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Bailey shakes Quinn’s hand when he wins the game, because to do otherwise would be folly.
“No permanent damage,” he says, and Quinn smiles.
“A little permanent damage,” he suggests, as sleazily as he ever has.
Bailey shakes his head. “I want her walking in those orphanage doors tomorrow on her own two feet,” he says.
“Deal,” Quinn says, and he slips Bailey a little extra before he takes your arm in his.
Bailey warns you—you look like you listen, but you look like a lot of things. In your tight little leather dress, you look like you belong on the arms of men like Quinn and Avery.
And then Bailey tidies his lounge, sets his snake back in her terrarium, and goes to bed.
There’s a knock on his door at sunrise, and Bailey opens it, half-expecting you to walk in.
You don’t.
There’s a young man standing there, wearing a delivery service uniform. He’s carrying a fruit basket.
“The mayor sends his consolations on your loss,” he says, eyes wide, and Bailey realizes that he recognizes him. A former resident.
He takes the basket. It would be worse to refuse it.
Quinn has done this before, too comprehending of the position the orphans occupy to treat them as anything but disposable. And he disposes of them too readily and too playfully. Daring Bailey to try to stop him.
Bailey can’t say he would have done anything differently. Not with his own debts, not with the upkeep of the orphanage.
If he’d known he would be receiving a fucking fruit basket as payment for your life, he would have done anything differently. He would have handed you your documents with a smile on his face if it could have taken you out of Quinn’s grasp.
And Quinn would have taken someone else.
In a few days, Bailey will go out to the dump. He knows where Quinn leaves bodies. He’ll cart you back to the orphanage, and he’ll bury you in the back garden. Sometimes, he thinks that’s what it’s there for.
There are people he needs to tell.
Robin takes the news poorly, face crumpled in a parody of agony. She only cries harder when he tells her he’ll avoid collecting on her debt, given the circumstances.
Bailey wishes he didn’t understand how she feels.
Avery comes to the orphanage a few hours later, as the temple’s bells toll out to summon in sinners.
“Care to explain the message I received this morning?” Avery asks, waving his mobile. “From our esteemed mayor?”
“In my office,” Bailey says, gesturing for Avery to follow him. The walls have ears, here, orphans gathered around for hints on their future.
“In your office,” Avery says, not budging. “Of course. You’d hate to allow me to harm one of your wards.”
A girl at the other end of the hall drops a mop, and Bailey glares at her as she scrambles to pick it up. “That’s my business, Avery,” Bailey says. “Not yours.”
“Of course it is,” Avery says. His voice is far too loud for the old building, calling out to anyone who dares to listen. “Did Quinn let you fuck her too, before she died?” His expression turns into a bitter smile. “Or was it after?”
Bailey doesn’t have a response. The girl who dropped the mop has shoved her fist halfway into her mouth, biting away the urge to speak.
The front door of the orphanage swings open, sending shocking morning light into the hall.
When you step inside, you momentarily blot out the sun. It’s fitting, because you look as untouched as you’ve ever been.
Your sundress is new—starched, clean, pretty—and your hair is brushed, and the bruises on your skin are nothing more than the usual, for one of his wards.
Quinn lied, Bailey thinks. Quinn thought he’d have a laugh at Bailey’s expense.
Avery, for once, is also speechless.
So are you. You look between Bailey and Avery as you pass them, steps shockingly even on the wooden floor. Bailey can’t make himself look into your eyes.
“Well,” Avery says. “That damned prankster.” He sighs hugely. “You had us worried sick, doll.”
You just stop, and turn to face him, before you continue your march towards the stairs.
Bailey sees it—something pale, pulsating, wriggling, just inside the sleeve of your sundress.
“Wait,” he says, grabbing your shoulder, and you stand still, obligingly, while he plucks it from your arm. It’s squishy, soft, the scent of dirt on you stronger as his fingers close around it and he brings it up to the light.
A piece of lint. Not alive at all.
You look up at him, a wordless question, and Bailey steps back. “I won’t have one of my wards dressed in damaged clothing,” he excuses.
You don’t answer. You just climb the creaking stairs to your room.
Avery stares up after you. “I’ll be taking her out on Saturday,” he says, decisive.
He leaves, and Bailey watches him, and then he glares around at the other orphans. There’s a group of them all dressed up, fresh-faced in their Sunday best. They follow Avery out before he realizes the odd thing. Ordinarily, you would have been with them.
Bailey pays more attention to you than he has before, during the next few weeks.
You seem normal for one of his wards. Shaken, quiet, skin sunk and bruised. You don’t speak to him, but you pay him on time, handing the notes over without an expression on your face.
He understands. Anyone lucky enough to survive Quinn’s pleasures is, perhaps, their own kind of unlucky.
But he keeps seeing things that don’t make sense.
There isn’t any school in April, and so wherever you go, all day and all night, it’s never any of Bailey’s business. He’s sure you’re still going out with Avery, because the man seems satisfied.
Bailey keeps looking in, though, when he passes your bedroom door, and there never seems to be a light on, even when he hears movement from within.
