Nightingale Girl

by M. R. Pritchard

  I panic and start swiping at the men. “Get them out!”

  “Out.” Clea makes them leave. Before she closes the door, she shouts into the hallway, “Daddy!”

  In a puff of smoke Lucifer appears in my room. He bends down and touches the middle of my forehead with his index finger, and I’m out.

  THE DEVIL WATCHES OVER HIS OWN

  Clea is sitting on my bed. She looks worried. I vaguely remember trying to attack the men she brought in to help lift me off the floor.

  I stretch my arms and legs, then realize I am in bed wearing nothing but my underwear.

  “Who did this?” I ask, gripping the blankets to my chest.

  “Your grandfather.” Clea reaches out and brushes my hair away from my face. “You look just like him, you know. The eyes, the hair.” She smiles sadly.

  “Who?”

  “Gabriel.”

  I pull the covers up to my chin. I resemble him and her, different features at different moments.

  Lucifer bursts into the room. He looks at Clea. “I feel your sorrow.” His voice is deep and thunderous, as though he is making some heartfelt confession that he can no longer hold in.

  Clea looks away from her father.

  Lucifer focuses on me, taking an intimidating step forward. “I saw why.”

  “How?” I ask.

  Lucifer touches my forehead with his index finger. “I saw. Everything.”

  He must mean he saw the many reasons why I don’t want anyone to touch me. Perfect. Then he probably saw how I despise being pitied. He must have; he doesn’t give me that look like the doctors did.

  “Hellions are forbidden from touching you, but Sparrow is different. There are very few whose touch you trust.”

  I nod.

  Lucifer glances at Clea. “I will do this only because I lost one child due to my stubbornness.” He snaps his fingers.

  Noah Cooper appears in my room, looking much different from the last time I saw him. No longer one of the walking dead, he’s all dark hair and brown eyes, as handsome as he was when we were dating in high school. Noah stands before me smiling his lady-killer smile with perfect white teeth. He resembles a ghost now, just like Clea.

  “How is he whole again?” I ask. “Last time I saw him, his soul had turned.”

  Lucifer smiles. “I have power over the souls here.” Lucifer walks in a slow circle around Noah. “This is one of the few you trust. He will be responsible for finding you nourishment and attending to you after your Hellion feeds.”

  My Hellion? Shit, now that just sounds dirty.

  “So, he’s like my manservant?” I ask, motioning to Noah.

  Lucifer nods.

  “Why?”

  “You have the ouroboros. This is important.”

  Not so long ago, Lucifer was the one who finally told me what the mark was on my thigh. But he has yet to explain its true significance. I only know that the mark is part of the reason why I can travel between realms so easily.

  I nod in thanks.

  Lucifer disappears.

  Clea looks nervous.

  “Meg.” Noah whispers, his face stretched in disbelief.

  And then I am staring into Noah’s deliciously chocolate-brown eyes. With all the food I’ve had since I woke from my coma and shit got real fucked up, I have yet to have chocolate. Noah disappears, then reappears, with a Hershey bar in his outstretched hand.

  Well, fuck me. I am surrounded by temptation down here. But that is Hell, I must remind myself. Temptation until your soul is owned by the devil.

  “I think I should go,” Clea mutters as she stands and floats out of the room.

  Noah watches her before turning. “I’m sorry I tried to eat your face. This whole dying and going to Hell thing doesn’t come with a manual.”

  “You could have found a Safe House and repented. The Deacons would have taken you in,” I point out. “You could be in Heaven right now.”

  Noah tosses the Hershey’s bar onto the bed; he moves across the room and sits down at the table near the window.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” he asks. “Besides, the astral plane is so lovely.”

  “What’s the astral plane?” I ask as I stare at the chocolate bar. My stomach growls.

  “Eat it.” Noah waves at me. “This is my duty as your manservant.”

  I rip open the wrapper and eat the chocolate bar in less than a minute. It tastes amazing, chocolaty and gooey; I wish I had a glass of milk. I’m still hungry.

