I didn’t know what to do. All of the Wyvern augmented brain, just a day after my appointment with Jamie, and I was as clueless as the dumbest dumbfuck in the Crown States.

  I saw the tears, saw Lillian start sobbing, and I turned away.

  “Help,” I said. “Jamie.”

  A heartbeat passed. I raised my voice, “Jamie!”

  But he was already in the doorway.

  He had to be just outside the door.

  How long was he there?

  Didn’t matter. Lillian was hurting and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed.

  Jamie didn’t meet my eyes as he crossed the room, going to Lillian’s side.

  She pressed her head into his chest.

  “Get him out of here,” she said.

  “Step outside, Sy,” Jamie said. “I’ll be there soon.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” I said.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “But step outside.”

  I moved the trolley away, just to be safe, as I headed toward the door. I paused, “She has retractable needles under her fingernails like Fray did. Watch out.”

  “I know, Sy. I’ll be careful. Just go.”

  As I left the room, I heard Lillian’s voice, faint and small.

  “I don’t like the me that says yes to Sylvester.”

  Jamie’s reassurance was short, gentle, and I didn’t process it at all, because of how deep Lillian’s words had cut.

  What was I supposed to do?

  I made my way into the hallway, and ran my fingers through my hair.

  I’d been honest. I’d invited her to meet me halfway, and she’d agreed. In the moment, she’d even seemed happy with it. It was a bittersweet happiness, but… surely that had to be better than having nothing. Loneliness and what Lillian had been talking about, being ruined without each other.

  This was a compromise, and most compromises left both parties a little unhappy, but…

  …They weren’t supposed to leave people like Lillian was right now. Unhappy with herself.

  What was I supposed to do?

  Avoid Lillian? Say goodbye for good? Never touch her or kiss her again?

  How was that better? She herself had said it was bad.

  Was I supposed to avoid the Lambs altogether? I couldn’t see a way around things that didn’t rekindle at least a part of this hurt that I’d just seen in Lillian.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, stopped halfway, and leaned against the wall. The only sound I heard was the rustle of the sheer curtains and the indistinct murmurs of Jamie and Lillian’s voices.

  “Just give me a moment? Talk to him. I know you want to,” Lillian said. No longer whispering or murmuring.

  “Sylvester can hold his own. I’m worried about you.”

  “No. I need a moment to collect my thoughts. I’m a mess, and I can’t even articulate why.”

  “I think you did, and I’ll hardly judge you for being out of sorts.”

  “Please? Just a bit of quiet? I won’t try to escape.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  I closed my eyes, listening as the footsteps approached.

  Jamie gently closed the door behind him.

  “Do you remember our conversation, back when we were dealing with the Devil’s men who had cornered the nanny and the mayor’s children?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I was worried about this sort of thing. The weight of this sort of thing.”

  Weight. The word rang a faint and broken bell. “I didn’t think you were talking about this.”

  “I was. I’ve alluded to it at other times. While I was recuperating from the Ravage, then at the Brothel, twice, and back at Lambsbridge…”

  I shook my head a little.

  “That damn memory of yours, Sy.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “We’re all a little bit twisted, when it comes to matters of the heart,” he said.

  “I remember that. It was our first real, honest conversation. I mean you and me, not me and the old Jamie.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. He looked in the direction of the door, cracked it open, peeking at Lillian, and then shut it. He stayed there for a moment, his back to me, before turning around again.

  “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

  “You miscalculated. You didn’t account for… how she felt.”

  “Every step of the way, she gave the okay. She wanted the kiss, she challenged me to fish for the packet. She said I could search for the tooth, touch her hands, examine her shoes. Her body language, all the while, right up until the end, it reinforced that. She was happy in the moment.”

  “It still wasn’t okay, Sy.”

  “What is!?” I asked. “What was I supposed to do that would make all that alright!?”

  “Think beyond the moment, for once. I know it’s not common practice for you, but think longer-term,” Jamie said. “Think about Lillian having to go back to the Lambs, with her feelings for you rekindled and all stirred up.”

  I set my jaw.

  “And she has to live with the fact that she said yes, and that she was weak and romantic in the moment instead—”

  “Stop,” I said, my voice firm.

  Jamie stopped. He fixed me with a level, unreadable stare.

  “There’s nothing weak about Lillian. There’s nothing bad about being romantic.”

  “I agree,” Jamie said. “But right now, she feels weak. She wasn’t thinking straight, and let’s be entirely honest. You aren’t exactly operating on a level playing field, are you?”

  “Are you talking about the ropes? Because—”

  He stabbed his finger into my chest. “I’m talking about you, Sy. You. You’re a manipulator. Yes, she said yes. But you led her to that answer.”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you saying you didn’t?”

  “I’m saying—I might have. But that’s hardly fair.”

  “Existence isn’t fair, Sy. Especially ours,” Jamie said.

