by Cole McCade
Gasping, her chest hollowed out, she sank against him and listened to the race of his heart underneath her cheek. This had to be what going mad felt like. This was what happened to the human mind under pressure. Less than two days. Less than two days and he was breaking her, and reshaping her as something she didn’t recognize.
“You’re upset.” His voice vibrated deep against her ear; he settled heavy arms around her waist.
“Mn.” She turned her face into his shoulder. “There’s nothing not to be upset about.”
“I suppose this is true.”
“What the fuck am I doing, Priest? What is this?”
He stroked her hair back, coaxed her to lift her head, to look at him. “Perhaps, in this situation…instead of thinking of everything you wish to keep, you have realized that you have nothing left to lose.”
“That’s no excuse.” She shook her head. “I feel like I’m losing myself.”
His only answer, at first, was a kiss—a kiss she didn’t want, a kiss she couldn’t turn away from, a kiss that feathered over her lips and left them sighing. “Or you are finding yourself.”
“No. Finding myself like this…I…I…”
“You what?”
“I’m not like you. I’m not going to find myself by being like you!”
“I told you.” Steel hardened in his voice. “Everyone is like me. What is wrong with me is wrong with every living being. I am simply more honest about it.”
“No. You’re broken, you’re sick, you—you—there’s no kindness inside you at all.”
“Kindness is wasted.”
“Kindness is all I have,” she bit off.
“Then you have nothing.” He shifted—deliberately, pointedly, his cock still inside her and nudging half-hard against her folds; she cried out in shock, back arching. “Don’t ever show anyone an ounce of compassion, firefly. They’ll spit on you and blame you for the mess.”
She struggled to pull herself together, struggled to catch her breath, and shook her head. “That’s not true.”
“It’s the only truth there is.”
“No. It’s not. You just tell yourself that to justify what you do.” She pushed back from him, struggled free, leaning on her good leg and parting their bodies with a hiss under her breath, wet heat and thick flesh sliding slick against her before she was free and tumbling back. He let her go; she pushed away, spilling to lean hard against the enclosed porch wall. “We aren’t all perfect. We aren’t all saints. But one mistake or stray thought doesn’t damn you and turn you into this unfeeling, awful creature. One selfish thought. Everyone has selfish thoughts. Bad thoughts. Everyone does bad things. It’s what you choose to do about it afterward that matters.”
He regarded her knowingly, then inclined his head. “Perhaps that is true. But if it is, then we all have a monster inside us, as well.”
“Maybe. But the answer’s still the same. Moments of weakness aren’t as important as the choices you make about them.”
He rose to his knees, looming over her. When he reached for her, she flinched—but he only delved two fingers into the breast pocket of her shirt before withdrawing with the firefly pendant tangled around his fingers. Slowly and methodically, he untangled it, uncoiling the chain one loop at a time.
“You speak of choices, and yet you refuse to make one of your own,” he said—then leaned forward, and slipped the pendant around her neck. His fingers buried in her hair as he fitted the clasp together, meeting her eyes so close she thought he might kiss her again. But he only studied her as he drew one hand back to trail the length of the chain, then delicately laid the pendant against her collarbone. “It’s not your fault, if you don’t make a choice. But you chose me, tonight.”
Willow stared at him, then tore her gaze away and looked toward that golden square of light where nearly everyone she’d ever loved was gathered without her, so close and yet so painfully far. She might never cross that distance again. Even if she survived, she might never be able to return to the light, and that knowledge was a pain she couldn’t endure, a pain she would willingly bury in a thousand empty trysts if only to numb herself a little more.
“No,” she said, and lowered her eyes to the tips of her bandaged fingers. “I chose myself.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ONE DAY, WILLOW WOULD FINALLY throw Erin-the-Doll away.
