My Marionette Lover novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hands Off

Arlen pays for the broken prince in front of the dean and brings back the funding, to everyone's shock, and privately asks Hazel to teach him what the thread is; his own arm swings at the glass wall and her thread stops it.

The dean had come in on a Saturday for this, and his secretary called me in at nine.

I hadn't slept.

The three pieces of the prince were wrapped in a towel in my bag, and I was ready to be expelled.

The dean sat behind a big desk with a printout in front of him.

He had gray hair, a gray suit, and the face of a man who had been awake since the Foundation called him.

"Miss Pemberton, I've received a complaint."

"From Arlen Redfern," I said.

"From his grandmother's office, on his behalf. It says you humiliated him publicly with some kind of trick."

"I did."

He blinked.

I had thought about lying, but my grandmother never let me.

"He stood on a stage and wrecked my grandmother's last puppet in front of two hundred people," I said. "I wanted him to say sorry."

The dean opened his mouth to answer.

The door opened first.

Arlen Redfern walked in without knocking.

He wore yesterday's coat and he had not slept either.

There were gray shadows under his eyes, and for the first time I noticed that he was very pale.

"Dean," he said. "I need five minutes. Then I need you to forget the complaint."

"Mr. Redfern, your grandmother's office..."

"Is not me."

He put a folded paper on the desk.

It was a check, and I could see the number from my chair.

"That's for the prince," Arlen said.

"Whatever it costs to rebuild it, and the whole season of the puppetry program on top."

"I'll send the Foundation a letter."

"The funding stays."

The dean stared at the check.

"Your grandmother will not..."

"Please," Arlen said.

It was the quietest word I had ever heard him say.

The dean looked from the check to Arlen to me, and I think he decided something he didn't want to say out loud.

"I'll give you the room," he said, and he took the check and left.

The door clicked shut.

Arlen stood with his back against it and his hands in his coat pockets.

I stood too, because I didn't know what else to do.

"I know you hate me," he said.

"You called my grandmother's work a freak."

"I said it."

"You said it."

"I said it, and I didn't choose to." He rubbed his face. "That sounds like a thing a guy says."

"It sounds exactly like a thing a guy says."

"Last night you made me apologize and it felt like the best thing that has happened to me in twelve years."

I had no answer to that.

"Because for the length of a sentence I knew who was talking," he said. "It was your thread, and it was still me."

I looked at his chest.

There was no silver there now, only a thin black line that I could see if I turned my head.

It ran from between his shoulder blades up into the ceiling and out of the room.

"There's someone else on you," I said.

"I know."

"You know?"

"I've always known there was something," Arlen said.

"I thought it was how I'm made."

"Then you pulled and something answered, and I'd never felt a second hand before."

He laughed, a dry sound.

"I'm asking you to teach me what it is."

"I'm not a charity," I said. "You broke the thing I loved most."

"I know."

"I'll rebuild it," Arlen said, "and I'll pay for every day of it."

"I don't want you to forgive me."

"I want to know who's moving my arms."

He said it without any lazy smile, and for the first time I thought he might be telling the truth.

"My grandmother taught me never to tie a person," I said slowly.

"You did last night."

"I was angry."

"Good," Arlen said. "It was the first honest thing anyone's done to me in years."

His eyes dropped to my bag.

"Is that it?"

"Yes."

I took out the towel and opened it on the dean's desk.

The cedar head had split from the brow to the chin.

Arlen looked at it for a long time.

"I'll get that fixed," he said. "I'd like to help. If you'll let me."

"Why would I let you touch it?"

"Because I would like to put it right with my own hands."

Something shifted in his shoulders.

He caught his breath.

"Hazel," he said, in a different voice.

I looked at the line behind him.

It had gone as tight as a guitar string, and his right arm was rising.

It rose slowly, with the elbow bent and the fingers curling into a fist, and he was fighting it.

I could see the cords in his neck.

"It does that when I want something," he said through his teeth.

His arm swung toward the dean's glass wall.

I grabbed the jester out of my bag, the one with the bells.

My silver thread shot out and caught his wrist.

I pulled the other way, hard.

His arm stopped an inch from the glass.

It shook between us, his fist caught between a black thread and a silver one, two hands I couldn't see pulling for his arm.

Arlen looked at me.

He was shaking all over.

"Hold me," he said.

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