by Gregory Ashe
Waving both hands, Emmett shook his head. “It’s a shit plan, ok? No. No arguing. It’s stupid. It’s godawful stupid. And even if you really believe what you’re telling me, don’t try to pretend there wasn’t more to it. You weren’t thinking about Urho when you started that saw. You were thinking about—” He pulled back, and a flicker of what might have been compassion crossed his face. “I don’t know, I guess. That’s your shit. Not mine. But I know you weren’t thinking about those kids, not really. You were looking for a reason to fuck yourself up. To really fuck yourself up. And you found it. I don’t want to sit here arguing about how you would have bled out and died even if Urho showed up. I don’t. I’m not going to do it. So can we just agree that’s a shit plan and we’re not going to use it?”
“If it was just one finger—”
“Jesus Christ. I’m up to here with you, tweaker. Up to here. Ok? No saw. No cutting. Not as part of the plan, anyway.”
I set my jaw.
“Ok?”
“Ok,” I said through gritted teeth.
“You admit it was stupid?”
“Stop pushing it. I said ok.”
A slack grin covered Emmett’s face. “Let’s take it from another angle. Try to use your brain, ok? I know you’re out of practice lately—”
“Fuck you.”
“—but try. What do we know about the Lady awakening people?”
“We went over this.”
“Say it again.”
“She kidnaps people. She’s been kidnapping them for years. Centuries, I guess. She tortures them—I guess she’s mutilating chakras—and then, when they’re not psychic, she lets them go.”
“That part’s strange, isn’t it? Kind of like your mom. Why let them go?” Emmett shook his head.
I was thinking about the answer Mom had given: How bad do you want to know? And then the cigarette. It wasn’t an answer; it was a question. But that could be an answer in its own way. That was her answer. And maybe it was the same answer that the Lady would have given. When I’d been eight, Francis Valentino, who was ten and smelled like his older brother’s deodorant and who told us his dad, Ricky Valentino, was in with the mob, had tied an M80 to a stray dog’s tail and lit the fuse. And it had blown off a chunk of the tail. The dog had left a trail of blood down the row of apartments, and some of that blood had gotten on Ricky Valentino’s white Camaro. When Ricky saw it, he backhanded Francis so hard that Francis did a totally spontaneous and uncoordinated cartwheel and landed ass-up in the rock garden outside the apartment building. Francis was bleeding from scraped knees and elbows and crying, and Ricky kept shouting, “Why’d you do that, dumbfuck?” and cuffing Francis, and Francis kept bleeding and crying. The only answer anybody could get out of Francis, then or ever, was, “It was a stray.” And I thought the Lady—and Mom—would have understood Francis’s reasoning perfectly.
“Anyway,” Emmett said, his voice puncturing my thoughts. “That’s not the important part. Keep going.”
“What else is there?”
“She keeps getting kinetics instead of psychics. But she needs a psychic.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Or something’s wrong with her power.” Emmett’s voice gained speed. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Your abilities were fucked up, right? But they started coming together. They started working for you, and they worked better as you got through some of your own shit.”
“You think the Lady needs a therapist?”
“I think she needed help. Her own chakras might have been fucked up. Or maybe you’re right: maybe she never really knew what she was doing, and everything was an accident. If that’s the case, she needed a guide. But she couldn’t go to another awakener. Like you said—like your mom said—they’re territorial.”
That word, guide, buzzed through my brain, but I was focused on something else. “You said her chakras, but Em, I’ve seen inside her. I used my second sight. I . . . I saw this thing. Shriveled. Shrunken. It looked starved and furious, and it was hiding inside her body. I don’t think she’s human. Or if she was, she isn’t anymore.” I thought again of that newspaper article from almost seventy years before, Lillian Bellis in New York City. Mom. “I don’t know if my mom’s human either. I mean—” I shook my head. “Fuck, this sounds like comic book shit.”
“Stay with me for a minute longer. You told me you got help. You told me someone helped you. With your abilities, I mean. Someone helped you unlock them. Figure them out.”
