“I only wanted to sleep,” he says. It sounds like he’s got a mouthful of gravel, but upon closer inspection I realize it’s because all of his teeth have come loose. It makes him look older, as does the sagging skin, but he couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Just another runaway who stumbled into the wrong house.
“Anna,” I say, grabbing her arm, but she won’t let herself be dragged back. She stands without flinching as he stretches his arms wide. The Christlike pose makes it worse when the blood starts seeping through his ragged clothes, darkening the fabric everywhere, on every limb. His head lolls and then whips back and forth wildly. Then it snaps upright and he screams.
The sound of ripping that I hear isn’t only his shirt. Intestines spill out in a grotesque rope and hit the floor. He starts to fall forward, toward her, and I grab and yank hard enough to pull her to my chest. When I put myself between her and him, another body crashes through the wall, sending dust and splinters everywhere. It flies across the floor in scattered pieces, ragged arms and legs. The head stares at us as it skids, baring its teeth.
I’m in no mood to see a blackened, rotting tongue, so I wrap my arm around Anna and pull her across the floor. She moans softly but lets herself be pulled, and we rush through the door into the safety of daylight. Of course when we look back there’s no one there. The house is unchanged, no blood on the floor, no cracks in the wall.
Staring back through her front door, Anna looks miserable—guilty and terrorized. I don’t even think, I just pull her closer and hold her tight. My breath moves quickly in her hair. Her fists are trembling as she grips my shirt.
“You can’t stay here,” I say.
“There’s nowhere else for me to go,” she replies. “It isn’t so bad. They’re not that strong. A display like that, they can probably only manage once every few days. Maybe.”
“You can’t be serious. What if they get stronger?”
“I don’t know what we could have expected,” she says, and steps away, out of my reach. “That all this would come without a price.”
I want to argue, only nothing sounds convincing, even in my head. But it can’t be like this. It’ll drive her insane. I don’t care what she says.
“I’ll go to Thomas and Morfran,” I say. “They’ll know what to do. Look at me,” I say, lifting her chin. “I won’t let it stay like this. I promise.”
If she cared enough to make a gesture, it would be a shrug. To her, this is fitting punishment. But it did shake her up, and that keeps her from really arguing. When I move to my car, I hesitate.
“Will you be all right?”
Anna gives me a wry smile. “I’m dead. What could happen?” Still, I get the feeling that while I’m gone, she’s going to spend most of her time outside the house. I walk off down the driveway.
“Cas?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you came back. I wasn’t sure if you would.”
I nod and put my hands in my pockets. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Inside the car, I blare the radio. It’s a good thing to do, when you’re sick to death of creepy silence. I do it a lot. I’m just settling into my groove with some Stones when a news report cuts through the melody of “Paint It, Black.”
“The body was found just inside the gates of Park View Cemetery, and may have been the victim of a satanic ritual. Police can’t comment yet on the identity of the victim, however Channel 6 has learned that the crime was particularly brutal. The victim, a man in his late forties, appeared to have been dismembered.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The images before me may as well be news footage played on mute. Lights on all of the squad cars ring out in red and flashing white, but there are no sirens. The police walk around in drab black jackets, their chins tucked low and somber. They’re trying to seem calm, like this happens every day, but some of them look like they’d rather be off in the bushes somewhere throwing up their donuts. A few use their bodies to obscure the view of nosy camera lenses. And somewhere in the center of it all is a body, torn to pieces.
I wish I could get closer, that I kept a spare press pass in the glove compartment or had the money to keep a few cops in my pocket. As it is, I’m lingering on the edges of the press crowd, behind the yellow tape.
I don’t want to believe that it was Anna. It would mean that man’s death is on my hands. I don’t want to believe it because it would mean that she’s incurable, that there is no redemption.
As the crowd watches, the police exit the park with a gurney. On top of it is a black bag that should normally be shaped like a body but instead looks like it’s been stuffed full of hockey equipment. I suppose they put him back together as well as they could. When the gurney hits the curb, the remains shift, and through the bag we can see one of the limbs fall down, clearly unattached to the rest. The crowd makes a muffled noise of disturbed disgust. I elbow my way back through them to my car.
* * *
I pull into her driveway and park. She’s surprised to see me. I’ve been gone less than an hour. As my feet crunch up the gravel I don’t know whether the noise comes from the dirt, or from my grinding teeth. Anna’s expression changes from pleased surprise to concern.
“Cas? What’s the matter?”
“You tell me.” I’m surprised to find how pissed I am. “Where were you last night?”
“What are you talking about?”
She needs to convince me. She needs to be very convincing.
“Just tell me where you were. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I stayed near the house. I tested my strength. I—” She pauses.
“You what, Anna?” I demand.
Her expression hardens. “I hid in my bedroom for a while. After I realized the spirits were still here.” The look in her eyes is resentful. It’s the there, are you happy now? look.
“You’re sure you didn’t leave? Didn’t try to explore Thunder Bay again, maybe go down to the park and, I don’t know, dismember some poor jogger?”
The stricken expression on her face makes the anger leak out through my shoes. I open my mouth to pull my foot out of it, but how do I explain why I’m so angry? How do I explain that she needs to give me a better alibi?
