Girl of Nightmares (13 page)

The door to the shop jingles and Stella trots over to meet Thomas, her toenails clicking. At his entrance, the tension dissipates and Morfran and I take a deep breath. I hope Thomas’s psychic thing isn’t working right now, and that he isn’t particularly observant, or he’s going to ask why we look so uncomfortable and embarrassed.

“No Carmel today?” I ask.

“She stayed home with a headache,” he replies. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was thrown twelve feet through the air and landed on second-degree burns. You?”

“Groggy, and weak as a wet noodle. Plus, I think I may have forgotten a letter from the alphabet. If I hadn’t asked to leave, Mrs. Snyder would have sent me home anyway. Said I looked pale. Thought I might have mono.” He grins. I grin back, and we sit in silence. It’s strange and filled with tension, but it’s also kind of nice. It’s nice to linger here, to hold ourselves back and not barrel through this moment. Because whatever we say next is going to catapult us into something dangerous, and I don’t think either one of us really knows where it might lead.

“So, I guess you’re really going to try this,” he says. I wish he wouldn’t sound so hesitant, so skeptical. The quest might be doomed, but there’s no reason to paint it that way from the get-go.

“I guess I am.”

He smiles, lopsided. “Want some help?”

Thomas. He’s my best friend and sometimes he still makes it sound like he’s a tagalong. Of course I want his help. More than that: I need it.

“You don’t have to,” I say.

“But I will,” he replies. “Do you have any idea where to start?”

I run my hand through my hair. “Not really. There’s just an urge to get moving, like there’s a clock ticking somewhere that I can barely hear.”

Thomas shrugs. “It’s possible that there is. Figuratively speaking. The longer that Anna stays where she is, the harder it might be for her to cross over to somewhere else. She might become embedded in it. Of course that’s just conjecture.”

Conjecture. Honestly, half-cocked guesses about worst-case scenarios aren’t what I need right now.

“Let’s just hope it’s not a real clock,” I say. “She’s already been there too long, Thomas. One second is too long, after what she did for us.”

Thoughts about what she did to all of the runaways in her basement—all the teens who wound up in the wrong place and the wanderers stuck in her web—flutter over his features. Other people might judge Anna’s fate as a proper punishment. Maybe lots of people. But not me. Anna’s hands were tied by the curse put on her when she was murdered. Every one of her victims was a casualty of the curse, not the girl. That’s what I say. I’m well aware that none of the people she tore apart would be likely to say the same thing.

“We can’t rush this, Cas,” Thomas says, and I agree. But we can’t keep treading water, either.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

Morfran writes Thomas a note to get him out of the last days of school, saying he’s come down with a bad case of mono. We’ve spent every moment we’ve been awake poring over books—old, musty tomes that have been translated from older, mustier tomes. I was grateful to have something to do, to feel like we were moving forward. But after three days of minimal sleep and living off sandwiches and frozen pizza, we have virtually nothing to show for our efforts. Every book is a dead end, going on and on about contacting the other side, but never even addressing the possibility of punching through, let alone pulling something back. I’ve called every contact I know who might have information, and I got jack squat.

We’re sitting at Thomas and Morfran’s kitchen table, surrounded by more useless books, while Morfran adds potatoes to a pot of beef stew on the stove. On the other side of the windows, birds flit from tree to tree, and a few large squirrels are fighting for control of the bird feeder. I haven’t seen Anna since the night we contacted her. I don’t know why. I tell myself that she’s afraid for me, that she regrets telling me to come for her, and is staying away deliberately. It’s a nice delusion. Maybe it’s even true.

“Heard from Carmel lately?” I ask Thomas.

“Yeah. She says we’re not missing much at school. That it’s mostly a bunch of back-to-back pep rallies and friendship circles.”

I snort. I remember thinking the same thing. Thomas doesn’t seem worried, but I wonder why Carmel hasn’t called me. We shouldn’t have left her alone for so many days. The ritual had to have shaken her up.

“Why hasn’t she come by?” I ask.

“You know how she feels about this,” Thomas says without looking up from the book he’s reading. I tap a pen against the open page in front of me. There’s nothing useful there.

“Morfran,” I say. “Tell me about zombies. Tell me how voodooists and obeahmen raise the dead.”

