Page 79 of Odder Still
“That was my only one.”
Tavish fiddles with his brooch. Its crown pattern shines once more with silver streams of ignation. “Elspeth refilled it from the lab’s supply.” He swallows. “There’s a chance the elevator might open for me.”
“It’s worth a try.” My grimace of a smile feels wrong pressing against my cheeks.
Elspeth rolls their chair back a little. “You two go on. There must be documentation of the auroras’ states here somewhere. It would improve our understanding of their situation, show us what they have and haven’t tried yet, what they might have learned in the process. I want to find it.”
I nod. “If we haven’t returned by the time you do, leave without us. Don’t wait. Take what you can and help these auroras.”
“I’ll save the day for you, don’t fret yourself.” Elspeth smirks. “Just be careful, you two.”
Our walk across the lab seems to take a thousand strides. Tavish chews on his tongue as he holds his brooch up to the lock. The light glides over it, once, then again.
My parasite and I exchange hopes. Our heart catches.
The lock beeps. Slowly, the elevator opens.
Tavish’s grip on his brooch tightens to the point of fragility, as though he might break himself on its edges. “If Mother programmed it with my coat, then she must have planned for me to be included at some point.” His voice hitches with something. Longing. Sentiment. Melancholy. The sound of a coin flipping. “This all might have been different had I been working alongside her here.”
‘Just barely enough.’My parasite repeats Greer’s words with a sardonic twist. Even after all he’s done, all the pain and poverty he’s witnessed, he’s still entitled.
He takes one step forward, one step into the elevator. Then he stops. “Helping the auroras is imperative, but I’m no more use to you storming a lab than Elspeth is. I came with you, but what have I managed to actually do for us, except give up the last of my inheritance in Glenrigg? I’m no fighter, no scientist. I’m not a rebel or a leader or a savior. All I ken is to swing a bit of bureaucracy in my favor, to win a couple battles so we all get by.” Tavish’s voice quavers—breaking glass in place of a diamond. But it stays in one piece. “That is something Icando though. I’m my mother’s only living child. We’re made it past the BA already; I think I can convince her to take me back and defend me, innocent or not. If I spin your quest to save the auroras just the right way—”
“You are not telling her about that!” My fear is cold as ice, but beneath it burns something like outrage. Raghnaid spent her life abusing the auroras. She has no right to be a part of saving them now. It doesn’t matter that I, too, have caused them pain—caused pain to one in particular. I still won’t work with her. We won’t work with her. “You’re not telling her about me.” I almost sayus, but I don’t know which us I’m referring to—to my parasite and me, or to Tavish and my presence here.
“Then I can distract her! I’ll go through the company, throwing such a fuss about the auroras dying and her incompetence that she’ll be focused on nothing else for hours. She won’t even think to look for you until you’re long gone. I can do that. I can be of help that way.”
“No!” I object, stepping into the elevator to face him even if he can’t see me. “You shouldn’t have to put yourself under her control again.” I try to breathe, but each inhale is like a billow stoking the fire. “I know that back in the pool room, you wouldn’t finish what Malloch had started with her, but that might be the only way to set things right here. Could any of the other heads touch you if you were the one in control of Findlay Inc.? Could anyone stop us from helping the auroras however is needed? You’re strong enough to do it. I believe that.”
“Maybe I don’t want tobethat strong! I don’t want to risk losing my home if I fail. And I don’t want to kill her.” Those last words come out so small, so soft, they seem to exist for too little time to have been real, but the desperation on Tavish’s face is undeniable.
“I know,” I whisper. Because I felt the same, once. I didn’t want to risk my own home, and I didn’t want to kill a villain. Now there’s noIin that emotion, only aweburning so brightly I swear I could light Lilias on fire with a single look. But whatever Tavish’s feelings, there’s still amethat knows his path doesn’t have to veer from mine just yet. He can crawl back to his old life later.
Tavish tightens his fingers, his chin lifting. “But I do have the skills and the strength to buy you more time. This is my way to help us both get through this.”
Us both. But not together. “And possibly be thrown in prison afterward? That’s absurd!”
A line of blood drips from one of the scabs along the side of his cuticles. It reminds me of Ailsa. “At least I’d still be in Maraheem.”
Perhaps the longing in his statement should hit me like an anvil or a hammer or a knife, but my heart had broken itself already in preparation for this moment. I knew it would come. I knew anything we had would be temporary. “And me?” The question seems too delicate for something that splits me apart so. “Where will I be?”
Tavish’s chest heaves, just once, and he tips his chin away from me. “You wanted to go home.”
Somehow, this is what hurts. Not that he wants to stay, but that he knows I want to go. That he’s known that all along. Both of us playing this game with each other while knowing whatever we felt, whatever we wanted, it was liminal.
We were liminal.
But what can I say to that? That I’ve changed my mind? That I’ll stay here with him, if only he doesn’t put himself in danger on some bleak, reckless mission? It wouldn’t be the truth. I tug fiercely at my fishnet gloves, trying to tuck in their frays and only making them worse. Worse in the same way I’ve made this worse, the way I’ve drawn it out and frayed it into ruined smithereens.
As though sensing my silent motion, Tavish finds my hands with his. He lifts one of them to his chest—the one striped with the black of my parasite, though I’m not sure if he knows. His fingers shake. “Ruby…”
I want—I need—just one more hour of him before I go back to being no one from a no-man’s land. It won’t ruin his chances at returning to his old life, if that’s still what he’s bent on. If he wants to worm his way back into his mother’s good graces, he’ll still be able to do it afterward.
I slip my palm into his hair, clutching him as though I can keep him there with just my touch. “You’re coming.” I grip his head in both my hands. “We’re doing this together.”
Pain twists Tavish’s lips, but he swallows it in one solid gulp, leaving only cracks behind. “Ruby.” This time he forms my name with determination.
It’s no longer a coin toss. He’s made his decision. I make mine.