  “The astral plane is a place of souls and dreams.” Noah stands and claps his hands together. “What do you want? Soda, chips, turkey sandwich?”

  “Sure.” That sounds way better than milk or the Twinkies and Sno Balls I ate for the few days before we showed up here.

  Noah disappears. He’s gone for longer this time. I lie down and wait, inspecting the marks on my arm. Sparrow was definitely not himself. The change must’ve screwed him up pretty good. Nothing new for Sparrow, though; seems messing up his brains is the thing to do, lately. Poor guy. I am kinda pissed that he sucked me dry and didn’t have the courtesy to pick me up off the floor. When he finally comes around, I’m going to make him pay for that.

  Noah returns and hands me a brown paper bag. I open it to find everything I asked for inside.

  “How did you get this?” I ask.

  “Scoured Hell.”

  “Seriously?”

  He nods. “Soda’s past the expiration date, but who knows what they put in that crap. Sure the turkey’s on its last day, but it smelled fresh enough. And I think chips will last forever, as long as the bag is sealed.”

  I wrinkle my nose.

  “What?” Noah asks innocently. He inspects his fingers. “Last time I saw my fingers, Rick was chewing them off. Your grandfather knows some pretty nifty magic.”

  Rick was a friend of Noah’s, one of the newly dead. They were surviving together, until they turned.

  I open the bag of chips. “That wasn’t just my grandfather. He’s Lucifer.”

  “Oh.” Noah looks at me with disbelief for a moment. I remember him making the same face when we were kids, when he didn’t believe something I told him, like the things John Lewis did to me. “That explains a few things.”

  I bite into the sandwich and open the soda.

  “So that makes you . . .” Noah taps his finger on his bottom lip, waiting.

  “The granddaughter of Lucifer.” I take a bite of the sandwich. The turkey’s pretty good. Not even slimy.

  “Okay. That’s cool.” Noah moves to the chair next to my nightstand. “You should eat. Sleep.” He tips his head to the side, and his eyes narrow on me. “And you should probably wear more clothing around me. I may be dead, but I’m not that dead.”

  I pull the blanket tighter around me. “You’re dead enough to know that nothing under this blanket is for you.”

  Noah chuckles. “Still so tough, Meg.” He smiles at me. “Thanks for doing whatever it was that brought me back.”

  “Nothing, besides being scared shitless of letting the goons down here touch me.”

  Noah moves from inspecting his fingers to his forearms and biceps. “You always were strange with that.” He flexes his left arm and tests the muscle with his index finger of his right hand. “Just not with me.”

  “I know what to expect with you.” I take another bite of the sandwich and shake chips into my hand. “Would you stop feeling yourself up? It’s making me uncomfortable.”

  “Been a while since I had this body.” Noah folds his hand behind his head and kicks his feet out, crossing them at the ankles.

  As I eat, Noah reminisces about all the things we got in trouble over as kids: hotwiring cars, stealing model helicopters, skipping school, parties, having premarital underage sex in absurd places.

  Jeez, we did a lot of bad shit.

  When I’m finished eating, I’m disappointed to feel that my hunger is not fully satisfied. I could eat more—tons more, loads more. A glass of blood would c
ure it, but I’m not ready to go back there.

  “You should sleep,” Noah suggests. “I’ll watch over you.”

  “Thanks, manservant.” I smile at him before lying down again and burrowing under the soft satin sheets.

  . . .

  I dream that I have a beak—no teeth, no lips, just a perfectly smooth bird beak with a pointy tip. Nightingale is whipping around me as fast as lightning on her roller skates, whistling a daunting trill. I open my beak to speak to her, but the only thing that comes out is a dull, throaty squawking sound.

  I wake with a startle, my hand flying to my mouth.

  Goddamn Nightingale.

  After reassuring myself that I still have lips and teeth, I get up and head for the bathroom. I strip and shower, and after washing every inch of my skin, I wrap myself in a large towel and step in front of the mirror. I brush my teeth—scrub them until they’re smooth—and comb my hair, then head for the closet.

