…
To Paige's eternal regret and misfortune, the back stairwell had excellent acoustics. Bare floor, unpainted cement walls, all of it amplified her coughing and sniffling to a ridiculous degree as she hauled what felt like two tons of groceries up the stairs. By the time she got to the third landing, her cheeks were hot with exertion on top of fever. God, she hoped it was just a fever. High temperature, weak muscles, blurry eyes – she'd just been tested, and she was already panicking and checking the list of COVID symptoms every thirty seconds.
Jax would be delighted to know how well she was getting on. How sweet the deserts of justice, he would say. Or something equally unhinged.
She hefted a sack of potatoes onto the landing. Almost there. Just a few more to go. Bolstering herself, she reached down for one of the heavier bags –
– and folded over as a cough racked her chest. The bag slipped from her fingers and burst open on the stairs below. Tins of beans ricocheted off the wall. Soup splattered everywhere. Packaged medicine went flying. She made a grab for it, missed, and nearly pitched over the railing, accidentally kicking another bag down the stairs. Her grunt of pain was drowned out by the sound of canned goods and bagged fruit meeting their gruesome end on the concrete.
"Damn it!" she said once she'd got her footing back, and regretted it immediately when the curse reverberated off the bare cement walls and propelled her voice up the stairwell: DAMN IT! DAMN IT! DAMN IT!
Paige hunched her shoulders against her ears and sank onto the steps. Behold the Pale Dreamer, she thought, resting her aching head on her knee. Defeated by soup.
Her mobile rang in her coat. She put it to her ear, yanking the mask down with the other hand.
"Hey, Nick."
"Hey, sötnos. How do you feel?"
"Better," she lied. "I picked up some meds this morning."
"What kind?"
She craned her head. The tiny packaged bottle was on the floor two flights below, crushed under a netted bunch of oranges that somehow hadn't ruptured. Oranges were tough bastards. "The … purple kind."
"The kind Zeke always gets? Equate?"
"That's the one."
"Good. Don't forget to take some. Did your test results come back?"
"Negative."
His sigh sent a whoosh of air through the speakers. "Thank God."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I don't have much time right now, but I'll call again when I'm home."
"I thought you were on your break."
"I fell asleep." Nick sounded wearier than she'd ever heard him. "I was going to call you, but I just sat down on the couch and … I'm so tired, Paige. It's never been like this. Hospitals are supposed to be busy, but I don't think any of us have slept in twenty-four hours." He paused. "I have to get back to work in a minute. I'm sorry."
"I'll let you go, then."
"Try to talk to someone else today. I don't want you to lose your marbles."
A piece of crushed tomato slid down the wall. "I've still got them," Paige said, giving it the evil eye. "Don't worry about me."
"I'll stop worrying when this pandemic is over. We'll talk later, okay?"
"Okay."
The dial tone pealed in her ear. She tucked the phone away and looked resentfully at the mess she'd made of the stairwell. The soup looked like arterial spray dripping down the wall, if blood smelled like basil and garlic. Better mop it up before the landlord saw and had her fined for malicious defilement or grossly incompetent vandalism or something.
A spirit floated through the wall, one of the building's usual visitors – a faint wisp whose name she'd never learned. It always gave off a plaintive sort of energy, as if it had misplaced something and couldn't find it.
"Hey."
The wisp murmured something back, sending a chill through the æther. Paige felt the answering glow of fever on her cheeks, the rasp in her throat, the heat behind her eyes. She really fucking hated being sick.
"He's probably downstairs as usual. You should go find him."
The wisp hovered, indecisive, before drifting away again.
Leaving the bags of groceries where she'd dropped them, she left the stairwell and zombie-shuffled down the third-floor corridor. When she got to her front door, she found someone waiting there, his fist raised to knock.
"Hi, Michael."
Her voice was hoarse, like she hadn't spoken in years. When the boy turned to Paige and saw her face – bleary eyes, blotchy cheeks, nose rubbed raw above the mask – his expression fell.
"I'm fine. It's just a cold." She shuffled over to the door, and he took a few polite steps backward. "I just need to get the mop."
He waited in the hallway while she unlocked her apartment, tripped over the boot tray, rummaged in her laundry closet for a mop and bucket, and finally emerged with dust in her hair. When she found him still standing there, she blinked.
"Oh, sorry. You probably need something."
Michael held up his phone, where the calendar app was open, and tapped the red square labeled MAY 1. She closed her eyes, swayed.
