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And I longed to kiss the swords, for their shine resembled the gleam of your lips.
-Antarah ibn Shaddad
“Okay, what is with the number fourteen? It’s been the number of my place setting all week, and the number of my tent, and the number of my dune buggy. Is it a joke?”
Eddie’s eyes met Aisha’s. “You’ve never told her?” he asked.
“Told me what?” Susie’s head swung between them quickly. It shook the veil an inch back from her hairline. Quickly, she reached for it, until Aisha sighed and pulled the scarf down entirely.
“It’s just us, habibti,” Aisha said, gently, stroking Susie’s hair. She gestured at the open-air majlis with the firepit in the centre, and the tents beyond, and dunes that ringed them. In the opposite corner, Sheikh Abdullah was deep in conference his cousins, his architects, and Oscar Thorne. “His Highness has seen you unveiled, before. It’s all right. Inside these walls, you can literally let your hair down.”
“Whenever possible, I prefer to avoid an own-goal.”
The desert unsettled Susan, for some reason she had yet to divulge (and likely never would). It made sense to Eddie: Susan was primarily an urban creature, happiest when surrounded by crowds. She could spend a whole workday buried twenty feet underground without breaking a sweat. She could spend twenty-four hours in the air. (And nearly had, right up until the point Eddie vetoed the idea of riding a hot-air balloon over the desert, because absolutely fucking not, Susan.) Until recently, she was blazingly productive in her office off the gym at Glassknuckle, despite being constantly interrupted. But in the middle of the desert — the real desert, hours away from the nearest city — under the Milky Way arcing overhead like a jellyfish migration, she seemed to…shrink. As though made suddenly aware of her own frailty by the vast and punishing landscape.
Then again, Bobby Glass was outside the walls of Leyhill, now, having earned his early release. (For certain values of “earned,” anyway.) And he’d invested in Edward, not his own daughter. And it stung. It stung Edward, too. It stung him because it stood between them — this proof of her father’s faith in him against the harsh judgment of Susan’s abilities and worse, her devotion — and neither of them could forget it. Ever. It was a constant reminder of that day in the dell, her eyes huge and blue and brave and imploring him to just listen, think, remember.
Look at me. I didn’t do this to you.
“In Arabic, we compare our beloved to the moon,” Aisha was telling Susie. “Because its face may change, and turn away from us, but it always comes back.”
“Oh,” Susie murmured.
Not for the first time on this trip, Eddie sincerely wished that His Highness hadn’t insisted on eschewing the haram elements of travel that he’d so relished on English shores. Eddie could use a drink. Or five.
“But what’s that got to do with the number fourteen?”
“Susan,” Aisha chided. “How long is a lunar cycle?”
“…That’s a bit of a personal question.”
Aisha made a scoffing noise. “Regardless of how your internal clockwork might run, the actual lunar cycle is usually between twenty-eight or twenty-nine days. Which means that the height of the moon’s power happens on the fourteenth night. So, when someone says, Qamar 14!, they mean you’re as beautiful as the moon at the zenith of its light. Or, 14, for short.”
“I see.” Susie remained pensive.
“Darling, it’s a compliment,” Aisha told her, nudging Susie’s shoulder with her own.
“It just feels a bit creepy, to be honest.”
Aisha folded her arms and crossed her legs. “You’ve always hated attention.” She glanced at Edward. “She’s always hated attention.”
It was true. Reminding Susie of her own beauty, even mentioning it, put her in mind of the men who tried to butter her up as a means of gaining access to her father. Drawing her focus to the attention others paid to her was even worse. Once upon a time, Eddie had enjoyed winding her up this way. Now he couldn’t wind her up, at all. For years, they’d insisted everything was strictly business, between them. Now, Eddie saw the magnitude of this lie. Because now it was strictly business, and what stretched between them was as arid and cruel as the desert surrounding them.
“Just I was fourteen when Mum died, is all,” Susie said, quietly.
Eddie wanted a drink. Badly. He very, very badly wanted a drink. Or ten. Or, Hell, fourteen. He could drink them all in a row, and die of alcohol poisoning, and everyone would be so much happier. Even Eddie himself. Or, if not happier, he would at least be done. It would be over.
