Текст книги "Anna Dressed in Blood"

Автор книги: Kendare Blake

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

“Carmel.”

“Are you crazy? You could have been killed!”

“And if we had all gone, we would all have been killed. Listen, just stick with Thomas and his grandfather. They’ll figure something out. Keep your cool.”

There’s a definite chill on the wind, an early taste of fall, twisting through my hair with ice-water fingers. As I stare up the street, I see Thomas’s Tempo puttering toward us, complete with replacement door and a Willy Wonka bumper sticker. The kid rides in style, and it makes me grin.

“Can I meet you at the library in an hour or so?” I ask Carmel.

She follows my gaze and sees Thomas coming closer.

“Absolutely not. I want to know what’s going on. If you think for a minute that I believed any of that nonsense Morfran and Thomas were trying to tell us last night … I’m not stupid, Cas. I know a diversion when I see one.”

“I know you’re not stupid, Carmel. And if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll stay out of this and meet me at the library in an hour.” I go down the porch steps and walk down my driveway, making a little rolling gesture with my fingers so Thomas won’t pull in. He gets it and slows down just enough for me to open the door and vault inside. Then we drive away, leaving Carmel staring after us.

“What was Carmel doing at your place?” he asks. There’s more than just a little jealousy there.

“I wanted a backrub and then we made out for about an hour,” I say, and then cuff him in the shoulder. “Thomas. Come on. She was dropping off my bio assignment. We’ll meet her at the library after we talk to your granddad. Now tell me what happened with the boys last night.”

“She really likes you, you know.”

“Yeah, well, you like her better,” I say. “So what happened?” He’s trying to believe me, that I’m not interested in Carmel and that I’m enough of a friend to him to respect his feelings for her. Oddly enough, both of these things are true.

Finally, he sighs. “We led them on a royal goose chase, just like you said. It was a blast. We actually had them convinced that if they hung sacks of sulfur above their beds, she wouldn’t be able to attack them in their sleep.”

“Jesus. Don’t make it too unrealistic. We need to keep them busy.”

“Don’t worry. Morfran puts on a good show. He conjured blue flame and did a fake trance and everything. Told them he would work on a banishing spell, but it would take the light of the next full moon to finish it. Think that’ll be enough time?”

Normally I’d say yes. After all, it’s not a matter of locating Anna. I know just where she is.

“I’m not sure,” I reply. “I went back last night and she kicked my ass all around the room.”

“So what’re you going to do?”

“I spoke to a friend of my dad’s. He said we need to figure out what’s giving her all this extra strength. Know any witches?”

He squints at me. “Isn’t your mom one?”

“Know any black witches?”

He squirms around a bit and then shrugs. “Well, me, I guess. I’m not really that good, but I can cast barriers and make the elements work for me and stuff. Morfran is, but he doesn’t practice much anymore.” He makes a left turn and pulls up outside of the antique shop. Through the window I can see the grizzled black dog, its nose up against the glass and its tail thumping against the ground.

We go inside and find Morfran standing behind the counter pricing a new ring, something handsome and vintage with a large black stone.

“Know anything about spell-craft and exorcism?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says without looking up from his work. His black dog has finished welcoming Thomas and moves to rest heavily against his thigh. “This place was haunted as shit when I bought it. Sometimes still is. Things come in with their owners still attached, if you know what I mean.”

I look around the shop. Of course. Antique stores must almost always have a wraith or two swirling around. My eyes fall on a long oval mirror set onto the back of an oak dresser. How many faces have stared into it? How many dead reflections wait there and whisper to each other in the dark?

“Can you get me some supplies?” I ask.

“What sort?”

“I need chicken feet, a circle of consecrated stones, a banishing pentagram, and some kind of divination thingy.”

He gives me the stink eye. “Divination thingy? Sounds pretty technical.”

“I don’t have the details yet, okay? Can you get them or not?”

Morfran shrugs. “I can send Thomas down to Superior with a bag. Pull thirteen stones from the lake. They don’t come more consecrated than that. The chicken feet I’ll have to order in, and the divination thingy, well, I’m betting that you want a mirror of some kind, or possibly a scrying bowl.”

“A scrying bowl sees the future,” Thomas says. “What would he want with that?”

“A scrying bowl sees whatever you want it to see,” Morfran corrects him. “As for the banishing pentagram, I think it might be overkill. Burn some protective incense, or some herbs. That should be plenty.”

“You do know what we’re dealing with here, don’t you?” I ask. “She’s not just a ghost. She’s a hurricane. Overkill is fine by me.”

