Still. It’s only a coat.
But a sickly guilt trails him all evening, nipping at his conscience. He knows what to do with guilt.
He takes the sword to a large, empty room that only ever seems to exist when he’s like this: restless and tense, his bones buzzing under his skin. He moves through his drills with a ruthless, graceless efficiency. His mother had been a natural to the sword, as if she had spent her whole life waiting for someone to put a hilt in her hands. She fought like an apocalypse, like a great and inevitable ending. Arthur fights like a butcher, fast and ugly. But still: he works until his shoulders shake and his tendons are hot wires around his wrists.
It isn’t enough. He turns to books next, dragging himself through a tacky guidebook to European cryptids. He pauses to sketch an eighteenth-century headstone, engraved with a depiction of the twisted, sinuous animal that—one foggy night—supposedly dragged a woman to her death. The guidebook claims it was an enormous, bloodthirsty otter, but the locals used the word “ beithíoch.”
Arthur opens a bound journal and records the coordinates, the proximity of the water, the fog, the symbols the natives carved above their doorways for good luck. There are hundreds of other entries, going back all the way to Eleanor Starling herself, generations of frantic research collected into an eccentric bestiary.
But Arthur has added a new column to his pages, titled “Present Activity.” He refers back to the guidebook; the last reported attack was in 1927.
None,he writes, and feels a strange, sharp ache in his chest, almost like hope. Even bad stories end.
If he’s careful—if he doesn’t waver, if he isn’t distracted—he will end this one.
Arthur opens his desk drawer and removes a glass jar of ink, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a set of long steel needles with sharp starburst tips. He’d done his first tattoos with a ballpoint pen and a sewing needle, but he’s more careful now.
He’s running out of space. His arms and chest are crosshatched with stippled lines, the flesh knotted where he’d pushed the needle too deep. But if he rolls up his shirt and twists in the chair, he can reach a palm-sized stretch of skin between a pair of magpies, just below a set of crossed swords.
He chooses a Gorgoneion this time, a woman’s face wreathed in serpents.
At first, tattooing was just another cold calculation, a logical piece of his plans. But he’s come to enjoy it. The pop of parting skin, the sting of ink, the release. The feeling that he is slowly erasing everything soft and vulnerable, forging himself into the weapon he needs.
After a long time, he wipes the beaded blood away and checks his work in the mirror. He’s copied the design well, except for a few accidental variations in the woman’s face. Her chin is too sharp, and the hard line of her mouth ends in a wry, crooked twist.
I don’t mind the walk to Starling House so much anymore. Wearing Arthur’s coat is like wearing a small house, with shiny buttons for doorknobs and stiff woolen walls to keep out the chill. For the first time I understand how anybody could actually like winter; it’s a delicious defiance to be warm when the world is cold.
I’m careful not to wear it when Jasper might see. He’s good about not asking questions, but there’s no reason to worry him, so I wait until the school bus is pulling out of the parking lot in the mornings before I slide my arms into the sleeves and square the collar against the late-March wind.
I’m just leaving the motel parking lot when a voice says, “Opal? Opal McCoy?”
I turn to find a pretty white woman striding toward me. She’s smiling like she just caught me by chance, but her steps are hard and purposeful on the pavement. Her teeth look expensive.
“Yes, ma’am?” The words taste young and country in my mouth. “Ma’am” is for schoolteachers and hairdressers and harassed-looking moms at the grocery store; this woman is in some other category entirely. Her haircut is blunt and modern, and she wears a watch with the face turned to the inside of her wrist.
“I’m Elizabeth Baine.” She pronounces every syllable of her name in a way that tells me no one has ever called her Liz. “I was hoping we could have a chat.”
“Uh. About what? I’m headed to work right now, actually—”
“I’ll be quick, then,” Baine says, and smiles some more. It’s a well-practiced expression, an efficient arrangement of muscles meant to make me smile back. It’s alright,this smile says, you can trust me. The hair prickles on the backs of my hands. “You work at Starling House, don’t you?”