  “I’m me. Manipulation is me. I toy with people. I toyed with her for years and she called it a lovely romance that she won’t ever be able to live up to. Because that’s how she operates and that’s how I operate and that’s how we function as a pair.”

  “There is no pair anymore, Sy. You left her. You can’t cling to the scraps that remain.”

  “There’s more than scraps,” I said, more defensively than I might have liked.

  “When you left the room, she said Hayle warned her about you, after your first kiss. That she only just now realized why. It’s not because you’ll cross the line. It’s because you’re clever enough to redefine the line. You have to realize that dragging out a half-relationship with Lillian isn’t going to make her happy in the long run. Because I think, right there in that room, in that moment that your time with her took a turn, Lillian sure realized it.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Jamie? Because you can say ‘life isn’t fair’, but that’s a whole different ballpark from ‘Sylvester can never ever have a relationship, because that relationship will never be a level playing field’. And that sounds pretty shitty.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Jamie said.

  I shook my head.

  “There are people who can stand on a level playing field with you,” Jamie said. “Experiments.”

  “Mary?” I asked. “Started down that road. Would be even unhealthier than…” I flailed inarticulately in the direction of the door.

  “It was good of you to realize that,” Jamie said, voice soft.

  “I’m not about to wait for Abby or one of the twins to grow up. I’ll be a goner before then.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said.

  “So, what, you?” I asked, a little bitter.

  Jamie was silent. He didn’t meet my eyes.

  “I like girls. You and I both know very well that I like girls, Jamie.”

  “I know.”

  “So what, you want me to go find some back alley doctor, see if they can mess with my head, twist things around? Would that make you happy?”

  I realized the words that were coming out of my mouth as I spoke them. This was a dark echo to a prior conversation. One that had played through in my head at least once a night for years now.

  “No need for something that extreme,” Jamie said. “Not least because I don’t think your Wyvern-altered brain would do very well with people carving things up in there.”

  “Then—”

  “Sy,” he said. “I’ve come to know you. I’ve made peace with that. With who you are. I’m okay, I think. Your company is good as-is.”

  I stopped. Then I found the words. Because I couldn’t let the conversation end with that.

  I spoke with more bitterness than I would have liked, “So all of this. Your counsel, telling me how to deal with Lillian. It’s biased. Because you like me.”

  “I do. I wouldn’t have come to find you in Tynewear like I did if I didn’t like you at least a little. And I am biased. So you do have to take what I say with a grain of salt, here.”

  I screwed up my face, scowling, then ran my hands through my hair again.

  “Sometimes there are no compromises, Sy. Sometimes the reality is that things just don’t work out, and you have to make peace with that.”

  There would be no working things out with Lillian, if Jamie was right.

  “Maybe… go for a walk, Sy?” Jamie suggested. “I’ll do what I can to smooth things over with Lillian. We’ll get things mostly normal, then decide where to go from there, once she’s able to have a conversation with us.”

  I drew in a deep breath, and then sighed.

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  I headed toward the stairs, to make my way out of the building. Jamie, at the door, stopped.

  “Sy.”

  I turned to look up at him.

  “Just so I know, there’s one thing I don’t get, and I want to talk to Lillian while armed with all the information.”

  I nodded.

  “How in the world is it you’re so damned clueless and innocent about matters, and then, there, with her, you’re different? She even noticed it, almost right off the bat. That you were flirting, that you were interested in a way that you usually aren’t.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That.”

  “You’ve missed and inadvertently stumbled on rude innuendo a hundred times in the last six months. I just can’t reconcile that with this.”

  I put two fingers to my head, then turned them, as if I were turning a key in the lock.

  “What?” Jamie asked.

  “Wyvern,” I said. “You gave me my appointment just yesterday. I was anticipating this. This time with Lillian. So I took those feelings and ideas out of the box.”

  “The box,” Jamie said. There was a kind of horror on his face.

  “Yeah. Compartmentalized it, buried it, locked it away.”

  “Sy, you can’t—you can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” I asked, offended.

  “Because it’s one thing if they warp you, if this messed up existence of ours and life with the Academy twists us around and makes us strange, but it’s something else altogether if you do it to yourself!”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s not f—” Jamie started. He shook his head. “That’s not good, Sy. Why would you even do that in the first place?”

  “Because of the nights I spent with Mary. The nights I slept with Lillian? At first, anyhow. I guess I did it because I didn’t want to spoil that. Didn’t want it to get weird, didn’t want to push them away. Those moment, frozen in time, were good enough as they were. I didn’t want to let those feelings push me to change that and risk breaking it. So I made myself innocent. More innocent.”

  The horror was still on his face. I didn’t quite understand it.

  “You castrated yourself.”

  “I didn’t castrate myself. I… asserted control. I left just enough of the less-innocent parts there because they seemed to amuse you and the others. It’s really, really not that important, Jamie. Hell, I halfway forgot about doing it until I started thinking about spending time with Lillian again, and making the most of it.”

  Jamie, always rock solid, looked anything but in the moment, “You cannot alter yourself and then forget about it, Sy!”