“Listen, kid. What you’re talking about is nothing more than a trumped-up séance. Summon the ghost and bind it in the circle of stones. Use the scrying bowl to get your answers. Am I right?”

I nod. He makes it sound so easy. But for someone who doesn’t do spells and spent the last night being tossed like a rubber ball, it’s going to be damn near impossible.

“I’ve got a friend in London doing the specifics. I’ll have the spell in a few days. I might need a few more supplies, depending.”

Morfran shrugs. “Best time to do a binding spell is during the waning moon anyway,” he says. “That gives you a week and a half. Plenty of time.” He squints at me and looks a whole lot like his grandson. “She’s getting the better of you, isn’t she?”

“Not for long.”

*   *   *

The public library isn’t all that impressive to look at, though I suppose I’ve been spoiled growing up with my dad and his friends’ collections of dusty tomes. It does, however, have a pretty decent local history collection, which is what’s really important. Since I’ve got to find Carmel and settle this whole bio assignment business, I put Thomas on the computer, searching through the online database for any record of Anna and her murder.

I find Carmel waiting at a table back behind the stacks.

“What’s Thomas doing here?” she asks as I sit down.

“Researching a paper.” I shrug. “So what’s the bio assignment about?”

She smirks at me. “Taxonomic classification.”

“Gross. And boring.”

“We have to make a chart that goes from phylum to species. We got hermit crabs and octopus.” She furrows her brow. “What’s the plural for octopus? Is it ‘octopuses’?”

“I think it’s octopi,” I say, spinning the open textbook toward me. We might as well get started, even though it’s the last thing I want to be doing. I want to be getting newsprint on my fingers with Thomas, searching out our murdered girl. I can see him at the computer from where I’m sitting, hunched over toward the screen, clicking away feverishly with the mouse. Then he writes something on a scrap of paper and gets up.

“Cas,” I hear Carmel say, and from the tone of her voice she’s been talking for a while. I put on my very best charming smile.

“Hm?”

“I said, do you want to do the octopus, or the hermit crab?”

“Octopus,” I say. “They’re good with a little olive oil and lemon. Lightly fried.”

Carmel makes a face. “That’s disgusting.”

“No, it isn’t. I used to eat it with my dad all the time in Greece.”

“You’ve been to Greece?”

“Yeah,” I say, talking absently while I flip through pages of invertebrates. “We lived there for a few months when I was about four. I don’t remember very much.”

“Does your dad travel a lot? For work or something?”

“Yeah. Or at least he did.”

“He doesn’t anymore?”

“My dad’s dead,” I say. I hate telling people this. I never know exactly how my voice is going to sound saying it, and I hate the stricken looks they get on their faces when they don’t know what to say back. I don’t look at Carmel. I just keep reading about different genuses. She says she’s sorry, and asks how it happened. I tell her he was murdered, and she gasps.

These are the right responses. I should be touched by her attempt to be sympathetic. It isn’t her fault that I’m not. It’s just that I’ve seen these faces and heard these gasps for too long. There’s nothing about my father’s murder that doesn’t make me angry anymore.

It strikes me suddenly that Anna is my last training job. She’s incredibly strong. She’s the most difficult thing I can imagine facing. If I beat her, I’ll be ready. I’ll be ready to avenge my father.

The idea makes me pause. The idea of going back to Baton Rouge, back to that house, has always been mostly abstract. Just an idea, a long-range plan. I suppose that for all of my voodoo research, part of me has been procrastinating. I haven’t been particularly effective, after all. I still don’t know who it was that killed my dad. I don’t know if I would be able to raise them, and I’d be all on my own. Bringing Mom is out of the question. Not after years of hiding books and discreetly clicking out of websites when she walked into the room. She’d ground me for life if she even knew I was thinking of it.

A tap on my shoulder brings me out of my daze. Thomas sets a newspaper down in front of me—a brittle, yellowed old thing that I’m surprised they let out of the glass.

“This is what I could find,” he says, and there she is, on the front page, beneath the headline that reads “Girl Found Slain.”

Carmel stands up to get a better view. “Is that—?”

“It’s her,” Thomas blurts excitedly. “There aren’t that many other articles. The police were dumbfounded. They hardly even questioned anybody.” He’s got a different newspaper in his hands; he’s riffling through it. “The last one is just her obituary: Anna Korlov, beloved daughter of Malvina, was laid to rest Thursday in Kivikoski Cemetery.”