“Oh, my little love. I’ll get them to stop.”
Aisha resumed stroking Susie’s hair. Edward allowed himself one tiny second of seething envy before attempting to dismiss it. It was good, he reminded himself. It was good that Susan had friends. Real ones. Girlfriends. Good that she still had friends from school, too — it was so easy to lose track of them, as the years passed. And good that she had a friend who could open their way to the Gulf, who could get them into Gulf real estate, and therefore into the infrastructure development projects that would let them break the chokehold of Colombia and Peru on the cocaine trade. Using solar power to grow drugs had to be better than chopping down what was left for the Amazon for the same task. Right?
“No, don’t,” Susie sighed. “S’all right, now I understand it. No desire to be rude.”
“Sadly, I cannot say the same,” Eddie said, forcing an all-too-theatrical yawn. “I’m turning in.”
“Tusbih ala khair,” Aisha told him.
“Laylatun hadiah.”
Susie said nothing. Just looked at him with her huge eyes, so bright in the dark, and gave him a tiny nod with her chin. Edward bade good evening to His Highness, and took his leave. Behind him, he heard Aisha whispering something to Susan. Ignoring it, Eddie loped over to his tent. It was less of a tent than it was a Quonset for glampers. His Highness had insisted on showing them the deep desert — he said they could not truly claim to have seen the Gulf without also having seen the dunes. The skies. The stars. The absolute riot of stars. Looking up at them now, Eddie felt a tiny hint of what Susie was likely experiencing. Having grown up on the grounds of Halstead, he considered his sense of powerlessness in the face of natural chaos a healthy and appropriate response. But Susie didn’t have a Geoff to help raise her.
Lately, it seemed like she’d had no one at all.
Bobby was getting worse. Much worse. His adjustment to life outside Leyhill, where he was surrounded by men of his own age, experience, and values, and had ready access to his sauna and cold plunge and barbecue, was thus far less than ideal. He didn’t understand why boxers needed to be on TikTok, for one. Or why texts were better than phone calls. Or why no one used email. Or how AI slop worked. Or its role in propaganda. For seven years, Susie had insulated her father, wrapping him up in the fluffy white duvet of an eternal 2020, wherein the pandemic was a distant headline and not a civilizational tipping point. And now, Bobby seemed completely gobsmacked at the idea that the world still had sharp edges.
Which, naturally, was one of Eddie’s reasons for bringing Susie to the Gulf. Four hours ahead of London time, she could still call her dad, but she could put the phone down and walk away when he screamed. In London, she could not do this. In London, she got screamed at in her own flat, because Bobby had kicked her out of the office his first day out. Now the place reeked of cigar smoke and Bobby’s pomade, and Eddie couldn’t smell her perfume unless he was very close to her.
(He’d been extremely tempted, two months ago, to pick up the Atkinsons reed diffusers she liked best: Mayfair Opulence and Velvet Crush. Eddie found them extremely soothing. Only putting them in the room where he’d first made love to his dead wife seemed like wallpapering over Bella, despite the many other Duchesses Halstead who had probably died in the very same room. So he couldn’t. And didn’t.)
“Darling,” Eddie said out loud, under his breath, as he tapped sand out of his sandals, “I’m, uh, really going through it, right now. And I could use your help.”
One of the many physiotherapists Susie had sent in the wake of his utter humiliation at her father’s hands had asked Edward, once, if he thought Halstead was haunted. When he said the staff had been saying as much for years, the chap then asked if he ever spoke to the spirits. It helps, you know, he’d said. Talking to them. It helps.
So now Eddie talked to Bella. Because sometimes she sat with him at dinner, or during meetings, or in the car when he was alone. Sometimes he spotted her peering over Tarquin’s crib. Sometimes he woke up crying and didn’t know who he missed most: the wife he’d never really gotten a chance to discover, or the man he used to be, before the hood went over his head. What was it Sticky Pete had said? You see, until you’ve had the living shit beaten out of you, you don’t know anything. But when you realize the only thing that matters is power, the whole world opens up.
