“But it’s getting worse. You have to leave—”
“I will.” Jasper turns away again. This time he makes it all the way to the door before he pauses. In a much softer voice, he says, “But she won’t. So if you can stop this, whatever it is—now’s the goddamn time.”
It’s past time. Opal handed him a vital, final clue—befriend the Beasts—and he spent a week pickling himself in self-pity and booze, just because he was too cowardly to pursue it. To unlock the door he’s been trying to unlock for his entire adult life, and follow the Beasts down into Hell and make war on whatever he finds there.
He doesn’t know what it is. He suspects there’s a locus or a source, something that sends the Beasts up to do their bloody work, and he hopes that it’s mortal enough to be stopped by a sword through its heart. All he knows for sure is that there have been other places plagued by foul mists and invisible Beasts—until they weren’t. Until someone stopped them.
Even now, Arthur should be arming himself, pursuing that dedication, making ready. Instead, he’s been delaying. Drinking, because then he would sleep, and when he sleeps the House sends him dreams of her, of them, of a future they won’t have.
How selfish, how fundamentally silly, that he should start wanting to live right when he ought to die.
When Arthur finally looks up, Jasper is gone.
It’s only much, much later—after Arthur has swept up the glass and puke, emptied the rest of the bourbon down the bathtub drain, opened the fridge, puked again, and begun to assemble everything he’ll need for his final descent—that he realizes: his notepad is gone, too.
NINETEEN
I must fall into actual sleep at some point, because I dream of the house again. Except—for the first time—Jasper is there. He’s standing in front of the gates, eyes accusatory, both palms red and wet. As I watch, the wrought-iron beasts of the gates begin to move. They coil and writhe, reaching for Jasper, wrapping their metal limbs around him, opening their rusted mouths to swallow him whole.
My own scream wakes me up. The dream fades, but I remember snatches of Jasper’s real voice, the worry and fear in it, and think, with disgust: Enough.
I take the trash out that evening, embarrassed by the flaccid, stringy feeling of my muscles. On the way back from the dumpster I lift two middle fingers in the direction of Bev’s office. The blinds snap back into place.
The next morning I shove my feet into my tennis shoes, trying not to notice the drips of Antique Eggshell scattered over the tops, and slouch across town.
The air is wet and vivid and the sky is a cheery almost-summer blue that makes me want to crawl back to room 12 and hibernate. But the light sinks determinedly into my skin, driving out the gloom of the last week and leaving a slightly depressing normalcy in its place. Everything I know about myself and the world itself has shifted, but nothing’s really changed. I know my name, but I’m still nobody; I know where my nightmares come from, but I can’t make them stop; I know how Arthur tastes, how his hand feels at my waist, but I can’t have him.
Charlotte is peeling pastel flower decorations off the library windows when I turn up, and it occurs to me that I missed Mother’s Day. Jasper and me usually play cards and split a cigarette on the riverbank, in memorial. I wonder if he was with the Caldwells this year, if he picked flowers or made pancakes or whatever kids are supposed to do on Mother’s Day.
Charlotte beams when she sees me. I feel like a grub exposed to strong sunlight. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She says it low and sullen, the caricature of a teenager. “It’s business hours. How come you aren’t housekeeping for Sweeney Todd?”
“How come you aren’t bringing my holds to the motel anymore?” It’s a clumsy dodge, but it works.
Charlotte sets her box of decorations on the sidewalk and crosses her arms. “Oh, I didn’t realize I worked for you! I haven’t got a paycheck yet so maybe you should figure that out and get back to me.” Her voice is two degrees past teasing, sharper than I’m expecting.
I fiddle with a stray thread on my shirt before muttering, “Sorry,” and going inside. I get my holds from the high school volunteer behind the desk, who greets me with a youthful effervescence that ought to be criminalized, and slink back out the double doors with my shoulders hunched around my ears. My reflection looks like someone else. I refuse to consider who.
“Opal.” Charlotte stops me before I can stalk dramatically past her.