Page 82 of Smoke & Ashes
I arrived well early at the warehouse because patience was very, very low on my list of strengths, and was pleased to find that Eve had opted not to show up in person. Not that it would have been bad to see her in general. But that this whole fucking awful sequence of events had been too much, and I didn’t want the closest I’d ever had to a bona fide love of my life hanging around while I was trying to bring back the closest I’d had in years to a friend.
Which meant in the end it wound up being me, two anonymous goons, and the doctor stuck in a thankfully bright and airy warehouse space in Canary Wharf, with Elise’s disanimated body standing in a shaft of grainy sunlight.
“If I might ask, where did you get the statue from?” Dr Bright’s question was natural, especially for an academic, but I wasn’t sure how to answer it.
“It’s my friend’s,” I explained. “I think she used to … she used to go out with a sculptor.” It was creepily close to being true, if bymy friend’syou meanactually herand if bygo out withyou meantwas the mystically created sex slave of.
“It’s very lifelike. Now, would you like to perform the ritual, or shall I?” She gave me a smile that read as a little cold. “That is, what would your friend have preferred?”
I almost thought she was baiting me. If it turned out that this woman was a weird magic junkie looking for any excuse to perform rites of unspeakable power and pedigree, I was going to be incredibly ticked off. “I think she’d have wanted it done properly. And my guess is you can do that better than me, on account of how you’ve got the book.”
Doctor Bright nodded. Reading from the text in a language I still didn’t understand—I should look into night classes or something—she walked around Elise’s statue with her hand outstretched in a way that eerily reminded me of when I’d watched Russel creating Lisbeth. If shewasn’tsecretly completely aware of what she was doing, then I couldn’t imagine what the fuck she thought was going on, because at this point the cover story I’d given her was fitting about as well as that one jacket I’d accidentally stuck through a hot wash and a full tumble dry. Which is to say it wasn’t fitting at all, and it was covered in tiny bits of bobbly fluff.
As the rite progressed, the circles Dr Bright was describing grew narrower, and before long she was in touching distance of Elise. I knew that this was how the ritual worked, but even so I was starting to get a little bit freaked out. There was something about this whole scenario that was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
Of course maybe I was projecting or transferring or whatever it was when you got freaked out about one thing but were really freaked out about something else. Just because mylastattempt to save one of my friends from a terrible fate had backfired horribly, it didn’t mean this one would.
The ritual drew to a close with Dr Bright stepping up to Elise, making a few final incantations, and kissing her on the lips.
I was slightly shocked but immensely relieved to see the doctor leap back in surprise as Elise turned from stone to flesh, or to the illusion of flesh.
“That … was not anticipated,” she stammered.
Elise stumbled like the little mermaid, and I dashed forward to catch her, yetagainremembering too late that doing those kinds of things with a broken arm was a poor life choice.
She looked up into my eyes and for a horrible, horrible moment I thought she might have forgotten me. “Miss Kane,” she exclaimed. “You are alive.” She righted herself and began giving me the once-over. “But you seem to have fared poorly in the battle. You are quite in pieces.”
Quite in piecesdidn’t cover it. In the time she’d been gone I’d—fuck. What had I done? I was way drunker most of the time than I should have been, way more inclined to sleep in my clothes and in my office or with whoever would have me. Sure I was injured but more than that I was a fucking miserable out-of-control mess and seeing Elise again made it clear how far I’d let myself slip. “Yeah,” I told her “I’ve not been eating the bananas either.”
Her look of dismay at this news was so familiar I burst into tears. And out of whatever passed for instinct for a person made entirely out of stone and stolen fire, she hugged me. “We are not where we were, are we?” she said after a little while. “I think perhaps some time has passed?”
I explained. And it was harder than I thought it would be. Losing her had been bad enough, getting her back and then having to explainhowI’d lost her and what a shitty job I’d made of un-losing her, or of baseline taking care of myself while she was gone, was more than I could even. I choked through it, in the end, and thought she took it well, but then she’d always been stronger than I was. “Then I got a message from Dr Bright here saying she could help,” I managed, sputtering my way towards an embarrassingly phlegmy conclusion, “and we put you back together. And that’s kind of it.”
Elise took the doctor’s hand and shook it. “I am most gratified, Dr Bright.”
“Not at all.” For somebody who’d accidentally brought a statue to life with magic, she was doing surprisingly well. “And please, call me Nick. It’s been … instructive.”
When Nicola Bright had gone, I led Elise out into the rain and we stood on the pier at Canary Wharf watching the grey-brown waters of the Thames dance and churn in the storm.
“I confess myself worried,” she observed. “Miss Nimue has always been an ally, and with Miss Saint-Germain no longer to be relied upon, I worry that we are rather alone.”
I put an arm around her. It felt good but weird but good to know she was in my life again. “Not totally alone. Eve’s still around. And Tara is …” actually what was Tara? She was on my side, definitely, maybe more so than Julian had been because Julian was a fundamentally selfish creature and incapable of changing. But I didn’t want to put a label on what me and Tara had, if it even made sense to talk about us having awhatat all. “She’s with us too, I think. And maybe we’re overthinking it anyway. It’s not like anything’shappening. Apart from the rain.” I shrugged. “And I’ve always liked rain.”
“I believe all will be well.” She patted me gently on the arm, and I winced. “But I must insist we bring you to a hospital at once,” she said. “You have left this far too long without treatment.”
I sighed. “You’re right. I don’t know how I ever managed to get along without you.”
She insisted on hailing a cab immediately, and with the rain drumming on the roof like improv jazz, I let myself be carried away into the city. I leaned my head against Elise’s shoulder and shut my eyes. Yes, I probably should have got the arm thing sorted out sooner, and yes it was probably unhealthy to be relying on a magic statue who was younger than most Netflix original series to force me to act like a grownup, but it worked. And bringing her back had worked. Which meant despite all the utter bullshit and the creepy visions and the fuckups on fuckups on fuckups, I’d done one unambiguously good thing.
And I could live with that.
Epilogue
Home & Dry
It had rained for a solid week after Nimue came back. I’d have said it was hard rain, but not only was that a horrible cliché but I had a weird feeling Eve had once told me it came from an episode ofStar Trek. Either way it chucked it down—cue a bunch of hand-wringing from the Met Office and a whole lot of talk about climate change.
Things had got back to normal at casa de Kate surprisingly quickly. Elise was resilient as only a being made of a resistant material could be. She started making me eat bananas again, but I was so glad to have her back I couldn’t resent it even a little bit.
