Release

  “My lady?” he says.

  “I have come…” she says again. Then she looks into the face of the man, and she asks, “Why have I come, Tony?”

  “You came to kill me,” the man says.

  The Queen’s eyes focus on the man, clearer now. “Yes,” she says. “That is what I came to do.”

  “I have come to kill you,” she hears herself saying, and there is surety in it, a purity of purpose that is bracingly tart in her mouth, like a drink made from spring flowers. She will kill this man. She will make him pay for what he has done to her, for the bruises around her neck, for the mud in her lungs, for–

  “Tony?” she says, and the clarity is gone.

  There is a man in front of her, cowering in his corner. (There is another in the room, too, a man too large to be real, and she can only see him if she does not look directly at him.) But there is a man in front of her.

  It’s Tony.

  “You murdered me,” she says to him, and his eyes finally meet hers.

  “You’ve come to drag me down to hell,” he says.

  “You murdered me,” she says again.

  “I didn’t mean to–”

  “You did.”

  “Only right that second,” he says. “Only for a second.”

  “A second is all it takes.”

  “I’ve missed you so much.”

  She feels a flare of anger, and the short bed to her right catches fire. Tony cries out and shrinks back.

  “You have no right to miss me,” she says, and again she feels her power, the other power that’s there, the one giving her shape–

  But no–

  She calms, eyes still on the man, and the larger man she can only barely see pulls the burning mattress from the cell, extinguishing it.

  “You have no right.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t.”

  “What do you want from me, then?”

  At this, she considers. And discovers she knows.

  Adam pulled out of the parking lot and started the journey to the lake where the get-together was, the sun still hanging over the horizon, slowly making its way to set out past a sound, a peninsula and then into an ocean somewhere.

  “Who’s the rose for?” Angela said, picking it up from the floor.

  “I got it this morning,” Adam said. “Just felt right. Like I had to.” He glanced over at her, thinking. “You know what? I thought it was a going-away thing for Enzo, then I wondered if it was for Linus, but I think it’s gotta be for you. On this day. This going-away day for you, too.”

  Angela’s face softened, she pushed out her lower lip, letting it quiver, and said, gently, “Do I fucking look like the kind of girl who wants flowers?” He laughed as she put it on the back seat. “You’re that kind of girl, though,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t use ‘girl’ as an insult.”

  “I’m reappropriating it.”

  “I see.”

  They drove in silence for a moment, then Angela said, “You won’t vanish, will you?”

  “What?”

  “When I’m in Rotterdam. People always say they’ll keep in touch, but then they find other friends and the times get less and less–”

  “Skype every Wednesday and Saturday.”

  She nodded, solemnly. “If your parents let you have any sort of connection with the wider world.”

  “I’ll go to your house and ask your mom.”

  She nodded again.

  “We won’t lose touch, Ange.”

  “It’s college after,” she said. “We might have lost touch anyway.”

  “We can deal with after, after. Let’s get through the next thing first.”

  “That’s a very mature attitude, Mr Thorn.”

  “One of us has to be, Ms Darlington.” Adam glanced into his rear-view mirror, hearing sirens. He pulled over to let seven police cars speed by, going well over a hundred miles an hour, by the look of it. “Whoa. What’s going on there?”

  The cars all turned at the main intersection, towards the prison but away from the lake, so Adam figured he’d probably never know what it was about. Frome had already reached its annual quota of big news stories with the murder of Katherine van Leuwen.

  Adam turned his car in the other direction, towards the paths where he ran lakeside, towards the nice cabin the Garcias had rented for their son’s get-together.

  “My stomach is actually starting to hurt,” Adam said.

  Angela sighed. “I’m so glad he’s moving to Atlanta.”

  “I can’t help how I feel. I can’t help missing him.”

  “You know, everyone says that, but I wonder if it’s actually true. If you tried hard enough.”

  “I can’t help missing you.”

  “That’s different. I’m supernatural.”

  Adam pulled his car up to the cabin. They weren’t the first. At least half a dozen other cars were there, including–

  “There’s Linus,” Angela said, nodding at him. He was already holding a cup of beer and seeing Adam pull in. Adam parked, and he and Angela got out, ready to go.

  But then a voice said, “Pizza’s here!” and Adam saw Enzo approaching with a smile and his heart broke, it broke, it broke.

  They are indoors, in a room, a corridor, with no windows of any kind, yet the faun knows how close they’re getting to sunset. Time is running out. And then all of time will run out. He has known it as a thought since this morning, since following the Queen out of the lake, but it is only now, this close, that he begins to feel real fear.

  They will not make it.

  She nears the man, looking him up and down. She reaches out to touch him, but before her fingers land, he flinches away, hitting his head hard on the metal wall. She can sense the bruise forming below the skin, the smaller bruise forming on his brain, and with a wave of her fingers, she heals it, almost without a thought.

  “Am I dead?” the man asks.

  “You should be so lucky,” the Queen says, and the colloquialism of it tells the faun the other spirit is in charge here. The one who cannot hear him. The one completely unaware of the danger.