Eight was very much too old for dolls. Eight was old enough for grown-up things, but right now Erin-the-Doll was very much a grown-up thing. Erin-the-Doll was her test subject, and test subjects were very important in experiments. She should probably have another doll for…for…for a control. Yes. That was the word she’d learned for it, only control in this situation didn’t mean it like it did when it talked about having power over someone, like Daddy having control over bedtime and when she was allowed to watch TV. For some reason control meant something different this time. It meant the one in the experiment that wasn’t touched so that she could compare the results to the original, and Daddy had said when experimenting with real people it was very important to have multiple control people to test for side effects.
But Erin-the-Doll wasn’t a real person. Erin-the-Doll was an awful little voodoo monster that hardly even looked like a little plastic person anymore after Willow had spent years burning the charred tips of her mutilated hair and digging pens into her eye sockets and smashing her face against bedposts, and she didn’t need a control because deep down Willow hoped that everything she did to the doll would burn in every inch of Erin-the-Girl’s sneering horrid body each time she opened her mouth and said Willy, Willy, Willy-boy.
So with a touch of glee, she wrenched Erin-the-Doll’s arm off, then poked the nubby plastic ball joint on the end with the tip of the soldering iron just to watch it melt.
“Carefully,” Daddy said, leaning over the kitchen table and watching her with that warmth in his eyes that she loved, that warmth of approval and pride. “You want a hole barely large enough for the rod to go through. If you make it too large, the ball joint won’t hold in the socket anymore.”
“Does it have to?” she asked, and squinted as she very, very cautiously used the hot tip of the iron to melt a hole right in the center of the plastic. A thin curl of smoke rose, bringing with it a satisfying stink of burning plastic. “We’re gonna stick it to the metal part inside, right? So that’ll hold it on?”
“It will. But it will only hold the metal piece on. The plastic arm will fall off, and then she won’t look like a doll anymore.”
“She’ll look like a Terminator bot.”
Daddy laughed gently and ruffled her hair. “Something like that.”
“Maybe I want a Terminator bot.” She made a fierce face at Erin-the-Doll, screwing her mouth and nose up until her face was tight as a bunch of wrinkles piled on each other. “Maybe I’ll melt your whole face off. I hope it hurts.”
Daddy arched a brow, pulled out a chair, and sank down to lean his arms on the table. “You seem pretty mad at that doll.”
“Meh.” Willow scrunched up her nose, shrugged, and picked up the little metal skeleton Daddy had helped her put together. The arms were connected to the shoulders by little adapter sockets and…and…she couldn’t remember the right word for it. Something with chipsets and tape, something about sending instructions from the main receiver to the core processing unit and down to the arm to make the shoulders rotate and the elbow bend and the fingers move. Carefully, she started picking it apart. Her small fingers were better for this than Daddy’s, easing the itsy two-pronged connector out. “It’s an old ugly doll. I don’t like it anymore. Dolls are for little girls.”
“I guess they are.” Daddy folded his hands, as if that could hide how they shook. She didn’t think he even realized he did it, but she noticed every time. “Is that girl Erin still in your class at school?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she still picking on you?”
Willow shrugged again. “She’s a butt. I don’t really care.”
Daddy looked at her, one of those long looks that said he was thinking something, then sighed. “Okay, baby. What are you going to do with your robot when you’re done with it?”
“Dunno yet.” She squinted as she unwound the copper wire screwing two pegs together, uncoiling it carefully. “It’s just a…a…proto…protein…?”
“Prototype.”
“Yes!” She nodded firmly. “It’s a prototype. I’m going to make a bigger one next. I’m gonna make a walker robot, and a robot to do dishes, and a robot to do homework, and—”
“A walker robot?”
Willow bit her lip and set the framework down. She tried not to look at Daddy’s crutches, propped in the corner, but that made her want to look at them more. They were new and he said they were just-in-case, but it was still scary that sometimes, Daddy couldn’t stand up by himself. It made him angry in a way that scared her, that made her quiet, because even though he wasn’t angry at her he was angry in a way that seemed to make him hurt, and she didn’t want to make it worse.
