Welcome to Bordertown Page 39

  “Ouch!” Ashley shakes her head. “Not so hard, there, big fella.”

  “Sorry.” Nat hangs his head. He’s one of the nicest members of the troupe, even if he isn’t a very good actor. He’s got big wide eyes like a startled baby animal and reminds Ashley of her little brother back in the World. A swaggering, half-mad Jack Sparrow he is not.

  The troupe finishes the scene. No one forgets their lines so badly that they have to wake up Alain to paw through the script. He rouses halfway through anyway, to argue with himself about some blocking, but on the whole, everything is going according to schedule.

  Until the bleeding girl staggers in.

  Everyone freezes. Ashley scrambles up from the floor. When no one else does anything, she moves toward the girl, who has collapsed on the ground. Slowly the others gather around—everyone except Alain, who hasn’t moved from his couch, although he is at least sitting up, watching what’s going on through slitted silvery eyes.

  The first thing Ashley notices as she drops down beside the girl is that she’s obviously a halfie—the pointed ears, the white-blond hair, and the pale eyes are married with a human softness. The second thing Ashley notices is that there’s a lot of blood. It’s already starting to pool under the girl.

  “Get a doctor!” Renata yells. “Get someone!”

  The girl blinks once, heavily, and opens her mouth. She groans. “Robert said to wait for the Rowan Gentleman, but I was too scared. I—” she manages to say, then gives a terrible choking cough. Red dust comes from her throat, a fine powder that dusts her clothes, sticking to her lips and cutting off any further speech.

  “The Silver Suits are coming,” someone shouts, but the words come from far away. Ashley is focused on the girl, who has stilled. Her eyes go dull, her mouth slack. Nothing moves but the tide of blood.

  “All of you,” Alain says in a voice she has never heard him use. “I want all of you out of here. Right now.”

  For a split second, the cast just stares, shocked motionless by this new Alain. Then the actors trickle off the stage, some casting glances back at the dead halfie girl on the floor as they go, some studiously avoiding the sight. Renata is holding on to Kit’s arm; Nat keeps his eyes on the floor, his thin shoulders hunched.

  Reluctantly, Ashley gets to her feet. It’s hard to tear herself away from the girl’s sightless eyes, hard not to want to smooth her hair and pillow her head, even now that it doesn’t matter. Even now when the girl can’t be uncomfortable.

  Ashley follows them as far as the stage exit and then turns around, hesitating at the curtain. Alain has gotten up off his couch and is standing over the dead girl. His long hair hides his expression. He bends down as the front doors start reverberating with a loud pounding. He touches the girl’s lip and then brings that finger to his mouth. Someone is shouting for the doors to be opened; it’s got to be the Silver Suits. With a sigh, Alain goes to let them in.

  “This is all my fault,” a voice near her says, keeping his voice low.

  Ashley starts. One of the tech guys crouches in the shadows, peering toward where a single Silver Suit and two medics swarm around the girl’s body. It takes her a moment to recall his name—Tristan. He was the one who painted the blue circle on the floor. He’s got a shaved head that makes him look older than he is, and he wears sunglasses constantly, even indoors.

  “What do you mean?” she whispers back. Ashley doesn’t think he’s that much older than she is. He might be twenty at the most.

  Tristan shrugs his shoulders.

  Ashley wonders if there was time for him to stab the girl and then come in the back way. She wonders if she is crouched beside a murderer.

  She wonders why in the world Alain tasted the girl’s blood.

  Across the room, Alain is speaking to the police. “Is she truly dead?”

  The Silver Suit is an elf, tall and slim. He nods. “Did you see anyone? Hear anything?”

  Alain shakes his head. “Her scream, nothing more.” He doesn’t care about the girl. Her death is an annoyance—an interruption to his daydreams. But Ashley remembers being a girl with nowhere to go and no one to care about her. She could easily have wound up dead, and Alain would have been just as bored by her corpse.

  “I heard her,” Ashley says, coming out of the shadows quickly so that if Tristan means to murder her, too, he’ll have to do it in front of the Silver Suits. “She said something about ‘the Rowan Gentleman.’ ”

  “Were you here when the body was found?” the Silver Suit asks.

