Cut Deck

The vase shatters when it hits the floor.

It’s blue and ugly. The vase, not the bird—although the bird is blue too.

The vase isn’t really much of anything anymore. Which is good, because I’ve spent my whole life hating it. I just never had the guts to throw it out.

But I’m too busy chasing the bird around my kitchen with a broom to thank it for breaking the ugly thing.

The bird rebounds like the collision never happened—a flurry of flapping wings and stray feathers that blanket the floor. Beads of sweat glide down my back as I swat at the creature, careful not to actually hit it. The bird chirps in alarm, but instead of flying toward the open sliding glass door, it circles the ceiling fan again, bumping into cabinets with every frantic zig-zag. It’s like it can’t even see the way out.

But that’s impossible. The door is open. The windows are open.

There is every way out, and the bird chooses to stay trapped.

Its next victim is an expensive-looking oil painting of a white rabbit. A picture frame. A wooden cutting board, which clatters so loudly it scares the bird into increased hysteria. But above all else, what really makes my teeth grind is the cereal box it knocks over next.

The box flies off the island and lands on the floor, adding cornflakes to the sea of feathers. I curse under my breath. I was going to eat that.

With a sigh, I use the back of my hand to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I’ve been at this for half an hour, and nothing seems to work. Maybe it’ll go away if I ignore it. I lean against my broom and glance up at the fan, which spins but hardly addresses the heat drifting in from outside. When it’s gone, I can close the windows. I scan the ceiling for the bird—but it’s nowhere to be seen.

Before I can celebrate, something blue catches my eye.

The bird stands in the pile of spilled cornflakes, pecking at the cereal like it’s lived here as long as I have.

I frown. Those can’t be good for him.

As I crouch by the mess and watch the bird eat, it either doesn’t notice me, or doesn’t care that I’m there. I swat at it with my hand. It doesn’t budge. I point my broom at it instead. “Go.”

The bird ignores my demand.

I glare. “There’s gotta be cornflakes somewhere else. Now get.”

Before I can make another threat, someone knocks on the door.

Slowly, I rise to my feet and glance over my shoulder to study the foyer. I didn’t order anything, did I?

Three more knocks cut through the silence, neatly spaced and perfectly timed. So it’s not a package. I turn around and point at the bird. “We’ll discuss this later.”

With my jaw clenched and broom in hand, I walk toward the foyer. Who would want anything to do with me on a Monday morning?

I open the door, saying, “Were my instructions unclear last week? I thought I already told you exactly where to install those solar panels, and believe me, they won’t get any sun where they’re going…”

A young woman with long black hair stands on my porch holding a duffel bag. She wears a pair of deeply tinted shades—and a suit as dark as night.

Every drop of blood in my veins ices over. My shoulders stiffen, and I blink a dozen times to ensure I’m seeing straight. Shades. Suit. A holster on her belt, carrying something that looks awfully similar to a black Nightjade gun.

Only one occupation requires a uniform like that.

But the panic subsides when my gaze settles on the cobalt ribbon pinned to the back of her hair.

“Jade Silva?” I can’t suppress a smirk when I lean against the doorframe. I look her up and down with a chuckle. “How long has it been? Three years? Four?”

“Agent J. Sparrow,” she corrects. She holds up a dark blue poker chip before shoving it back in her pocket. Her brows crease as she takes in my disheveled hair, the feather-covered broom, and my current state of shirtlessness. “I’m here on business.”

“So formal.” I toss the broom aside and cross my arms. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Jade hesitates, then slowly removes her sunglasses. I miss the chance to be alarmed by the look in her eyes before the words come out. “Your brother is dead.”

I blink.

Somewhere beyond her, beyond me, a car drives by. A gust of wind bends a pine branch. A robin plucks a worm from my lawn before flying away.

“Well don’t just stand there. Come on in.” I turn around and head inside, leaving the door open. “You know your way around. Make yourself at home.”

Jade closes the door, following close behind as I cut through the foyer and into the kitchen. I pause in front of the espresso machine on the counter. “How do you take your coffee again?”

“Mal—”

“Cinnamon.” I snap my fingers. “You always put cinnamon in your coffee.”

“Mal, I don’t think this is a good time—”

“It’s always a good time for coffee.” I preheat the machine and start measuring the grounds, spilling a few.

From the corner of my eye, I can see Jade part her lips, then close them. She takes a seat at one of the barstools lining the island and sets the duffel bag on the counter. She folds her hands together over the marble, observing the mess on the floor. She doesn’t mention it. I tamp the grounds and get the machine going after a few fumbles. My hands shake.

I find the broom again and busy myself by sweeping up the cornflakes while we wait. I don’t see the bird anywhere. Maybe it finally left.

“Is that your grandmother’s old vase?” Jade’s question splinters the silence.

My throat tightens. I glance at her, then at the shards of blue and white ceramic on the ground. I nod.

She shakes her head. “You’re lucky your dad isn’t here to see that mess. He’d kill you.”

I nod again, flex my fingers into fists, then relax them. “Yup.”

