Once she was sunk up to her shoulders, Wendy tilted her head back and reveled in the cold shiver that ran chilly fingers up the base of her skull to her temples. Groaning, Wendy sank again as deeply into the bath as she could, until only her nose was above the water. When she opened her eyes the bathroom ceiling was distorted and wavery, but Wendy had a feeling that it wasn't just the water causing her vision to drift.
Surfacing, she stared at the wall and nodded; yep, she was definitely beginning to hallucinate. Her father had last painted the bathroom when she was ten, maybe eleven. Wendy was positive that she'd remember if he'd decided to spray paint pink stripes and swirls above the toilet, especially ones that had the disconcerting habit of forming into glaring, malevolent faces in her peripheral vision.
Finally dragging her eyes away from the faces in the walls, Wendy was stunned to realize that the air was steaming above her. “Didn't I run cold water?” she whispered plaintively.
Ice melting in a Styrofoam coffee cup, watering down the bitter liquid flung on the side of the road.
“No. No-no-no, I know what to do,” Wendy said, sitting up so that the water sloshed over the side, drenching the tiles and towels. She waved at her raccoon and chuckled maliciously, grabbing for the driest washcloth to wipe her hands. “I really will ask Emma.”
It took her three tries to punch in the number correctly. It rang and rang and rang, and just as Wendy was certain it was going to voicemail, Emma's familiar cool voice answered. She was annoyed. “Wendy, I'm about to eat for the first time all day. What is it?”
“You. Bitch,” Wendy slurred.
There was a pause on the other end. “Excuse me? I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. You bitch.” Wendy was shaking now in the water, her teeth chattering. “You haul me out to the middle of nowhere, strip me down, and bind me up without even asking permission—”
Immediately Emma's voice dropped and grew further annoyed. “Wendy, please, we discussed the reasons behind this already.”
If she'd been in the same room, Wendy would have slapped her. “And then you have the nerve—the nerve!—to tell me that you don't think I'm good enough to be Reaper material? You come into my dreams and try to push me around? What the hell, Emma? Who does that?”
“What?”
“But I can handle that, you know? It's just stupid high school buffy crap all over again, just from an adult. So I can handle you thinking you're better than me because you're all hot and older and a smarty-pants doctor. Eddie thinks you've got good legs. Who cares? I've got legs too, you know. But it's not—”
Wendy broke off to cough. Her entire torso twisted under the shuddering shape of the wracking coughs, and her throat felt like razors were shredding her insides apart. Every inch of her flesh ached.
“Wendy?” Emma's voice was no longer pitched low or cool. She actually sounded concerned. “Wendy, what's wrong?”
“What did you do to me, Emma?” Wendy whispered, scooping up a palm full of bathwater and drinking it down. “Jane couldn't take off the binding. What did you do?”
“Wait-wait-wait,” Emma was nearly pleading now on the other end. Her voice had gone high and quiet. “You saw Jane again today? When?”
“I hate you,” Wendy said baldly. “I hate you so much. You guys…everyone, all the ghosts, they say I killed my mom but it was really you. You did it. ’Cause if Mom had her cord transmuted the way Eddie's cord is probably transmuted then she'd be alive, right? Yeah. She'd have walked around those Lost like it was nothin’.”
Wendy coughed again. “You're the doctor, Emma. Emmaline. Emmaline, thinks she's soooo fine. You could have saved her. You could've taken her after Piotr put all the pieces together again and you could've put her head back on straight. She just had to go back in her body. No biggie, right? You knocked Eddie out of his easily enough.”
“Wendy?” Emma said softly. “Wendy, I don't know what you're talking about. Did you take something today? Are you drunk? Did you drink alcohol in conjunction with—”
“I'M SICK!” Wendy screamed into the phone, making the raccoon jump and flee the bathroom. “Don't you get that, you crazy bitch?! I'm…I'm running a fever. I'm staring at the walls and the walls are staring at me and the bath was so cold but now the water's warm-warm-warm.”
There was another long pause. Wendy thought that perhaps the phone had cut out, that Emma had hung up on her, when Emma quietly said, “Have you taken your temperature recently, Wendy?”