"I'm getting my paycheck in three days. Can it wait until then?"
After a moment, he tapped his lips and pointed downstairs.
"You'll ask. Got it." She gave him a bleary smile. "I didn't forget, I'm just … not in the best state right now."
As if on cue, another vicious rack of coughing seized her chest. He gave her a look of alarm.
"I'm fine," she croaked, once she'd detached her face from the crook of her elbow. Her lungs felt as dry as kindling. "Tell him three days."
She trudged away before he could reply.
Part of her regretted speaking aloud instead of with her hands. She'd need to buckle down to learning sign language if she was going to talk to Michael properly. It would be nice to have a friend outside the Seals, even if he was the landlord's errand boy; they could bake bread or surf mattresses or whatever it was people did to keep from going insane on lockdown.
Just … later. When she didn't feel like a microwaved bowl of week-old soup.
It took half an hour to mop up the spill in the stairwell, twenty minutes to gather her scattered groceries, and then another fifteen to haul the lot back up to her front door. Paige ended up having to make three trips between her apartment and the stairwell, and by the time she locked up and flopped onto her bed, she was too exhausted to think about dinner.
She woke up a few hours later in total darkness. Her phone was buzzing. She fished around for it in the covers and brought it to her cheek.
"H'lo?"
"Paige, I can't talk tonight. I'm sorry. They asked me to work a double shift."
"It's fine." Her voice was slurred with sleep. "Go do doctory things. I got this."
"I'll call as soon as I can."
"'Kay."
"Bye, sweetheart."
Dial tone. Paige was about to sink back into the covers when someone knocked on her front door.
Even as she opened up, Michael and his golden curls were already vanishing around the corner, and there was a dinner tray at her feet. Toasted whole wheat bread, vegetable stew in a bowl, a quartered apple and a cup of tea, still scalding. She carried it inside, wobbling. Dear sweet Michael. She'd have to find some way to thank him. She hadn't even thought he liked her that much; she was always delaying her rent, probably getting him into trouble with his boss.
The stew was bland, either because there wasn't any pepper in it or because her taste buds had gone dead and she needed to get tested again ASAP. But the apple was as cold and crisp as an autumn day, and the tea soothed her throat. She cupped icy hands around it, studying the painted forget-me-nots on the porcelain. It reminded her of Jaxon's china cabinet. He filled it with mismatched tea sets and goblets that he kept finding somewhere or other, all of them exquisitely beautiful and of dubious origin. Paige knew for a fact that the blue set with the pattern of iridescent fish scales had been purchased on the black market, and the crystal glasses on the top shelf extorted from Didion Waite. Jax liked to make a big mystery of where he came by all his treasures, but once you got to know him a little, you could usually make an educated guess.
The thought of her former employer made something curdle in her stomach: half anger, half regret. She missed her room in Dials, piled with paperbacks and strung with fairy lights; she missed her mornings with Eliza, who baked pastries for breakfast if you asked nicely; she missed the blossom tree in the courtyard, which wept petals every spring. And for all that he was a bloodthirsty, blackmailing, pretentious old bastard, she missed her mime-lord too.
She washed the dishes and set them back on the tray by her door, leaving a scrawled thank-you note under the bowl. Then she drank a spoonful of grape-flavoured medicine, brushed her teeth and collapsed back into bed.
Sleep only came in the early hours of the morning – after she'd tossed and turned and thrown all her covers onto the floor, shivering and wretched in the dark.
…
Paige only left her rooms twice the following week, once to pick up fever medicine from the corner store and once to personally let Michael know that she'd paid the rent. She'd been informed when she first moved in that since it was just the three of them "keeping close quarters," they could move freely about the building as they liked. It didn't make the place feel any less like a prison, but at least she could visit another human being when she got sick of her empty rooms.
She found Michael sorting the mail on the first floor, piles and piles of it, weirdly a lot for a building with only three people living in it. When she tried to thank him for the food – which had kept appearing at her door at eight o'clock precisely every night – he shook his head, as if it had nothing to do with him.
"But I saw you," she said, perplexed. "I just … it helped. I'm not that great at cooking, and I wasn't in a fit state to be handling knives or ovens or anything. I would've ended up poisoning myself. Or just burning the place down."
He looked back at her without the modestly downturned eyes of someone who knew they'd done a good thing but wanted to be tactful about accepting thanks. Holding her eye contact, he pointed to himself and shook his head again.