“I thought you were researching a paper, Thomas,” Carmel comments, and Thomas starts to sputter and explain. I don’t care a lick about what they’re saying. I’m staring at her picture, a picture of a living girl, with pale skin and long, dark hair. She’s not quite daring to smile, but her eyes are bright, and curious, and excited.

“It’s a shame,” Carmel sighs. “She was so pretty.” She reaches down to touch Anna’s face, and I brush her fingers away. Something’s happening to me, and I don’t know what it is. This girl I’m looking at is a monster, a murderer. This girl for some reason spared my life. I carefully trace along her hair, which is held up with a ribbon. There’s a warm feeling in my chest but my head is ice-cold. I think I might pass out.

“Hey, man,” Thomas says, and shakes my shoulder a little. “What’s wrong?”

“Uh,” I sort of gurgle, not knowing what to say to him, or myself. I look away to buy time, and see something that makes my jaw clench. There are two police officers standing at the library desk.

Saying anything to Carmel and Thomas would be stupid. They’d instinctively look over their shoulders and that would be suspicious as hell. So I just wait, discreetly tearing Anna’s obituary out of the brittle newspaper. I ignore Carmel’s furious hiss of “You can’t do that!” and put it into my pocket. Then I discreetly cover the newspaper up with books and schoolbags and point down to a picture of a cuttlefish.

“Any idea where that fits in?” I ask. They’re both looking at me like I’ve come unglued. Which is fine because the librarian has turned and pointed at us. The cops are starting to make their way back to our table, just like I knew they would.

“What are you talking about?” Carmel asks.

“I’m talking about the cuttlefish,” I say mildly. “And I’m telling you to look surprised, but not too surprised.”

Before she can ask, the tramping noise of two men laden down with cuffs, flashlights, and sidearms is loud enough to warrant turning around. I can’t see her face, but I hope she doesn’t look as mortifyingly guilty as Thomas does. I lean into him and he swallows and pulls himself together.

“Hi, kids,” the first cop says with a smile. He’s a stout, friendly looking guy who’s about three inches shorter than me and Carmel. He handles this by staring Thomas directly in the eyes. “Doing some studying?”

“Y-yeah,” Thomas stutters. “Is there something wrong, Officer?”

The other cop is poking around our table, looking at our open textbooks. He’s taller than his partner, and leaner, with a hawk’s nose full of pores and a small chin. He’s bug ugly, but I hope not mean.

“I’m Officer Roebuck,” the friendly one says. “This is Officer Davis. Mind if we ask you kids some questions?”

A group shrug passes amongst us.

“You all know a boy by the name of Mike Andover?”

“Yes,” Carmel says.

“Yes,” Thomas agrees.

“A little,” I say. “I just met him a few days ago.” Damn this is unpleasant. Sweat is breaking out on my forehead and I can’t do anything about it. I’ve never had to do this before. I’ve never gotten anyone killed.

“Did you know that he’s disappeared?” Roebuck watches us each carefully. Thomas just nods; so do I.

“Have you found him yet?” Carmel asks. “Is he all right?”

“No, we haven’t found him. But according to eyewitnesses, you two were among the last people seen with him. Care to tell us what happened?”

“Mike didn’t want to stay at the party,” Carmel says easily. “We left to go hang somewhere else, we didn’t exactly know where. Will Rosenberg was driving. We were out on back roads off of Dawson. Pretty soon Will pulled over and Mike got out.”

“He just got out?”

“He was upset about me hanging with Carmel,” I interrupt. “Will and Chase were trying to make nice, calm him down, but he wouldn’t go for it. He said he was going to walk home. That he wanted to be by himself.”

“You are aware that Mike Andover lived at least ten miles from the area you’re talking about,” Officer Roebuck said.

“No, I didn’t know,” I reply.

“We tried to stop him,” Carmel pipes up, “but he wouldn’t listen. So we left. I thought he would just call later, and we’d go pick him up. But he never did.” The ease of the lie is disturbing, but at least it explains the guilt clearly written on all of our faces. “He’s really missing?” Carmel asks shrilly. “I thought—I hoped it was just a rumor.”

She sells it for us all. The cops visibly soften at her worry. Roebuck tells us that Will and Chase took them out to where we dropped Mike off, and that there was a search party started. We ask if we can help but he waves us off like it’s better left to professionals. In a few hours Mike’s face should be plastered all over the news. The entire city should have mobilized into the woods with flashlights and raingear, combing for traces of him. But somehow I know that they won’t. This is all Mike Andover is going to get. One lame search party and a few questioning cops. I don’t know how I know. Something in their eyes, like they’re walking half-asleep. Like they can’t wait for it to be over, for hot meals in their bellies and their feet up on the couch. I wonder if they can sense that there’s more going on here than they can deal with, if Mike’s death is broadcasting on a low frequency of the weird and unexplainable, telling them in a soft hum to just leave it alone.