A flicker of motion catches my eye: Thomas is flapping his hand toward his throat, giving me the cut-it signal.

“What?” I ask. “They bring people back from the dead, right? That’s crossing over, if I ever heard it. There’s got to be something there we can use.”

Morfran sets the spoon down on the counter with a sharp crack. He turns toward me with an irritated expression.

“For a professional ghost killer, you sure ask a lot of numb-nut questions.”

“What?”

Thomas nudges me. “Morfran gets offended when people say voodoo can bring you back from the dead. It’s sort of a stereotype, you know?”

“It’s utter Hollywood bullshit,” Morfran grumbles. “Those ‘zombies’ aren’t anything more than poor, drugged souls who got sedated, buried, and dug up. They shuffle around afterward because the drug was poison from a puffer fish and it boiled their brains tender.”

I narrow my eyes. “So there was never even one real zombie? Not even one? It’s what the religion is famous for.” I shouldn’t have said that last part. Morfran’s eyes bug out momentarily, and he sets his jaw.

“No real voodooist ever tried to raise a zombie. You can’t put life back into something once it’s gone.” He turns back to his stew. I guess that’s the end of that subject.

“We’re not coming up with anything,” I mutter. “I don’t think these people even knew what the other side really was. I think they’re just talking about contacting ghosts that were still trapped here, on this plane.”

“Why don’t you call Gideon?” Thomas asks. “He’s the one who knows the most about the athame, right? And according to Carmel, the athame was seriously pulsing the night of the ritual. That’s why she thought you were going to try to cross over. She thought you could.”

“I’ve tried to call Gideon about a dozen times. Something’s going on with him. He’s not calling back.”

“Is he okay?”

“I think so. I feel like he is. And I think someone would have heard and passed the news along if he wasn’t.”

The room goes quiet. Morfran is even stirring more quietly while he pretends not to listen. They would both like to know more about the knife. Inside, Morfran is dying to know, I’m sure of it. But Gideon has told me everything. He’s sung me that stupid riddle—
The blood of your ancestors forged this athame. Men of power bled their warrior, to put the spirits down
—and the rest has been lost in time. I say the riddle out loud now, absently.

“Aunt Riika said something about it too,” Thomas says softly, his eyes unfocused but looking in the general direction of the athame in my backpack. He starts to smile. “God, we’re idiots. The knife is the door? It swings back and forth? It’s just like Riika said. It’s never really closed.” His voice grows in intensity, his eyes swelling behind his glasses. “That’s why the drum ritual wasn’t just wind and voices like it was supposed to be! That’s why we could open the window to Anna’s Hell. That’s probably why Anna’s able to communicate with you from over there in the first place. The cut she took from the athame that didn’t send her away. She’s got her foot in the proverbial door.”

“Wait,” I say. The athame is a blade of steel and a handle of dark oiled wood. It isn’t something you can crack open and walk through. Unless … my head is starting to hurt. I’m no good at this metaphysical crap. A knife is a knife, it’s not also a door. “Are you saying I can use the knife to cut a gateway?”

“I’m saying the knife
is
the gateway.”

He’s killing me here. “What are you talking about? I can’t walk through the knife. We can’t pull Anna back through the knife.”

“Cas, you’re thinking in solid states,” Thomas explains, and smiles at Morfran, who I must say looks damned impressed by his grandson. “Remember what Riika said. I don’t know why I didn’t catch on sooner. Don’t think about the knife. Think about the shape behind the knife, about what the athame is, at its core. It isn’t really a knife at all. It’s a door, disguised as a knife.”

“You’re weirding me out.”

“We just have to find the people who can tell us how to really use it,” Thomas says, not even looking at me anymore, but at Morfran. “We have to find out how to blow it wide open.”

*   *   *

My backpack feels heavy, now that I’m carrying an entire gateway inside it. Thomas’s excitement is enough to lift him off the floor, but I can’t wrap my head around what he wants to do. He wants to open the knife. He’s saying that on the other side of the athame is Anna’s Hell? No. The knife is the knife. It fits in my hand. On the other side of the knife is … the other side of the knife. But this hunch is all we have to go on, and every time I question him about feasibility, he smiles at me like he’s Yoda and I’m just a dumbass without the Force.

“We’re going to need Gideon, that’s for certain. We need to know more about where the knife comes from, and how it’s been used in the past.”

