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Everything was yellow in the spring, and the spring taught you why yellow was the color of fever and pollution, nausea and bile, white shirt sweat-stains and Jack Vessalius’s hair. If you left anything outside for any degree of time whatsoever, it was at least tinged yellow by the time you saw it again; if you were driving a car, you’d need to run your windshield wipers a couple times until the cleaning fluid washed away the hazy yellow film that clung to the glass.
Levi Baskerville had never gotten his driver’s license, but he knew how to run the windshield wipers. It was his most productive achievement to date. He also knew how to speed, how to not use his turn signal, how to avoid an accident by the skin of his teeth—he was bad at braking, but that was alright, worst case scenario you could just drive into a wall and let physics take over. It was one of the privileges of being a Baskerville: no car crash, no matter how messy, would ever kill you. Other people—maybe, but Levi Baskerville had not cared about other people in a very long time and he wasn’t about to start now. The Baskervilles were quite the persona non grata these days and Levi had his hands full enough looking after himself, let alone other Baskervilles, let alone the humans whose lives were actually at risk from a car accident.
Thank goodness he wasn’t Glen anymore by the time public favor had turned against them, really. He didn’t have to worry about his people, he didn’t have to worry about his family—he didn’t have to worry about anything other than the annoyance of totalling another car.
And that was, most definitely, the only thing that he was worried about, too—Glen’s business was Glen’s business, and if he wanted to abandon his duties to go get fucked on Shutter Island, that was his right and his prerogative. Core knows that if Levi had had a boytoy with a private island, he would have done the same—though the insane asylum housed on that island would have been a severe turn-off for him. Kudos to Oswald for being able to look past that, for an entire year and counting!
—Kudos to Jack for being able to look past the manner of Lacie’s death, for an entire year and counting.
Levi parallel parked, by some definition of the term, hitting a lamppost as he did so and abandoning the car to the mercy of the tow trucks near the city pier. Here was the only shuttle that went to and from Shutter Island, though Levi wasn’t about to get on it. Glen’s romantic life was Glen’s business, not Levi’s; Levi was here for the jetski rentals on the small strip of sand everyone called a beach that sat beneath the pier, because if you could drive a car you could ride a jetski, he was sure. —And where would he ride the jetski? Well, that wasn’t anyone’s business. He hadn’t even decided that for himself, yet. He’d probably figure it out along the way.
He started down under the pier, already sweating in the spring heat and humidity, and regretted none of his actions; he slipped on the unpaved path down and turned dirt and sand into something resembling mud on his ankles and lower legs, and still he did not regret, until finally he reached the rental stand, with a plastic table and chairs shaded by a beach umbrella planted next to it like an imitation of a reputable venue, and met eyes with the person inside—and then he regretted, very much, and he thought he knew where it was he had always been planning on riding his rental jetski to.
The boy running the rental stand looked enough like a young Oswald to turn Levi’s stomach; though his hair looked like it had been cut with an ancient lawnmower in the bathroom mirror, it had the same color and volume as Levi’s successor, and though his eyes were a piercing green rather than a reflective violet, they, and the bone structure of the boy’s face, were uncannily reminiscent of Oswald’s.
“Hi, I’d like to rent a jetski for the day,” Levi said cheerily, paying no attention to the resemblance whatsoever. “Full tank of gas, too, please and thank you.”
Something flashed in the boy’s eyes, something like surprise and recognition, before he swung his legs down off the counter, leaving behind two streaks of cleanliness on the pollen-covered surface, and popped a button on the cash register.
“Driver’s license?” he said. His voice, even, was similar to Oswald’s, though perhaps just slightly higher; maybe this boy was younger than Levi had thought, maybe he had yet to go through puberty.
Or maybe—
But this was a minimum wage job; she would never work a minimum wage job. She would never work a job, period, unless as cover for something else, and why would she take cover here when it was so easy to just storm Shutter Island herself?
Levi handed over the license he’d used to rent the car he’d been using and waited. The boy at the counter took one glance at it and slid it back over to him.
“Your real license, please,” he said—bored, cold, over this, and so, so damn familiar. Something in Levi ached, but he didn’t say a word, instead leaning forward and smirking.