After a few more minutes officers Roebuck and Davis say their good-byes to us and we sink back into our chairs.

“That was…” Thomas starts, and doesn’t finish.

Carmel gets a call on her cell and picks it up. When she turns away to talk I hear her whisper things like “I don’t know” and “I’m sure they’ll find him.” After she hangs up her eyes are strained.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

She holds her phone up sort of listlessly. “Nat,” she says. “She’s trying to comfort me, I guess. But I’m not in the mood for a girls’ movie night, you know?”

“Is there anything we can do?” Thomas asks gently, and Carmel starts riffling through papers.

“I’d just like to get this bio homework done, honestly,” she says, and I nod. We should take time for some normalcy now. We should work and study and prepare to ace our quiz Friday. Because I can feel the newspaper clipping in my pocket like it weighs a thousand pounds. I can feel that photo of Anna, staring out from sixty years ago, and I can’t help myself from wanting to protect her, wanting to save her from becoming what she already is.

I don’t think there’ll be much time for normalcy, later on.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I wake up covered in sweat. I had been dreaming, dreaming of something leaning over me. Something with crooked teeth and hooked fingers. Something with breath that smelled like it had been eating people for decades without brushing in between. My heart’s pounding in my chest. I reach under my pillow for my dad’s athame, and for a second I could swear my fingers close on a cross, a cross twisted round with a rough snake. Then my knife handle is there, safe and sound in its leather sheath. Fucking nightmares.

My heart starts to slow down. Glancing down at the floor, I see Tybalt, who is glaring at me with a puffed-up tail. I wonder if he had been sleeping on my chest and I catapulted him off when I woke. I don’t remember, but I wish that I did, because it would’ve been hilarious.

I think about lying back down, but don’t. There’s that annoying, tense feeling in all of my muscles, and, even though I’m tired, what I really want to do is some track and field—throw a shot put and run some hurdles. Outside, the wind must be blowing, because this old house creaks and groans on its foundation, floorboards moving like dominoes so they sound like fast footsteps.

The clock by my bed reads 3:47. For a second I blank on what day it is. But it’s Saturday. So at least I don’t have to be up for school tomorrow. Nights are starting to bleed together. I’ve had maybe three good nights of sleep since we got here.

I get out of bed without thinking and pull on my jeans and a t-shirt, then stuff my athame into my back pocket and make my way down the stairs. I pause only to put on my shoes and slide my mom’s car keys off the coffee table. Then I’m driving through dark streets under the light of a growing moon. I know where I’m going, even though I can’t remember deciding to do it.

*   *   *

I park at the end of Anna’s overgrown driveway and get out of the car, still feeling like I’m mostly sleepwalking. None of the nightmare tension is gone yet from my limbs. I don’t even hear the sound of my own feet on the rickety porch steps, or feel my fingers close around the doorknob. Then I step in, and fall.

The foyer is gone. Instead I drop about eight feet and face-plant in dusty, cold dirt. A few deep breaths get the wind back in my lungs and on reflex I pull my legs up, not thinking anything but what the fuck? When my brain switches on again I wait in a half-crouch and flex my quads. I’m lucky to have both of my legs still in working order, but where the hell am I? My body feels just about ready to run out of adrenaline. Wherever this is, it’s dark, and it smells. I try to keep my breathing shallow so I don’t panic, and also so I don’t breathe in too much. It reeks of damp and rot. Lots of things have either died down here or died elsewhere and been stuffed here.

That thought makes me reach back for my knife, my sharp, throat-cutting security blanket, as I look around. I recognize the ethereal gray light from the house; it’s leaking down through what I guess are floorboards. Now that my eyes are adjusted, I see that the walls and floor are part dirt and part rough-cut stone. My mind does a quick replay of me walking up the front porch steps and coming through the door. How did I end up in the basement?

“Anna?” I call softly, and the ground lurches beneath my feet. I steady myself against a wall, but the surface under my hand isn’t dirt. It’s squishy. And moist. And it’s breathing.

The corpse of Mike Andover is half-submerged in the wall. I was resting my hand against its stomach. Mike’s eyes are closed, like he’s sleeping. His skin looks darker and looser than it was before. He’s rotting, and from the way he’s situated in the rocks, I get the impression that the house is slowly taking him over. It’s digesting him.

