Page 69 of Katabasis
“No, really.” Alice hugged her arms against her chest. “I don’t think he likes me all that much, actually.”
“Oh, he must. He followed you to Hell, didn’t he?”
Alice did not feel like explaining the tangled web of complications that had put her and Peter in Hell together. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Suit yourself.” Elspeth dug a little box out of her pocket. “Smoke?”
“Oh—no, thanks.” Alice had been trying to quit.
Elspeth shrugged and lit her own. Alice watched, fascinated, as smoke furled out the sides of Elspeth’s head. “Does that do anything for you?”
“Of course not,” said Elspeth. “Not physiologically, anyways. But the ritual’s nice. The soul remembers. It’s like—echoes of how it feels, which after a while seems close enough.” She took a deep, lusty suck, and a rich, woody scent filled the air. “Ahh.”
Alice caved. “Oh, all right.”
Smiling, Elspeth lit another cigarette and handed it over. Smoke hung in a cloud around her head like a veil.
Alice waved a hand in front of her face. “How do you do that?”
Elspeth looked flattered. “I’m so glad you noticed.”
“Can all Shades do that?”
“Only with a lot of practice,” said Elspeth. “Do you know what proprioception is?”
“Sure. Knowing where your body is without looking at it.” Alice knew this only because she had practice climbing. Most people had some degree of proprioception—you needed it to walk without staring at your feet, to tie back your hair without craning into a mirror—but climbing made you exceptionally good at it. You had to trust you could sustain the whole of your body weight on just two fingertips.
“Right,” said Elspeth. “Well, as a Shade, your default state is a gray cloud. You don’t cohere unconsciously anymore. You have to hold an image of what you looked like and will your essence to assemble. It takes immense concentration—as if you had to remember constantly to breathe. I’m very good at it. I knowexactlyhow I look.” Elspeth sniffed. “When I try very hard, I can become butterflies.”
She shimmered and, as if to show off, briefly became even more solid. Her smoky veil vanished. Color returned to her cheeks. Her hair assumed a shine, and at her feet, a shadow solidified.
Alice blinked down. She tried to focus on her smoke, the push and pull of it. She had a hard time looking straight at Elspeth. She hated how deeply the resemblance struck her. For no matter how she parsed it, she could not rid herself of the clear recognition that Elspeth looked likeher. What a cliché they made. Brittle brunettes, sad girl smokers. She wondered. What was the attraction?
“Could I ask you something?”
“Sure,” said Elspeth. “You want to know why I killed myself.”
“How did—I’m sorry, I’m being rude.”
“No, I don’t mind. Lots of Shades have asked. Why do you want to know?” Elspeth cocked her head. “Think much about killing yourself?”
Alice found her bluntness astonishing. Elspeth watched her earnestly, waiting for her answer.
Oh, what was the point of pretending? Of course she was wondering. Did death make you better off? Alice often thought it might, but she had only circumstantial evidence for believing so, and most people who had done it were unavailable for comment. “I have, a bit. Once or twice. I guess—it occupies my thoughts more than I’d like. Obviously I didn’t—well, I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m asking.”
“You’d like to find out where the boundary is,” said Elspeth, not unkindly. “You’d like to know when it goes from feeling pretty blue, to thinking you wouldn’t mind if a bus ran you over, to actively stringing a rope together and kicking off a chair. Is that right?”
“I—I guess, yeah.” Alice had never said as much out loud before, and it scared her to hear her own thoughts reflected back to her. It scared her that someone else had had those same exact thoughts about the bus. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s fine,” said Elspeth. “Lots of people want to know. I used to hear them from the Pavilion. It was all anyone ever talked about—why’d she do it, blah blah blah.” She tapped some ash from her cigarette, then cut Alice a sideways look. “Who’s your advisor?”
Alice found it prudent to lie. “Helen Murray.”
“And she makes your life hard, does she?”
“Some.”
“Hm. Well, see,myadvisor was Jacob Grimes. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”