  She touches the man on his elbow, the nearest bit of flesh to her. It burns so fast, the faun can smell it cook. The ancient urge is awakened, the forbidden one: the faun grows hungry.

  The man calls out and falls to the floor in the corner of his cell. The Queen stands over him.

  And the faun can feel her indecision.

  “Why are you so afraid?” she says to the man, feeling real bafflement. This is Tony. Tony who knew her. Tony who killed her. Tony should be frightened, yes, but this cowering, this abjectness…

  “You’ve come to kill me,” Tony weeps.

  “How can I kill you if you think you’re already dead?” she answers. “Were you always this foolish?”

  “Yes,” Tony answers, almost immediately.

  And there. The power of a word. The power of one word. That’s where it all changes.

  “Hey, Adam,” Enzo said, hugging him. For that instant and that instant alone, Adam was holding him again, inhaling the smell of Enzo’s hair, dark and wavy and so thick it almost seemed alien compared to Adam’s destined-to-thin blondness.

  Then Enzo was pulling away. Maybe for the last time ever. And if Adam had mostly made his peace with this, “mostly” was as close to “not at all” as any hand grenade.

  “Glad you came,” Enzo said. “Hey, Angela!”

  “Whatever,” Angela said, unloading the pizzas.

  Enzo smiled to himself. “I suppose it’s too late to ever heal that friendship.” He looked up in Adam’s eyes. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Yeah, Enzo,” Adam said, thinking, I love you, I love you–

  Then a mutinous thought: was he only thinking that because Enzo expected him to?

  Where had that come from?

  “You look well,” Enzo said. “Feels like I haven’t seen you all summer.”

  “You haven’t.?
??

  Enzo looked surprised. “Really?”

  “We keep missing each other.”

  Enzo made a face. “I just kind of thought you were hanging out with Linus.”

  “Doesn’t mean you and I couldn’t have hung out, too.”

  Enzo gave him a look, trying to guess what Adam meant. Adam couldn’t have told him; he didn’t know either. But here was Enzo. Here was the face he had been so close to. Here was the body he knew so well. The touch and the smell and the taste of it. Here was the mouth that had hinted at so many wonderful things while saying so few wonderful things straight out. Here was the mouth that broke his heart.

  And maybe, Adam thought, maybe hearts don’t ever stop breaking once broken. Maybe they just keep on beating, until they’re broken again, and then they keep on beating still. His heart was broken just at the sight of Enzo, it longed to touch him again, even after all that Enzo had done.

  But it still beat. And a part of it was wondering where Linus had got to, because that broken heart had leapt a little when he saw Linus standing there.

  “Anyway,” Enzo said, breaking a silence that had become uncomfortable.

  “I’m going to miss you, Enzo,” Adam said, meaning it. “Angela’s going away, too, for all of senior year.”

  “Really?” Enzo said, sounding genuinely concerned.

  “It’s okay. We’ll keep in touch.”

  “We will, too.”

  “Sure, Enzo.”

  Adam paused, trying to put his finger on what seemed odd here. Then he realized there was something troubling about the physical fact of Enzo–

  He was somehow smaller than Adam remembered. Still bigger than Linus, but smaller, too. Out of nowhere, Adam thought of the night he and Enzo had first argued. Whenever he told the story to anyone else, he would always say he couldn’t remember what it was over, but that was a lie: it was because Enzo had been jealous. Enzo. He’d seen Adam laughing with a guy from the cross-country team and on the basis of nothing at all, accused Adam of sleeping around.

  The argument had been fairly quickly settled – there was neither evidence nor intention and Enzo had apologized – but what Adam remembered, what he always remembered, was how big Enzo had seemed. Not physically, no one was ever really going to tower over Adam, but that first Enzo’s anger, then the astonishment that Adam felt that Enzo felt jealous over him, had filled up the room, filled up everything.

  That anger had seemed so large that, for a moment, all of Adam’s future depended on the outcome. Until it was settled, even though he wasn’t in the wrong, Adam felt his life teetering. What if he lost him? What if he lost Enzo? It would be the end of the world. It would be the end of all hope. And that Enzo seemed, implicit behind all the jealousy, to feel the same, well, that just made him bigger and bigger until he took up every corner of Adam’s potential oxygen.

  But then that world did end, didn’t it?

  And now, here was Enzo. Just another of the many humans shorter than Adam.

  When did that happen?

  “Anyway,” Enzo said again.

  Adam looked at him, but Enzo wouldn’t meet his eye any more, clearly wanting this to be over. “You know what?” Adam started–

  But never finished because two things happened and it all changed. The first was larger on the surface, but the second was the one that actually did it.

  The first was that a big, strawberry-blonde girl came over from the tables where Angela and Linus and other people including JD McLaren from the garden centre and Renee and Karen from Adam’s work were digging into the pizzas. Adam didn’t recognize the girl, but she put her arm around Enzo’s shoulders, he turned his face to her and they kissed. They kissed right there in front of Adam.

