Siren Queen(41)

“So you want the child. What else do you want?”

“To go home,” Greta said promptly. “I was brought here on a rope. I want my child to know the forest and the long night. I want her to have good fish and cold days.”

“Hm. At least you don’t want to be a movie star as well, I suppose…”

“And I want my man.”

Mrs. Wiley’s white eyebrows went up to her hairline.

“If you want your man, he should have been here with you, don’t you think?”

Greta shrugged like a horse flicking its tail to remove flies. What Brandt Hiller was to her was different than what Emmaline was to me, what a human woman might have felt for the father of her child. He was hers, and that was what mattered. Mrs. Wiley must have intuited at least a little bit of that because she nodded.

“Well, tell me. Who’s the lucky young sheikh?”

“Brandt Hiller.” Greta paused. “I don’t know his real name.”

Mrs. Wiley made a snorting noise that turned into a laugh.

“Oh, you have interesting friends,” she said to me. “Miss Ambitious and Miss Muleheaded, that’s you two.”

“What?” I asked when Greta only glared. “What’s the matter with Brandt Hiller?”

“My dear, even up here in my tower, I know a few things. I know what Variety tells me because a darling child brings it up to me. I’m first to know when it rains because I am so high up. And I know, because everyone does, who Oberlin has to offer up to hell on Halloween.”

Greta made a cry of alarm, and I froze, pricks of heat and cold running down my body and making me shudder.

“Is it true then?” I asked. “Is that what the Wild Hunt on Halloween is for?”

Mrs. Wiley shrugged.

“We’re only human, and who knows the actual truth of it? Every year, they go riding, and every year, they give over one girl or boy to what’s waiting in the dark. No one sees that girl or that boy ever again, and then there’s a party that’s never loud enough or wild enough to cover the fact that there’s something that can take even from the likes of Oberlin Wolfe, John Everest, and Elgin Aegis.”

“Who are they giving up this year?” Greta asked, but from the sound of her voice, Greta knew.

“It’s always the one the king loves most,” Mrs. Wiley said. “And this year, even I know it’s Brandt Hiller.”

She sighed.

“I can’t give you your life back. I drank it up, and I wouldn’t even if I could. But Miss Muleheaded, you have to know that taking back your man means crossing Oberlin Wolfe.”

“I am not afraid of that man,” Greta retorted, and I wished that I could agree. I certainly was.

“All right. There’s one tried and true way to keep him back from what’s waiting in the hills, an old way, and it’s as sure as anything that doesn’t have an ironclad contract with one of the three.

“You find him on the ride, you pull him away, and you hang on to him. They’ll change him in your arms, anything to make you say ‘enough,’ and if you let go, well, then, you’ve lost.”

Greta nodded, eyes narrowed. She trusted her own strength more than she trusted anything else in the world. Her mother could bend an iron poker into a perfect round wedding ring, she had told me. She could hang on to one skinny boy.

“And when he’s a naked man again, cover him up, and then he’s yours. At least, Oberlin Wolfe can’t take him away from you. But do remember, Miss Muleheaded, that he’ll still be there, and he will be mad fit to kill. I told you before, Miss Ambitious, how much they like to own things. Tell your friend about my feet, if you like, because I don’t care to. You tell her and then you think hard about how much they like having things taken away.”



* * *



There were another two months before Halloween. It was two months for Greta to pace, to refuse any but the briefest interviews as The Belles of St. Desmond was playing to sold out houses, two months for me to bounce away from my last bit part and towards something far stranger.

When they called me back for a second read in Nemo’s Revenge, I figured it was another tiny part, background scenery or smoking a skinny cigarette in a dock scene. After all, they were paying me by the week, they might as well get something out of me.

Instead, the narrow young assistant led me into a room that was empty of everything except a long table where the Mannheim brothers sat, bored looks on their faces.

“Luli Wei,” the assistant announced, and I turned to face them. They had a scatter of paper in front of them, and Scottie, the older one, handed me a printed sheet.

“Here, read over that,” he said. “We’re still waiting.”

I wanted to ask waiting for who? but I only nodded and read over the script. I could feel them looking at me, but I had grown comfortable being a thing that was looked at, if not touched.

“Oh good afternoon, so sorry I was late, beg pardon, all…”

Harry Long entered a room as if there was always a crowd waiting for him, eager to hang on his every word and gesture. Most of the time, it was true. Unlike so many of the silent kings, he thrived in sound, and though there were always stories that he had a charm where his voice used to be, I didn’t believe it.

That afternoon, he was one of the kings of Wolfe Studios, and his oak-dark voice rolled out to wrap us all close to him. He was thin but muscled with hair slicked back like black patent leather and a thin mustache that might have been drawn with an artist’s brush. He was dressed in white—white shorts, white shirt, white tennis shoes—and all he was missing was the racket. We, the Mannheim brothers and I, forgave him for it because he was simply himself, and that self, that afternoon, was enough to be forgiven anything.