Appalled, he felt a lump thicken in his throat, and fought the temptation to finish his thought, furiously as he’d ever fought anything. But though she herself showed not the faintest flicker of expression to confirm these traitor words in his head, it was too late — even unspoken, they hung between them, like the stink of powder after gunplay.
You do not, not ever, get to tell me you really did love me, after all.
Took near a minute of the silence that followed for Chess to realize that the everlasting “London” rain had finally stopped, along with the noise of that threadbare, cycling crowd. Hugging himself hard, he turned a slow circle, blinking. Down all seven streets, from here to their vanishing points, the Dials were empty but for him and Oona: every fellow phantom gone, every building hollow and silent, every laneway glinting slick. No rat-skitter or pigeons’ coo to break the stillness; no footfall over the grey rooftops, pavers dull as teeth below, shingles like scales above. The black sky held no stars.
For a moment, the entire scene seemed to ripple, no more than a hastily sketched picture on threadbare black silk curtains, stirred in a cold breeze.
“What’s it matter, any’ow?” Oona asked, finally. “Don’t know why I put myself out. You’re dead now, same as me.”
“I am not. My body’s still up there, still alive — ”
“Occupied, too. Which means you can’t do nothin’ wiv it, don’t it?”
“Well, I ain’t about to stop tryin’!”
She gave him a long look — and smiled again, finally, with far more warmth than last time. “That’s different, then. Now, you ready to get out of ’ere, or what? ’Cause I sure am, and I’m thinkin’ it’ll take the both of us.”
“Be one fancy piece of work if it did, seein’ as how you ain’t even a hex no more.”
“You neither, cully — not down ’ere. But I’m sure we can figure out somefing.”
Chess’s lips drew back. “Fuck ‘we,’ Ma. Might’a slipped your mind how you ain’t ever been exactly reliable — for me, anyways.”
Oona slid one small hand out from under his cuff, considering her fingernails as though they were little horn mirrors, nonchalant. “Oh, I could be, wiv the right incentive. ’Sides which,” jabbing a thumb skyward, “them lot upstairs been droppin’ lines for weeks, trawlin’ for your attention, and you can’t even see ’em. Can ya?”
Christ, how Chess loathed this feeling of being just a step behind, that glee some so-called “smart” people took in changing subjects too fast for him to follow: Oona, Songbird, the Enemy. Hell, even Ash Rook’d talked down to him at first, though — give the big bastard his due — he’d also been the one person ever tried to break himself of that habit, if for no other reason than Chess had told him to either do so, or get reacquainted with his own right hand.
“Seems not,” he said, between clenched teeth. “Can’t even say I know which ‘lot’ you’re talkin’ on, unless — ” But here memory broke past anger. “Yancey,” he breathed.
“That’s her name, then, Miss Table-tapper?” He nodded. “Well, la di da. Strong little missus, ain’t she? She’s been yammerin’ away at you for donkey’s years, wiv never a bit o’ joy. Which might be why she’s suddenly decided t’talk t’me, instead.”
Chess’s hackles rose. “Right now?”
“Says ’er friends are layin’ a trail for you, to take you up an’ out. Which makes sense — this place’s been flush wiv silver, the last few days. But you don’t know why that is, do ya? ’Scuse me again, for not rememberin’ you don’t know nothin’.”
“And whose damn fault is that?”
“Patience, boyo. The way a call from Up Over looks down ’ere, it’s like a silver thread you catch ’old of, then tug at it t’follow it up.” She plucked something from the air alongside the dial-column, traced it, as though running her fingers up an invisible wire. “And that’s where you’ll need me, to show you the way. The show you where any one of ’em is.”
“You been’ . . . seein’ these call-threads. All the time. Since I got here.”
“That’s when they started, yeah.”
“And you never told me.”
“Didn’t fink you’d be amenable. Was I wrong?”
“More like ’cause you already tried to tug on one yourself and didn’t get nowhere, is what I’d guess.”
Oona let her eyes drop. “’Course,” she admitted. “Can’t expect you to trust me now, though, can I? Not when I always did leave you to pay the butcher’s bill whenever I could, ’cause on the pipe, it’s take what you can and keep it, wiv barely any room for anything else. No changing it now. But I never did nothin’ to you I wouldn’t’ve took myself.”
“Oh, no doubt. And that’s what taught me to reckon my own price higher.”
Oona nodded, face rigid, silver gleam of the rain-drenched streets reflected in her downcast eyes. They stood there a moment, long and longer. Chess would’ve reckoned it by heartbeats, if either of ’em had had one.
“Maybe it’s that I ’ad to be like I was,” she offered, at last. “So you’d turn out like you are. Like you ’ad to be.”
Raw as he was feeling, the guffaw that burst out of Chess at this last piece of ridiculousness caught him by surprise, but he was grateful for it all the same.