A guide. “What are you talking about?”
“Think about it, Vie. All this stuff goes down at the same time: all of a sudden, the foster care game is over, and you’re supposed to be back with your dad—who’s in deep with Lawayne and, by extension, with the Lady.” Emmett ticked this off on a finger. “The Lady gets those kids and does something to them that makes her want them bad. She wants those kids in a way she hasn’t wanted any of the other kids in two hundred years.” He ticked off another finger. “And she brings back her army to make sure nobody interrupts.” He ticked this off too. “Vie, everything changed for you—and for the Lady—in a matter of months. And the reason everything changed is somebody started helping her. Somebody showed her what she needed to do. Or somebody fixed her chakras. Or something. But all of a sudden, after two hundred years, the Lady has a—”
Guide, I wanted to say.
“—way to bring her psycho husband back from the dead. Do the math, Vie. There’s only one person that we know who can help people with abilities like yours. There’s only one person who could have ramrodded you back into your dad’s arms. The same person.”
“Ginny.”
My guide.
THE SOUND OF THE front door opening stole the rest of our conversation. I stared at Emmett. He stared back at me.
“You’ve got to decide now, tweaker. Do you believe me? Do you believe your gut?”
Ginny. She had helped me unlock my powers. She had given me a chance at a normal life—she had gotten me away from Dad, helped me land at Sara’s house. She hadn’t ever fought at my side, but she’d been there, counseling me, warning me, doing her best to make sure I came out ok.
And then I thought of how she’d missed a scheduled check-in a few months back. I thought of the way she’d limped afterward, how she’d laughed about a bad fall on a ski trip. I thought of the missing coyote. And I thought of how she’d told me that she wasn’t a warrior, and I’d called her a coward, and she hadn’t denied it. Because it was the truth. She was a coward. She had sold me out to save herself. I thought of the paperwork at Dad’s house, the letter insisting that my friends and family thought I should be back with Dad. I thought about that microcassette with Austin’s voice. Had that been a frame? Had it been a forgery?
How long had she been working for Urho and the Lady? For as long as I’d known her? Or since that missed check-in, and the limp, and the lame story about falling on the bunny slopes? My heart beat faster and faster. I wanted the window open again, and that black Wyoming wind to steal the heat from my body.
“Now, tweaker. Decide now.”
I nodded.
“You trust me?”
I nodded. No hesitation, and as much as Emmett tried to hide it, I saw that electric sheen dapple his eyes again. He let out a soft breath and tucked my hair behind my ears again. “Play along. And try to be convincing. Unlike that time you told me that Austin is the best kisser you’ve ever known.”
“That wasn’t a lie, I was—”
“Bullshit me later.”
And then Emmett sprinted to the door and threw it open.
“Miss Miller. Miss Miller!”
Sara’s heavy steps trundled below. Then her voice filtered up the stairs. “Emmett? My God, your face—what happened? What’s going on? What are you—”
“Vie’s here. He’s right here, in his room.” He tumbled down the steps, his voice growing softer. “He’s freak
ing out, Miss Miller. He’s—I think he wants to hurt himself.”
The first step groaned under Sara’s weight, but then the sound of movement stopped. Emmett had grabbed her arm. Or put himself in her way. Or given her one of those smiles that could have stopped a runaway diesel. Or his face. Maybe his face had stopped her with its crazy corkscrew scars.
“Can you call someone? Like someone at the hospital? Someone that can talk to him? He won’t listen to me, and he says he can’t—” I had to admit; Emmett was good. The little hitch in his voice, all that emotion driving a wedge into the words. “He can’t let you see him. He’s talking about doing something really bad, Miss Miller.”
It was all an act, but there was an undercurrent to it, deep waters rolling with real emotion. Emmett cared. People cared. Factually, there was nothing surprising about it. I had always known Austin and Sara cared. I had guessed that Emmett cared, although he was such a little shit sometimes that I figured even he didn’t really know what was going on in his own head. Hearing them talking about me, though, and hearing that spike of emotion driven through Emmett’s words, and hearing the way Sara’s breathing got soft and labored the way it always did when she cried—hearing it was something else entirely.