Robin is always playing games alone. Crying, too, even though you survived. Perhaps you’re telling her what happened, some vicarious sadism at your own mutilation.
And there’s an odd, almost familiar smell that follows in your wake.
Avery brings you to Bailey’s next poker game, and you aren’t in any of the fancy, flimsy things you’ve shown up wearing before, just that same white sundress. He’s only seen you in that, since you came back. He hasn’t woken you up to pay your debts, so perhaps you still wear pajamas. Bailey wouldn’t know.
He doesn’t want to know if you sleep.
Quinn sees you, and turns pale as death. “She’s—not—not again,” he says, fingers slipping on his cards.
“Come, now,” Leighton says, sweet as anything. “I know she’s a better lay than that.”
You don’t speak. You haven’t for a month. Bailey waves you over to his drinks cabinet, and he watches you in the mirror as you pour. It would be easy to miss—and he thinks that the others do—but you lift each glass to your lips, quickly, before you carry the tray over.
Bailey lifts his vodka up, and studies it discreetly. There’s something inside it, some illusion of pale movement.
Bailey knows that even if the thing he’s seeing was inside his glass, it wouldn’t still be moving. It would have been preserved.
None of his guests notice, sipping their drinks with obvious pleasure. Even Quinn takes his, too tempted to resist.
You stick close to Quinn, but you aren’t helping him. You’re looking at him, brushing past him, bringing him more brandy. Bailey watches you with sick fascination, whatever game you’re playing too close to the surface to be noticed by anyone but him.
And Quinn? Quinn plays to lose.
Well. Bailey supposes that whatever he did to you was only fun the first time. He seems, Bailey thinks, to be the sort to take trophies.
When Avery wins, it’s a relief to everyone. You even take his arm as you walk away with him.
Bailey cleans his flat alone again, and then, out of some odd instinct, he drives to the orphanage to wait for you. He thinks he remembers what Avery said he was planning tonight.
Avery doesn’t bring you back to the orphanage, and so Bailey does what he never does. He goes looking.
He knows about the types of parties that are thrown in this town, and when he pulls his car up outside of Remy’s estate, he clicks the safety off on his gun.
There are no guards. That ought to have been his first warning.
Inside, there’s a stench of iron and filth, the parquet slick under his feet. There are quiet sounds, the gurgling and moaning of bodies unaware they are dying.
A—a girl, he must call her a girl, because the only monsters in the world are men like him—looks up from her meal, face dark and wet with the meat of the still-breathing elk-masked thing spread out beneath her.
Bailey recognizes them both. He had sold her to him, once.
He continues on, and so does she, eating without the use of her hands.
Bailey clutches his gun. He doubts it will save him.
You’re in the center, untouched, no blood on you, still in that damned white sundress. Bailey can’t see Avery. He doesn’t know if he wants to.
You smile when you see him, teeth inhuman in number, the first expression he’s seen on your face since before—he can say it—before you died. You’re holding something clutched in your fist, pale white, and for a second, Bailey thinks the bones are yours.
And then you open your mouth.
Your tongue—isn’t. Bailey feels a shock of anger at Quinn, your lost value still the first thing on his mind, habits formed from long practice. Care for the money, not for the people.
“What are you doing?” he asks, before he can stop himself, lowering the gun because he somehow knows it will do nothing.
The bones disappear into the grave of your mouth, a white so pale sliding down your hollow throat. You have to fight them down, some close-to-human reflex almost like gagging.
And then you stand up, smiling, pleased with yourself. You tilt your head at him, a gesture more animal than human. Shall we?
Bailey started this, in a way. He’s willing to see it through. He leads you towards his car.
From another room, Bailey hears a scream, and a thick, wet crunch. He wants to—to stop it, even though he knows he needs to stay out of it. All he has is a gun.
You keep walking, like you already know where he’s going.
So Bailey follows you, trying to push the smell of blood away, and winding up with another, still eerie scent.
He smells it more when you get into his car, dirt and decay, like the first time he’d ever moved a body. But you look as new as the day he told you about your debts. It might, Bailey thinks, even be the same sundress.
You still do up your seatbelt, even though Bailey thinks he and you both know what you are.
He hates being here with you, this dead thing in a girl’s skin. He hates that he could have stopped it.
He drives you home in uneasy silence.
“Am I next?” Bailey asks, in the car, parked outside the orphanage with the doors still locked. If he dies, he wants it to be out here, where the locked doors might keep you from getting in. He’s not sure if he’s protecting them or himself.
You look over at him, and he hears the unspoken question. Do you need to be?
“No,” he says, hoping it’s true. He’ll—he’ll make it true, if it isn’t. He thinks about the girl he’d seen. He thinks about Robin, the most useless wretch of all, with sharpened teeth and inhuman hunger. “It’s Quinn, isn’t it.”
You don’t nod, but he knows he got it right.
Bailey thinks about the videos Quinn has tricked him into looking at. He thinks about the timestamps he’s seen in the lower left corners, focusing on those instead of the center of the screen. They’ve always been so much longer than he thought they could be. “Make him suffer,” he says. Your look at him is startled, some new thought finally breaking its way into your dead-set mind. “I’ve lost valuable merchandise to him,” Bailey says, the lame excuse lying cold and wet in the car.