  Noah’s sitting next to the window. His eyebrows rise as I step out of the bathroom. I walk the few steps to the closet, open the door, and walk inside.

  Noah is behind me in a heartbeat.

  “Didn’t have threads like this back in Gouverneur.” He touches the clothing on the hangers.

  “Nope.” I take a pair of dark jeans from the shelf.

  Noah opens one of the drawers. “Shit.”

  I turn to him. He’s holding up something that looks like red string.

  “Is this even considered underwear?” He winks. “These would look nice under those jeans.” He holds out the string.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Noah digs through the drawer inspecting all the scraps of fabric Clea supplied me with. “Never wore dirty underthings like this for me, Meg.”

  “I couldn’t afford that shit when we were kids.” I pull a gray top from its hanger. I didn’t have a bank full of money until I turned twenty-five.

  “What’s there to afford? It’s just string.” Noah closes the drawer. “I could go get some fishing line and make you something.”

  “Get out of here. I need to get dressed.”

  Noah looks me up and down. “I am your manservant. I’m sure my duties include helping.”

  “Out.”

  He’s gone in a flash. I close the door and get dressed.

  When I leave the closet again, Noah is sitting across the room on the small couch along the wall.

  “Shit, Meg.” He stands. “You look good. How come you never dressed like that when we were together?”

  “I couldn’t afford these clothes on my budget of food stamps and stolen cigarettes.”

  “I would have bought you something like that. If you hadn’t run away to college and left me behind.”

  I rest my hand on my hip and thrust my other thumb toward the closet door. “Sure. I’m betting you could have afforded all that with your small-town drug dealer budget. Selling weed didn’t exactly pay your bills. I remember that much. You lived in your grandmother’s basement.”

  Noah frowns. “Way to ruin the mood.”

  “There was no mood.”

  His eyes narrow on the new tattoo on my chest; the wings of the sparrow peek over the low collar of my top.

  “New ink?” Noah asks.

  “Yeah.” I’m not sure I could handle explaining Sparrow and the tangled mess we’re in right now.

  My stomach rumbles.

  Noah straightens his back. “What do you want? Pancakes, hot cocoa, bacon?”

  That sounds amazing. “Sure.”

  He’s gone.

  I walk to the small table near the window. There’s a lot of moaning from the walking sacks of flesh below us. And there are shouts in the distance, probably new souls trying to figure out where the heck they are. I did the same when I woke up in county lockup and realized I was alone. The jail was empty except for the dead. I spent weeks trapping rats and eating them. I shudder. It was days of staring at the spoon outside of my cell before I finally worked up the courage to reach for it. It wasn’t a rock hammer, but it would do. I dug through the crumbling cement wall in the back of my cell, made my way to the basement of County, and escaped through the sewer cap. The whole time all I could think of was that move The Shawshank Redemption and how Andy never gave up after all those years. When I finally reached street level, I ran to my house for supplies. I know how those fresh souls feel; I lived it for a short time.

  I sit at the table until Noah appears again. He’s holding a steaming plate of food and a mug.

  “You know how hard it was to find this?” He sets breakfast down, then sits at the chair opposite me.

  “How hard?” I ask as I dig in.

  Noah looks away. “Luckily some old lady knew how to make pancake mix from scratch. Had her whip up a short stack before she turned into a gooney. Some weird dude in the woods killed a pig and cut the bacon fresh. Found the hot cocoa—”

  “Stop. I’ve decided I don’t want to know where this came from.” I try not to think about a dead old lady cooking my breakfast.

  When I’m done eating, I push the plate away. I stand, find the thigh holster for my blade, and strap it on my leg. I secure my weapon, then find the thin leather jacket I’ve been wearing thrown across one of the chairs near the door. I put it on, then turn to Noah.

  “Shit, Meg.” Noah stands. “That’s hot.”

  “Shut up.” I reach for the door handle and smirk, tipping my head toward the blade. “It’s better than a Beretta.”

  “Don’t know about that. Those guns saved your life once.”

  “Yeah. I did shoot seven Hellions and Jim.”