“Now, how do you know whether or not this is a fake?” he said. “You barely even looked at it! Should I complain to the manager?”
“I’m the manager,” the living ghost seated before him said, “so good luck with that. Your real license, please?”
“I’ll complain to the owner!”
“Good luck, she just left the mainland.” A smirk carved its way onto the ghost’s face. “So what will you do now?”
“Great question!” said Levi. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Levi grinned. “You won’t get rid of me that easily this time, Lacie Baskerville.”
The ghost stared at him for a moment, eyes hard, and then she reached under the counter, pulled out a clipboard and pen, and slid it across to him. “Read this,” she ordered. “Thoroughly, and sign what needs to be signed. I’ll get your rental ready for you.”
“Ooh la la,” said Levi, eyes twinkling; blackmail, it seemed, had worked when nothing else had, and he flipped lazily through the forms, intending not to read them at all, until he flipped one page too far and noted a sudden change of document. Instead of a generic rental form, he was looking at a psychological report; a simple scan of the thing revealed that it was for Oswald, somehow, and, mouth set in a grim line, Levi took a seat in the cheap plastic chair at near the rental station and flipped back to the beginning, reading the entirety of the packet he’d been given in detail.
The forms were your typical forms, other than a mediation agreement that was a little bit too stringent for a shitty little jetski rental place like this, but a few pages in they changed—files, clearly lifted from Shutter Island, detailing how Oswald had been lured there with the illusion of Lacie and then systematically drugged and gaslit until his very sense of identity had been crushed—by Jack Vessalius, too, who was posing as a psychiatrist. Levi had been completely wrong about Oswald’s time at Shutter Island—well, mostly wrong. Apparently, once Jack had succeeded in his gaslighting, he had fucked Oswald as a means to further destabilize his sense of self, but the sex was hardly the reason Oswald had gone there and certainly wasn’t why he had stayed.
Jack really was endlessly entertaining. Levi never would have expected this out of him in a million years!
It was honestly impressive that Lacie had managed to swipe the file but not her brother; this document alone had Levi’s blood boiling, and he had never been as emotional as Lacie was. Either she had somehow become an expert in self-control since faking her death, or the security on Shutter Island was enough to stop even her.
Levi filled out the rental forms resplendent with false information and returned to the counter; Lacie took them, glanced over the signatures, and then slid a keychain across.
“Have an exit plan,” she told him, uncaring, and then placed the clipboard back under the counter and swung her feet back into place.
“You aren’t coming too?” Levi said. “I’d have thought you wouldn’t want our dear Master Glen there a moment longer than he has to be.”
Lacie laughed, sharp and bitter. “Coming where?” she said. “Even a full tank of gas on one of those little things wouldn’t get you to Shutter Island—let alone there and back. Leaving aside the problems of docking, getting in and out unnoticed, finding Nii-sama and getting him onto the jetski, keeping him there, making it back—and all without alerting their robust security—are you delusional, Levi, or just an idiot? If it were really that easy, I’d have him out already.”
“Unless you were trying to hide the fact that you faked your death from him,” Levi pointed out. “How did you manage that, by the way? I would have thought that his ritual had all the bases covered, he tweaked it so much. Or did you somehow piggyback off of that to get out?”
Lacie said nothing, her smile small and enigmatic and still so, so bitter. “I really couldn’t say, you know,” she said. “It just—happened. And I wouldn’t want anything getting back to the Jury.”
“I haven’t seen the old woman in years,” said Levi.
“So what?” Lacie shot back. “You haven’t seen me in years either.”
“Not since before you took up crossdressing,” Levi agreed. “You know, you probably would have had me fooled if you tried imitating Glen on top of your disguise. You two look damn near indistinguishable like this.”
“Well, isn’t that just what every girl longs to hear from the man who knocked her up!” Lacie spat. “Go on then, Levi, get on your damn jetski, see what you can do to fix this—and then go back to rotting on Tinder and hitting up every catfish who wants your credit card information, why don’t you? Some of us have a job to get done.”
“Pissy, pissy,” Levi mocked. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Or maybe the binder’s getting to you.”
Lacie rolled her eyes. “Levi Baskerville, ever the gentleman… You truly are a credit to our people. It truly is little wonder that you gained the title of ‘least popular Glen of all time’.”