  “I was standing right next to her,” says Ashley, nodding. “That’s why I heard her and he didn’t.”

  The Silver Suit writes something on his pad. “But then you left? Did you leave before or after she died? Was anyone else present?”

  Ashley looks around the room, like she might find a good answer written on the crumbling plaster or threadbare theater chairs. She can’t say it was because Alain cleared the theater; that would make it sound like the Magic Lantern had something to hide.

  “Actresses are so dramatic,” Alain says, yawning hugely. “Always rushing from rooms. Declaring they’re about to faint at the sight of blood.”

  Ashley levels a glare in Alain’s direction, but he is busy studying the Silver Suit’s boots as if he’s considering a pair for himself.

  “So all she said was ‘the Gentleman’?” the Silver Suit asks. “Have you any idea what she meant?”

  “The Rowan Gentleman. That guy with the crazy mask and the cloak, right?” Ashley has heard whispers about the Rowan Gentleman, but they’re as muddled as her explanation. Stories and tossed-off rumors that have either made him sound like a psychopath (luring those already down on their luck into some dark basement to be chopped up into pieces) or a saint (spiriting them off to his own personal sanctuary to be fitted with new identities and safe passage to the World or the Realm). People who are in trouble, or with the Wharf Rats and need help, or are in debt to the Bloods, or whatever—they all want to believe that someone will save them. Ashley figures they better save themselves; she’s pretty sure that the Rowan Gentleman is either a myth or a dangerous lunatic.

  The medics lift the dead girl carefully onto a gurney. The Silver Suit notes Ashley’s and Alain’s full names. He notes other things, too, although Ashley isn’t sure what those things are. Clues, she hopes.

  “Your father is worried about you,” the elf tells Alain as he starts toward the doors.

  Ashley sees the muscles of Alain’s back tighten, but his voice is as light as ever. “Give him my best.”

  When the Silver Suit is gone, Ashley sinks down into one of the theater chairs in relief. “That was awful,” she says.

  “Come to dinner with me tonight,” Alain says suddenly. He’s standing with his back to her, still looking at the doorway to the ticket counter and the street.

  “I can’t,” Ashley says. “Not after this. I’m sorry. I just can’t.” She stands up. “Thanks for the scarf, though.”

  Alain does not reply.

  * * *

  The lights are dim on Carnival Street when Ashley lets herself out of the Magic Lantern. Alain offered to walk her home but she refused, wanting to be alone. She keeps seeing the halfie girl, bleeding and dying on the warped floorboards of the stage.

  Her heels click on the cobblestones as she walks in and out of the pools of electric light cast by the streetlamps. The light isn’t very reliable, and everything on either side of her slides away into shadow. Ashley pulls her coat closer around her, wondering if she should have taken Alain up on his offer after all.

  She’s about to turn the corner onto Mock Avenue when a hand reaches out from the darkness and grabs her. All of a sudden, she’s being shoved roughly up against a dirty wall in a narrow alley. She’s too surprised to scream. The guy holding her there is tall, maybe six feet.

  Ashley can hear faint music in the distance, probably coming from The Dancing Ferret up the street. The guy smells like sweat and metal and rage.

>   “I don’t have anything valuable,” Ashley babbles. “Money, or … or anything—”

  He shakes her, slamming her back against the wall. “Where’s Lydia? I saw her go into your crappy little theater.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Lydia—”

  “She’s blond. A halfie. Pretty—”

  “Dead.” Ashley doesn’t mean the word to come out so cold and flat, but fear has robbed her voice of emotion. “She was already hurt when she came in. We tried to help but there wasn’t anything we could do.”

  The man swears viciously. “Did the Silver Suits come?”

  Ashley nods. The man turns his head aside and spits. He’s human, with slicked-back greasy hair and bloodshot gray eyes. He’s got stubble, and he smells like unfamiliar herbs, something bitter and weird.

  “What about Robert?” he says. “Where’s he?”

