“Fine. Whatever.” Zuzana spun on one platform heel and walked out into the rain.
“Wait!” Karou cal ed after her. She wanted to talk about it. She wanted to tel Zuzana everything, to complain about her crappy week—the elephant tusks, the nightmarish animal market, how Brimstone only paid her in stupid shings, and the creepy banging on the other door. She could put it in her sketchbook, and that was something, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to talk.
It was out of the question, of course. “Can we please go to Poison?” she asked, her voice coming out smal and tired. Zuzana looked back and saw the expression that Karou sometimes got when she thought no one was watching. It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there al the time, and al her other expressions were just an array of masks she used to cover it up.
Zuzana relented. “Fine. Okay. I’m dying for some goulash. Get it? Dying. Ha ha.”
The poisoned goulash; it was an old groaner between them, and Karou knew everything was okay. For now. But what about next time?
They set out, umbrel a-less and huddled together, hurrying through the drizzle.
“You should know,” Zuzana said, “Jackass has been hanging around Poison. I think he’s lying in wait for you.”
Karou groaned. “Great.” Kaz had been cal ing and texting, and she had been ignoring him.
“We could go somewhere else—”
“No. I’m not letting that rodent-loaf have Poison.
Poison’s ours.”
“Rodent-loaf?” repeated Zuzana.
It was a favorite insult of Issa’s, and made sense in the context of the serpent-woman’s diet, which consisted mainly of smal furry creatures. Karou said,
“Yes. Loaf of rodent. Ground mouse-meat with bread crumbs and ketchup—”
“Ugh. Stop.”
“Or you could substitute hamsters, I suppose,” said Karou. “Or guinea pigs. You know they roast guinea pigs in Peru, skewered on little sticks, like marshmal ows?”
“Stop,” said Zuzana.
“Mmm, guinea pig s’mores—”
“Stop now, before I throw up. Please.”
And Karou did stop, not because of Zuzana’s plea, but because she caught a familiar flutter in the corner of her eye. No no no, she said to herself. She didn’t
—wouldn’t—turn her head. Not Kishmish, not tonight.
Noting her sudden silence, Zuzana asked, “You okay?”
The flutter again, in a circle of lamplight in Karou’s line of sight. Too far off to draw special attention to itself, but unmistakably Kishmish.
Damn.
“I’m fine,” Karou said, and she kept on resolutely in the direction of Poison Kitchen. What was she supposed to do, smack her forehead and claim to have remembered an errand, after al that? She wondered what Zuzana would say if she could see Brimstone’s little beast messenger, his bat wings so bizarre on his feathered body. Being Zuzana, she’d probably want to make a marionette version of him.
“How’s the puppet project coming?” Karou asked, trying to act normal.
Zuzana brightened and started to tel her. Karou half listened, but she was distracted by her jumbled defiance and anxiety. What would Brimstone do if she didn’t come? What could he do, come out and get her?
She was aware of Kishmish fol owing, and as she She was aware of Kishmish fol owing, and as she ducked under the arch into the courtyard of Poison Kitchen, she gave him a pointed look as if to say, I see you. And I’m not coming. He cocked his head at her, perplexed, and she left him there and went inside.
The cafe was crowded, though Kaz, blessedly, was nowhere to be seen. A mix of local laborers, backpackers, expat artist types, and students hung out at the coffins, the fume of their cigarettes so heavy the Roman statues seemed to loom from a fog, ghoulish in their gas masks.
“Damn,” said Karou, seeing a trio of scruffy backpackers lounging at their favorite table.
“Pestilence is taken.”
“Everything is taken,” said Zuzana. “Stupid Lonely Planet book. I want to go back in time and mug that damn travel writer at the end of the al ey, make sure he never finds this place.”
“So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days.”
“I do,” Zuzana agreed. “I swear I hate more people every day. Everyone annoys me. If I’m like this now, what am I going to be like when I’m old?”
“You’l be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony.”
“Nah. BBs just rile ’em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka.”
“You’re a brute.”
Zuzana dropped a curtsy, then took another frustrated look around at the crowded cafe. “Suck.
Want to go somewhere else?”
Karou shook her head. Their hair was already soaked; she didn’t want to go back out. She just wanted her favorite table in her favorite cafe. In her jacket pocket, her fingers toyed with the store of shings from the week’s errands. “I think those guys are about to leave.” She nodded to the backpackers at Pestilence.
“I don’t think so,” said Zuzana. “They have ful beers.”
“No, I think they are.” Between Karou’s fingers, one of the shings dematerialized. A second later, the backpackers rose to their feet. “Told you.”
In her head, she fancied she heard Brimstone’s commentary:
Evicting strangers from cafe tables: selfish.
“Weird,” was Zuzana’s response as the girls slipped behind the giant horse statue to claim their table.
Looking bewildered, the backpackers left. “They were kind of cute,” said Zuzana.
“Oh? You want to cal them back?”
“As if.” They had a rule against backpacker boys, who blew through with the wind, and started to al look the same after a while, with their stubbly chins and wrinkled shirts. “I was simply making a diagnosis of cuteness. Plus, they looked kind of lost.