She asks no further questions as I clean the broken vase.

Eventually, I prepare our coffee, remembering to add cinnamon to Jade’s—and extra honey for good measure. I slide her a mug and down half my drink in one gulp. “God, that’s good stuff.”

Jade doesn’t touch her coffee. “Mal…”

“So glad I went ahead and splurged.” I slap the espresso machine and turn around to study it. I take another sip. “I’m thoroughly convinced that I wouldn’t survive without this thing.”

“Mallory.” I freeze. Jade lowers her voice. “Did you hear what I said?”

I glance over my shoulder at her, then turn back around. “I heard you just fine.”

I can’t look at her, so I drink the rest of my coffee and bring my mug to the sink.

“I don’t think you’re understanding the severity of your situation right now. Your brother was…” She bites her lip.

A knot forms in my throat, and I swallow through it. “I know what he was.”

“And that’s exactly the problem.” She stands up and walks over to where I stand, hugging her abdomen. “Without your father’s position, you’d be in a refrigerated truck halfway to New Mexico by now.”

It’s quiet. Through the still-open sliding glass door and windows, a bird chirps cheerfully. My voice lowers. “Is that where Randy is?”

“No.”

I start washing my mug. “Why not?”

She stares at her shoes, then at me. “I made arrangements for you.”

The mug is clean now, so I scrub a pan instead, knuckles clenched. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Of course I did.” She almost sounds hurt. “Undergrounder or not, Randy deserves a funeral.”

The pan is crusted with burnt eggs. No matter how thoroughly I scrape it, or how much soap I slather it in, nothing changes. I should’ve let it soak overnight.

“Is that what you arranged?” I scrub the pan harder. “His funeral?”

“Well…not exactly.”

I pause. “And what do you mean by that?”

Jade sighs, unzips the duffel bag, and pulls out an urn.

Carefully, she sets it on the counter. It’s blue and white, just like the shattered vase I thought I was finally rid of. My breath catches in my lungs.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” she says, her voice nearly a whisper.

My legs tremble. “How did he…”

“He was finally caught. Got mixed up in some Underground operation that went south.” She stares at her hands. “They exterminated him at a training facility a few hours south of here.”

I nod.

“Randy doesn’t belong in the Tombs, Mal.” She stares at the urn, eyes glossy. “I couldn’t let them send his body there.”

I swallow. “Thank you.”

“But…there are other arrangements in place too.”

I return to the pan, clutching the handle with white knuckles.

“You knew Randy better than anyone,” Jade says. “Even after he…disappeared…I think deep down, you knew what he was up to.”

I hold back a nod. All I can do is stare at the pan.

“This is what the Agency thinks too. Especially my father.”

I scoff. “How is Agent Canary doing, anyway? Still pressed about the last time he caught me climbing out of your window?”

Jade glares. “I’m being serious here.”

My fingers are already wrinkling from the water, but I keep it running. “Go on.”

“Traitors don’t usually get nice funerals, Mal.” She sighs. “But your father wasn’t usual, and by default, neither are his sons.”

“I’m aware.”

“As Head of House, Agent Canary has agreed to make an exception to the rules, given who your father was, and…what you were. To me.”

I scrub the pan hard enough for the sponge to finally cut through the crust. “So no refrigerated trucks for Randy.”

She pauses. “You can have a nice ceremony for him. I can help, if you’d like.”

“But there’s a catch.”

Jade sighs. “If you were anybody else, even with your Immunity, you’d be exterminated for your brother’s associations. In the eyes of the law, you’re just as much of a traitor as he was.” Her voice is stern. “You realize this, right?”

My neck twitches. I keep my eyes fixed to my task. “Yup.”

“It took some…convincing, but Agent Canary is willing to offer you a pardon. Under one condition.”

“And what would that be?”

Jade hesitates. “There are shoes for you to fill.”

I drop the pan. It rings so loudly against the sink’s steel that Jade nearly jumps back. “No.”

“Mal, listen to me—”

I get back to scrubbing. “Not happening.”

“Just think about it for a second, okay?”

“There’s not a chance in hell, Jade. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.”

“But—”

“They’ve been sending me letters and knocking on my door for years, and there’s a reason why they never hear back.” I shake my head. “It’s not happening.”

“You need to be realistic here,” she says between clenched teeth. “Your brother ran off to join the Underground. Randy was a traitor, so they killed him for it. It doesn’t matter that you stayed put or inherited your father’s Immunity, alright? Policy will earn you that exact same fate if you don’t agree to this deal. The only reason you’re still breathing is because I’m the one who begged my father to make an exception. Your dad was one of the greatest Agents this region has ever seen, and Canary still needed convincing.”

“If they want me to join so bad, then why did he need convincing in the first place?”

“My father has his…motivations. But you know how the Corps feels about legacies and success rates. He has higher ups who are eager to see if the son of Agent Finch will bring them the same results his father did.”

“So it’s political.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

My hands feel like they might fall off, but I keep scrubbing. “I’m not joining.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?”

“They’ll kill you if you don’t agree to this, Mal!”