She lowered her eyes, fidgeting a little with the end of the copper wire. “…I…I wanted to make a robot that….that can walk for you. So it doesn’t hurt you so much.”
Daddy was quiet, so quiet. And she was scared, so scared. She didn’t want to look at him, because he might have that hurt, defeated look on his face, like he’d lost some kind of race he didn’t even want to be running.
“Willow…” he started, only to stop at the sound of the gate opening. Then feet on the sidewalk, that particular stalk-stalk-step of heels. Willow looked up as something strange passed over Daddy’s face: something like elation and despair, like the sun was shining and the moon was out all at the same time, and it was day and night on his face and he was so, so very scared but he wanted to hope anyway.
Willow didn’t understand his face. She’d never seen him like that before, but then he was up: his chair toppling, his steps wobbling for a moment, his right leg dragging heavier but still he was moving, rushing to the front door, flinging the screen open and then shoving the wooden door aside to tumble out on the porch and stop, stock-still, breathing so hard his shoulders rose and fell like rolling waves on the river.
“Miriam,” he breathed.
Ice crawled up Willow’s legs, starting at the tips of her toes. Fire burned at her crown, crept down her ears and cheeks and neck, and crashed in a torrid tempest of hot and cold flashes somewhere in the center of her chest. That look on Daddy’s face. That name.
Mama.
She threw the skeleton down, spilled out of the chair, and dashed to the door, squeezing out behind Daddy’s unmoving bulk. And there she was: standing on the walk, as beautiful as a maple tree in autumn, all fire-reds and russets and nature’s untouchable wildness. She wasn’t a woman-turned-little-girl in one of Willow’s stolen skirts, either. Not anymore. She was a polished, shining femme fatale, a rough gem cut into something glittering and shiny in a finely made skirt suit in deep emerald green silk and a jacket lined in wispy tufts of pale brown fur that framed her smooth, perfectly youthful, perfectly made-up face. Gold glinted on her fingers and her wrists, and jewels shone in her ears and in her glossy, shimmering hair. She pulled large, stylish sunglasses off with perfectly manicured fingers, and looked them over with flat green eyes.
Green eyes the same color as the eyes of the little boy standing at her side, his tiny brown hand clutched in hers.
Willow froze, hiding behind Daddy, peeking around his legs. The little boy couldn’t be any more than three, maybe four, he couldn’t be older because if he was the math didn’t make sense in ways Willow couldn’t stand to think about—but he was dressed up like a little man in a perfect tiny steel-gray suit, like doll clothing. His sun-streaked, golden-brown hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail, but a few long, wispy locks drifted into a soft, velvety-tan face that looked like Mama’s but looked like the hinóno’éí who lived in Crow City, too. He stared down at the toes of his polished shoes, but through the soft brown-blonde fringe of his lashes she caught that glimpse of green, the same green that looked at her in the mirror every morning.
“Miriam?” Daddy repeated. “You’re back? Oh, God—”
“I’m not back,” Mama cut off coolly. She looked through Daddy like he was made of glass, like he was a little figurine that belonged on Willow’s shelf of trinkets from Uncle Wally. “Hello, Joseph. You’re not looking all that well.”
Daddy made an awful, awful sound Willow hoped he would never make again. “I’m fine.”
“Are you?” Her lips curled mockingly, but she diverted her gaze to Willow, locking on her like laser sights. “Hello, Willow. Mommy’s home. Did you miss me?”
Willow shrank back and pressed her face to the back of Daddy’s thighs. Not really, she thought, but dutifully mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”
“I missed you, too.” Mama’s voice hadn’t changed. It still had that syrupy tone to it, only now it was rotten. Like dying honeysuckles when they started to turn to decaying, moldering mulch. “You’re the reason I’m here, sweetie. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
Daddy’s fists clenched. His voice descended to a warning growl. “Miriam—”
“I’m speaking, Joseph,” Mama snapped. “Don’t interrupt me.” She slipped from razors back into syrup from one breath to the next. “Willow? Honey, do you want to come live with Mommy? I have a nice house, now. And you can have all the toys you want. And a brother. Don’t you want to meet your brother? You can come play with him and be like a little mommy, too.”
