Page 24 of Odder Still
“This isyourroom?”
Lavender slips in just before Tavish closes the door. He slides down a physical bolt so practical and dull that I wonder whether Sheona picked it out or if he somehow stumbled across it himself. “Does that bother you?”
“No. There’s only one bed, though.” As I say it, my heartbeat pounds a little louder. I tug at my gloves, trying to realign my emotions the same way I adjust the interwoven black strings.
“I’m aware.” A hint of red appears in Tavish’s cheeks. “I can have another mattress brought in if that’s what you prefer. I’ve no wish for you to be uncomfortable.”
His honesty comes with a kind of vulnerability that feels as though he’s extending his hand toward my teeth and asking me not to bite. As though he trusts me. I choke on something deep inside myself, large and tight and consuming. For him to open himself up without necessity or benefit: that, I think, must be friendship. Or the start of one, if I grab hold of it. If I can acknowledge his hand and bare my throat in return. “This is the most comfortable sleeping arrangement I’ve had in weeks,” I reassure him. The rug alone looks twice as plush as Ivor’s cot, and I can’t imagine Tavish would let me sleep there without a pillow and a blanket or two after all he’s done for me already. “I should thank you, by the way. What you did back there was incredible.”
A smile lights up Tavish’s face. “Oh, no, that was—it was nothing. Just a bit of luck, really.”
I can see the excuse is half a lie. The printed papers on his desk look similar to the ones he brought to the boardroom. What looks like a typewriter with raised dots on the keys perches in front of the cushioned chair, while from within an open drawer peeks out a pile of the same little devices Tavish ran over his paperwork’s titles back at the boardroom. A longer inspection of the room reveals similar aids—a clock without a front, an umbrella holder of canes, a thick set of cards whose backs hide lifted lines, a phone with unique indents around the outside of the spinning dialer.
I try to imagine him here, at his desk, notes and worries and a buzzing phone, while I drank beer to the news of his brother’s death. “You must have started planning all this well before I came through the gate today.”
“I’ve been working since last night. I slept for a few hours in the early morning and a few again while awaiting responses from the directors. Sheona helped enormously. She might not act it, but she feels guilty for not checking for you. As do I.”
“You’d just learned your brother was murdered. I think anyone has a right to be distracted by something like that.”
“Aye, but still.” Tavish removes his shoes with the care of a glassmaker handling his masterpiece. He traces his fingers up the first three rungs of his mounted shelves and places them onto the only open space.
My own boots release a smudge of grime onto the pristine floor as I step out of the way for Tavish to hang his suit jacket on the back of his chair. He loosens his scarf and flops onto his mattress. Somehow the dramatic collapse comes off as stupidly sophisticated when he does it, his ankles landing perfectly crossed and his palms propping him up from behind. Lavender tiptoes her weighty body across the bed, as far from him as she can, and curls up on one of his pillows. Her equally elegant motions mirror Tavish’s perfectly.
I lean against the desk and tug at the tops of my boots, but I don’t take them off. Setting them by the door with Tavish’s seems too forward, like an announcement to the world:Hi, I’m a part of his life. They’ll only leave crust behind when I have to pick them back up again.
I sink onto the marble floor instead, tucking in my feet so they don’t touch the plush carpet. Blue hops into my lap, ignoring the grime. She starts purring the moment I rub my fingers down the sides of her neck.
My mind flashes back to Alasdair and his grim fate. What were his murderers hoping to achieve? Simple vengeance? Chaos among the family? A transition in power? If I’m going to be sitting in their estate for the time being, it would probably benefit me to know what’s going on here, so I’m not caught in it unaware.
I run a hand down my jaw, the harsh prickles of facial hair rubbing into my palm after so long without a shave. “If I may, who will get the company now that Alasdair isn’t here to inherit? Ailsa?”
The parasite pulls up the memory of Ailsa’s dispute with Raghnaid, the way her mother disregarded her. I shove it back down.Yes, I know. I was there.
‘Here because you need help,’it tosses back.
You could help by not using Tavish’s old words against me and getting the fuck out of my head.I flick it for good measure. It snaps me with a jolt of heat so stifling that I almost miss Tavish’s reply beneath the wave of pain.
“Aye, probably Ailsa, though she will hate it almost as much as Mother will—she’d never have killed Alasdair for it, if that’s what you’re getting at. At least, not the Ailsa I knew.”
That didn’t count her out entirely. “If not her, then who else benefits from your brother’s death? Surely he had enemies?”
Tavish stiffens. He seems a step away from slipping over the edge of his emotional waterfall, but he breathes out and sits straighter, tugging at the lines of his button-up shirt. Perhaps his emotions are not rapids, after all, but rather ignits, his power flaring until it suddenly zaps out, forcing him to recharge. “I suppose Alasdair had rivals among the other corporations,” he says. “Greer O’Cain in particular despises him, but no more than they hate my mother. And I can’t imagine them assassinating him like this. He was found in his parlor, his throat slit and a fish symbol drawn in red paint.”
I give Blue my best spine scratch. Perhaps she does know her owner isn’t coming back after all. “What about your staff?”
Tavish groans. “We investigated ours thoroughly, but there were thousands of workers in the upper districts when Alasdair was killed, and our security isn’t infallible. Besides the advantage the other big seven corps might gain, everyone from the lower districts also stands to profit from Findlay Inc. having a less ruthless heir.”
“An heir like you?” I realize the implication as soon as I’ve said it, trenching its way through Tavish’s features like a dark pit. “I’m not accusing you,” I clarify. “I just want to know, if you had control of this company, what would you do with it?” Ivor’s allegation rings in my head too violently not to ask. Whatever Tavish’s reply, I trust that he means well. But meaning well and doing good are two different things; my own failures prove that.
Tavish’s pain doesn’t leave, only transforms, aimed, I think, inward instead. “That’s—it’s beyond my ken. I’d never actually considered it.”
I gently nudge Blue out of my lap before heaving off the ground. “But if you did? If you had the chance to do whatever you wanted with the ignation and the auroras. With Maraheem?”
“You’re off your head.” He snorts, a refined, dainty sound that rides on a needle’s point. “Everything would take so much planning. I don’t have a tenth of the information I’d need for that kind of undertaking, or half the ability, or—”
“What if you had everything you needed here, to do anything you wanted, what would you choose?”
“I’d force the assembly to take down the gates.” He whispers it, so low it nearly blends into the brush of his lips together. “But without the proper precautions, eliminating the harsh district divisions would throw the city into chaos. We’d need the assembly to have equal representation between the upper and lower, and new tax distributions, and so much more. An impossible amount more.”
