Release(27)

Blinking in this corporeal body, he moves on.

He finds her in front of a hearth, though no fire has been lit there for some months. On the mantel above, there are photographs.

There are photographs of her.





“What are you smiling about?” Angela said, poking her head into the back room.

“I was just remembering Kurt Miller,” Adam said.

“Sweet guy. I was sad when he moved away.”

“Not sad enough to be friends on social media.”

“I’m not desperate.”

“I was thinking of Philip Matheson, too.”

“The boy who took Adam’s flower.” She nodded, understanding. “Someone’s looking for physical consolation.”

“Might help wash Wade off me.”

She sat down next to him again. “I’ve got to get back on the floor, but… It’s okay to not be okay, you know.”

“I know. I’m happy for you. But selfish enough to be sad for me.”

“And Wade?”

“I’m not sad for him at all.”

“Adam–”

“I can’t lose my job. Paying for college was going to be iffy anyway–”

His phone buzzed. A text from Marty. Angela read it with him over his shoulder. You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy, Micah 7:18.

“Who quotes Micah?” Adam said.

“And who’s the ‘you’ in that sentence?” Angela said.

“He’s saying sorry. I think? Maybe? He believes some awful shit, but at heart, he’s not the worst person I know.”

Angela sighed. “Go to Linus. Wash Wade off. Get some loving. I’ll see you tonight.”

“For a going-away party that suddenly has more people going away?”

“We can just eat all three dozen pizzas over at my house if you want.”

Adam grinned at her, sadly.

She grinned back, sadly, too. “You can’t miss me yet. Now, seriously, go. We’ll figure this shit out, but you’ve got Linus waiting.” And then she said something he knew her mother had always said to her. “Never pass up the chance to be kissing someone. It’s the worst kind of regret.”





She reaches out to touch the photographs, but stops short. “This is me,” she hears herself whispering, amazed. “This is who I was.”

This is who she was, thinks the Queen, and for a moment the separation is clear, for a moment she can almost step behind this body and see it, looking at the photos of itself. She feels her own power, restless, churning, the power of the waters of the world, the power that answers to the moon and the moon alone, the power that could level this house, destroy this body, destroy this town, if such a thing were ever to be allowed again–

“What–?” says the Queen in her own voice. “How have I–?”

And this fleeting spirit, this weak, fleeting spirit that should have no hold on her, this spirit surrounds her again, binds her, seems even unaware of her presence except as a vehicle for itself, and the Queen forgets, as she steps back into the body that welcomes her.

Her glance moves from photo to photo. There are none of her with the hands that killed her. None showing the bruises around her throat.

“I was unhappy here,” she says. And from that unhappiness she went out and found, not happiness, but numbness, which is what she thought her only option was.

She knows why she came here. It is home. It drew her. Even as Tony’s hands were choking her, even as she could feel the blood boiling in her temples in a way that spoke only of irreversible damage, even when she woke for the last few seconds of her life in the silt of the lake, drowning, her lungs filled, even then, she thought of home. She thought of here.

She realizes her mistake.

“This was my home,” she says, “but it is not my home now.”





The faun barely has time to get out of her way as she turns and leaves, still not seeing him–

(Though for a moment there, for a moment–)

She steps past him, back out the front door, over the woman–

The woman now waking–

“Katie?” asks the woman, certain she is dreaming.

“Katie is dead,” says his Queen, not looking back, heading out into the world.

The faun has no choice but to follow.





LINUS AT 2 O’CLOCK





Second shower of the day. Adam stood under the spray in Linus’s bathroom, breathing in the steam, washing the smell of the Evil International Mega-Conglomerate, the smell of Wade’s office, the smell of Wade – though, to be fair, also the smell of pizza and bulgogi – out of his hair.

Linus poked his head around the shower curtain, his glasses immediately steaming up. “You okay in here?”

“Yeah,” Adam said.

“Angela’s right, you know,” Linus said, taking off his glasses, blinking his big, half-blind eyes in a way that Adam found impossibly adorable. “You have to report him.”

“Can we talk about it another time?”

“Sure.”

“It’s just,” Adam said, “I’m naked and you’re too cute for me to believe right now.”