“I can’t believe you’re accusing me.”
“I can’t believe that you can’t believe it,” I retort. I don’t know why I can’t stop being so combative. “Come on. People don’t get butchered in this city every day. And the very night after I free the most powerful murderous ghost in the western hemisphere, somebody shows up missing their arms and legs? It’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“But it is a coincidence,” she insists. Her delicate hands have formed balled-up fists.
“Don’t you remember what just happened?” I gesture wildly toward the house. “Tearing off body parts is, like, your MO.”
“What’s an ‘MO’?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Don’t you get what this means? Don’t you understand what I have to do if you keep on killing?”
When she doesn’t reply, my crazed tongue plows ahead.
“It means I get to have a serious Old Yeller moment,” I snap. The minute I say it, I know that I shouldn’t have. It was stupid and it was mean, and she caught the reference. Of course she would have. Old Yeller was made in like 1955. She probably saw it when it came out in theaters. The look she’s giving me is shocked and hurt; I don’t know if any look has made me feel worse. Still, I can’t quite muster an apology. The idea that she’s probably a murderer holds it in.
“I didn’t do it. How can you think so? I can’t stand what I’ve already done!”
Neither of us says anything else. We don’t even move. Anna is pissed off and trying very hard not to cry. As we look at each other, something inside me is trying to click, trying to fall into place. I feel it in my mind and in my chest, like a puzzle piece you know has to go somewhere so you keep trying to push it in from all different angles. And then,
just like that, it fits. So perfect and complete that you can’t imagine how it was without it there, even seconds ago.
“I’m sorry,” I hear myself whisper. “It’s just that— I don’t know what’s happening.”
Anna’s eyes soften, and the stubborn tears begin to recede. The way she stands, the way she breathes, I know she wants to come closer. New knowledge fills up the air between us and neither of us wants to breathe it in. I can’t believe this. I’ve never been the type.
“You saved me, you know,” Anna says finally. “You set me free. But just because I’m free, doesn’t mean—that I can have the things that—” She stops. She wants to say more. I know she does. But just like I know that she does, I know that she won’t.
I can see her talk herself out of coming closer. Calmness settles over her like a blanket. It covers up the melancholy and silences any wishes for something different. A thousand arguments pile up in my throat, but I clench my teeth on them. We’re not children, neither of us. We don’t believe in fairy tales. And if we did, who would we be? Not Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty. I slice murder victims’ heads off and Anna stretches skin until it rips, she snaps bones like green branches into smaller and smaller pieces. We’d be the fricking dragon and the wicked fairy. I know that. But I still have to tell her.
“It isn’t fair.”
Anna’s mouth twists into a smile. It should be bitter—it should be a sneer—but it isn’t.
“You know what you are, don’t you?” she asks. “You’re my salvation. My way to atone. To pay for everything I’ve done.”
When I realize what she wants, it feels like someone kicked me in the chest. I’m not surprised that she’s reluctant to go out on dates and tiptoe through the tulips, but I never imagined, after all this, that she would want to be sent away.
“Anna,” I say. “Don’t ask me to do this.”
She doesn’t reply.
“What was all this for? Why did I fight? Why did we do the spell? If you were just going to—”
“Go get your knife back,” she replies, and then she fades away into the air right in front of me, back to the other world where I can’t follow.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Since Anna has been free, I haven’t been able to sleep. There are endless nightmares and shadowy figures looming over my bed. The smell of sweet, lingering smoke. The mewling of the damned cat at my bedroom door. Something has to be done. I’m not afraid of the dark; I’ve always slept like a rock, and I’ve been in more than my share of dim and dangerous places. I’ve seen most of what there is to be afraid of in this world, and to tell you the truth, the worst of them are the ones that make you afraid in the light. The things that your eyes see plainly and can’t forget are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination. Imagination has a poor memory; it slinks away and goes blurry. Eyes remember for much longer.
So why am I so creeped out by a dream? Because it felt real. And it’s been there for too long. I open my eyes and don’t see anything, but I know, I know, that if I reached down below my bed, some decaying arm would shoot out from underneath and drag me to hell.
I tried to blame Anna for these nightmares, and then I tried not to think of her at all. To forget how our last conversation ended. To forget that she charged me with the task of recovering my athame and, after I do, killing her with it. Air leaves my nostrils in a quick snort even as I think the words. Because how can I?
So I won’t. I won’t think of it, and I’ll make procrastination my new national pastime.
I’m nodding off in the midst of world history. Luckily, Mr. Banoff would never realize it in a million years, because I sit in the back and he’s up on the whiteboard spouting off about the Punic Wars. I’d probably be really into it, if only I could stay conscious long enough to tune in. But all I get is blah blah, nod-off, dead finger in my ear, snap awake. Then repeat. When the bell rings for the end of the period, I jerk and blink my eyes one last time, then heave out of my desk and head for Thomas’s locker.
I lean up against the door next to his while he stuffs his books in. He’s avoiding my eyes. Something’s bothering him. His clothes are also much less wrinkled than usual. And they look cleaner. And they match. He’s putting on the Ritz for Carmel.