“One-oh-three-ish,” Wendy said stiffly. Then she laughed crazily. “And I'm getting hot-hot-hot!”
Cursing quietly on the other end, Emma quickly began speaking with someone else. Wendy shook her head. Silly Emma. Silly, stupid, back-stabbing Emma.
“I'm coming over right now,” Emma said, returning to the phone. There was a strange echo in the background now; Wendy thought it might be the sound of Emma's running steps echoing around the hospital's concrete parking garage. “Stay there. Stay cool if you can. Dump out the bathwater, run a cold shower. Get ice packs if you can manage it.”
“Why should I listen to you?” Wendy demanded. “You got me into this mess.”
“Because, one, I'm a doctor, and two, I put the loosest binding possible on you, Wendy. You should not be reacting this way. You said that Jane tried to remove the binding? Are you sure?” Emma broke off and quietly cursed. “Where the hell is my car?”
“Elise has it,” Wendy giggled. “Jane had her feet all over the dashboard too.”
“She…what?!” Emma made a noise somewhere between a growl and a gurgle. “I…I just don't…”
“Emma?” Wendy whispered. “I think I'm gonna be sick.”
“Jesus. Look, just lean over the side of the tub,” Emma demanded and Wendy did so. The sick splattered across the tile was nothing but spit and bile; Wendy realized that the only thing she could recall eating all day was one of Jon's cookies.
Setting the cell on speakerphone and resting it on the toilet lid, Wendy carefully straightened and flipped the stopper on the tub. The water began to drain as she crawled out, easing over the side of the tub as slowly as she could manage. Her knee slid on a tiny puddle and Wendy cracked her funny-bone painfully on the side of the toilet. She moaned.
“Wendy? Wendy, are you still there? Wendy, are you okay? Answer me, damn it! WENDY!”
“Mmmhmmm,” Wendy whispered. “No more bath. Tired.”
“Wendy, okay, I want you to listen to me. Are you listening? Wendy, tell me you're listening.”
“Listening,” Wendy obediently repeated, taking the phone between her chattering teeth. It took all her energy to straighten up and rest against the wall, but she managed. It was time to crawl.
Tilting away from the bathroom wall, Wendy lifted one leg and then the next, then an arm and then the next, forcing her rebelling body to shuffle down the hall until she reached the relative sanity of her own room. Her comforter was half on/half off the bed, her gothic Hello Kitty throw pillow peeking from beneath the dust ruffle. Wendy hooked a finger into the black tassel and pulled the pillow close, jerking the rest of the comforter off the bed to wrap over her shivering, naked form.
“I can't hear you,” Emma was shouting into the phone. “WENDY! SAY SOMETHING!”
“Sorry,” Wendy whispered, watching colors pulse against her eyelids, a kaleidoscope of red and green and blue. “I don't really think you're a bitch. I'm just mad.”
“Listen closely, Wendy. I'm getting a taxi and I'm coming over, okay? Where are you, Wendy?”
Wendy pinched the bridge of her nose. “I'm glad I'm a Lightbringer. I'm glad I'm not a Reaper. I'm new. I'm different. I'm my own.”
“Where are you?”
“My room. Upstairs. End of the hall.”
Emma's voice dropped; she was relieved. “Great. Fabulous. I'll be there as soon as I can but in the meantime I want you to try and take the binding off yourself, okay? Do you think you can do that?”
“You can take a binding o
ff yourself?”
Emma hesitated. “You can try.”
“You still don't think I'm good enough,” Wendy accused her, voice breaking. If she weren't so dry, she would have cried. “You still think I'm trash.”
“Wendy, I never said that.” Emma was almost pleading now. “Please, just try to take off the binding.”
It was worth a shot. “How?”
“Thank heavens, she finally sees reason. Fine, okay, here's what you do. Try and slide into the Never. You won't be able to do it, but try anyway. This will make seeing into the Never easier, yes?”
“Uh huh,” Wendy said, remembering Jane's ribbons of Light and how they'd wrapped around her, pinching and pinning her down, twisting her all up. She closed her eyes and followed Emma's instructions. It was still difficult to push past what felt like layers of cotton pressing down beneath her skin, layered on her bones and ligaments in soft, twisted tangles, but she managed. “What else?”
