Not Quite Human

Chapter 22

Andrew looked at the man across from him.
Michael. His bodyguard, apparently, for the foreseeable future. Perhaps the permanent scowl came with the job — an occupational requirement, intimidation being a professional asset. Not that Michael needed to try particularly hard. He was six-foot-something, with a long scar running from one cheek down to the corner of his mouth, as though someone had started drawing a Joker smile and lost interest halfway through. Andrew found him plenty intimidating without the scowl.
He also didn't love the smoking. Michael appeared to be in an ongoing, committed relationship with his cigarettes — Andrew had stopped counting after what he estimated was the hundredth of the day, and he wasn't confident that was the ceiling. The room got genuinely foggy by nightfall. Andrew was grateful his bed was by the window.
For what it was worth, the rest of life in the palace was easier than he'd expected. The sleep was the strangest part — deep and uninterrupted, the kind he hadn't had in years. The absence of beatings took some adjusting to as well, not because he missed them, but because his body kept bracing for something that didn't come.
He and Neil had fallen into a habit of meeting in the library in the evenings, the hour when Michael disappeared to smoke with the other guards. Neil was easy to be around. Andrew wasn't entirely sure what to call what they were — he'd been without a proper friend for long enough that he'd lost the reference point. Jeremy had been the closest thing, and Jeremy was gone. They'd understood each other, he and Jeremy, in the way that people do when they've survived the same things. But surviving together and actually helping each other had been two different things. In master's household, you kept your head down and looked after yourself. That was the only rule that mattered.
He wasn't in master's household anymore.
"I told you you wouldn't believe it," Andrew said, affecting a pout. "But I'm serious. A hundred is the minimum. The room gets completely foggy by midnight — I'm only still breathing because my bed's next to the window."
Neil had been laughing for a solid thirty seconds, small tears at the corners of his eyes. Andrew found he didn't mind being laughed at, not when it was like this.
Neil had seemed tense since morning, though. Andrew had noticed. He didn't ask — it wasn't his place yet — but later Neil mentioned it himself, in the offhand way he had of dropping serious things into conversation like they were nothing.
His father had shown up in his head. Uninvited, obviously. Had apparently apologised — as though an apology were something Neil could do anything useful with — and said something about there being two polar halves to his soul, which Neil summarised as blah with impressive efficiency. The man, apparently, wasn't especially committed to staying dead.
Neil had no idea whether any of it was true, and even less interest in finding out, given that his father had spent most of his life being manipulative and deeply unpleasant. Was a convenient second half of the soul supposed to account for all of that? Neil had decided not to engage with it. He'd also discovered, through necessity, that screaming shut up loudly enough inside his own head was an effective deterrent. Andrew filed this away as potentially useful information.
Damien came into the library looking like a man who had just realised he'd been doing a puzzle with the answer face-up on the table.
He was annoyed with himself. Genuinely, visibly annoyed — the kind that came from Nerezza having to point something out that he should have seen weeks ago. Andrew was in the castle. Andrew had lived in the place they were trying to find. Andrew knew the way.
It was, as Damien put it through slightly gritted teeth, very obvious in retrospect.
Neil's face went through several things when Damien asked Andrew to take them there. The logic was clear — the discomfort was clearer. Andrew had never shown any sign of willingness to go near that place again, and asking him to was asking a great deal. But Andrew was also too frightened to refuse outright, and that dynamic made Neil deeply uncomfortable.
Andrew, for his part, sat quietly and did the calculations. He couldn't give an address. The place was a derelict shack in Blackwoods with no postcode and no name — just a track off a track off a road that most maps didn't bother including. But he could point the way. He could do it from a distance. A safe distance. A mile, at minimum. Possibly more.
Damien agreed without hesitation. He didn't need Andrew inside — he needed a direction. And once they had a direction, Nerezza and Alaster could handle the rest. Both of them had been restless for a while, too long without an outlet, and Loki had been exploiting that restlessness with considerable creativity. Giving them something real to sink into would be a mercy for everyone involved.
He decided to bring Abbadon as well. Abbadon and Hissana had been at odds lately — a tension that had been building steadily — and to make things worse, Eyene and Lady Legasus had both disappeared without explanation, leaving Abbadon in a mood that was best redirected toward something productive. This seemed like the right kind of distraction.