Bliss is as prickly as Mum and me, if a bit more aggressive with it. I generally keep my snarls as an answer; she uses them as a challenge. I can’t say I blame her. What happened to her was a lot more public than what was done to me, even when the news took up Chavi and her place in the string of unsolved murders.
Inara is quieter than Bliss, not shy or withdrawn, just . . . more patient, I suppose. Bliss explores a situation by lighting a match and letting it explode. Inara watches first, observes. She waits to speak until she knows what she wants to say and has a healthy guess as to how others will react to it. It’s easy to see why the Hanoverians have taken them in.
“I hear your parents and siblings are in Paris,” I say to Bliss, my fingers buried in Inara’s hair to help her braid it for bed.
Bliss growls, but Inara glances back at me over her shoulder. “Most people would just say family.”
“Your family’s here, and in New York. I may not know you two that well, but that’s clear enough.”
Inara laughs at the fierce blush that lights up Bliss’s pale skin.
“Yes,” Bliss manages after clearing her throat. “They’re in Paris. My father’s teaching.”
“They’ve been bugging you to come visit?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you do . . . we’re going to have a couple of guest rooms. If you want to get together, or if you need to escape for a night. Or if things go south and you need to say fuck it. Safety net’s there. And you wouldn’t have to listen to your parents pout if you bring Inara.”
“They have been bitching about it,” she agrees. Without warning, she pulls off everything but her underwear and rummages through her bag for sleepwear.
“Our apartment is one giant room,” Inara explains. “Even after the Garden, modesty isn’t so much a thing there.”
“Eh. I had a sister.” I tie off Inara’s braid, hand her the brush, and turn around so she can return the favor. Her strokes are smooth and sure, never tugging too hard but letting the bristles scrape gently along my scalp.
“Does it ever stop, do you think?” Bliss asks suddenly.
“Does what?”
“That sense of being a victim.”
It’s a little strange, the way they both focus on me at that. They’re both older than me, if not by very much, but then, my world exploded five years ago. In a sick sort of way, I guess I have seniority. “It changes,” I say finally. “I don’t know that it ends. Sometimes it flares, for no reason at all. The more choices we make, though, the more we live our lives . . . I think that helps.”
“We heard Eddison say you killed the bastard. The one that was after you.”
“I did.” My hands are in my lap, free of heavy-duty bandages but still more Band-Aid than skin. Inara has pale, rippling scars on her hands from burns and gashes. “He came after me, we struggled over his knife, I stabbed him. A lot. Adrenaline, you know?”
“I shot Avery. The Gardener’s older son, the one who liked to maim. I don’t know how many times.”
“Four,” Inara says, her voice soft.
“Sometimes I shoot him and there are no bullets in the gun. Sometimes I shoot and shoot and shoot and never run out of bullets, but he doesn’t stop. He just keeps coming forward.”
“Sometimes I wake up and have to strip down so I can lie naked in the tub, because clothes and bedding feel too much like flower petals,” I reply. “Because in my nightmare, I’m alive but bleeding out, can’t move, and he’s surrounding me with white roses, like the Lady of Shalott’s bier down the river.”
They both laugh, even as Bliss groans. “You like classics?” Inara asks.
“Some of them.”
“Don’t ever get this one started on Poe,” Bliss tells me. “She can quote all of it. And by quote, I mean recite. All of it. Every goddamn word of it.”
The braid thumps against my back as Inara ties it off. “It kept my brain busy.”
“That’s the trick, I think.” I stretch out across the bed. Inara and Bliss aren’t anything like Chavi and Josephine, but the feeling is there. I’m comfortable with both of them in a way I didn’t expect to be right off. “Things don’t just magically get better, but we can make them better.”
“Slowly,” adds Inara.
“So fucking slowly,” sighs Bliss.
“I take pictures of Special Agent Ken and send them to Eddison. When we get to Paris, I’m dressing the doll in mime gear at a café, and I can almost guarantee Eddison’s response will be That’s horrifying or something very similar.” They laugh again, Bliss easing down gently across my back, careful with my battered and wrapped ribs. Her hair is all wild curls, not something you can braid dry, and it spills around her. I can see their wings, or parts of them where the tank tops don’t hide them.
They’re beautiful, and awful, and I get the feeling they see them largely the same way. At least Inara, anyway, but then, I think she’s had more practice than Bliss at reframing perspective.
Inara stretches out beside me, her legs thrown over mine and her cheek against the back of Bliss’s shoulder. “How many times did you stab him, Priya?” she asks softly.
“Seventeen. Once for each girl he killed, and once for me.”
Her slow, satisfied smile is both terrifying and wonderful.
I don’t remember falling asleep that way, but Mum shows me the picture in the morning. Over Marlene’s amazing cinnamon rolls, Eddison teases Bliss about being cuddly. He takes a little too much delight in setting her wrong-footed, at least until Inara hands me a little blue dragon made of clay and tells me to mail it back once Special Agent Ken is done with him.
Seeing Eddison try not to blush is always a good thing.
We say goodbye to the female Hanoverians at the house, laden down with plastic bags of treats from Marlene. She swears there won’t be a problem getting through security with them, and standing safely behind her where she can’t see him, Vic rolls his eyes.
“Victor.”
He freezes, sighs, and shakes his head.
Mum watches him with amusement. “You didn’t really think you’d grow out of that, did you?”
“Did you?”
“It never worked on me to begin with.”
Eddison nudges Vic in the side. “I can believe it. Can you?”
“I absolutely believe it.”
Inara and Bliss ride with us to the airport, sitting in the back with me while Mercedes and Mum sit in the middle row. Suitcases fill the trunk space. Our stuff left Colorado last week, professionals loading it into the shipping container to guarantee even distribution. They were significantly better at their job than the ones who dropped the container off. Still, it’s going to take another two to three weeks before it actually arrives at the new house, so until then we’re living out of suitcases.
There’s an entire suitcase dedicated to Mum’s coffeemaker, the box wrapped in most of the towels we own for extra protection.
Eddison and Vic grab most of the bags between them, save for the carry-ons and the enormous orange-and-yellow knit blanket Hannah gave me when I said goodbye to my vets. She gave me her address, so I can write, and I have a feeling she’ll chivy the men into writing me occasionally. The blanket is warm and soft, eye-smartingly sunny, and she had to yank it away from the unabashedly weeping Happy when he looked ready to blow his nose in it.
Officer Clare was there, his partner watching him closely, to apologize. He’s on suspension until the department psychologist clears him for duty. Some cases hit unexpectedly, especially if your wife leaves you just before. It’s no excuse, but the situation is what it is, and it’s not my problem anymore.
Gunny looked at me for a long time, then gently folded me against him. “Armistice, Miss Priya?” he’d whispered.
Something like.
Then Corgi clapped me gently on the back and announced my smile didn’t make him want to piss himself anymore. So, you know. There’s that.