by J. L. Murray
"Come on, Frankie," he said.
"Why is it so important to you?"
He frowned, watching the road. "I don't know. It just always bothered me. You'd been avoiding detection for so long, I always just thought it was strange you gave me your real name. You must have been used to giving aliases."
"Yeah," I said.
"So what made that night different?"
I was quiet for a long moment, watching the clouds part to turn the world brilliantly bright over the pretty little stretch of highway. The sun shining off the water hurt my eyes, but I didn't want to look away. It was beautiful here.
"Don’t know," I said. "Guess I just got sick of lying."
"Or you felt something, right away?"
"I don't know," I said. "I was just so tired. Tired of the way I was living, tired of the wraiths ordering me around. I was tired of everything. I wanted one night where I could just be a girl in a bar." I flinched a little at the phrase. Jason Halloran had used the same words. You were just a girl in a bar.
"But it was dangerous," he said. "I was dangerous."
"You didn't seem dangerous to me," I said. I smiled and looked over at him, but he wasn't smiling. There was an odd look on his face. "What is this, Dekker?"
"I'm just trying to understand you, Frankie. I'm trying to understand what we are."
"We're just two fake FBI agents trying to make our way in this crazy, mixed-up world."
"Did you feel like you knew me when we met?"
"What?" I frowned. "No."
He nodded and turned his eyes back to the road. He looked disappointed. "So I was just a guy. And you had a sudden urge to tell the truth. Nothing more."
"I was tired of the lies," I said, "I was tired of this life. You were...goddammit, I've told you I didn't want to leave. I wanted to run away with you, Dekker. Why are you asking this?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. It just seems like something happened in me that night. I tend to be obsessive, but it's like you put a spell on me that night." His eyes glittered when I glanced over from the road with an angry shine to his dark, penetrating stare.
"Put a spell on you,” I repeated, considering that. “Are you asking if I'm a witch?"
"No," he said. He looked away from me and I returned my eyes to the road, feeling unsettled. "I'm just trying to understand."
"Why I didn't say my name was Rita Hayworth?"
"Yes. "
"Because I wanted to be real. For one night, I wanted something real. I wanted to sleep in a bed and be seen as me. Not as a person who came back from the dead, or as a person on Death Row, as the girl who killed people. I just wanted to be myself. I wanted to show one goddamn soul that I was a person. I wanted to feel, even if it was only for one night. I wanted to sleep next to someone warm and feel them next to me."
"It didn't really work out that way," he said. "You never did get to sleep that night."
"No," I said. "They couldn't even let me have that."
"The wraiths."
"The wraiths, Cain and Abel, Lilith, whoever the fuck these new assholes are, the ravens. Myself. No one. I'm not allowed to have things like that." I swallowed hard and stared at the road. "They won't even let me have you." He motioned for me to turn inland and I did, passing quaint houses, the small blocky shape of a hospital building in the distance.
"I'm here with you now," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, you are. And they all want you dead for it."
"This all started because you gave me your real name."
"So?"
"It's like you wanted me to find you," he said. "It's like you wanted me to come. The first time you disappeared, it was so easy to find you again."
"Because you had loJack on your car." I turned into the hospital parking lot.
"I didn't have any goddamn loJack," he said, as I pulled into a parking spot. I put the emergency brake on and sat there, motionless, looking straight ahead.
"So you lied." He didn't answer. "Then how did you find me?"
"I've told you, I know a lot of people."
"That's not disturbing or anything."
"Doesn't it bother you that I lied?" he asked.
I frowned, finally glancing at him. His eyes were unmerciful, studying me, not letting me go. The truth was, it really didn't bother me at all. I couldn't give two shits how Dekker found me that first time. When I saw him, when he finally showed up, pretending to be angry about me stealing his car, I was so goddamn happy to see him that it scared me to think about it. I had done my best to keep him there, despite all the threats from the wraiths. But I didn't have to try very hard.
He was never planning on leaving.
"Are you going to save me, Dekker?" I said, my voice soft, almost a whisper.