“Your face, Emmett. God. Was there an accident? How long have you—” Her breathing changed. “If he’s going to do something stupid, I need to see him. Get out of my way, please.”
“He’s going to be mad, Sara. He’s going to—can you just call someone first? Just in case? And then if you go up there and he gets mad, maybe someone else can talk him down? Or—or call the police. Can’t they arrest him? Like, for his own good?”
Doubt trickled through my gut, a cold sluice that made me rock forward. Had Emmett tricked me? Was this really his plan: to get me into a hospital, hell, to get me into a jail cell, to do whatever it took to get me locked up and—in his mind, at least—safe? I didn’t think so; that was something Austin might have tried, but not Emmett. Still, that cold wash of doubt made me hesitate.
“Please, Miss Miller. It’s not good.”
“Not the police. He—I don’t want to go into it, Emmett, but if he gets into any more trouble, I’m afraid he’ll have to go away.”
“Miss Miller, there’s got to be someone.”
Sara’s steps were so quick and sudden that for a moment, I took the explosion of creaks and groans for the house falling down. She must have crossed the living room at a sprint. I heard the phone topple, the brass chiming as it hit the floor, and then Sara swearing as she collected it. Sara swearing. Now that was unusual. When she spoke, her voice was too low for me to hear except at the end, when she said, “Thank you,” over and over again.
The stairs groaned again. Then she was in my doorway, her cheeks red, her blond hair frizzing like a thundercloud, and the smell of french-fry oil filling the room like smoke. “Oh God, Vie. What happened to you? Where have you—are you all right?” She took a tiny, ballerina-dancer step into the room. “Emmett said you’re thinking about doing something stupid.” She was still crying; she chuffed little breaths, and after a moment of my silence, she touched the corners of her eyes. “I’m not mad.” That only made her cry harder. “I just want you to know I’m not mad.”
“I—” A lie was forming on my tongue. And then it evaporated, left my mouth dry and soapy, and I was suddenly telling the truth. “I was. Thinking about doing something stupid, I mean. But Emmett talked me out of it. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I . . . I’m sorry I broke my promise. And I’m sorry I left.” Ran away. That’s what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to form the words. It hurt me too much, and I thought it might hurt Sara even more. “I thought I knew what I was doing.”
She took another of those tiny steps, just the tips of her toes moving all her mass, and then another. It would have been funny except for the ache that had opened her face and left it raw. And then another ballerina step. And then another. And then she was standing right in front of me, and the smell of french-fry oil puffed off her polyester Bighorn Burger shirt. I leaned into her, my head resting against her warmth, and one of her hands fell onto my back, and she rubbed up and down, up and down, and I remembered how she wiped the stainless steel counters at the end of each shift.
She spoke in rhythm with the long strokes of her hand. “When’s the last time you ate, sweetheart?”
I rocked my head in a no.
“When’s the last time you slept?”
Another no.
Her free hand combed my hair, teasing knots out of the long blond strands. “Do you want some ice for that nose?”
I laughed, only it didn’t sound like a laugh at all, and then I butted against her gently, and she kept rubbing my back and furrowing my hair.
“Let’s get you something to eat,” she finally said. “I’ve still got some of that fried chicken. And then you have to see a doctor.”
“I’m not going to do that. What Emmett said. I’m ok.”
Her Bighorn Burger shirt muffled the speech, but she must have understood because she laughed and said, “About your nose, sweetheart. The rest of it—we’ll talk about it, ok?”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t want to answer. Here, at long last, was calm, peace, quiet, rest. Home. I had been fighting for so long. I had fought with Austin, with Krystal, with those human blowjobs at the public house, with Leo and Kyle and Urho. I’d even been fighting with Emmett, and the only difference was that the typical highs-and-lows of fighting with Emmett had, for once, been accompanied by fucking. This was the first time in what felt like ages that I wasn’t fighting. And I thought back to the last time I had felt like this, and I thought of Austin, and packing into Bear Rocks, the horse’s warmth under me, the sun riding my shoulders, and Austin looking back, framed by the sky and the blue eye of the lake, his face strong and serious and intent, as though I had uttered a cry for help and he was ready to rush into a burning building—the way he always looked at me, I thought now.