  “Obviously I didn’t. I caught myself in time,” I said.

  “You can’t—Sy, no. That’s not fair.”

  “You almost said that a bit ago. That this wasn’t fair. What’s not fair about it, Jamie?”

  “I was here for you, Sy. I left everything behind, I came to help you. And I thought—I thought hey, you had feelings, you’d weighed them, you decided there was no chance with me, and that was fine. But you didn’t even consider it. Your feelings were put away, tucked in some dark corner of your mind and locked away. I never had a chance to earn a place in your heart.”

  I was supposed to say something back, but that last line drove it home. Now I was the one who felt the horror that Jamie seemed to be evidencing, because it was dawning on me just why he felt that way.

  It had taken longer to get there, but in the long run, this conversation was playing out just like my last conversation with Jamie.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But—you know I—”

  I couldn’t bring myself to say it again.

  “There was never a chance,” I said. “Please trust me on that.”

  “But you can’t know, can you?” Jamie asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure.”

  “I would have appreciated you letting me have that point-one percent chance,” Jamie said. “I gave a lot to be here for you, maybe even years of my existence. I don’t regret that, even now, but it sure would have been nice if you gave me that iota of a chance, in exchange.”

  I could see the hurt. I could see the damage I’d inadvertently done. The wedge.

  I didn’t know what to say, and there was no calling out for help, asking for some other person to come in from just around the corner and rescue me from this situation.

  “Just tell me,” Jamie said. “Tell me that, in the end, my feelings or the possibility of me having feelings wasn’t a reason you walled off that part of yourself. That you didn’t throw up that barrier in between us.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it.

  “You did,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Just go for your walk, Sy,” he said. “I’ll talk to Lillian. I’ll… think things through. We’ll talk later.”

  “I knew this would happen,” I said. “Or something like it. That’s why I put that barrier there. That there was a chance you would get jealous, or upset, or my feelings in another direction would push you away. I put the barrier there because I valued you. I thought it was safe take it down for Lillian, because she was a known element, except it wasn’t, and this conversation—”

  “Stop talking, Sy,” Jamie said.

  I stopped talking.

  “Go for your walk.”

  I turned, taking the stairs.

  I went for my walk. I spent an hour wandering the city, paying only minimal attention to the possibility that the Lambs were trying to track me or find me.

  My thoughts were a mess. I tried to organize them, but so many individual things seemed impossible to recover, impossible to salvage.

  I was hurt and angry and against all logic and rationale, I resented Lillian and Jamie for making this so hard.

  No compromise at all? No flexibility? Even the compromises I’d taken upon myself years ago were coming around to bite me.

  It was dark by the time I finished my walk. I had the wherewithal to be secretive as I made my way back to the building, making sure I wasn’t followed.

  Hardly mattered.

  No, it really didn’t matter at all.

  I made my way up the stairs to that hallway and that room. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest as I pushed the door open, and found the room empty.

  No Lillian, no Jamie.

  Two glasses and two lengths of rope sat on the trolley, but nothing littered it. All of the pills and blades, large and small, had been picked up and put where they belonged.

  On the table, the sleeves had been picked up and taken with. The gun had been left there. I picked it up and tucked it into my waistband.

  I remained there, taking in the moment, for a very long time, the wind blowing in through the windows.

  Would Jamie be back? I had no earthly idea.

  Could I endure the conversation when he did get back? The hurt looks? I had no idea.

  Just in case, I found a scrap of paper, and scrawled out a short message.

  It was shitty, and it was unfair. He deserved better.

  But I couldn’t endure the thought of waiting and him not showing up. I couldn’t endure having that conversation if he did show up, and having it end in an interminable break.

  I’d had that conversation in my head so many times by now that I couldn’t bear to give it more power than it had. The eerie echo of it we’d just had was too telling, as it was.

  Those who dwell in history are doomed to relive it, I thought to myself.

  I looked down at my message.

  Thanks for the last six months.—Sy.

  I’d have to find Emmett before Jamie and Lillian did. Get some answers, on the promise of getting Lillian back to them. See if I couldn’t get Pierre in the bargain, while I was at it. If I couldn’t, then I’d be directionless.

  “At least I can’t let you guys down, eh?”

  The assorted Lambs and would-be Lambs, apparitions, surrounded me. Evette, Gordon, both Jamies, Mary, Lillian, Helen, Ashton, Duncan, Emmett, Abby, Nora, and Lara.

  “I was stupid,” I said. “Tried too hard to be a Lamb. Hold on to the past, you know?”

  I could picture the individual expressions, the body language. I appreciated the sympathy, hollow as it was.

  “Let’s get out of this damn city,” I said. “Get ourselves into some trouble.”

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  Thicker than Water—14.1

  The trains had been outfitted with more seats, to make up for the higher demand on the lines that were still active. Less leg room, less aisle space. The new benches had armrests placed to divide them, constraining how many people could sit on each bench, with an eye toward encouraging more people per bench.