You smile, mouth closed. He notices that now. You must have spent time, in this postmortem month, developing a smile that didn't spark fright.
Bailey reaches for the door handle, and finds it locked. Your cold hand settles on his skin. You’re looking at the orphanage.
“You won’t—do anything to them,” Bailey says, grasping for authority. “The orphans.”
You just look at him.
Bailey understands.
“Are you going tonight?” he asks, and you shrug. “You certainly poured him enough brandy to keep him down.”
You don’t smile. But Bailey sees your teeth. Hundreds, thousands, he thinks, although he knows that they can’t all fit in your mouth. He can’t look closely at them. They blur.
You don’t want Quinn not to fight. You don’t need him passive. It doesn’t matter that he’s easily twice your size.
Bailey feels, for the first time in a long time, sick.
“Well,” he says. “You’d better get going.”
You look up at the orphanage, at a light on in an upstairs window that Bailey thinks he recognizes.
“A clean break is better,” he says, gruff as anything, years of practice letting him make the statement true. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”
He doesn’t know why he doesn’t think you won’t tell her anything tomorrow, other than the fact that he knows it’s true.
The doors unlock.
You step out of the car before he does, looking small and vulnerable in the open air. The act might almost fool Bailey, if he didn’t know better.
He sends orphans out into the world like this. He’s part of it.
For a moment, two monsters look at each other. He nods. So do you.
And then you slip into the night like you’re part of it.
Bailey doesn’t bother to visit Quinn’s house the next morning.
He finds the man’s body—what’s left of it—in the landfill, wretched, a host for insects, his chest hollowed out. His face is twisted, his eyes ruptured, his lips pulled back and his teeth gone.
Bailey calls the police. He wouldn’t have, before, but the mayor’s death requires a paper trail.
And then he lights up a cigarette, and tries to avoid looking at the body.
“Good find,” the coroner says, as the officers she brought with her take down measurements. “I can’t believe anyone missed it.”
“Missed it?” Bailey asks. He’d hardly had to walk into the landfill at all. The body was simply there.
The coroner shakes her head. “Look at that,” she says, gesturing to the flies in Quinn’s chest cavity. “That species arrives later in the decomposition process. And there’s hardly any difference in temperature, between the man and his surroundings.”
Bailey doesn’t have the patience for this. “Your point?” he asks.
“This man’s been dead for a month,” the coroner says. “Since Easter, I think. I can’t believe no one in his office noticed.”
“Vacation,” the clerk who’d showed up says. He’s got a handkerchief pressed to his nose. Bailey thinks he’s seen the man in the town hall before. “Allegedly. His office was robbed last night as well.”
Bailey leaves them to it.
He looks for you across town—you haven’t been stupid enough to turn yourself in, but you aren’t anywhere else he thinks to look for you. Not the temple, not the school, not the brothel or the docks or the train station trying to skip town.
So he returns to the orphanage, and, of course, there you are.
You’re staring at your garden, the little plot you’ve been growing flowers in. The poppies aren’t yet blooming, merely sprouting. You’ve been spending too much time out here, lately. Bailey can’t imagine why.
You turn to him, and Bailey wonders how he didn’t see it sooner. The thinness of your skin, the pallor, the lack of focus in your eyes. The bruises are the same ones you died with, never healed.
You didn’t really come back.
He’s as silent as you are, as you peel that damned white sundress off, fold it, lay it on a sun-warmed stone. You’re naked beneath it. The wound in your chest is half-closed, messy, some self-conscious attempt made to close it postmortem, the same way the flayed skin of your breasts has been stuck badly back on. Your sex, what he can see of it, is a ruin of bruises. Your bare feet, in the cool, dark earth, are missing toenails.
The inventory of your injuries cannot compare to the effect—Bailey would have known you to be a dead thing in this moment, had he not already understood.
You step closer, breath rotten, eyes looking through him. Your voiceless mouth opens. The maggots inside are crawling, roiling, wanting out, and Bailey would stumble back if he was not rooted to the spot.
“What do you want from me,” Bailey says, scrambling for his usual control, unable to make it a question.
You answer anyway.
You bring his hand up to the wound in your chest, over your heart, and his fingers sink in, the putrefying meat of your body accepting him easily, some final penetration. Something wriggles against his fingers. Your flesh is soft and cool around him.
Bailey doesn’t ask if you’re certain, because he already knows the answer. He finds your heart, cold and slick and unbeating, and he tugs, and you close your dead eyes and tremble in something that could almost be pleasure, and you—
You crumble before him, around him, decades of decomposition in an instant, flesh falling into the dirt, bones dry and white before they, too, disintegrate, returning to dust.
Your heart in his fist is nothing but rich earth, the same as the ground below his feet.
Bailey stares down at the poppies, at the new fertilizer, and he breathes in the changed scent. Growing things, warm soil, the end of a late spring day.
The folded sundress is the only sign you were ever there.