Nothing But Blackened Teeth(23)

“Are you saying I murdered him?” There was no threat in his voice, only incredulity, shame in the slurry of his speech.

“I did not. The words ‘Faiz murdered Phillip’ never crossed my lips. Nope. No, sir. Or any variations of the statement. Ask Cat. She’s right here. She’d tell you if—”

“Lin. Stop it.” The ohaguro-bettari had moved again, blurring from where she’d sat behind us to kneeling at Phillip’s head, his skull pillowed on her lap. She crooned to him with a mockingbird’s warble. His breathing slackened. “You’re not helping the situa—”

“What situation?” Lin grinned wider, half-screaming, arms flung out. He spun like a top and the yokai twirled with him, expressions ecstatic. “There’s no situation here. Faiz absolutely did not take advantage of a situation to murder Phillip. No one would dare dream about saying anything like that. Not with the knife still in reach.”

“Lin!”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” M’awwy. M’awwy. Faiz burrowed his face into his palms.

My lungs felt full. Heaving with earth, and wet concrete, and fingertips grated down to the bone. I swallowed and snarled: “The book—does anyone remember what the fuck the book said?”

Both men shut up.

“I—” I ran a hand through my hair, swallowed, swallowed again, but the reek of Phillip’s insides persisted, a sour caul gloving my tongue, the back of my mouth tasting muddily of coins. You know there was nothing in that book, a voice in my head reminded me. But we’re past that. This is past logic. “You said it was a bit of blood, a bit of cum, a bit of bone, and a bit of organ.” I swallowed a third time, ran my tongue over my teeth. “Do either of you remember if it was meant to be fresh?”

“No, no, no. Cat,” Lin hissed. “What the fuck?”

“Probably fresh, I guess,” I continued, six thousand miles away, numb in a way that made me wonder if I’d ever come home to myself, every word another lock to keep me out. “That’d make the most sense. That’s why it is human sacrifice and not grave digging.”

Faiz stared at me like I’d told him the secret names of the prophets, the private and the profane, the sacred alphabet shared by devotee and deity. He looked at me like I’d taken up the memory of his first word and given him a corpse instead. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” I said, all the while thinking you’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying. A decade of friendship teaches you a lot of things: the tics that separate I’m sorry and I’m sorry you caught me, that hangdog expression that is really code for when the other person’s expecting you to fix their mess.

I wondered what they saw in my face.

I leaned down and warmed my hand in Phillip’s belly. He shuddered at the contact.

“I know,” I said again, tired, the lie practically lit up in red neon lights. “I know. But Phillip’s dying, so we—I—let’s make it count for something, I guess.”


*

We dug a hole at the base of the fourth pillar and placed Phillip’s viscera into that cradle of shallow loam, one coil at a time. Faiz and Lin fought over whether we should cut his throat or whether we should measure out his offal and fill another three holes, just to be sure. One last act of mercy for the man we’d known since we were all sixteen, or have his death matter. But then the manor sighed—a long, slow breath, a dying man’s breath spun of silk filaments—and suddenly, there was Talia, propped up against a wall, still garlanded in her wedding whites.

It was exactly like the fairy tales promised: a little blood, a little bone, a little cum, a little bit of organ, and the manor returned the girl of Faiz’s dreams. She smelled of the earth and summer sunlight. Honeysuckle and fabric softener and skin warmed on a stoop in the sun. When Faiz took Talia in his arms, Phillip’s heart gave out, one last exhausted pump. He died alone while our backs were turned. Twenty-four years of being the center of everyone’s attention and that’s how he went out, not with a bang or a whimper, just a sigh and the world going colder and the last light from the lanterns dimming to nothing, fireflies in blind eyes.

We went home after that.

What else were we supposed to do?





EPILOGUE




When Phillip’s parents called to tell us there’d be a memorial in Vermont, that ancestral home his mother would say a hundred times she’d regretted leaving, none of us made excuses. We showed up in our funerary best: me in a black dress, Lin in his long coat, and Faiz in a suit that no longer fit. Talia stayed in the hospital, nursing her nightmares.

There were policemen at the wake but they stood loose-stanced and long-bodied, bored already of their assignment. No awkward sympathy mottled their paired expressions. They slouched in a corner, hunkered over YouTube videos, only occasionally subjecting the crowd to halfhearted audits. I didn’t blame them. Compassion, like everything else, can be worn dull by rough use.

Moreover, the investigation was closed. Before we came home, we’d turned the mansion into Phillip’s pyre. Then we lied on repeat until the fiction became as natural as terror: there was alcohol, there was a fire, there was a panic. When we came out, we realized we were one short. By then, it was too late.

It worked.