Paige frowned. "If not you, then who?"
He nodded in the direction of the landlord's office. When she gave him a blank look, he mimed pouring wine from a bottle and sipping from a glass. She drew back.
"Him?"
Michael nodded.
"Why would – I don't – he doesn't –" She looked furiously at the office door. All her gratitude had vanished; she felt obscurely, bizarrely insulted, as if the man behind it had some nerve to be concerned for her well-being. "It's none of his –"
She stopped herself. Everything she wanted to say felt childish. She knew it was childish. She ought to go thank him instead of standing here and taking her anger out on Michael – lovely, mild-tempered Michael, who'd probably just delivered the food as part of his daily errands. "Well," she said, "thanks anyway," and patted the mail desk before turning away.
It was tempting to go back up to her apartment and pretend like she hadn't learned anything new. But that would be cowardly, and Paige refused to be a coward on his account. No. She would thank him and be done with it. And this time, she would not be rattled. She refused to let him see her thrown off-balance by a few sickbed meals.
Full of resolve, she marched over to the office door and knocked.
"Yes," came the cool reply.
She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The office was spacious and thickly carpeted, with curios and outdated novels lined up on dark wooden bookshelves. A projector sat in one corner next to a softly playing gramophone. Glass vials stood side-by-side on the windowsill, their contents made dark and viscous by the candlelight. Velvet curtains were drawn over a window that looked down into the deserted courtyard.
It was a cozy space. Not quite lavish, but not modest, either. The kind of room she might have wanted for herself if not for the man behind the desk, who lifted chilling, green-stained eyes as she drew the door shut behind herself.
The Rephaim were reticent, misanthropic creatures, generally keeping to their control cities on Earth if not to the Netherworld. It was rare to see one willingly residing in London. Even rarer to see him working for a living, if you call keeping tenants working. Leeching off their income, more like. Paige had no idea why he'd stooped so low, given what Rephaim thought of filthy human money, but whatever. Every species had to have at least one eccentric.
There was a goblet of wine not far from her landlord's right elbow. Michael had been spot-on with his little charade.
"Good evening, Paige."
She touched the door one last time, making sure that she'd left it ajar, before stuffing her hands into her pockets.
"Hi."
"Have you recovered from your fever?"
"Mostly, I think."
For lack of anything better to look at, she looked down at his gloved hands. They rested on the desk next to a yellowed chapbook written in an unfamiliar language. He'd put it down when she came in, as if to graciously give her his full attention. These little courtesies always made her hackles rise, but when she checked his expression to see if he was secretly mocking her – as Jaxon did when he treated people with extravagant gentility – she found nothing.
"Listen," she said, drawing herself up. "Michael told me you were the one that – made the food. Or it was your idea. I didn't get all the details. So … thank you, but I can cook for myself. It's not your job to make dinner for people."
He just looked at her, as if he could tell there was more. She hesitated before adding:
"And I don't want to owe you anything."
"Besides your rent," he said.
"I've already paid my rent for this month."
"Yes, you have. But our contract is effective for another ten months, and even if you choose to terminate your stay at an earlier date, you will continue to owe me for your lodgings until it expires. That is the nature of a tenant's relationship with her landlord."
Paige narrowed her eyes. "Okay. Let me rephrase: I don't want to owe you for anything else."
"You do not."
"I know. I just wanted to make sure we were clear on that."
"Of course."
Good. Then they were done. She reached for the door, already calculating how to close it behind her as nonchalantly as possible.
But something made her stop. She'd come in here expecting a fight, and he … wasn't giving her one. He'd just picked up his goblet, as if now that she was leaving, the laws of courtesy permitted him to take a drink. When he caught her gaze over the rim, he paused with it halfway to his lips. She hesitated.
"Are you … going to make me food again?"
"Would it be unwelcome if I did?"
"Yes, it would."
Arcturus Mesarthim considered her for the space of a heartbeat; then he set the goblet aside. When he spoke again, there was a cautious sort of slant to it, as if he were approaching a wild animal.
"May I ask why?"
"I told you, it's not necessary."
"I disagree. You were bedridden for a period of four days, and I had no way of knowing whether or not you were infected and unable to leave your apartment. I have a responsibility to my tenants now more than ever. Surely you have nothing to lose by accepting it."