“Once you can see your Light as well as feel it, look at it closely. Feel the cool spots, the black parts of the Light, woven through the holes in the brighter parts of your Light. Like…like one of those silly potholders you'd make in school, with a handloom? Feel the holes? Those are the spots where you can force open the binding.”
Far away on the other line, Emma could have no idea how hard it was for Wendy to even see the Light, much less force anything.
“I…I can't…”
But then, just as Wendy was about to give up, she felt it. It was nothing at first, just the slightest twinge against the underside of her too-sensitive skin, nails rasping faintly across her nerves. Wendy paused and returned to that spot, her hands hovering on the outside of her body while inwardly every coherent thought was concentrated on that narrow slice of skin and sinew and bone.
Emma was right; it was Light, but Light like no other she'd ever felt before. It was Dark Light, cool to the touch, the texture silky but strong, the feel of it almost like brushing her fingers through Piotr's hair.
“You see?” Emma asked from forever away. “Can you feel it? Now rip it if you can. Tear. Pull.”
Brushing her inner senses along the deftly woven strands of power, Wendy pried her fingers into the weave. It hurt and she dimly realized that she had to be causing some sort of damage to herself by trying to pull free on her own. Emma had made this dark stuff out of Wendy's own spirit, carving into her soul and weaving it back together again—yanking on her soul could only rip her apart piece by piece.
Then Jane had twisted the weave so tightly that there were hardly any holes left.
“Harder,” Wendy whispered, digging her mental fingers in. “Ignore…it.”
“You can do it,” Emma was saying. “Keep trying!”
Wendy knew she was crying freely now, but she didn't care. This agony was like nothing she'd ever felt before; worse than the time she'd shattered her wrist, worse than when she'd been attacked by Specs and had her soul stripped whole from her body, worse than the vaguely remembered pain of the car accident that ushered her into this bizarre give-and-take existence with the dead in the first place.
“Hurts,” she whispered, finally giving up. The binding hadn't budged, not really, and she felt the failure sticking in the back of her throat in a lump of disappointed tears and frustrated anger.
“Wendy? Wendy?” Emma's voice was growing smaller and smaller as the lights in Wendy's room stuttered and dimmed.
“Wendy?”
She coughed; it was the best reply she had.
Emma's voice was rapidly fading.
“Wendy…
I'm…
on…
my…
way…”
“There are birds everywhere still. We don't dare go to my place,” Eddie said, laboriously straightening and scowling at the overcast sky. They'd taken sanctuary under the bridge of the Tot Lot playground, but raucous calls in the distance made it clear to all three of them that it was only a temporary shelter. “And we know heading back to Wendy's house is right out. So what do we do?”
Edgily looking around, Eddie patiently watched as Lily knelt beside Piotr. She brushed a hand across Piotr's knuckles and winced; her fingers passed through his flesh as if she were living and Piotr were only the faintest of Shades.
“What's up?” Eddie asked.
Lily held up her palm. “It is completely numb. I can feel nothing…Eddie, I am at a loss,” she said, drawing back and shaking her wrist sharply to wake the deadened hand. “Perhaps we should have listened to Ada and traveled directly to Alcatraz. Stopped by and grabbed a couple of webs on the way.”
“No use. Without her. No antidote without her. It was a trap,” Piotr roused enough to say. “If it looks like a trap and tastes like a trap then it is a duck. In a trap.” He chuckled weakly and shook his head, trying to hook fingers in the dappled diamonds of the swaying bridge. His fingers passed through. “Where is Wendy? I came here for Wendy.”
“She's not here, man,” Eddie said uneasily. “We don't want her here right now anyway, remember? The Reapers are coming. If they spotted us…”
“We could go to one of the Riders’ haunts.” Lily suggested. Frowning, she glanced at the road, hands restlessly sifting through the sand at her feet. “If we could catch a ride going north, Piotr's Treehouse isn't far. We will be safe there for a time, until we can regroup and plan our next step.”
Eddie stuck his hands on his hips, grimacing. “Treehouse? Right. Like, what, an actual treehouse? He lived up in a tree?” Eddie shook his head. “Good one.”
