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"What are you?" he asked

Not who, but what

She didn’t answer The elevator doors closed and she was alone with her reflection, in which she sahat Kaz had seen She earing nothing but soaked jeans and a fil to her skin Her hair clumped in blue coils around her neck, like Issa’s serpents, and rust-streaked bandages hung loose froainst the blood, her skin looked translucent, al herself and shaking like soh, but it was her face that caught her Her cheek elling fro her into the chair, and her head was set in a hard-jawed doard tilt so that her eyes were hooded in shadow She looked like soht She looked… not entirely hued herself down the hall She had to cliet onto her balcony, and break a pane out of her balcony door to get into her apartave out or her shivering incapacitated her, and finally she was inside, stripping off her wet clothes She dragged herself onto her bed, tugged a quilt around her, curled up in a ball, and sobbed

Who are you? she asked herself, reel’s question, and the wolf’s But it was Kaz’s that reverberated through her, an echo that wouldn’t die

What are you?

What?

20

TRUE STORY

Karou spent the weekend alone in her apartment, feverish, bruised, sliced, slashed, andfrom bed on Saturday was torture Her h to snap Everything hurt Everything It was hard to pick out one pain from the next, and she looked like a brochure on do coconut proportions and bloo Zuzana for help but abandoned the idea when she realized she didn’t have her phone It ith her coat and shoes, bag, wallet, keys, and sketchbook, back at the shop She could have e-ined how Zuzana would react to the sight of her, and she knew her friend wouldn’t let things pass this ti She was too tired to co herself Tylenol and tea and passing the weekend in a daze of chills and sweats, pain and nightined sounds and looked to her s, hoping as she had never hoped to see Kishmish with a note, but he didn’t co on her--not Kaz, wholass, and not Zuzana, whom she’d conditioned to accept her absences ary silence She had never felt so alone

Monday came, and she still didn’t leave the apartment Erratically she kept up with the tea and Tylenol Sleep was a carousel of nightain--the angel, the thing on Izîl’s back, the wolf chiht would have changed, but nothing else did except perhaps that herAnd rang She pulled herself over to the console by the door and croaked, "Hello?"

"Karou?" It was Zuzana "Karou, what the hell? Buzz lad to hear her friend’s voice, so glad someone had come to check on her, that she burst into tears When Zuzana cae of her bed, tears strea down her battered face She came to a halt, all five-almost-feet atop cartoonish platform boots, and said, "Oh Oh God Karou" She was across the tiny room in a streak Her hands were cool from the wintry air, and her voice was soft, and Karou put her head on her friend’s shoulder and cried for long ot better after that

Zuzana got her settled without asking questions, then went out for supplies: soup; bandages; a box of butterfly closures for sealing the split flesh along Karou’s collarbone, arel’s sword had cut her

"These are going to be so with the sa one to the hospital right away"

"I did," said Karou, thinking of Yasri’s balm "Sort of"

"And what--? Are these claw marks?" Both of Karou’s upper arers had sunk in, and pierced with scabbed puncture arded her in silence, then got up and heated the soup she’d brought She sat on a chair beside the bed, and when Karou finished eating, she kicked her feet--bootless now--up on the mattress and folded her hands in her lap "Okay," Zuzana said "I’ood story that I hope will be the truth"

The truth Karou attee--"First tell me what happened Saturday with violin boy"--while she rolled the idea of truth around in her mind

Zuzana snorted "I don’t think so Well, his na until you do soot his name!" This morsel of normal life made Karou almost absurdly happy

"Karou, I’m serious" She was serious Her dark Slavic eyes took on a no-nonsense intensity that Karou had told her in the past would stand her in good stead as an interrogator with the secret police "Tellwas, Karou told the truth all the time, but she told it with that sardonic seous Did she even have a facial expression that ith telling the truth in earnest? And ould she say? This wasn’t a story she could ease into gently, like dipping a toe in cold water She had to just juel tried to kill me," she said

A beat, and then, "Uh-huh"

"No, really" Karou was conscious--too conscious--of her expression She felt as if she were auditioning for the role of "truth teller" and trying way too hard

"Did Jackass do this?"

Karou laughed, too quick and too hard, then winced and held her swollen cheek The idea of Kaz hurting her was just silly Well, hurting her physically, though now even the idea that he could have hurt her heart see else she had to worry about "No It wasn’t Kaz The cuts were ht In Morocco God, it was probably on the news Then there was this wolf guy who I thought was dead but was most definitely not The rest was Bri in my sketchbooks is true" She held her wrists out, lined up so her tattoos spelled out true story "See? It’s a hint"

Zuzana was not aed ahead The truth, she found, felt s stone in the palm of your hand "And my hair? I don’t dye it I wished it this color And I speak twenty-six languages, and those were mostly wishes, too Didn’t you ever think it eird that I speak Czech? I ave it to ht before I caot it in Papua New Guinea, and it sucked And I’ve been shot, too, and I think I killed the bastard, and I’el tried to killI’ve ever seen and also the scariest, though that wolf guy was pretty freaking scary, too, and last night I pissed off Briot back here Kaz aiting and I threw hireat actually because I didn’t have ain, which is about the only good thing to co She scraped back her chair and pulled on her boots, setting each foot doith a clomp, and she surely would have left then--probably forever--if not for the thunk that rattled the glass panes of the balcony door

Karou gave a strangled cry and jued for the door It was Kishmish

It was Kishmish, and he was on fire

He died in her hands She smothered the flabird fury of his heartbeat giving way to long pauses as she hunched over hiue worked in and out of his beak, and his frantic chirrups tapered aith his heartbeat "No no no Kishmish, no--" And then he died Karou stayed hunched there, on her balcony, holding hi of nos faded to whispers, but she didn’t stop saying them until Zuzana spoke

Her voice eak "Karou?"

Karou looked up

"Is that…?" Zuzana gestured a jittery hand at Kishmish’s lifeless form She looked perplexed "That’s… um That looks like--"