Like puppies.”
Karou felt a pang of guilt. What was she doing, defying Brimstone, spending wishes on mean things like forcing innocent backpackers out into the rain?
She flopped onto the couch. Her head ached, her hair was clammy, she was tired, and she couldn’t stop worrying about the Wishmonger. What would he say?
The entire time she and Zuzana were eating their goulash, her gaze kept straying to the door.
“Watching for someone?” Zuzana asked.
“Oh. Just… just afraid Kaz might turn up.”
“Yeah, wel , if he does, we can wrestle him into this coffin and nail it shut.”
“Sounds good.”
They ordered tea, which came in an antique silver service, the sugar and creamer dishes engraved with the words arsenic and strychnine.
“So,” said Karou, “you’l see violin boy tomorrow at the theater. What’s your strategy?”
“I have no strategy,” said Zuzana. “I just want to skip al this and get to the part where he’s my boyfriend.
Not to mention, you know, the part where he’s aware I exist.”
“Come on, you wouldn’t real y want to skip this part.”
“Yes I would.”
“Skip meeting him? The butterflies, the pounding heart, the blushing? The part where you enter each other’s magnetic fields for the first time, and it’s like invisible lines of energy are drawing you together—”
“Invisible lines of energy?” Zuzana repeated. “Are you turning into one of those New Age weirdos who wear crystals and read people’s auras?”
“You know what I mean. First date, holding hands, first kiss, al the smoldering and yearning?”
“Oh, Karou, you poor little romantic.”
“Hardly. I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it’s al sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as assholes.”
Zuzana grimaced. “They can’t al be assholes, can Zuzana grimaced. “They can’t al be assholes, can they?”
“I don’t know.
Maybe not. Maybe just the pretty ones.”
“But he is pretty. God, I hope he’s not an asshole. Do you think there’s any chance he’s both a non-orifice and single? I mean, seriously. What are the chances?”
“Slim.”
“I know.” Zuzana slumped dramatical y back and lay crumpled like a discarded marionette.
“Pavel likes you, you know,” said Karou. “He’s a certified non-orifice.”
“Yes, wel , Pavel’s sweet, but he does not give of the butterflies.”
“The butterflies in the bel y.” Karou sighed. “I know.
You know what I think? I think the butterflies are always there in your bel y, in everyone, al the time—”
“Like bacteria?”
“No, not like bacteria, like butterflies, and some people’s butterflies react to other people’s, on a chemical level, like pheromones, so that when they’re nearby, your butterflies start to dance. They can’t help it—it’s chemical.”
“Chemical. Now that’s romantic.”
“I know, right? Stupid butterflies.” Liking the idea, Karou opened her sketchbook and started to draw it: cartoon intestines and a stomach crowded with butterflies. Papilio stomachus would be their Latin name.
Zuzana asked, “So, if it’s al chemical and you have no say in the matter, does that mean Jackass stil makes your butterflies dance?”
Karou looked up. “God no. I think he makes my butterflies barf.”
Zuzana had just taken a sip of tea and her hand flew to her mouth in an effort to keep it in. She laughed, doubled over, until she managed to swal ow. “Oh, gross. Your stomach is ful of butterfly barf!”
Karou laughed, too, and kept sketching. “Actual y, I think my stomach is ful of dead butterflies. Kaz kil ed them.”
She wrote, Papilio stomachus: fragile creatures, vulnerable to frost and betrayal.
“So what,” said Zuzana. “They had to be pretty stupid butterflies to fal for him anyway. You’l grow new ones with more sense. New wise butterflies.”
Karou loved Zuzana for her wil ingness to play out such sil iness on a long kite string. “Right.” She raised her teacup in a toast. “To a new generation of butterflies, hopeful y less stupid than the last.” Maybe they were burgeoning even now in fat little cocoons.
Or maybe not. It was hard to imagine feeling that magical tingling sensation in the pit of her bel y anytime soon. Best not to worry about it, she thought.
She didn’t need it. Wel . She didn’t want to need it.
Yearning for love made her feel like a cat that was always twining around ankles, meowing Pet me, pet me, look at me, love me.
Better to be the cat gazing cool y down from a high wal , its expression inscrutable. The cat that shunned petting, that needed no one. Why couldn’t she be that cat?
Be that cat!!! she wrote, drawing it into the corner of her page, cool and aloof.
Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn’t. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and… cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark.
Someone who would wait with an umbrel a to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.
The door opened. She looked in the mirror and suppressed a curse. Slipping in behind some tourists, that winged shadow was back again. Karou rose and made for the bathroom, where she took the note that Kishmish had come to deliver.
Again it bore a single word. But this time the word was Please.
11
PLEASE
Please? Brimstone never said please. Hurrying across town, Karou found herself more troubled than if the note had said something menacing, like: Now, or else.
Letting her in, Issa was uncharacteristical y silent.
“What is it, Issa? Am I in trouble?”
“Hush. Just come in and try not to berate him today.”