Bella would tell her husband to just be a man and get over himself. After a lifetime as an Italian countess (a flying Italian countess, he thought, bitterly), Bella had no patience with men who didn’t declare themselves. It was one of his most dangerous flaws, she told Edward: his willingness to wait until circumstances required direct intervention. This, Eddie realised, was also one of Susie’s foremost flaws. Eddie had ignored the problem that was Freddy until it was too late, and now Susie was doing the same with her father. If she were a man, they could just go on a shooting weekend or fishing on the Spey or some other such thing, and then it would be fine. But she wasn’t, so they couldn’t.
“I miss when Susie trusted me,” Eddie said, casually, as he turned out the lights. Nothing happened. Why Eddie expected some big jump scare moment whenever he said things like this, he had no idea. Bella was probably rubbing her hands (or legs) together with glee, every time he came within touching distance of Susan. She liked Susan. Wanted to be friends. Wanted under her wing. Once upon a time. “She used to fall asleep in the car next to me,” he elaborated. “And now she won’t even get in the same car. I wish I knew how to repair that breach. Or if it’s all in my head. But you know that, already. Wherever you are, you probably know how all this ends.”
On the plane the Sheikh had sent, Susie slept. Eddie had padded past her in the simulated darkness of their flight, wearing the Huntsman slippers she’d bought him that first Christmas, and looked down at her, curled on her right side. The Sheikh had sent pyjamas, too, and she wore them. They were adorable. Hot electric pink with leopards and toucans and palm trees. She looked so cute. Cute, and luscious, and troubled: her face pinched, her fists drawn to her chest, her knees tight to her body. Out of absolutely nowhere, he’d wished the Sheikh had sent along a teddy bear for her to cuddle.
(The camp did have little stuffies for them, upon arrival: plush Rüppell’s sand foxes, with huge ears and long, articulated tails. Clearly, the proprietors knew Edward had a nephew at home. He assumed Susie got one just to keep things on a level footing. Maybe she was even cuddling the thing now.)
“I miss having someone to cuddle,” he quietly admitted, as he flipped his covers back, and slid between them. “I miss how you let me weep in your arms like a child, and didn’t think I was a stupid cunt.”
Vulnerability. That was the problem. His weak point. Vulnerability itself was his most vulnerable spot. Because he responded to it in others, but despised it in himself. He’d bristled and preened by equal turns under Susie’s Wet Wipes, but somehow letting Bella see him in dire straits was fine. Probably because she was a tiny little thing, and he could break her in half even while stumbling about on his cane. It was vanity. Pride. The sin of sins. Eddie knew this. And yet. And yet. And yet.
“I miss carrying you,” he said, into the pillows. “Though all things considered, I suppose I still am.”
He closed his eyes.
And opened them again, seemingly five minutes later, when a soft but persistent knocking, at the approximate tempo of a shiv repeatedly entering a human body, sounded at the glass door to the structure. As usual, Eddie came awake instantly. He was half out of bed before even registering the noise. And fully on his feet before he saw Susan there. She wore a matching set of gold silk pyjamas featuring rampant black panthers. The camp lights bathed her face red. Nausea and the taste of tinfoil rose in his mouth before he could remind himself why she looked that way: red lights were healthier for the local wildlife, and didn’t trigger the computer vision algorithms that guided the missiles and drones that occasionally flew overhead between the hours of one and six.
“Susie?” Eddie unlocked the door and slid it aside. “What’s wrong?”
She looked down and away from him. “There’s something in my room.”
“Some…thing?” Perhaps Eddie wasn’t the only one with a spectral sensitivity. “What do you mean?”
She rolled her lip under her teeth. “The floor looked like it was moving.”
She’d had a bad dream. It made sense; she’d been nervy and weird the whole trip. And likely thinking about her mum, if their conversation earlier were any indicator. Naturally, Eddie couldn’t say this. What he could do, he did: stand aside and usher her in, and pull the blackout curtains before turning a light on.
“I have to ask you this,” he started to say, to which she said, tersely: “It wasn’t a dream.”