I move away a few steps. I’d really rather he not tell me about it.

A soft shuffling sound gets my attention and I turn to see a figure hobbling toward me, like it’s drunk, wobbling and lurching. The shock of not being alone is momentarily eclipsed by the heaving of my stomach. It’s a man, and he reeks of piss and used-up booze. He’s dressed in dirty clothes, an old tattered trench coat and pants with holes in the knees. Before I can get out of the way, a look of fear crosses his face. His neck twists around on his shoulders like it’s a bottle cap. I hear the long crunch of his spinal cord and he crumples to the ground at my feet.

I’m starting to wonder if I ever woke up at all. Then, for some reason, my father’s voice bubbles up between my ears.

“Don’t be afraid of the dark, Cas. But don’t let them tell you that everything that’s there in the dark is also there in the light. It isn’t.”

Thanks, Dad. Just one of the many creepy pearls of wisdom you had to impart.

But he was right. Well, right about the last part at least. My blood is pounding and I can feel the jugular vein in my neck. Then I hear Anna speak.

“Do you see what I do?” she asks, but before I can answer, she surrounds me with corpses, more than I can count, strewn across the floor like trash, and piled up to the ceiling, arms and legs arranged together in a grotesque braid. The stench is horrible. In the corner of my eye, I see one move, but when I look closer I realize that it’s the movements of bugs feeding on the body, twisting beneath the skin and lifting it in impossible little flutters. Only one thing on the bodies moves of its own power: The eyes roll lazily back and forth in their heads, mucus-covered and milky, like they’re trying to see what’s happening to them but no longer have the energy.

“Anna,” I say softly.

“These are not the worst,” she hisses. She’s got to be kidding. Some of these corpses have had horrible things done to them. They’re missing limbs or all of their teeth. They’re covered in dried blood from a hundred crusted-over cuts. And too many of them are young. Faces like mine or younger than mine, with the cheeks torn away and mold on their teeth. When I look back behind me and realize that Mike’s eyes have opened, I know I have to get out of here. Ghost-hunting be damned, to hell with the family legacy, I’m not staying one minute longer in a room filling up with bodies.

I’m not claustrophobic, but right now I seem to have to tell myself so very loudly. Then I see what I didn’t have time to before. There’s a staircase, leading up to the main level. I don’t know how she had me step directly into the basement, and I don’t care. I just want back up in the foyer. And once I’m up there, I want to forget what’s residing underneath my feet.

I make for the stairs, and that’s when she sends the water, gushing in and rising up from everywhere—cracks in the walls, seeping up right through the floor. It’s filthy, as much slime as it is liquid, and in seconds it’s creeping up to my waist. I start to panic as the corpse of the bum with the broken neck floats past. I do not want to be swimming with them. I don’t want to think about everything that’s under the water, and my mind’s eye makes up something really stupid, like corpses from the bottom of the stacks opening their jaws suddenly and scrambling out along the floor, hurrying to grab my legs like crocodiles. I push past the bum, bobbing like a wormy apple, and am surprised to hear a little moan escape my lips. I’m going to gag.

I make it to the stairs just as a pillar of corpses shifts and collapses with a sick splash.

“Anna, stop!” I cough, trying to keep the green water out of my mouth. I don’t think I’m going to make it. My clothes are as heavy as in a nightmare and I’m crawling up the steps in slow motion. Finally I slap my hand onto dry floor and jerk myself onto the ground level.

Relief lasts about half a second. Then I shriek like a chicken and throw myself away from the basement door, expecting water and dead hands coming to drag me back down. But the basement is dry. The gray light spills down and I can see down the steps and a few feet of floor. It’s all dry. There’s nothing there. It looks like any cellar that you might store canned goods in. To make me feel even stupider, my clothes aren’t wet either.

Damn Anna. I hate that time-space manipulation, hallucination, whatever. You never get used to it.

I stand up and brush my shirt off even though there’s nothing to brush off, looking around. I’m in what used to be the kitchen. There’s a dusty black stove and a table with three chairs. I’d really like to sit down on one, but the cupboards start opening and closing by themselves, drawers slamming shut and the walls starting to bleed. Slamming doors and smashing plates. Anna is acting like a common poltergeist. How embarrassing.

A sense of safety settles on my skin. Poltergeists I can take. I shrug my shoulders and walk out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, where the dust-sheeted sofa looks comfortingly familiar. I collapse down on it in what I hope looks like a pretty decent impression of bravado. Never mind that my hands are still shaky.