"You make it sound like that’s crazy,” he said.
"Suicidal, is what it is," I said. "You're better off in prison, or on the run, or anywhere else."
"If that were true," he said, "you wouldn't have agreed to come with me."
"What can I say? I'm a sucker for self-destruction."
The state medical examiner was still up in Clackamas on another case, Dekker told me, and the county commissioners wanted the investigation to stay on the downlow until they could explain what the hell was going on. The ME was due back later in the week, with a nurse assigned to keep an eye on the basement. It was that very same nurse, wearing peach scrubs and too much perfume, who let us into the cold, makeshift morgue. A half dozen gurneys were lined up, the bodies covered with plain white sheets. I could see my breath, and rubbed my own shoulders at the cold.
"Shouldn't they be refrigerated?" I said, staring at the bodies.
The nurse, whose name tag read Chelsea Park, RN, shrugged apologetically. "They don't really thaw out," she said, looking uncomfortable.
"Where's the last victim?" I said.
She walked over to stand beside the nearest gurney. "Doctor Saladin keeps breaking his instruments on the bodies," she said. "This one's been sitting there for three days and he's still frozen solid."
"Thanks, Chelsea," Dekker said. "As always, you are really helpful."
Chelsea beamed at him. "So you just want to examine him alone, like usual?"
"Yes, please," said Dekker, "thanks for being so accommodating. You sure it's not going to get you into trouble?"
She giggled. "No one needs to know, Special Agent Tucker." She noticed me watching and she hurried for the door. When she left, I stared at Dekker.
"Really? The hot nurse?"
"What?"
"You're not allowed to talk about the way I get information ever again."
He frowned. "That's not what this is. I didn't get her drunk and bat my eyelashes."
I laughed. "Maybe not the alcohol. But you sure did bat some pretty eyelashes at her."
He glared at me. "Are you jealous?"
"I'm more worried about that poor girl. Does she know what she's getting herself into?"
He gave a half-cocked grin that spread slowly across his face. "You are jealous. I didn't think it was possible."
"I'm not jealous."
"If you say so," he said, rubbing his mouth as he watched me, trying to hide his smile. "Definitely not jealous."
"You're not my boyfriend," I said. "You can do what you want."
"Did you do what you want?" he said, almost seeming embarrassed. He didn’t look at me as I frowned at him.
"Are you asking if there was anyone else?" I said. “Are you really asking me that?”
"Forget it," he said. "None of my business."
"You're goddamn right. Fuck you." A metallic rattle rose around us. "I couldn't get your goddamn smug face out of my head, is that what you want to know?"
"Frankie..."
"So, no, there wasn't anyone else. I didn’t. I couldn't. It never crossed my mind. And you've got no fucking right to ask me that." Metal pans in glass cupboards rattled, and I realized the ground beneath us was shaking. Dekker's eyes widened, but he didn't
look away from me. I closed my own eyes and took a deep breath as I felt his large hand encircle mine, warm and comforting. The rattling stopped. When I opened my eyes again, Dekker was still staring at me.
I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from rattling, hid my hands so Dekker wouldn't see me shaking. The jumping under my skin, the scratching in my head grew softer with every passing second, as if receding into the distance. But I knew it was there, this thing inside me, waiting to emerge. Just waiting for me to set it free.
"Let's look at this corpse before it thaws out," I said, moving around looking toward the metal table which held the most recent victim, shrouded in a crisp white sheet.
"Yeah, okay," said Dekker, sounding disconcerted. He raised an arm, motioning for me to have a look. I walked unsteadily over to the body. I'd scared him and I didn't want that. But maybe if he was afraid of me, he'd let me be and he'd be safe. Showing him how dangerous it was to follow me was the right thing to do. If I wanted, I could crack the floor open, just like I did back in Jason Halloran's house. I'd been drawn down to to the basement and could feel those women in his walls. I could goddamn feel them. I just knew they were there. And I put my palms to the walls and...