  “Where you going?” Noah asks.

  “You my manservant or my nanny?”

  He shrugs. “Pretty much the same thing.”

  “I’m not going to stay locked up waiting to be someone’s Hungry-Man TV dinner. Let’s go find some trouble.”

  Noah smiles wide. “That’s my girl.”

  We head for the entrance to the burning caves, but the droves of stinking, meandering meat sacks drive us back. They keep a few yards’ distance from the opening, never entering.

  “We should wait until night,” Noah suggests.

  “But I’m bored now.”

  “Hang on.” Noah dashes out of the cave and sprints around the dead to a pile of gravel. He grabs a handful before running back to me. His cheeks are flushed. “Okay. Come on.”

  I follow him back to my room and out on the balcony. Noah bends and pours the handful of pebbles on the floor.

  “What are you up to?”

  He smirks up at me before taking three of the pebbles and moving toward the railing. Noah leans over and throws a rock. Moaning erupts below.

  I move to look over the railing. There’s a group of the dead far below my window. It must be fifteen stories or more down.

  Noah tosses another pebble. They shift and moan, searching for the source of the noise, hoping for a fresh neck to bite into.

  “That’s cruel.”

  Noah shrugs. “You’re bored.”

  A bird flutters by; it’s more of a shadow, but it gives me an idea. I bend and take a handful of pebbles.

  “What are you doing?” Noah asks.

  I lean my hip on the railing and hold my hand out.

  “Try it,” I suggest.

  He grabs a handful of stones and mimics my stance.

  We stand like this for minutes.

  Noah turns, raises his eyebrow in question, then yawns exaggeratedly.

  A bird flutters down and lands in his open hand.

  Noah’s eyes widen.

  “Ye of no faith,” I mock.

  It’s a robin, which pecks at the stones a few times before ruffling its feathers and flying away in frustration.

  “Cool.” Noah smiles.

  I’m still on the fence about staying down here with Sparrow, but I’m not going to continue to be bored out of my mind all day long waiting for him to come feed off me. I just need some distraction, some time to th
ink things over for a little bit.

  “Manservant. Can you get us some birdseed?” I ask.

  Noah disappears, returning a few minutes later with a plastic bucket filled with seed. “You don’t even want to know where I found this.” He hefts the bucket to the corner of the balcony and sets it down.

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  I take a handful of seed and move back to the edge of the balcony.

  Noah does the same.

  “Is this what we’re going to do all day? Let birds eat out of our hands?”

  Three chickadees land on the railing. They hop closer and closer until two flutter up to my hand to eat. The other takes flight and hovers around Noah’s hand before landing and pecking at the seed.

  “Why not?”

  “The Meg I knew would never do this.”

  “Maybe I’ve changed.”

  Noah chuckles. “People don’t change, Meg. They just suppress it all.”

  “That was deep.”

  “And I wasn’t even under the influence.”

  We watch the birds, laying out seed and letting them eat from our hands until night comes.

  After all the birds have gone, Noah presses the lid on the container of seed. He moves to stand near me. Our elbows are resting on the stone railing as we both stare off into the moonlit vastness of Hell, until there is a knock on my door.

  “Come in,” I shout.

  Sparrow enters my room, and my nerves kick up a notch. I notice he’s gaunt again. Starving. He stands motionless near the door, a deep rumble echoing from his chest as he looks warily at Noah.

  “You should probably leave,” I warn Noah as we both step into the room.

  My manservant is gone in a flash, and it is just me and Sparrow. My heartbeat quickens as I reach for my blade and cut my arm.

  Sparrow moves just as quickly as before. He latches on. I feel his teeth on my skin, the sharp pinch of pain, and the movement of his tongue. He sucks. The feeling intensifies. My knees weaken. My core burns and quivers. Sweet Jesus. I drop to the ground . . .

  I come to as Noah’s lifting me off the floor. “Knew that guy was fucked in the head,” he’s muttering as he sets me on the bed and covers me with blankets.

  “You don’t understand. He can’t help it,” I say. “He’s not normally like this.”