Lips Touch: Three Times(17)
Author: Laini Taylor

Pranjivan started to shut the door in Vasudev’s face and the demon blurted, "And I wager she’ll have a whole lot of British company on her way, do you hear me? I’ll see that curse through yet!"

The door snicked shut. Vasudev stamped his foot and hollered, "That girl’s going to speak! Do you hear me? Any time now her voice is going to burst out of her like a tornado and I’m going to win! She’s in love, Pranjivan old devil! Do you hear? A girl will do crazy things for love. Just ask Estella — she went to Hell for it!"

There was no answer from within and Vasudev was left standing at the servants’ entrance, breathing fast through gritted teeth. "Damn Pranjivan," he muttered, giving up and going away, trying to console himself by dreaming up grim deaths for the beggar once Estella was finally dead and not there to protect him. Something painful, he thought.

Something excruciating.

EIGHT The Stolen Shadow

A namique’s eighteenth birthday party was the following evening. In his rooms, James slid a small velvet ring box into his pocket, put on his dinner jacket, and took a deep breath. He couldn’t afford much in the way of a diamond, much as he couldn’t really afford to support a wife, especially a privileged heaven-born daughter like Anamique. It was madness, surely, but of all the madness he had known, it was the sweetest. He patted his pocket and set out.

He had just bought flowers and was walking past the Palace of the Winds when a man loomed up before him, tall, Indian, severe. For a moment James thought he must be a cutthroat, he had such a look of intensity — almost savagery — in his eyes, but then he recognized him by his fine English suit. Here was the factotum of the widow called "the old bitch," the one who had filled Anamique’s head with fear and nonsense and blighted her young life with silence.

"What do you want, man?" James asked him, drawing himself up to his full height, which, he was pleased to see, was a bit taller than the Indian’s.

"Do you love the girl?" Pranjivan asked.

"It’s no business of yours," said James, his voice dropping to a growl.

"If you love her, you can love her silence too."

"Love her silence? What is this? Some kind of a game?"

"It is a game, but not a funny one. It’s a demon’s game, and if you encourage the girl to speak, you encourage her to kill you, and the demon wins. I especially wish the demon not to win."

"Demon?" James said. "Are you mad? There are no demons. There are no curses. There are only vicious jokes and vile people, tormenting an innocent girl!"

Pranjivan shook his head and said, "Are you really so certain? Would you look at a rock in a field and claim no cobra lies beneath it because you can’t see it?"

"And what is it I can’t see? Demons?"

"You can see demons."

James looked around him at the throng of camels and rickshaws and stern turbaned men with twirled mustaches. He cocked an eyebrow at Pranjivan, who smiled a thin smile and said, "There are none nearby just now."

"Of course not. Look, I’ll just be on my way. I don’t have time for your mythology today." James stepped around Pranjivan and continued down the avenue.

Pranjivan fell into step beside him. "Oh? Why is that? What happens today?"

James gave him a dark glance but didn’t answer. In his pocket, his hand curled around the little velvet box.

"From what I hear," said Pranjivan, "she would be devastated if she killed you. For her sake, I wish that not to happen."

"How good of you."

"If you wish to protect her –"

"I wish to marry her," said James, turning to face him.

"So marry her," said Pranjivan in a low, urgent voice. "But believe. The world goes down deeper than you know, Englishman. There are cobras under the rocks, and there are curses."

The urgency in the Indian’s voice perplexed James. He might be mad, but he was certainly sincere. What was this all about? The strength of James’s certainty weakened just a little.

Pranjivan went on. "She mustn’t speak. Believe it. Believe there is more to the world than what your own eyes have seen." Then he nodded his head in a sharp farewell and crossed the avenue to a waiting rickshaw. James watched him go. He saw him climb in, and he saw the rickshaw men gather up their poles, but before they could start off, a spidery hand reached out from within the shadows of the contraption and the men halted.

The street was banded with shadows slung low and long by the setting sun, and James couldn’t make out the second figure in the rickshaw until she sat forward. It seemed to cost her a great effort to move that little bit, and when her face came into the light, James saw Estella. She looked very ill. Her face was pinched and sallow, but her eyes burned with a fearsome intensity. James felt a shiver pass through him as she looked straight at him.

"What does she want?" he wondered. Uneasy, he started walking toward her but he hadn’t gone more than a few steps when the old bitch reached her hand out of the rickshaw and, in a sudden startling motion, snatched James’s shadow away.

He faltered and stared at his feet, then up at the rickshaw, then back at his feet. What had he just seen? The old bitch had reached out one frail hand, clutched it suddenly into a fist, and pulled – and James’s long thin shadow had gone taut before him, then disengaged from his feet and scudded over the cobbles to disappear into the shadowy rickshaw. He almost thought he had felt it pull free. A smile quavered at the corners of his lips and he wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.

But when a box-wallah paused beside him to reshoulder his burden before crossing the street, James couldn’t help but see the man’s shadow splayed out thick and dark over the cobbles and beside it… nothing. James cast no shadow at all.

The old bitch slumped wearily back in her seat and Pranjivan gave James a long look before ordering the rickshaw runners to move off. An incredulous laugh burst from James’s lips as he thought of calling out, "Stop! Thief!" He turned in a circle to see if anyone had been watching, but the street sweepers and lamplighters were all going about their own business, and the rickshaw soon faded into the gloom.

James resumed his walk toward the Agent’s Residence with a fervor of thoughts clashing in his mind. He didn’t believe in magic and demons. He believed in day and night, endurance and fury, cold mud and loneliness and the speed with which blood leaves the body. He also believed in miserable, defiant hope and the way the shape of the girl you love can fill your arms like an eidolon when you dream about dancing with her.

But whether he believed it or not, his shadow was … missing. With each person he passed he was forced to acknowledge its absence in stark contrast to the many quick shadows slipping by on the street. By the time he reached the gates of the Residence, he had begun to feel as if a neat slit had been opened in the lining of reason, letting madness sidle in.