Willow thought she was going to throw up, like the time when she ate an entire one-pound bag of gummy bears because Uncle Wally had given them to her and she didn’t want Daddy to know and take them away. She peeked around Daddy’s legs, staring at the little boy. “He’s…he’s my brother?”
Mama smiled her wide, sticky, plastic-red smile and tugged on the boy’s hand. “He is,” she cooed. “This is Devon. Devon West. Say hello to your big sister Willow, Devi baby.”
The little boy reluctantly lifted his head, and looked at Willow long enough for her to glimpse the whites of his eyes, wide and nervous around his irises, before they dropped again.
“Hi,” he said in a tiny voice.
“Oh, you can do better than that,” Mama said, and pouted. “You want ice cream, don’t you?”
The little boy sighed with a sort of weary, ancient patience that Willow understood a little too well. He squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and looked Willow straight in the eye like he was staring down a dragon. “Hello, Willow.”
“Oh,” she said faintly. “Hi.”
Daddy hissed something under his breath that sounded very much like a bad word. “What the hell is this, Miriam? You got remarried? You had another kid?”
“What I did or didn’t do isn’t your business. This is between me and Willow.”
“Like hell it is. She’s eight, and I’m getting tired of people trying to take my damned daughter away.”
Mama let out a high, incredulous laugh, a short and mocking burst. “She’s my daughter, too. And when did I ever get the chance to fight for custody?”
“When did you ever try to fight for custody? You can’t just show up and try to lay a claim after—it’s been four years, Miriam!”
I’m right here, Willow thought faintly, looking into that little boy’s eyes and seeing her own tired, confused terror reflected there. I’m right here, stop talking about me like I’m a thing…
She couldn’t get the words out. But the crows on the power lines shuffled their feet like they were doing a sidestep dance and caw-caw-cawed, loud and berating and angry, and Willow thought they were her voice when she couldn’t find her own.
“I was trying to make a better life for myself,” Mama said haughtily. “For Willow. What are you going to give her here? Poverty and…what? Indentured servitude? What’s wrong with wanting something better for myself and for my daughter?”
“Don’t.” Da
ddy shook his head, his hands bunched up in fists that shook, the veins standing out. “Don’t you dare pretend this was for anyone but you.”
“As if you know me. As if you ever knew me.” Mama raked him with a contemptuous look, before that smile was back. She could turn that smile on and off like a light switch, and it was so fake. Like Mama stared through a clown mask, when she looked at Willow again. “I can’t stay long, honey. Mama’s got to be uptown in half an hour. So go get your things. Give your bags to Richard. Not that you’ll need them; you can probably throw most of that old trash out.”
Willow realized a car was waiting outside the gate. A long, sleek car like a long, shining black eel, with too many wheels and a man in an undertaker’s suit leaning against the door, his white gloves like a corpse’s hands. She didn’t want to get in a car with that man, and she shook her head, making herself small behind Daddy, who puffed himself up big big big as if to make a better shield, and she loved him for it.
Mama made an exasperated sound. “I told you to go get your things, Willow.”
“I…” She nearly swallowed her voice. “…I don’t…want to.”
Mama stared, her eyes hard as marbles. “Why ever not?”
“I don’t…need more toys.” Willow bit her lip. “Can’t you…can’t you stay here? Why do I have to go away with you? Can’t you and Devon stay here?”
“Out of the question.” Oh so much dripping, slurping, awful-wet disgust in Mama’s voice. Slimy. “You’d take Devon away from his Daddy? Devon’s Daddy can be your Daddy too, you know. He’s a very nice man.”