Days of Blood & Starlight

9 Teeth

“Hey, Zuze?”

“Hmm?” Zuzana was on the floor with a mirror set up on a chair before her, painting pink dots onto her cheeks, and it was a moment before she could look up. When she did, she saw Mik watching her with that small concern-crease he got between his eyebrows sometimes. Adorable wrinkle. “What’s up?” she asked.

He looked back at the television in front of him. They were at the flat he shared with two other musicians; there was no TV at Karou’s place, where Zuzana mostly lived now—the media circus having finally died down a little—and where they usually spent their nights. Mik was eating a bowl of cereal and catching up on the news while Zuzana got ready for the day’s performance.

Though it was making them a bundle of money, Zuzana was getting restless with the whole thing. The problem with puppet shows is that you have to keep doing them over and over, which requires a temperament she didn’t have. She got bored too easily. Not of Mik, though.

“What is it about you?” she had asked him recently. “I almost never like people, even in tiny doses. But I never get tired of being with you.”

“It’s my superpower,” he had said. “Extreme be-with-able-ness.”

Now he looked back from the TV screen, his concern-crease deepening. “Karou used to collect teeth, right?”

“Um, yeah,” Zuzana said, distracted. She rooted around for her false eyelashes. “For Brimstone.”

“What kind of teeth?”

“All kinds. Why?”

“Huh.”

Huh? Mik turned back to the TV, and Zuzana was suddenly very alert. “Why?” she asked again, rising from the floor.

Pointing the remote to click up the volume, Mik said, “You need to see this.”