“You of all people should know how I feel about putting on a suit.”

“How you feel about it doesn’t exactly matter here, alright? This is your only option.”

I grind my teeth. I don’t realize my fingers are stinging until I see pink skin and blood under my nails. “It’s not the only one.”

Jade scoffs. “Do you even hear yourself right now?”

I abandon the pan and shut off the faucet, finally turning to face her. “You said it yourself, Jade. If enlisting is filling in his shoes, the alternative is looking pretty damn friendly.”

She looks at me like I’ve just plunged a knife through her ribcage. “You don’t mean that.”

“And what if I do?”

Her eyes widen, and a twinge of guilt twists in my gut. I grip the sink with both hands, let my head hang low, then bring it back up to study her. The quivering of her jaw. The gloss over her gaze.

God. I hate it when she looks at me like that. I close my eyes and take a deep, shaking breath. She could get me to do anything, couldn’t she?

When I open them again, she’s still staring at me.

“You need this pardon. I need this pardon. And if you can’t bring yourself to do it for me”—her voice cracks, and she softens it—“do it for Randy.”

She stares at the urn, and I do too. Tangled within the florals glazed over its surface, I notice a bluebird with its wings outstretched, carrying an olive branch in its beak.

“It’s what he would have wanted,” she says.

My throat burns. It feels like my heart is lodged inside it, pounding in my ears and mouth. I nail my eyes to that painted bird to keep the room from spinning.

“Agents have privileges, you know. Resources.” She looks at me. “You could get answers.”

I glance down at her, then back at the bird.

“Don’t you want to know where Randy disappeared to?” She hesitates. “Or what happened to him in the end?”

I want to tell her no—that I have the urn and places I think my brother would like to be as a dead person, and that I don’t need answers. That would be the reasonable reality, wouldn’t it? Pretending I already have the closure I’ve been starving for, no matter how unbearable the hunger pains may be?

But in spite of the shoes, in spite of myself—there is a deeply rooted part of me that wants to know. Something tells me this is my only chance to get answers.

Am I really ready to die without knowing what happened?

“Just…think about it, okay?” Jade grabs her bag and walks toward the door. “The collection of drunk voicemails in my inbox tells me you still have my number. Use it by the end of the week.”

She pauses, giving me one last look before putting her shades back on. “Thanks for the coffee.”

I stare at the mug as she lets herself out. It’s still untouched.

I’m not sure how long I stand here with my palms pressed against the countertop, staring at the veins in the marble, trying to notice a pattern I can’t find. When that becomes too much, I look at the bird on the urn again.

I’m not surprised about the way things turned out for Randy; I’ve been waiting for this day ever since he ran off. He knew what he was signing up for, and I knew it too. I thought I’d broken into the acceptance stage by now—that it would be soft and easy to wear, like a well-used pair of shoes.

I grip the edge of the counter so tightly it burns. Then why does it feel like I’m still getting blisters?

My foot taps. I stare at the marble again. The urn. The remaining feathers and cereal on the floor. The chipped paint on the wall, previously hidden by a painting. Jade’s cold mug of coffee. I can see my reflection within it, with cinnamon where my freckles should be.

I swipe my arm across the counter, and the mug goes flying.

It hits the floor and shatters. Dark liquid spreads over the black and white checkered tile I’m sure my dad paid a fortune for. I wonder if it’ll stain.

I pull away from the island and run my hands through my hair. I pace back and forth. I kick a cabinet and stub my toe. I cuss out the cabinet and pull at my hair again. I squeeze my eyes shut. My pacing quickens. Every heartbeat feels like someone’s punching my throat. I walk past one of the fallen paintings, and I kick my foot through it. My vision blurs and my ears ring and my lungs feel like they’re shrinking, and the ceiling is caving in, and it grows closer, and closer, and I can’t take a single full breath, and everything is shrinking, and I’m shrinking, and—

My fist cracks into the wall.

I freeze, palms planted against it, shoulders hunched up to my ears. Even as my breathing slows, my hands won’t stop shaking.

A chirp emits from the corner of the kitchen by the sliding glass door.

Slowly, I walk over to investigate—and my heart rises into my throat.

Sprawled out on the floor and drenched in sunlight, a bluebird rests on its back with crooked, outstretched wings. It faces the open door, studying the grass outside and the sky overhead. It’s a nice day for Seattle. There isn’t a tile closer to freedom in the entire kitchen.

What a beautiful place to twitch, and twitch, and stop.

I stand there for a long time, unsure if I should blame the bird or the cage that killed it, watching the light shift with a passing cloud. A breeze enters through the open windows and tangles my hair. Somewhere out there, a lawnmower starts, and another bird sings. I want to cry. I should cry. But I don’t.

There was every way out.

A feather falls onto my head. I look up again, and I have my answer for Jade.

My nails carve into the flesh of my palms. I watch the ceiling fan spin, dropping feathers with every rotation. Morning light seeps through the windows. The urn’s glaze catches it with a glint.

I’m going to find the person who put my brother in there.

And when I do, there will be no way out.

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