Patronizing bastard. "I don't need your help," she snapped. "Just let me get sick if I want, like a normal landlord."
"You had no objection to being brought food when you thought Michael was responsible. What makes you so reluctant to accept it from me?"
Later, Paige would look on this as the moment she could have walked away. She could have backed down, apologized, laughed it off with some stupid joke. But this creature had a knack for getting her back up – and if there was one thing she despised more than being pitied, it was being humbled.
"Look," she said, narrowing her eyes, "I know you Rephaim think you know what's good for us. I know you think it's your duty to make sure we don't do anything stupid and become drifters and – damage the veils more than we already have. But that doesn't mean you get to meddle wherever you like." There was a contemptuous, sneering edge to her voice that she'd never heard before. "I don't want your noblesse oblige. Just stay out of my life and I guarantee we'll both be much happier."
"It is not noblesse oblige, Paige." His gloved fingers tapped out a measured rhythm on the desk, matched to the sultry, swaying voice of the gramophone. "I have no desire to treat you as my inferior."
"I find that hard to believe."
"Then consider the possibility that I have Michael's interests at heart. He has lived with me for far longer than you have, and the sooner you regain your health, the safer he will be."
"If you were really thinking of Michael, you wouldn't send him up and down with dishes I might have contaminated."
"Touché." He flicked his gaze over her face, measuring her expression. "Very well, then. Let us have a bargain. Answer a question for me, and I will never offer you the charity you so despise while you remain here at St. Pancras. You may fend for yourself to your heart's content."
Paige hesitated. There must be a trick to this, but she couldn't see it. "Fine."
The gramophone crackled and went silent. Neither of them spoke until another song began, filling the room with the unseen caress of a pianist's hands on the keys. Arcturus studied her intently.
"Do you judge me for being Rephaite?"
There it was. She gave him a sardonic smile.
"No more than you judge me for being human."
"I see." He reached for the chapbook, as if this conversation had reached its natural conclusion. "Perhaps I will persevere in my study of human cuisine, after all."
"You just said we had a bargain –"
"Why should I honour my end, when you do not honour yours?"
"I answered the question."
"Not truthfully."
Son of a bitch. He wanted truth? She'd give him the truth.
"Fine," she spat. "Yes. I judge you for being Rephaite. You could drain my aura and make me amaurotic – or just snap my neck, if you felt like it. You've probably killed people. You have killed people. My people. Finn, Kay –"
She had his attention now. There was no longer any trace of mockery in him, only an infuriating impassivity as he held her gaze. Paige reined herself in with a herculean effort.
"I know what you Rephaim did. You put Abel Mayfield in the prime minister's seat. The Molly Riots happened because of you. Do you know how many people died? Did you ever think that maybe we didn't need your help? No. You had to interfere in our affairs. You had to keep playing your sick power game with us poor, mindless humans. The only reason you joined the British Empire in the first place is because you wanted the seat of human power at your beck and call. So yes, I judge you for being Rephaite. I judge you for treating us all like fodder. And," she added, deciding that if she was going to insult him, she might as well do it right, "I judge you for being an English bastard."
She threw the last word down like a gauntlet.
There was a grim silence.
Or at least, there should have been one. If there were any justice in the world, the gramophone would have executed a well-timed record scratch for dramatic effect, leaving her to face the music without any actual musical accompaniment. No such luck. The gentle sounds of vaudeville jazz continued to drift across the room, a woman urging her lover to come "just a little closer."
Despite the insults she'd heaped on him, Arcturus had borne her tirade with remarkably little change in expression, apart from a slight hardening of the jaw. There could no longer be any doubt that she'd eavesdropped on him with the other Rephaim. Whatever he might privately think of humans – base, ill-bred, scurrying creatures – she had probably just confirmed it. Yet when he spoke, his voice was quiet.
"I see."
No self-defense. No justification.
That's it?
Warily, she scanned his face. His eyes were losing their green tint, returning to a clear and luminous yellow. How he found voyants to feed on with everyone in London ordered to stay indoors, she had no idea, but it was a forceful reminder that he could just as easily feed on her as breathe. She turned to make a hasty exit.
"Paige."
She stopped on the threshold.
Maybe he was going to smite her after all. Or just tell her to leave her contract on his desk with a big red line drawn through it.
But he didn't. Declining to look at her, he picked up a sheaf of paper in an overt gesture of dismissal.
"I believe you still have one of my table knives. You may leave it with Michael."
…