“I was planning to ask if Aisha gave you something to help you sleep,” Eddie said, carefully.
Immediately, Susie shook her head. “If His Highness is keeping a clear head, then I want one, too.”
Clever. As usual. Eddie caught himself smiling. She’d see it, if she just looked up. “Susan, you’re not in the sisters’ section of a hyper conservative mosque. You are allowed to look at me.”
“It was nothing.” She made for the door. “This is stupid. I’m going back.”
“Yeah, well, I’m coming with you, then.”
“Suit yourself, Your Grace. I can’t stop you.”
Frowning, he followed her back to her tent. One window yawned wide open. “Did you…?” He sent her a quick look, which she didn’t see, keeping her bearing as resolute as though she were trooping the colour. “Susie, did you jump from the bed to the dressing table, and climb out the window?”
“I saw the floor moving,” she repeated.
“What does that mean?”
She fobbed open her unit and slid the door aside. Warily, she looked up through her lashes at him. Now he saw why she’d hidden her face: she’d cried herself to sleep. Or anyway it looked like she had, judging by the bandit mask smears of that ringed her eyes.
“It means I thought I’d left my knickers on the floor by the bed, and when I went to pick them up, they ran away from me.”
Eddie opened his mouth, then closed it. He glanced inside the space. Then back at Susie. “They ran away from you.”
“S’right.”
“On…legs?” She nodded. “Jointed legs?” Again, she nodded. “And when you say moving, you mean like-”
“Skittering,” she supplied.
Eddie sucked his teeth. “Lovely. Wonderful. Fantastic. Great.”
He steepled his hands before his face and squeezed his eyes shut. It was a miracle she hadn’t shot the thing and caused a diplomatic incident, really. That was what Eddie himself felt most tempted to do. He sighed. This was nothing. Nothing at all. Definitely nothing to be afraid of. He’d dealt with camel spiders and other desert arachnids before. There was absolutely no reason to be more paranoid than usual, just because they were miles (and miles, and miles, and miles) away from the nearest hospital. He had a strong heart. Not a good heart, by any means, but his blood pressure was lower than the average. The report following his last physical said he’d made an excellent recovery.
“Sorry,” Susie muttered. “I’ll take care of it. Prolly gone by now, anyway.”
She’d stepped halfway over the threshold when Eddie grabbed both her shoulders and steered her out. “Don’t. I’ve killed them; I know how to kill them; it’s fine. Go get me a shovel from the firepit.”
Susie returned with a shovel and a poker. “Good thinking,” Eddie told her. “Thank you. Now go back inside,” he nodded in the direction of his own structure, “and stay there.”
“What?”
Eddie failed to see what was so odd about the idea. “This is going to take time. I have to lure it out. I need quiet.” He lifted his brows. “If you’d rather stay with Aisha-”
“Aisha’s banging those husband-and-husband architects, as we speak. And the Sheikh and his staff might not take kindly to accusations of infestation at the royal glamping ground. That’s why I came to you.”
It was not quite a vote of confidence, but it was…something. “Well done, Aisha.” Again Eddie nodded toward his door. “Off you pop.”
“…What if you get bitten?”
“There’s a panic button by the bed,” Eddie lied.
“No, there isn’t,” Susie protested.
“Oh, did you not find yours? You should go look in mine. Two shakes, Susan.”
Quickly, Eddie stepped inside, and closed the door and threw the bolt behind him. He waited a while before turning on the light. After all, he thought, it was possible that it was nothing. Possibly a desert mouse, made into a spider by Susie’s imagination. Or maybe she’d exaggerated the size of the thing. Or possibly (Eddie wondered, wickedly), she’d made the whole thing up. As a test. Just to see if he’d go through with it. To see if he could be trusted.
“I asked for a mission, and for my sins, you gave me one,” he told Bella, smirking. Then he flicked on the light. “MOTHERFUCKING HELL!” he said, as he watched the thing bolt across the floor and into the bathroom.
Jesus Christ, it was a bloody Tribble. Weren’t men of his rank meant to slay dragons? Because at this particular moment, staring at Susie’s bathroom door, the Duke of Halstead would rather deal with one of those, thanks very much.