  “I don’t know any—” Ashley starts.

  The man slams her head against the wall again, this time hard enough for her vision to go bright with pain.

  “I’m s-s-sorry!” she stammers, hoping that she can act her way out of this. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know a Robert; the man believes she does. She just has to do what he expects. “Robert said he needed a drink. Maybe The Factory or O’Donoghue’s. I really, honestly don’t know. Please. Please don’t hurt me.”

  Tears slide down her cheeks. Think of the saddest thing that ever happened to you, her mother used to say. The most frustrating. The worst. Since then, Ashley’s been an expert at crying; she’s never had to use glycerine eyedrops, not even once.

  The man lets go of her arm, and Ashley stumbles back, wiping her eyes.

  “If you see him before I do,” the man says, “you tell him that me and my boys are looking for him. Tell him Nigel Barrow is looking for him. And if he doesn’t come and find me, I am going to burn down the theater with him in it.”

  * * *

  Ashley is still shaking as she closes the front door of the apartment. It’s the whole floor of what used to be a warehouse. It’s been partitioned off into rooms with cheap drywall here and there, or sometimes a Japanese screen or some printed Indian cotton hanging from tacks on the ceiling. There’s a big shared kitchen, a somewhat smaller shared bathroom, even a room of shared computers whose lights blink and glimmer and fade along with the unpredictable electricity.

  This is where Ashley has lived since she came to work at the Magic Lantern. Lots of the actors use the squat, along with some of the tech folks. It’s safer than anywhere she’s slept before.

  A bunch of the others are in the kitchen already, sitting around the big wooden table—it was a door once, in a previous life, now laid across stacked concrete blocks—and they greet her as she comes in.

  “You look all shaken up,” says Renata, pushing a mug of hot tea in her direction. “We were just talking about the dead girl at the theater.”

  “Someone … grabbed me on the way home,” Ashley says, gulping back the tea, tasting lemon balm and rosehips. It burns her tongue, but she’s glad of the distraction from the throbbing of her head and the way her eyes are filling with tears again. “He was looking for her. He didn’t know that she’d … she’d …”

  Nat comes around the table and puts his thin arms around her. “We’re here,” he says. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “No,” Ashley says, slightly hysterical. “It’s not. The man said he would burn down the theater to get to Robert. But there isn’t any Robert! And Alain won’t care. He’ll just buy something else that amuses him, but the theater! The theater will be gone!”

  “Calm down,” says Kit, standing up. “Breathe.”

  A moment later, Nat, Kit, and Renata are hugging her, all at the same time, which should be ridiculous, but she can feel herself relaxing.

  “You poor thing,” Renata says.

  “Had you seen the guy before?” Nat asks. “Hanging around the theater maybe?”

  Ashley shakes his head. “He said his name was Nigel Barrow, though. And Robert … Robert was the name the girl, Lydia, said before she died. She said, ‘Robert told me to wait for the Rowan Gentleman.’ ”

  “Why didn’t she, then?” Renata asks, startling Ashley with the sharpness of her tone. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that,” she says after she notices Ashley’s expression. “It’s just that I don’t know her, and all I care about is that you got hurt.”

  “The Rowan Gentleman isn’t real,” says Ashley. “Waiting for him is like waiting for Santa Claus to save you. Or the Tooth Fairy.”

  Once upon a time, Ashley had waited for someone to save her. She waited in the offices of agents while her mother discussed her commercial potential; she waited in front of cameras where she had to hold painful poses and suck in her gut; she waited on sound stages while directors yelled at her mother for drunkenly disrupting rehearsal. She waited and waited, until one day she saw herself in the mirror, saw her own hollow eyes and slack mouth. That was the day she couldn’t wait anymore.

  What I like about you, Alain had said to her the first time she tried out for one of his productions, is that you never seem to feel much of anything when you’re not onstage. But up there you feel everything.

  It’s called acting, she’d told him. Ashley wonders if he would say the same thing about her now.

  “ ‘If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,’ ” Renata intones, delight in her voice, “ ‘don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street. Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!’ ”

  “A Boiled in Lead song?” Kit says.