“No.” Lily smiled and shook her head. “It is just a nickname. No treetops. A warehouse and a steel mill. They are both abandoned. Near the canal.”
“Okay, no trees. But how are we gonna get him to this mystical land of tetanus and safety? You can hardly touch him and I'm not entirely sure that if he could walk, he'd stay stable enough to ride the whole way in a car.”
“A travois, perhaps?” Lily asked, glancing around the playground. “It may take some time to scavenge the material.”
“You mean like a stretcher? Yeah, I guess so. But how would he…” Eddie drifted off. “Oh, wait a second! Hang on just one minute.” Glancing furtively over his shoulder at the treetops, Eddie hopped to his feet and darted through the fence toward the closest house, returning a minute later with a multi-patterned quilt bundled in his hands. It was nearly solid in the Never, brighter than most of the surrounding wildlife. He beamed broadly.
“How did you—” Lily began.
“Wendy said the more emotion you pour into an object, the likelier it's gonna make a dupe in the Never, right? Well, that house right there belongs to the Perkins family,” Eddie said, flopping the quilt into Lily's lap.
“You know them well?”
“Oh yeah. I babysat for them every Saturday night for almost a year. This, my dear lady Lily, is their wedding quilt. Or, rather, Mrs. Perkins first wedding quilt.”
Lily rubbed the luxurious, rich quilt between her fingers. “What is the significance of this first wedding that the quilt would be so thick, so real?”
“She and my mom were great friends for a while there until her first husband, Mr. Horowitz, passed. He was a cop, you know? But his beat was up in Oakland and he ran afoul of some dealers. She lost it when they brought the news. I mean, seriously. Lost. It.”
“She loved him a great deal.”
He tapped the quilt with a sad, knowing smile. “Yep, you don't spend that kind of time with a family without knowing their treasured possessions. When Mrs. Horowitz became Mrs. Perkins, she packed the blanket away for her kids…but it was still hanging on the wall in the Never.”
He pointed across the street. “Speaking of treasured possessions and knowing your neighbors far better than is entirely healthy, that family over there is a flock—a gaggle?—a bunch of hippie Rennies. I bet they've got a staff or two in their back shed.”
“Rennie?”
“Renaissance Faire nuts. They do the circuit every
year. Wanna go check?”
“Stay here,” Lily said, eying the sky. “It is my turn to risk my skin.”
Quickly darting across the street, she vanished through the fence into the backyard. She was gone far longer than Eddie thought was prudent. He was about to try and tuck Piotr beneath the low slide and go after her when Lily scrambled back through the fence hauling a large canvas-wrapped bundle in her arms.
“What did I tell you, huh? You found the staves?” Eddie asked.
“Better,” Lily said, a twinkle in her eye, as she unrolled the canvas, exposing a network of deftly braided cables and what looked like thin, flexible sticks. She picked up two and began screwing the ends together. “Camping gear.”
An hour later, Eddie was still marveling at Lily's ingenuity. The crude travois he'd been envisioning had become a lightweight circle of durable flex-frame lashed with the thin twine. Piotr rested easily on the quilt; he was faint to look at, but the quilt was so dense that it held his weight easily and even seemed to lend him a little bit of substance. They waited until sunset to move and then scurried quickly toward Castro Street, hauling Piotr behind. Eddie had thought briefly of swinging by Wendy's to change the note and let her know where they'd be, but figured that it was too risky. They'd have to figure out a way to meet up later.
“I don't understand what you're trying to do,” Eddie said, panting as Lily stopped only momentarily at a streetlight to allow him to rest.
“We head north,” she replied simply. “Here. Hurry. The Caltrain comes.” She grabbed her edge of the stretcher and began speeding toward the tracks, Eddie grabbing up the foot of the travois and hurrying after. They barely made it.
Eddie was glad to see that the Caltrain was nearly empty of passengers, but Lily had them squatting with Piotr amid the bicycles for safety anyway. They stayed there all the way to the airport, where Lily made them dismount and hitch a ride on the back of a catering van puttering up the 101.
“You're disturbingly good at this,” Eddie said as they hopped off near the San Bruno canal. “Do all Riders ride around like this?”
Reaper (Lightbringer) Page 26