APPROX ONE HOUR (+ THOUSANDS OF ￡ IN DAMAGES) LATER
“Don’t ask,” Eddie said, when he finally made it back inside.
Her face was a pink blur. For some reason she was sitting on one of those armchairs that were always in hotels and resorts despite never really being used for anything other than blowjobs. “Why are you wearing my-”
“I said not to ask,” Eddie reminded her, as he made for his bathroom.
“But why do you smell like my-”
“I said not to ask!” He slammed the door and locked it.
“Can I go back to mine?” Susie whinged, from the other side.
“No!” Eddie barked. Then he turned the shower on, and tried to get his sight back.
All he had left in his bathroom was a kaftan. It would have to do. He cleaned his teeth, put it on, checked his eyes, applied more drops, put on his glasses, and wandered back into the room. Susie was still on the chair, sitting with her knees to her chin.
“Susan, stop looking at me like you’re in trouble. You’re not in trouble. I’m in trouble.”
Her pink immediately paled. “You were bitten?”
“No.” He frowned. “I don’t think so.” He took the footstool across from her. “I’m in trouble because I ruined your room, and damaged your things.”
Solemnly, she nodded. “I suspected that, when I noticed flecks of flame retardant on my coat.”
“I used the fire extinguisher,” Eddie said. “And the shovel. And the poker. And one of your block heels, I’m sorry-”
“Edward?”
“It gets worse. Now, I know you really liked that perfume-”
“Which perfume?”
“Um…” He winced. “All of them?”
“Edward-”
“I’ll replace them. All of them. I promise. Especially the one you just bought-”
“My Ajmal Jewel of Kimberly?”
“Not so loud!”
Susie rocketed to her feet. She crossed her arms. Shifted weight on the balls of her feet. Made her mouth a line. “I asked you to kill vermin, Eddie. A task with which you are abundantly familiar, on multiple levels. I did not ask you to destroy my things in the pursuit of a single spider!”
Jesus Christ, she was back. Susie was really, truly, finally back. Right here. In the flesh. Full eye contact and everything. He’d missed her so much. Until just now, he’d had not even the faintest idea how much. But it was a lot. It was so fucking much.
“That’s just it, though, Susan.” Now he too rose to his feet. Feeling a few stone lighter helped. “It wasn’t one spider. It was two.”
Her mouth worked. A line appeared between her brows. Her index finger tapped the arm it crossed. “That seems…”
“Ominous?” Eddie asked.
“Stastistically improbable,” Susie told him. “But, yes: ominous. In a very Doctor No sort of way. Though, obviously, in the novel, that was a-”
“Centipede,” they said, in unison.
A very tiny smile lit her features, and his vision blurred, and she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Um, just…” I miss my friend. I miss my best friend. I miss my best friend more than anything, more than my wife, even, because I’m a shit husband and a shit partner and a shit brother and if I’d just let Freddy walk out that door then none of this- “They have those little barbed hairs, you know. They deploy when the animal’s frightened. Like tiny, microscopic porcupine quills. And I think some got in my eyes, so-”
“Oh, Eddie,” Susie murmured, clicking her tongue. “You sit down. In the chair. And let me fix it.”
He was actually tearing up, now. “Okay.”
Susie wandered into the bathroom. Eddie switched seats. Stupidly, he looked down at his feet, and wished he were wearing shoes, so she might take them off.
“I bet you were a very silly boy, and used soap and water like a mug.” He heard her rattling around in his DOPP kit. “When the real solution, as any wearer of waterproof cosmetics can tell you, is to be found right here, with good old-fashioned olive oil. Or argan oil. Or-” She stopped short at the chair. Instantly, her voice went much smaller. “…Edward?”
“It hurts,” he said, thickly. And it did. Everywhere. All the time. In every joint, with every breath. “It really hurts, Susan. It really hurts a lot.”
“Well of course it does, Captain,” she said, soothingly, and he heard oil slicking inside a bottle. “Now look up at me, and try not to blink, and I’ll be out of your hair faster than you can say-”
“No.” Already he was shaking his head. “No. You can’t leave. You can’t go in there.”