“Berate him?” Karou blinked. She’d have thought if anyone was in danger of being berated, it was herself.
“You’re very hard on him sometimes, as if it’s not hard enough already.”
“As if what’s not hard enough?”
“His life. His work. His life is work. It’s joyless, it’s
“His life. His work. His life is work. It’s joyless, it’s relentless, and sometimes you make it harder than it already is.”
“Me?” Karou was stunned. “Did I just come in on the middle of a conversation, Issa? I have no idea what you’re talking about—”
“Hush, I said. I’m just asking that you try to be kind, like when you were little. You were such a joy to us al , Karou. I know it’s not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you’re not the only one with troubles.”
And with that the inner door unsealed and Karou stepped across the threshold. She was confused, ready to defend herself, but when she saw Brimstone, she forgot al that.
He was leaning heavily on his desk, his great head resting in one hand, while the other cupped the wishbone he wore around his neck. Kishmish hopped in agitation from one of his master’s horns to the other, uttering crickety chirrups of concern, and Karou faltered to a halt. “Are… are you okay?” It felt odd asking, and she realized that of al the questions she had barraged him with in her life, she had never asked him that. She’d never had reason to—he’d scarcely ever shown a hint of emotion, let alone weakness or weariness.
He raised his head, released the wishbone, and said simply, “You came.” He sounded surprised and, Karou thought guiltily, relieved.
Striving for lightness, she said, “Wel , please is the magic word, you know.”
“I thought perhaps we had lost you.”
“Lost me? You mean you thought I’d died?”
“No, Karou. I thought that you had taken your freedom.”
“My…” She trailed off. Taken her freedom? “What does that even mean?”
“I’ve always imagined that one day the path of your life would unrol at your feet and carry you away from us. As it should, as it must. But I am glad that day is not today.”
Karou stood staring at him. “Seriously? I blow off one errand and you think that’s it, I’m gone forever?
Jesus. What do you think of me, that you think I’d just vanish like that?”
“Letting you go, Karou, wil be like opening the window for a butterfly. One does not hope for the butterfly’s return.”
“I’m not a freaking butterfly.”
“No. You’re human. Your place is in the human world.
Your childhood is nearly over—”
“So… what? You don’t need me anymore?”
“On the contrary. I need you now more than ever. As I said, I’m glad that today is not the day you leave us.”
This was al news to Karou, that there would come a day when she would leave her chimaera family, that she even possessed the freedom to do so if she wished. She didn’t wish. Wel , maybe she wished not to go on some of the creepier errands, but that didn’t mean she was a butterfly fluttering against glass, trying to get out and away. She didn’t even know what to say.
Brimstone pushed a wal et across the desk to her.
The errand. She’d almost forgotten why she was here. Angry, she grabbed the wal et and flipped it open. Dirhams. Morocco, then. Her brow furrowed.
“Izîl?” she asked, and Brimstone nodded.
“But it’s not time.” Karou had a standing appointment with a graverobber in Marrakesh the last Sunday of every month, and this was Friday, and a week early.
“It is time,” said Brimstone. He gestured to a tal apothecary jar on the shelf behind him. Karou knew it wel ; usual y it was ful of human teeth. Now it stood nearly
empty.
“Oh.” Her gaze roved along the shelf, and she saw, to her surprise, that many of the jars were likewise dwindling. She couldn’t remember a time when the tooth supply had been so low. “Wow. You’re real y burning through teeth. Something going on?”
It was an inane question. As if she could understand what it meant that he was using more teeth, when she didn’t know what they were for to begin with.
“See what Izîl has,” Brimstone said. “I’d rather not send you anywhere else for human teeth, if it can be helped.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Karou ran her fingers lightly over the bul et scars on her bel y, remembering St.
Petersburg, the errand gone horribly wrong. Human teeth, despite being in such abundant supply in the world, could be… interesting… to procure.
She would never forget the sight of those girls, stil alive in the cargo hold, mouths bloody, other fates awaiting them next.
They may have gotten away. When Karou thought of them now, she always added a made-up ending, the way Issa had taught her to do with nightmares so she way Issa had taught her to do with nightmares so she could fal back to sleep. She could only bear the memory if she believed she’d given those girls time to escape their traffickers, and maybe she even had.
She’d tried.
How strange it had been, being shot. How unalarmed she’d found herself, how quick to unsheathe her hidden knife and use it.
And use it. And use it.
She had trained in fighting for years, but she had never before had to defend her life. In the flash of a moment, she had discovered that she knew just what to do.
“Try the Jemaa el-Fna,” Brimstone said. “Kishmish spotted Izîl there, but that was hours ago, when I first summoned you. If you’re lucky, he might stil be there.” And with that, he bent back over his tray of monkey teeth, and Karou was apparently dismissed.
Now there was the old Brimstone, and she was glad.
This new creature who said “please” and talked about her like she was a butterfly—he was unsettling.
“I’l find him,” Karou said. “And I’l be back soon, with my pockets ful of human teeth. Ha. I bet that sentence hasn’t been said anywhere else in the world today.”