  “Hey,” the girl said, really friendly. “I’m Natasha. Nat.”

  Adam shook her hand. “Adam.”

  “You’re Adam?” Nat said, smiling wide. “Enzo talks about you all the time.”

  Adam looked at Enzo, but Enzo looked away. “We were good friends in school is all,” Enzo said.

  Still stunned, Adam asked, “Where did you two–”

  “Summer job in his mom’s office,” Nat said. “Though I don’t think his parents approve because I’m not very Latina.”

  “You’re not at all Latina,” Enzo said.

  “Hey, my family came over on the Mayflower. I could be anything by now.” She smiled again at Adam, comfortable with the silence. Her face brightened. “You brought all those pizzas, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Adam said.

  “That was really cool of you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That reminds me,” Enzo said, and he took out his wallet. And this was the second thing. So much smaller than Enzo suddenly having a girlfriend, so much smaller than the walking, talking evidence that Enzo had moved on (certainly smaller than the ground-heaving possibility that Adam might have moved on a little bit as well), but this was the moment where it all changed. This strange small moment. Adam would even be able to put his finger on it in all the years to come. The power of one action.

  “Will a hundred and fifty cover it?” Enzo asked, holding out cash.

  Adam just stared at it for a minute, and his heart broke in a different way. A way that felt suddenly, terrifyingly free.

  “That’s okay,” he heard himself saying. “A going-away present.”

  Enzo grinned, surprised. “Thanks, Adam.”

  “Yeah,” was all Adam could say back.

  “Can I get you a beer?” Nat said.

  “Nah, I’m fine,” Adam said. “I can get my own.”

  He turned back to the even larger group of people now, the group gathered to say farewell to Enzo, and now that Adam had done that himself, he was suddenly desperate to find Linus, hoping in an increasing panic that he hadn’t ruined everything.

  “I was always this much of an idiot,” Tony says, still weeping. “One stupid thing after another.”

  “And I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  “No!” he practically wails. “I’m just saying that I deserve it!”

  “Deserve what?”

  He looks at her, fear and – the faun is surprised to see – a kind of relief in his eyes. He can tell by the Queen’s face that she sees it, too.

  Sees it and is displeased.

  “Is that what you think this is?” she says to him. “Your release?”

  “Isn’t it?” he asks.

  “I came here to tell you what I know. If you are released by it, then I have failed.”

  She touches his skin again, the sizzle of the burn lasting only an instant but he collapses. He is a bug, she realizes. Nothing more than a bug to be stepped on–

  No.

  No, she also thinks. No, more than that. I will tell him.

  “I will tell you,” she says. “Are you listening?”

  He looks up at her, wounded now, chastened. “I am.”

  She tells him.

  “I was alive when you took your hands off me,” the faun hears her say. “I was alive when your fingers left their bruises on my neck.”

  There is a different kind of fear on the man’s face now. The fear of waking up from a dream into something much worse.

  “No,” Tony says.

  “I was alive when you wept over me. I was alive when you lifted my body from the floor. I was alive when you found bricks to put in my pockets–”

  “No. Nonononono–”

  “I was alive when you put me in the lake, Tony.” She kneels to him. “I was still alive.”

  “You can’t be… I checked–”

  “You didn’t check closely enough. You were too high, too far gone–”

  There is a surprising surge of terrified defiance on his face, and he shouts at her, “So were you!”

  Before she can even think, she removes his head from his body.

  The faun can’t fix this, not while the Queen still holds the man’s head. But perhaps this is what the spirit bound to her nee
ded. It seems the most obvious, this straight revenge, this violent act to match the one that robbed the spirit of her body–

  Except–

  Except that isn’t what he feels in the spirit. Her spirit is questing, searching, lost. This isn’t the action of the spirit.

  This is the action of a Queen.

  And then she or the Queen or the hybrid that the two have become, that changing, shifting personality that the faun must somehow unravel, that voice says:

  “No.”

  “Where’d Linus go?” he asked Angela.

  “Bathroom,” she answered, surprisingly curt.

  “That bad?”

  “You ignored him the second Enzo spoke a syllable. Not your best move, Wild Thornberry.”

  “Shit,” he said. “And I just… Angela, I think I just got it with Enzo.”

  “Now? A little late, isn’t it?”

  “That was his girlfriend.”

  Angela spat out half a mouthful of beer right onto the dusty ground. “His what?”

  “I know.”

  “No, seriously, his what?”

  “Maybe he’s bi. Or fluid. Like you.”

  She gave him a look that said comparing her and Enzo was an endeavour embarked upon by fools. She looked around until she found Nat in the ever-growing crowd of partygoers. “Oh, my God,” Angela said. “She looks like you.”

  “What? No, she…” But he stopped. “Oh, wow.”

  “That’s probably the weirdest compliment you’re ever going to get.”

  “But, no, Angela, this isn’t the important thing. The important thing is he offered to pay me for the pizzas. Not even close to enough either.”

  Her eyebrows rose in confusion. “What?”

  “I’ll explain but I need to find Linus first.”