"Frankie," Dekker was saying. I blinked at him. He nodded at the body in front of me. "You have to pull the sheet down to look at him."
I nodded. But instead of pulling the sheet down, I just stood there, looking down at the brightness of the shroud, a fine spray of hoarfrost coating it. I could feel the cold coming off it, empty and smelling slightly of dust. It was coming off all the bodies, surrounding me. Where had I felt that before?
I reached down slowly and pulled the sheet down to reveal a man, hair recently cut, skin too pale to be alive, ice crystals on his cheeks and torso and feet. He had a doughy, slightly pampered look, even in death. Someone with money and no cares in the world. His eyes, open and pale, were odd. Something about them made a shiver go down my spine. And there was a hole in his chest, skin and muscle and bone cracked and fissured around it like a broken porcelain doll. As if someone had found him frozen and just reached inside.
Take your little knife and carve out her heart, Abby Stromberg had said. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I touched the corpse’s shoulder and even his skin felt hard, brittle, and frigidly cold.
"I found him covered in hoarfrost," said Dekker. "All over, not just in spots like you see now. There was no blood. Not even over his heart. Where his heart used to be."
He was watching me, his dark eyes searching. I looked back down at the man on the slab. Something about the eyes bothered me. "What's his name?" I asked, my voice hoarse.
"Brett Canton," he said. "Data analyst from Portland. "
"Why was he here?" I said, leaning closer, the smell of dust stronger.
"Kayaking fanatic," he said. "Plus he was a drinker. Liked to get away from the family and let loose. But I wouldn't tell his wife that."
I looked at his eyes, squinting. Something beneath the surface. I bent over Brett Canton's dead face, my eyes just over his. If he'd been alive, he'd feel my eyelashes brush up against him.
"Frankie, what are you doing? Do you see something?"
"I don't know," I muttered. But the more I stared into the pale irises, the more I was convinced that there was something there. Something moving. Something bright and very like...
"Fog," I said finally.
"Pardon?"
"Fog," I said. "I can see it, behind his eyes." It was true, I didn't know how I could see it, but I did. Rolling, almost intangible, exactly like the fog that so quickly encompassed everything in Moledet. The one and only time I'd been there, the fog had been everywhere, turning the world from hot and dusty to frigid in a moment. The dust, just like the smell coming off of the dead man.
I turned and pulled back the sheet on the next gurney to see a young black woman, her skin gone ashy, fog in her now-white eyes, and the same hole in her chest as Brett Canton, cracked around the edges.
The next body was another white man, whose eyes also revealed the fog. I spun, whipping sheets off the other bodies, looking down at them straight in the eyes. An older Hispanic man, a white woman, all in good health, all with holes in their chests, all with fog in their eyes.
"Frankie, stop it," Dekker said, his voice soft. I was scaring him again. I stopped still in the middle of six frozen bodies, my breath panting clouds in the frigid room.
"He's been to see Cain," I said, softly, almost afraid to disturb whatever was still trapped in the bodies. I remembered my sister, my mother, wielding power that was not their own. "Or someone with Cain's power."
"Are you sure?" said Dekker. "How can you know that?"
"I can see it," I said. "The fog, back when I was trapped in the mirror. Do you remember?"
“Yeah, I remember," he said, an edge to his voice. I remembered how the bavuah tried to seduce him with my face, when my reflection trapped me in the mirror. I hadn't given him credit for recognizing that she was false. I looked at him now, and could see he was still carrying the weight of that day.
I straightened, taking a step back, my hands shaking.
"Frankie?" Dekker said, catching my arm, steadying me.
"It’s coming," I said. "I can feel it getting stronger. That old man was right, the edges of the world are wearing thin and I can feel what's coming from the other side. Something bad, something evil."
"What old man? Talk to me, Frankie," he said, worry etching lines around his eyes. "Please."
"I'm crazy," I breathed. "I know I'm crazy. But something's coming. Fire and ice and my father says it's my fault. Everything's going to burn, even the sky. Even the sky. And the hoarfrost, the hoarfrost is everywhere and I can't stop it, I can't fight it, and even the gods can't help me now."