“Sure,” I say. Thomas is driving a bit too fast, and paying a bit too little attention. When he brakes at the stop sign before the high school, it’s sudden and jerks me forward, almost onto the dash.

“Carmel’s still not picking up,” he mutters. “I hope we don’t have to go in and find her.”

It’s doubtful. As we crest the hill it looks like most of the school is hanging out around the quad and parking lot. Of course they would be. It’s the last day of the year. I hadn’t even noticed.

It doesn’t take long for Thomas to zero in on Carmel; her blond hair shines a few shades brighter than everyone else’s. She’s in the middle of a crowd, laughing, with her backpack on the ground, resting against her lower leg. When she hears the Tempo’s distinctive sputter, her eyes flash our way and her face tenses. Then the smile is back like it never left.

“Maybe we should wait and call her later,” I say, without knowing why. Despite her queen bee status, Carmel is our friend first. Or at least she used to be.

“What for?” Thomas asks. “She’s going to want to know this.” I don’t say anything while he pulls into the first open space and puts the Tempo into park. Maybe he’s right. After all, she’s always wanted to know before.

When we get out, Carmel’s back is to us. She’s in a circle of people, but somehow manages to still be perceived as the center of it. Everyone’s body is slightly turned toward hers, even when she’s not the one talking. Something’s wrong here, and all of a sudden I want to grab Thomas by the shoulder and wrench him around.
We don’t belong
, is what my blood is screaming, but I don’t know why. The people surrounding Carmel are people I’ve seen before. People I’ve talked to in passing and they’ve always been friendly enough. Natalie and Katie are both there. So are Sarah Sullivan and Heidi Trico. The guys in the group are the leftovers of The Trojan Army: Jordan Driscoll, Nate Bergstrom, and Derek Pimms. They know we’re coming, but none of them acknowledge us. And there’s something frozen about the smiles on their faces. They look triumphant. Like cats who’ve swallowed a flock of canaries.

“Carmel,” Thomas calls, and jogs the last few steps to her.

“Hey, Thomas,” she says, and smiles. She doesn’t say anything to me, and none of the others pay much attention to me either. They all have predatory expressions locked on Thomas, who doesn’t notice a thing.

“Hey,” he says, and when she doesn’t say anything in return, but just stands there looking at him expectantly, he starts to trip up. “Um, you weren’t answering your phone.”

“Yeah, I’ve just been hanging out,” she replies with a shrug.

“I thought you had mono or something,” Derek interrupts with a smirk. “But I don’t know how you’d have gotten it.”

Thomas shrinks a few inches. I want to say something, but it’s Carmel who should do the talking. These are her friends, and on any normal day they would know better than to say anything offside to Thomas. On any normal day, Carmel would rip them a new one just for looking at him funny.

“So, uh, can we talk to you a minute?” Thomas has his hands shoved into his pockets; he couldn’t look more awkward if he started kicking the dirt. And Carmel just stands there, disaffected.

“Sure,” she says with another half smile. “I’ll give you a call, later on.”

Thomas doesn’t know what to do. It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask what’s the matter, what’s going on, and it’s all I can do to keep my own mouth shut, to keep from telling him to be quiet, not to give them anything else. They don’t deserve the satisfaction of seeing this look on his face.

“Or maybe tomorrow,” Derek says, stepping closer to Carmel. His eyes are on her in a way that makes my stomach turn. “Tonight we’re going out, right?” He touches her, snakes an arm around her waist, and Thomas goes pale.

“Maybe I’ll call you tomorrow,” Carmel says. She doesn’t move out of Derek’s grip and her face barely twitches while Thomas’s crumples.

“Come on,” I say finally, and grab his shoulder. The minute I touch him he turns and heads back for the car, half running, humiliated and broken in ways I don’t want to think about.

“This was a real pile of shit, Carmel,” I say, and she crosses her arms over her chest. For an instant, it looks like she might cry. But in the end she doesn’t do anything but look down at the ground.

*   *   *

There’s pure silence on the drive from the school to my house. I can’t think of a single thing to say and I feel useless. My lack of experience at friendship is showing. Thomas looks brittle as a brown leaf. Someone else would know something, some anecdote or story. Someone else would know what to do besides sit in the passenger seat and be uncomfortable.