Her hand rubs up and down, back and forth. “Come on in, now. The heat’s gettin’ worse.”
My legs are locked, feet rooted. Here, on the steps, I’m calm, firm, and collected.
I don’t know what will happen if I move. If the calmness will stick.
Mrs. Divs tugs. “You can’t stay out here forever.”
Really? Watch me.
“Kit.” She imbues my name with power, like a charm. “We’ve lost much worse than this. You come on inside.”
Yonni. She means Yonni.
My heels shift and move. I don’t fall over or melt into screams. I don’t lose any composure at all.
Apparently, I’m fine.
Go me.
Mrs. Divs props the door with her hip and I push it open farther so she can step through. The entryway is unnaturally quiet, post the Recorders’ determined tread. No inquisitive neighbors stick their heads out. I guess the potential trouble isn’t worth the curiosity. Only Mrs. Divs’s door hangs open, her thumping cane setting our pace.
“Can I have a cookie?” I ask. If I close my eyes I can smell them, even out here in the hall. Except, in my head the cookie jar sits on a table outside a pastry shop, amid a garden of green. And it isn’t even a jar, but a fat sticky roll piled with enough frosting to put me in a coma.
I could use a coma.
“Have you had breakfast?” Mrs. Divs asks.
Well, that answers that question.
“Never mind,” I say.
Niles plied me with a sandwich last night after bringing me home, so it’s not like I need the food.
Mrs. Divs pats my arm. “You eat breakfast, we’ll talk.”
We reach her suite. Her wall-screen runs unmuted today, voices filtering through the cracked door. Or rather, a voice.
Mom’s.
I throw the door wide and skid to a stop before the screen.
Mom wears the same airy purple blouse as before, hair swept in a knot. Her eyes are half-closed, lips moving through a lullaby. Reciting verses that, long ago, she used to sing.
“You see us broken? We’ll see you dead. A mask behind where stars aligned and ate regret.”
She sways with the cadence, hinting at melody. Notes just under the surface, trapped, unheard.
I let them out, sing them in a whisper to accompany her words.
“You see us broken? We’ll watch you fall. A kiss away from the trick that played us all for false.”
Mom closes her eyes like she can hear.
Or maybe she’s remembering how Dad used to ball her out about it. You know that’s a shitty song to sing to a kid, right?
But Mom only shook her head. It’s her heritage, she’d say and sing it anyway. So I would, too.
Like I am, now.
And like then, I’m singing in tandem—and not just with Mom.
“Close your eyes against the blood,” joins Mrs. Divs. “Promise yourself it was all for love.”
“And understand ours for you.” Mom raises a thin silver remote with a single button and doesn’t quite smile.
“Account closed,” she says and presses down.
The wall-screen blinks out and sparks at the corners. The suite lights flick on, burn white, then pop. A battery of pops that end in absence. Chained echoes bolting from fixture to socket, living room to kitchen.
Entryway to street.
I run to the lobby and bang through the outer door. All down the thoroughfare, streetlights hiss and spit despite being dark. The tower across the way burns bright from a hundred windows and blacks out. The one beside it follows suit, then the one behind that. On and on. An orchestrated light circus, with movements and beats and synchronicity.
And once the blast hits, light disappears.
Thirty seconds, less, and our whole block’s down. Everything’s down that I can see from street level.
The roof. I could see more from the roof.
I swing back my tower’s door. Through the glass Mrs. Divs stands in the entryway, just outside her suite. Both hands clasped on the cane firmly set in front of her, back straighter than I’ve ever seen.
She meets my eyes. Hers aren’t terrified, or even shocked. And I can hear her soft voice singing with mine.
The lullaby. Mom’s lullaby. The words, the tune. She knew them. The song of the Accountants, the song of the indies.
Mrs. Divs knew.
She raises the head of her cane first to her mouth, and then her temple in a simple salute. Not a Galton salute, but one I’ve only ever seen in Mom’s late-night meetings with her “special” friends.
What. The. Hell.
“For a moment there,” Mrs. Divs calls, muffled through the glass, “I was afraid she’d allow you to undo us, but I see she hasn’t forgotten who she is. If you see your mother, give her my blessing and apologize for my doubt.”
Then Mrs. Divs turns on impossibly steady heels and slips into her suite.
She’s an Accountant. God, she’s—she’s like Mom. She knew.
I yank the lobby door, but it swung shut behind me and won’t budge. I pull my keypass from my pocket—that I still have on me, thank God—and press it to the security lock.
Nothing happens. Its embedded screen dark and burnt, hot brown at the edges. I try again.
Which would absolutely work, because, of course, my run-down tower’s security system would somehow survive a block-wide—maybe even city-wide—blackout.