“How rude! What did I ever do to you?”
“Truly,” Lacie said dryly, “I cannot imagine.”
There was a moment of silence; Levi looked at the should’ve-been-dead girl for a long moment, feeling some alien melancholy stretch like a cat in his chest, and then snatched the keys away.
“Enjoy roasting out here,” he sneered, whirling on his heel, and stalked down to the end of the beach proper, where it took him no less than eight minutes to figure out which jetski was the one he’d rented and then around thirty seconds to crash into the dock. Lacie laughed at him; he flipped her off, and then overbalanced and flipped off of the jetski into knee-deep water, thoroughly disproving, it seemed, his theory that anyone could ride a jetski if only they knew how to drive a car.
—Granted, Lacie would likely argue that Levi couldn’t drive a car, either, but who cared what Lacie thought? Lacie was currently cosplaying as an Oswald who ran a scam jetski rental operation underneath a pier—
Cosplaying as Oswald who ran a scam operation—
Levi stood, shaking himself like a dog, and grinned in the direction of the rental stand, where Lacie was still seated, feet up and sweating in the shade.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Lacie!”
Her head jerked up.
“Lacie, I know what we have to do from here!”
Even from so far away, Levi could tell she was glaring at him; as he watched, she raised her hand to her throat and ran one finger across it—a clear threat, as if slitting his throat would be anything other than an annoyance. He ignored the threat, splashing back to shore and then up the sand towards the rental station, sloppy wet, exuberant.
“Lacie,” he said, once he’d gotten close enough that they could speak normally to each other. “I know what we need to do!”
Lacie’s eyebrows arched. “We?” she repeated. “What ‘we’, Levi?”
“We!” he said. “You and I, and any other clever little fellow who fancies himself a con artist and can see through our scheme.”
“Our scheme?” Lacie repeated. “I don’t recall ever agreeing to such a thing.”
“You will,” Levi said confidently—perhaps too confidently. He was used to Lacie pushing him away—too used to it—and in the ecstasy of the afternoon did not even consider that this might be anything different from what he was used to from her. “Wanna hear it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
She did not. Levi grinned at her and dripped on the sand and thought himself a genius, thought all was right in the world.
“You’re going to take your brother’s place,” he said.
Lacie raised her eyebrows. “On Shutter Island?” she said. “I’m sure our darling Jack would notice a few key differences extremely quickly.”
“No, not Shutter Island, obviously not Shutter Island,” said Levi. “Amongst the Baskervilles.”
“What?!”
“You will, for all intents and purposes, become Glen Baskerville,” he said. “It’ll be easy!”
“No, it will not.”
“Nobody in this world could tell you apart!”
“Jack could,” said Lacie.
“Jack’s not who we’re trying to fool,” Levi told her. “Think about it—why have the Baskervilles been scattered and divided?”
“Because Jack wanted to get rid of anyone who would try to save Nii-sama,” Lacie told him. “Obviously.”
“Well—yes—that too, but that’s not the main thing,” Levi said. “They’re scattered right now because Glen Baskerville is missing—”
“Imprisoned on Shutter Island, you mean.”
“Yes, that—so if we provide a Glen Baskerville as a point for them to rally around, we can bring back the Baskervilles, as if they’d never been lost!”
Lacie fixed him with a withering look. “That would never work.”
“Why not?” he said. “You would make a perfect Glen—”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“A perfect false Glen, I mean,” he amended. “A perfect replacement, a perfect illusion—nobody would be able to tell the difference, nobody knows Glen as well as you do.”
Lacie’s lips curled into a cruel smile. “That is true…” she said. “More true than you could ever know. Very well then—I’ll bite. Though do tell me, Levi dearest, how you plan to make me into Glen?”
Levi’s smile widened—he had won, as he had always known that he would. “Why don’t we get out of here and I’ll show you?”
Lacie’s eyes trailed over to the jetski floating belly-up in the water, and then to the pollen-stained counter she sat at and the cash register resting on top of it.
“I always did want to stab that Barma bitch in the back,” she said, opening the cash register and relieving it of the money inside. “Fine. Let’s go.”