indicating occupancy.  Susan walked with her head down between the street lights toward the only visible vehicle, glancing to either side of them at the tall gates and foot-lit drives.  The modest silver sedan uttered an electronic warning at their approach; William paused at its side, drew back his arm and put an elbow through the window.



It was the blown, wet-stone smell of dawn and the blanched and aqueous colours assumed by the morning already birthed beyond the curve of the horizon that woke Susan, to the prospect she had deferred.  The interior of the unfamiliar vehicle redoubled the sense of displacement already gathered around her like a stranger's garment, its grey weight small welcome to day.  They were parked alongside a broad field of asphalt and a half-dozen private aircraft, blank-eyed, standardized steeds.  Dust and avgas vapour swept through the tall chain link beside them; she sat without moving, gazing through the window at William, who stood before the barrier, making a thorough survey of their surrounds.  The set of his shoulders expressed both the diligence of the precaution and the disinclination with which he struggled and he brought it back to the car as he sat down.  Words came slowly to her, volunteering themselves in a reluctant shuffle, like creatures summoned out of hiding.

"What's the time?"
"Six.  How did he take the Frost news?" he asked, picking burrs from the edge of her skirt.
"Better than I expected, at first, but then he... it wasn't... good."
“Did you get the gooseberry eye?”  He mimed it for her.  She nodded.  “After that, you’ve got about eight seconds before body parts start pinging off the ceiling.”
"I know that now."

​Susan opened the glovebox before her then tried to cram it shut, too late to stem the flow of wet wipes, hair ties and brightly-cased singalong CDs into her lap.  Together they stared down at the alien artifacts, William grimacing as they returned them to their lair.

"This is why I don't steal cars... now I feel like we've got soccer practice, and then we have to pick up Maddison and Emily from ballet."  They shuddered together and he smiled, almost hesitantly, though her expression pushed his own back into distress and he drummed a foot on the floor of the car.  "Christabel... ishah y'li sidati... I can’t let you go if you’re not dealing with this better than I am.”

"I am." she sighed, digging through the contents of her bag.  He watched her, smiling briefly.

“How long will you take to get into Auberjonois once you're in the air?"

​“I don't know." she replied absently, looping the strap of her bag over her head.  "I'll have to wait for the seatbelt sign."  Susan leant across to take his chin in her hand; he closed his eyes while she painted lipstick on his mouth with careful strokes, moving only as she leant forward and kissed the colour onto her own.  "We have to go...”  She conceded the syllables in exchange for another slow taste of him, her hand loath to relinquish his neck.  

Dust flew from their footsteps as they strode across the gravel verge and he stooped to wrench the chain link free of the ground, holding it up for her.  Susan rose on the other side, brushing off the sharp stones pressed into her palms, her face beaten colourless by the cold wind.  Once more she felt the drag of the ineluctable current that had already borne her so far out into terra incognita that it eroded the very certainty of the ground beneath her feet, the distant, industrial drone clashing with her thoughts like static.  Gideon’s aircraft was a sleek work of cold white art upon the tarmac; a fat fuel truck disengaged from it and rolled away slowly, an orange light flashing on the roof of its cab.  The plane was larger than her worst expectations but did not approach those far more comforting dimensions of her limited experience, lit softly gold from within, its owner standing in the curve of a doorway set deeply into the fuselage.

“Don't go back to the house." she murmured to William, brushing the dust from her bag.  They halted at the foot of the slightly battered set of steps.

"It'll be taped off by now."

“I might never see you again, either... these fucking death traps crash all the...”  William lifted a hand to her mouth against the portentous nature of the observation; she took it in her own then between her teeth, and he bent to embrace her.  She held him so tightly that his bones began to hurt her arms as Gideon descended the steps toward them, tugging down his cuffs and smoothing a hand over his head.  Winding a length of William's hair around her fingers, she yanked it free, closing it in her fist when he set her down and rubbed his head.  “If I don’t see you again, I’ll find a witch and curse you.  How do you say goodbye?"

"We don't, really.  Is Pet with you?" he asked their host, keeping hold of her hand.

"She is inside, asleep already.  That colour, it is wonderful on you." Gideon smiled at the faint, wandering shade of coral on his lips.  "An you look very lovely tonight, Sussan.” he added, casting an eye over her grimy, blood-spattered person.  William crooked a finger at him, to which he smiled again, inquisitive.

“If she tells me that you or anyone else so much as looked at her the wrong way, I’ll neuter your whole sleazy fucking tribe with the same teaspoon.  Je suis fucking sincére.  T'as intérêt à lui coller aux basques sinon ça va barder pour toi." 

“Have no fear.  She is in good hands, bijoux... the best hands.  You may find she does not want to leave... then what will you do?”

​“I just told you, so write it down.”  

"Bonsoir, serpent-visage.” Gideon called, fluttering a hand at the warning finger William kept pointed at him as they ascended the steps.

“Bon débarras, grenouille stupide.” the latter replied.

Gideon swept Susan’s luggage from her grasp, shepherding her into the plane before she could further delay their departure.  Its interior was a secluded study in dense, bewildering, transplanted luxury, its perfumed air as warm as blood against her face and neck, the curving cabin panels lined with a caramel skin of dappled maple and reclining chairs in black, glove-soft Italian leather.  Luc and Étienne sat behind automotive magazines and comics in the rear; they smiled up at her from beneath their headphones.  Gazing along the narrow aisle, Susan chose a seat behind the door, the soft squab deflating slowly beneath her as she sank down.  

On the tarmac William lifted his T-shirt from his stomach to wipe his streaming eyes, still weeping as he let it fall and walked slowly backward, hands clasped on his head.  She pressed her lips to the double pane as Gideon sat down beside her, looking past her shoulder.

“Look at him... crying, comme un grand enfant." he chuckled.  “What is this?”  She glanced down at the fist imprisoning the hair from William’s head, unfurling her fingers; to her dismay, her palm held only translucent dust, like finely-powdered glass.  He tisked.  “Per'aps you were holding it too tightly.” 

The engines roared on either side of them, pressing her back into the seat, their velocity climbing exponentially and without preamble until the floor tilted away from the tarmac.  The  jet followed its nose into the air, turning a half-circle over the brightly glowing city and its dark blue arc of hills.


E N D   O F   P A R T   O N E

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CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Barn owl hovering by Roy Rimmer, UK. Category: bird behaviour.

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