“Hold. Still.” She took his jaws in her nails. Carefully, she dabbed at his eyes with an oiled flannel. “Why can’t I go in there, then?”
“There’s broken glass,” he said. “It’s dangerous. You could hurt yourself.”
“You mean from my perfume bottles?”
“And the mirror.” He swallowed a sniffle. “Mirrors. Plural. I’m about to be very unlucky.”
“You think so?” she purred. “Really?”
God, Bella, Monty, anyone listening: please. “Probably. I’ve more than earned it.”
Susie made a thoughtful noise, and shook the bottle some more.
“Brought it on myself,” Edward added. “I could’ve…” His throat wanted to close. “I could’ve let you help, and I didn’t, so it’s my own fault, really-”
“Shhh…” She continued dabbing at his face. “Right back where we started, eh? Like old times.”
“I should’ve-” His lips didn’t want to form the words. “It should’ve been-”
“If I hear you blame yourself for her death one more time, I will fucking slap you.” Now her hands on him were much faster, though no less gentle.
“Now it’s old times,” he muttered.
“It’s not your fault the old man gave her a Ferrari. One which you very much wanted to drive.”
“You were right, though, Susan,” he whispered. “When you sent the Dixons. You were right. Freddy wanted to go. Wanted to give himself up. Walk out the door and straight into Hell. He had a moment of clarity. A real one. And if I’d let him listen to that, if I’d just fucking let him go, finally, then-”
“But he’s family, and you love him, so you didn’t,” Susie said, calmly, as though they’d already had this conversation a thousand times, instead of talking around it for most of a year.
“No.” Experimentally, he widened his legs, and she stepped into the V of them, leaning closer and dabbing more carefully at his eyes. “I didn’t. Couldn’t. Let go.”
“That’s part of who you are, Captain.” Her voice was so light. Like music. Like rain on earth so scorched, the water fizzed away into fog. “Thought you’d let go of Halstead, hadn’t you? Turns out, when the chips were down, and the keys were yours, you wanted to expand the place, not give it up.”
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Keep your eyes open,” she reminded him. “I need to see where the irritation is.”
“Well, you’re usually very good at spotting it, Susan.”
She flicked him high on the ear with a middle fingernail. “Fuck-” His hands shot out before he could stop them, and grabbed her elbows. “Stop hurting me.”
“Stop moving. Stay in one place.”
Eddie watched her throat move and felt his own do the same. They were no longer talking about the spiders, or the hairs, or the glass, any one thing. Because it wasn’t one thing. It was two. Two people. Two venomous, crafty people, best suited to environments in which nothing else could thrive.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed.
“Well, you certainly are now, Captain,” Susie muttered. “You know, I was supposed to be restoring Vermeers, by now. At school they said I was a natural. A dab hand. Literally. I told them it was down to stitching up wounds at the gym. Painting on the iodine.” Again, she swallowed. “What they didn’t know is, I’d got really good at putting her needles in. For her infusions. Giving injections. Touching her without hurting her. That kind of thing. You never really forget.”
Again, his eyes filled. Dear God, this precious girl. How to account for her? How to account for any of this? “No,” he rasped. “You never do.”
“D’you maybe need to cry it out?” Susie asked. “The rest of the hairs, I mean?”
Emphatically, Eddie nodded.
“All right, then.” He heard silk drawing off her skin. Under her pyjama top, he saw the vague outlines of a black bodysuit or camisole. Susan stepped forward. “Here. This, you can ruin.”
On his face and under his arms, it was silk mesh. Sheer. Diaphanous. Her skin jumped under his jaw. A startle, maybe, or possibly a sob. Her nails razed his scalp. Briefly, for just a second before his inevitable implosion, Edward experienced the olfactory hallucination of Bella’s perfume. Probably it was just the admixture of all of Susan’s cosmetics splattered across his skin and hers. Probably. But it was enough. It was enough, and so was she, and so was this, so he leaned into that soft darkness and roared.