"What are you talking about? Frankie!"
I looked at him, startled. I blinked, tears clouding my vision. Dekker reached out, but I backed away, afraid of the touch for some reason, afraid of hurting him. I looked down at the body in front of me. Metal rattled again, the floor shook, I reached to hold onto something, afraid I'd fall right through the floor somehow, just fall right out of the world that was too thin, too insubstantial. But whatever I'd grabbed onto was too cold, and as my fingers began to go numb, I saw with horror that I was grasping Brett Canton's arm. I let go and stumbled, Dekker's hand catching me, steadying me, holding me until the shaking stopped. I grew calmer, and the force inside me eased its grasp, the clawing in my chest. The devil's had his claws in you since the day you were born.
"No, he hasn't," I breathed.
"Frankie," Dekker whispered, holding onto me as if I might disappear, as if he, too, sensed the thinning of the world.
"I can see it in their eyes," I said after a moment. "I can smell the dust on them. I know things that I shouldn't know, impossible things. I know he had steak and eggs for breakfast before he set out. And I know the peace he felt on the water before it happened. But I don't know how it happened. I don't know how he died."
Dekker looked at the body. "I can't see anything. Are you sure?" But his face said, Are you sure you're not insane? And I had no answer for that question, because I wasn't sure what the answer was anymore.
"I'm sure," I said, feeling sick, bile rising in the back of my throat, the numbness that came just before vomiting. "I have to get out of here." He nodded, keeping hold of me, leading me out the door. I didn't want his help, something hard in me refused to want his help, even now. But I was dizzy and sick and I let Dekker help me out of the morgue. What had Moira from my dream said? Spine of stone? If only she could see me now.
When we got to the car, I bent over with my elbows on my knees, trying to get my bearings back. But all that happened was I lost my breakfast right there in the parking lot. Dekker stood over me, rubbing my back as I puked pancakes, splashing my ugly shoes. When I finished, I stood up, unsteady still, but feeling better.
"Show me where you found him," I said, without missing a beat. "Brett Canton, the
most recent victim."
"Maybe you should rest," he said, "you don't look like you're feeling well."
"I told you I don't eat breakfast."
"Frankie, what just happened? What's going on?"
I took a few deep breaths, holding onto the car for balance. After a while, without looking at him, I said, "I don't like to feel things."
"What are you feeling?" His voice was hopeful, curious.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand before answering. "Everything," I said. "I feel everything."
NINE
We didn't talk in the car. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep and Dekker pretended to believe me. When he stopped the car, I opened my eyes and felt my mouth hang open.
"Savage Bay," he said, watching me. "Pretty, isn't it?"
"It's okay," I said, smiling a little at him. The corner of his mouth twitched. The sensation of the world wearing away had dissipated to a feeling of mild dread. I could breathe through dread. But the feeling of dark, dreadful things pouring out into the world haunted me. Mr. Corvid and Coyote and Moira haunted me, the visions of hoarfrost and fire, and Ome with two faces on one head. What was real and what was a dream anymore? I thought of waking up with a handful of red thread that floated to the floor.
"You up for this?" he said. "You can rest if you want."
"No," I said. "I need to do this." Solving Dekker's frozen murder dilemma would be the quickest way to find the tear in the world, where the veil had been ripped open. And I could finally find out if a dream was just a dream. All I had to do was die, that's what they told me. And the more I died, the more I lost. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but wouldn't any sacrifice be worth saving the world? Ome's words came back to me and I shuddered. What if you had to sacrifice him?
"Why do you feel like you need to do this?” Dekker asked. “Because it's Cain?"
"It's why I’m here," I said.
"Fuck those wraith assholes. You're here because I asked you to come," said Dekker. " They don't get to own you. No one does."
"No one but you, is that what you mean?" I said. My voice sounded tired as I said it. "You can't control everything, Dekker. You can't stop me from being in danger, from dying. You can't control any of it, no matter how hard you try."