“Oh, you mean the blood? Don’t go getting all in a fuss, there are ways and means. Now you get your butt on this couch.” She pats the cushion beside her while offering the evil eye, Niles bites his lip, and there’s nothing for it but to tiptoe over and collapse as ordered.
The fluffy cushions swallow me in, then bounce as Niles takes the last spot.
“What ways and means specifically?” asks Niles.
“Never you mind.” Mrs. Divs bats pale lashes, pours tea, and hands the first cup to him.
He accepts with reverence, batting his own much darker lashes, which are also, of course, long.
“I see you rolling your eyes, young lady,” says Mrs. Divs.
I wasn’t. Visibly.
My teacup arrives with her prim sniff.
“Now, Kit, I know family can sometimes be quite beyond our control, but fighting over intercoms? Causing a ruckus in the middle of the street? One would think we lived on the Brink.”
I balance my feet off the floor and try not to bleed on anything. “I’ll handle it.”
“I know Yonni’s passing was . . . difficult, and then this unfortunate incident with your mother, but that is no excuse to throw good conduct after bad. Yonni would be absolutely horrified to know you let that man spend the night in her place after he showed up wasted on the doorstep—don’t think I didn’t see that.”
She’s right. Yonni would skin me. Her last conversation with Dad involved screaming and a slap that sent Dad reeling. A month. My grandbaby was alone a month while you weren’t even on the same damn planet. How the hell are you my child?
The first and last time I saw her strike anyone, heard that level of ice in her voice. She refused him entry last time he stopped by, and now he’s sleeping on her couch.
I set the tea on the table, not thirsty anymore.
“You shouldn’t have let him in,” says Mrs. Divs. “It was very bad of you—and now this with your intolerable aunt. Yonni always said her children were tyrants, but I never heard a peep from them all the time she was here. She managed them with a steel fist and that is what you must do.” She balls her wrinkled fingers and holds them up high. “Steel.”
Apparently, blackmailing Dee with my cousin’s freedom isn’t ruthless enough.
The cookies join the tea on the table. Sugar sticks to my palms, gritty crumbles wedged between shaking fingers. I flatten them on my thighs.
“You can do it, dear.” Mrs. Divs squeezes my shoulder. “Now that that’s all settled, I think it’s about time you dyed your hair.”
Wait, what?
She folds her hands with a lordling’s authority and nods once. I rewind the last few seconds in my head and come up blank. Niles looks equally mystified, eyebrows knit and fingers tapping his knee as if counting out the replay. I catch his eye, but he shrugs in a don’t look at me.
“My hair?” I ask.
“Of course, dear.” Mrs. Divs clucks and shakes her head. “Niles, be a dear and go grab the box on my bed, would you? I pulled it from the closet last night. My room’s just down the hall.” Niles hops to and disappears down the hall past the kitchen and returns a minute later, box in hand. At Mrs. Divs’s nod, he gives it to me.
I lift the hinged lid. Colorkits, a mess of them. Pretty men and women with vibrant locks. One particular redhead winks above a scrawled Sunset Luminance in curly font.
“You’re quite distinctive, you know,” says Mrs. Divs, “just like . . . well. What with that feedshow special, it might be a good idea not to look quite so distinctive, if you take my meaning.” She pats my knee. “You’d be quite fetching as a blonde or a redhead. Niles agrees, don’t you, Niles?”
He pockets his hands and literally distances himself from the conversation—a full step back. “I . . . defer to your judgment.”
“That means ‘no,’” I say.
Mrs. Divs shrugs this off. “He’s just being shy.”
“Shy?” asks Niles.
That’s one word for it.
“Thanks, Mrs. Divs, but I don’t even know how to use these.” I replace the lid and push the box away.
She pushes it right back. “It’s easy, there’s a booklet. Do this tonight, and tomorrow you’ll—how does it go?—be a new soul for the new year.”
“But we’re midyear,” says Niles.
I pause, hand hovering short of a second push. Everyone always mixes up that quote, and that’s not what Gilken meant. Not entirely. “‘The object of the new year isn’t that we have a new year. It’s that we are new souls, with fresh backbones, ears, and eyes. Unless we understand how to start afresh, we’ll never be effective.’”
Mrs. Divs sips her tea. “Ah yes, that was it.”
My eyes narrow. Gilken has many popular quotes, but that’s not one of them. “You planned that.”
“I’ve no idea what you mean,” she says, “though it is nice to know the younger generation still respects our Archive’s founder. Such a beautiful sentiment, is it not? Reinvention to improve effectiveness.” She bunches her fingers. “Fists of steel, dear. Fists of steel. This, dear, is your new soul.”
All sealed up in a prepackaged box.