“Is that gel in your hair?” I tease.
“How can you be so chipper?” he asks. “Haven’t you been watching the news?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, deciding to feign innocence. Or ignorance. Or both.
“The news,” he hisses. His voice goes lower. “The guy in the park. The dismemberment.” He glances around, but no one is paying any attention to him, as usual.
“You think it was Anna,” I say.
“Don’t you?” asks a voice in my ear.
I spin around. Carmel is right over my shoulder. She moves to stand beside Thomas, and I can tell by the way they face me that they’ve already discussed this at length. I feel attacked, and a little bit hurt. They’ve left me out of the loop. I feel like a petulant little kid, which in turn pisses me off.
Carmel goes on. “You can’t deny that it’s an extreme coincidence.”
“I don’t deny that. But it is a coincidence. She didn’t do it.”
“How do you know?” they ask together, and isn’t that cute.
“Hey, Carmel.”
The conversation stops abruptly as Katie approaches with a gaggle of girls. Some of them I don’t know, but two or three are in classes with me. One of them, a petite brunette with wavy hair and freckles, gives me a smile. They all ignore Thomas completely.
“Hey, Katie,” Carmel replies coolly. “What’s up?”
“Are you still going to help out with the Winter Formal? Or are Sarah, Nat, Casey, and I on our own?”
“What do you mean, ‘help out’? I’m the chair of that committee.” Carmel looks around at the rest of the girls, perplexed.
“Well,” Katie says with a direct glance at me. “That was before you got so busy.”
I think Thomas and I would like to get the hell out of here. This is more uncomfortable than talking about Anna. But Carmel is a force to be reckoned with.
“Aw, Katie, are you trying to stage a coup?”
Katie blinks. “What? What are you talking about? I was just asking.”
“Well relax, then. The formal’s not for three months. We’ll meet on Saturday.” She turns slightly away in an effectively dismissive gesture.
Katie’s wearing this embarrassed smile. She sputters a little bit and actually tells Carmel what a cute sweater she’s wearing before toddling off.
“And be sure to have two ideas for fundraisers each!” Carmel calls out. She looks back at us and shrugs apologetically.
“Wow,” Thomas breathes. “Girls are bitches.”
Carmel’s eyes widen; then she grins. “Of course we are. But don’t let that distract you.” She looks at me. “Tell us what’s going on. How do you know that jogger wasn’t Anna?”
I wish Katie had stuck around longer.
“I know,” I reply. “I’ve been to see her.”
Sly glances are exchanged. They think I’m being gullible. Maybe I am, because it is an extreme coincidence. Still, I’ve been dealing with ghosts for most of my life. I should get the benefit of the doubt.
“How can you be sure?” Thomas asks. “And can we even take the chance? I know that what happened to her was terrible, but she’s done some terrible shit, and maybe we should just send her … wherever it is that you send them. Maybe it would be better for everyone.”
I’m sort of impressed by Thomas speaking this way, even if I don’t agree. But that kind of talk makes him uncomfortable. He starts shifting his weight from foot to foot and pushes his black-rimmed glasses higher up on his nose.
“No,” I reply flatly.
“Cas,” Carmel starts. “You don’t know that she won’t hurt anyone. She’s been killing people for fifty years. It wasn’t her fault. But it’s probably not that easy to go col
d turkey.”
They make her sound like a wolf who has tasted chicken’s blood.
“No,” I say again.
“Cas.”
“No. Give me your reasons, and your suspicions. But Anna doesn’t deserve to be dead. And if I put my knife in her belly…” I almost gag just saying it. “I don’t know where I’d be sending her.”
“If we get you proof…”
Now I get defensive. “Stay away from her. It’s my business.”
“Your business?” Carmel snaps. “It wasn’t your business when you needed our help. It wasn’t just you who was in danger that night in that house. You don’t have any right to shut us out now.”
“I know,” I say, and sigh. I don’t know how to explain it. I wish that we were all closer, that they had been my friends longer, so they might know what I was trying to say without me having to say it. Or I wish that Thomas was a better mind reader. Maybe he is, because he puts his hand on Carmel’s arm and whispers that they should give me some time. She looks at him like he’s gone nuts, but backs off a step.
“Are you always this way with your ghosts?” he asks.
I stare at the locker behind him. “What are you talking about?”
Those knowing eyes of his are seeking out my secrets.
“I don’t know,” he says after a second. “Are you always this … protective?”
Finally I look him in the eye. There’s a confession in my throat even in the midst of dozens of students crushing the hallways on their way to third period. I can hear bits and pieces of their conversations as they go by. They sound so normal, and it occurs to me that I’ve never had one of those conversations. Complaining about teachers and wondering about what to do on Friday night. Who’s got the time? I’d like to be talking to Thomas and Carmel about that. I’d like to be planning a party, or deciding which DVD to rent and whose house to watch it at.
“Maybe you can tell us all this later,” Thomas says, and it’s there in his voice. He knows. I’m glad.
“We should just focus on getting your athame back,” he suggests. I nod weakly. What is it my dad used to say? Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He used to chuckle about living a life full of booby traps.
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