“Get out!” Anna shouts from directly over my shoulder. I peek over the back of the couch and there she is, my goddess of death, her hair snaking out in a great black cloud, her teeth grinding hard enough to make living gums bleed. The impulse to spring up with my athame at the ready makes my heart beat double time. But I take a deep breath. Anna didn’t kill me before. And my gut has a hunch that she doesn’t want to kill me now. Why else would she waste time on the corpse-filled light show downstairs? I give her my best cocky grin.

“What if I won’t?” I ask.

“You came to kill me,” she growls, obviously deciding to ignore my question. “But you can’t.”

“What part of that actually makes you angry?” Dark blood moves through her eyes and skin. She’s terrible, disgusting—a killer. And I suspect that I am completely safe with her. “I will find a way, Anna,” I promise. “There will be a way to kill you, to send you away.”

“I don’t want to be away,” she says. Her whole form clenches and the darkness melts back inside, and standing before me is Anna Korlov, the girl from the newspaper photo. “But I deserve to be killed.”

“You didn’t once,” I say, not exactly disagreeing. Because I don’t think those corpses downstairs were just creations of her imagination. I think that somewhere, Mike Andover probably is getting slowly eaten by the walls of this house, even if I can’t see it.

She’s shaking her arm, down near the wrist where there are lingering black veins. She shakes harder and closes her eyes, and they disappear. It strikes me that I’m not just looking at a ghost. I’m looking at a ghost, and at something that was done to that ghost. They are two different things.

“You have to fight that, don’t you?” I say softly.

Her eyes are surprised.

“In the beginning, I couldn’t fight it at all. It wasn’t me. I was insane, trapped inside, and this was just a terror, doing horrible things while I watched, curled up in a corner of our mind.” She cocks her head and hair falls softly down her shoulder. I can’t think of them as the same person. The goddess and this girl. I can picture her peering out of her own eyes like they’re nothing but windows, quiet and afraid in her white dress.

“Now our skins have grown together,” she goes on. “I am her. I am it.”

“No,” I say, and the minute I do, I know it’s true. “You wear her like a mask. You can take it off. You did it to spare me.” I stand and walk around the sofa. She looks so fragile, compared to what she was, but she doesn’t back away, and she doesn’t break eye contact. She’s not afraid. She’s sad, and curious, like the girl in the photograph. I wonder what she was when she was alive, if she laughed easily, if she was clever. It’s impossible to think that much of that girl remains now, sixty years and god knows how many murders later.

Then I remember that I’m really pissed. I wave my hand back toward the kitchen and basement door. “What the hell was that about?”

“I thought you should know what you’re dealing with.”

“What? Some bratty girl throwing a hissy fit in the kitchen?” I narrow my eyes. “You were trying to scare me off. That sad little display was supposed to send me running for the hills.”

“Sad little display?” she mocks me. “I bet you almost wet yourself.”

I open my mouth and quickly shut it. She almost made me laugh, and I’d still like to be pissed. Only not literally. Oh crap. I’m laughing.

Anna blinks and smiles, fleetingly. She’s trying not to laugh herself.

“I was…” She pauses. “I was angry with you.”

“For what?” I ask.

“For trying to kill me,” she says, and then we both do laugh.

“And after you tried so hard to not kill me.” I smile. “I guess it must’ve seemed pretty rude.” I’m laughing with her. We’re having a conversation. What is this, some kind of twisted Stockholm syndrome?

“Why are you here? Did you come to try to kill me again?”

“Oddly enough, no. I—I had a bad dream. I needed to talk to someone.” I ruffle my hand through my hair. It’s been ages since I’ve felt so awkward. Maybe I’ve never felt this awkward. “And I guess I just figured, well, Anna must be up. So here I am.”

She snorts a little. Then her brow furrows. “What could I say to you? What could we talk about? I’ve been out of the world for so long.”

I shrug. The next words leave my mouth before I know what’s happening. “Well, I was never really in the world in the first place, so.” I clench my jaw and look down at the floor. I can’t believe I’m being so emo. I’m complaining to a girl who was brutally murdered at sixteen. She’s trapped in this house of corpses and I get to go to school and be a Trojan; I get to eat my mom’s grilled peanut butter and Cheez Whiz sandwiches and—

“You walk with the dead,” she says gently. Her eyes are luminous and—I can’t believe it—sympathetic. “You’ve walked with us since…”