  “It’s Kipling, you heathen.” Renata takes a bottle of nettle wine out from one of the stacked boxes they use like cabinets. “Ashley needs a drink and I need one, too, so we’re opening this, and when we’re done, we’ll open three more like it.”

  * * *

  When Ashley finally goes to bed, it’s three in the morning and her throat is hoarse from talking and drinking cheap nettle wine. Her room is one of the partitioned spaces without windows—she lies on top of her bedspread in the stuffy, dank air, tossing and turning, unable to get the dead girl’s face out of her mind. Finally, she gets to her feet and pads toward the kitchen, wanting to splash some cold water on her cheeks. She can tell from the gray light coming in through the window over the sink that it’s almost dawn.

  Just as she turns off the water, she hears a sound—someone moving through the apartment. Not sure why exactly, she steps back into the shadows, watching as the person reaches the front door. It’s Tristan, and he has a rucksack slung over one shoulder. He looks around furtively before opening the door and slipping outside into the hallway.

  All their shoes are lined up by the front door—Ashley finds a pair of ballet flats that she’s pretty sure are hers and jams her feet into them. Otherwise she’s wearing a tank top and flannel pants, but there’s no time to change, and weirder outfits have certainly been seen in Bordertown. She grabs her keys and slips out the door after Tristan.

  She’s never followed anyone before, so she’s pretty impressed with herself that he doesn’t seem to notice as she darts in and out of doorways, keeping to the shadows as the sun rises, turning the gray sky to a hollow blue. He’s taking a familiar route, down Mock to Carnival, and she’s starting to feel foolish as they near the Magic Lantern. It doesn’t look like Tristan is up to anything sinister besides getting to work really, really early.

  As he heads for the backstage door and fumbles with a key, she considers going back to the squat and lying down for a few more hours. The adrenaline is starting to ebb, and she finds herself exhausted. Ashley decides she can nap on one of the couches in the back of the theater. Alain always does; they must be comfortable.

  Tristan disappears through the door.

  And even though Ashley figures that there’s no reason to sneak anymore, she goes around to the front and unlocks that door, pushing it open slowly, stopping for a
long moment with each creak. Alain lives above the Magic Lantern and, like most elves, is a light sleeper.

  She creeps through the darkened theater and through the heavy velvet curtains at the back of the stage. As she walks toward the green room, she hears a rustling coming from the wardrobe area. Curious again, she slips inside and goes toward the back of the room, where the three-way mirrors are.

  There she stops, ducking instinctively behind a hanging row of old-fashioned dresses. Peering between them, she can see Tristan—tying on the black, long-sleeved outfit of the Rowan Gentleman, complete with flowing cloak. The berry-red half-mask hangs around his neck.

  “What foolishness is this?”

  It’s Alain’s voice. Ashley jumps and pulls farther back into the shadows. Alain, striding into the room, seems not at all surprised to see Tristan dressed like a lunatic who’s not supposed to be real. “We planned no—” he says.

  Tristan cuts him off. “I thought I could handle things with Lydia. All this is happening because of me. It’s my fault. I’ve got to make it right.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Robert,” Alain says, and Ashley has to swallow her gasp, because if Alain knew that Tristan was really Robert all along, why did he hide that from the Silver Suit? From her? “We have all made mistakes. Going after Nigel Barrow alone will solve nothing.”

  Alain knows the name of the man who grabbed me, Ashley thinks in a daze.

  “We’ve got to do something, or more kids are going to die,” says Tristan.

  Ashley refuses to start thinking of him as Robert. She’s confused enough as it is.

  Alain paces back and forth. He moves with a restless energy, so utterly unlike his usual self that, for a moment, Ashley wonders if it’s him at all.

  “We don’t know what he’s doing,” Alain says languidly. His voice, at least, is the same. “Lydia was supposed to be the one who would tell us, but she never got the chance. You want us to just go in there unprepared? We’re supposed to be saviors of the lost, not punishers of those who do wrong. The Silver Suits can sort them out.”