And a minute later, that horse had dumped me on my ass, and there hadn’t been anything really magical about that trip. Except that moment. That snapshot.
“Food,” Sara said, and she gave my back a firm pat. “Before you turn sideways and disappear.”
We had barely reached the top of the stairs when a knock came at the door.
“Just a minute,” Sara called.
But the door creaked, and footsteps clicked on the floorboards.
“Hold on,” Sara shouted, taking the stairs faster. “I said just a—”
The shot was big enough to lift the house off its limestone foundation. That’s how it felt anyway. Sara jerked, the way she might have jerked if a bee swerved near her nose. Only it hadn’t been a bee. Bright red petals curled on her shoulder, and she lifted her hand toward the blood.
“Get down,” I said, dragging her toward me. Another shot rang out, the bullet ripping a chunk of plaster from the stairwell, and the trapped sound raced between the walls. Some of the plaster sifted onto my tongue, and its taste mingled with the iron of blood in the air.
Sara’s weight compressed me for a moment. She was moaning, and she began to mumble about being shot. I didn’t bother to listen. With another, “Stay down,” I wriggled out from under her. Then I hesitated.
Where was Emmett?
“Come out, Vie.” It was Ginny’s voice. It wasn’t firm, but it wasn’t shaky either. It was like wet sand. Too much pressure, and the whole thing would crumble, but for the moment it was holding. She had a gun; she’d already shot Sara. Her resolve, even if it wasn’t any stronger than wet sand, didn’t need to last much longer. A gun would be fast. A gun would be final.
Where was Emmett?
A footstep rapped out on the floor. Just one. But that brought her one step closer to the stairs. She was a big woman—tall, and built like a chimney stack—and how many steps would it take to bring her to where she could see me?
Had he been shot? Had s
he caught him by surprise, shot him in the back? The thought zinged through me and left my mouth in a reflexive, pained O.
“If you come out now, I’ll call an ambulance for Sara.”
“Ginny?” Sara’s voice was weak. She was raising bloodstained fingertips to the light as if for inspection. “Why did you shoot me, Ginny?”
“She’s in shock, but it’s going to wear off.” Ginny’s voice had that nasty, wet-sand grit. “It’ll be better for her if we’re gone before she does something stupid.”
I slipped out of my body and into the other side. I centered myself, reaching out into the emptiness of this half of reality, and brushed Emmett’s mind. He wasn’t far, but there was something between us. One of Emmett’s barriers, maybe. Or maybe he was unconscious. Or dying. I sent my message anyway, like pressing my mouth to glass and speaking into its surface. She’s here. She’s inside and she shot Sara. But I didn’t know if he heard me; I didn’t even know if he could do anything, even if he had heard me.
Shot right in the back. One of those hollow point rounds that mushroomed out, and he’d have just a tiny hole in his back but a huge, gaping fist ripped out of the front, and his brain might still be flickering little electrical signals, but he was dead. Gone.
The next part, I figured, was hopeless, but I didn’t really know what else to do. I was vaguely aware of Sara trying to rise on the steps, but I had abandoned my physical body for the moment so I couldn’t do anything to stop her. Instead, I flowed through the other side toward Ginny.
As she had the last time, Ginny lacked the spirit coyote that, for as long as I had known her, had slunk along her aura. I had noticed its absence when she had come to tell me that I’d be moving back in with Dad, but I hadn’t really thought about what it meant. Now, in the light of everything Emmett had told me, it made more sense. Something was different about Ginny. She had changed. Whether the loss of her spirit animal was one of the tortures inflicted by the Lady and Urho or simply a side-effect, I didn’t know, but I recognized what it meant: she had changed. Emmett had been right—if the gun and the shots at Sara weren’t proof enough.