How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (18 page)

Desty

“All
I’m saying is I changed my mind… Don’t even try to pretend like you don’t
fucking owe me. If not for—” Jax stopped talking on his cell phone when he saw
me coming down the stairs. He nodded at me, then told whoever he was on the
phone with, “Just call me back when you get a chance.”

Jax
threw the phone on the table and grinned. “Hey. You give him one for me?”

“Um…”

Then
he laughed, a little too hard.

“I
just now realized how that sounded,” he said. “But it’s what I would’ve asked
Tough if I was talking to him instead. So, why’re you up?”

Because
I was too turned on to sleep and I didn’t feel like masturbating. Because I was
scared Mikal was going to use Colt to kill Tough. Because Kathan was using
Tempie like bait to get me to become joint-familiar—which, according to Jax’s
typed-up translation, would make us Kathan’s Destroyers and possibly bring
about the end of the world. And then there was the whole mess with Mom. Pretty
much any reason would do.

I
sat on the couch and pulled my feet up under me. “Was that somebody from the
Witches’ Council?”

Jax
looked down at the cell phone on the table.

“I
left Bailey a message,” he said. “She’ll get back to me in the morning,
probably.”

“Kathan
could’ve been lying,” I said. “But fallen angels—”

“Use
the truth to lie. Yeah, I know.” Jax took a deep breath and let it out in a
rush. “Tough’s going to be okay. That guy’s like a fucking cockroach. You can’t
kill him.”

I
looked down at the wood grain on the coffee table’s top, thinking about how
dead on his feet Tough had been when we got back to the bedroom. He could
barely keep his eyes open, but he wanted to make sure I was satisfied. And the
way he kept touching me and kissing me, it was like he was trying to tell me he
loved me.

Now
there was an intelligent, not-stupid-girl-at-all thought—he must love me if he
was all affectionate after I blew him. No wonder Tempie thought I was a naïve
moron. Three days with the guy and I was already imagining we were, like, soul
mates.

“I
just want him to be okay,” I said.

“He
will be,” Jax said.

“You
think there’s any way to use my Destroyer-y powers to do something? Or do they only
work when Tempie and I are ‘as one?’”

“I
guess that depends on whether you’ve ever ‘wrought upon the Earth ultimate
destruction without discrimination’ before,” Jax said. “Without your sister’s
help.”

I
sighed. “I probably would’ve noticed something like that.”

“It’ll
be okay,” Jax said. “We’ll find out what’s up with this
chosen-soldier-kills-his-brother prophecy thing. I’m sure Bailey’ll holler back
at me tomorrow.”

I
nodded. We would read the original and Bailey would explain what she knew about
the subtleties of the translation. Jax could probably even cross-reference it
with stuff he’d already memorized. We would figure out a way to keep Tough
safe. That’s what friends and hopelessly enamored, stupid-in-love girls are
for, right?

“Want
to play?” Jax asked, holding out his video game controller.

“I’m
not very hand-eye-coordinated,” I said.

“Come
on,” he said. He got up and messed with the cords on the back of the
television. “I’ve got a really old Nintendo. It doesn’t matter if you’re bad at
that.”

“Fine.”
It would be something to do, and there wasn’t any way I was going to sleep
tonight. While Jax unwound the old controllers, I looked at the wireless one
sitting next to his cell phone. “Do you have some kind of spell to make—”

Jax
dropped the Nintendo controller in his hand, then grabbed it back up and
laughed.

“Raelyn—from
the Council—she fixed the phone for me so all the NP-energies in town wouldn’t
screw it up. It’s kind of an emergency thing. Sometimes they need me to come
over and recall something in the middle of the night or on a day I’m not
scheduled to work.”

“I
was actually wondering about your wireless controller,” I said.

“Oh,
that.” He shook his head and shrugged. “Perk of working for the Council.”

He
started the Nintendo, handed me a controller, and sat down. The old, beepy
music made us both laugh.

“I
haven’t played anything like this in forever,” I said. “My mom had a Super
Nintendo before she got married. She said she used to play it so she could
clear her mind.”

“Yeah,
that’s the good thing about these games,” Jax said. “You can just play and not
think for a while.”

Tough

I
wish the last dream I ever had of Sissy was something cooler or more
memorable—like we talked forever and she told me Heaven was great and Mom and
Dad loved me and Ryder was there, too, because you can’t get Lost once you’re
Saved, even if you are an asshole—but all we did was sit on the back porch at
the farmhouse and watch the sun go down.

“That’s
it?” I asked her.

Sissy
nodded and squeezed my hand.

Then
I woke up. The sun was screaming through my window and I felt exactly like a
guy who’d had his bigger, faster, stronger brother beat the ever-loving hell
out of him. Go figure.

I
pushed up and looked around. There was a note on my nightstand from Desty.

Tough,

I
went with Jax to talk to Bailey at the Witches’ Council. I’ll be back.

-Desty

P.S.
You look great naked.

There
was a spot in front of her name where Desty had started to write something or
maybe make a heart, but she’d drawn over it with a line. She was even awkward
on paper.

That
made me smile for a second, but it couldn’t take my mind off having to ask
around for a gun to kill Colt with. Maybe I could shoot Mikal a couple times,
too, just to piss her off.

No,
it’d probably be smarter not to dick around. One for Colt and one for me.

I
checked my alarm clock—almost one. The ass-end of noon, Ryder used to call it,
right before he would kick my ass-end for sleeping in and missing school
because I’d snuck out the night before to sit in with Rowdy’s band. Apparently
it was okay for him and Colt to be hung over dropouts, but not for me.

The
good old days,
I thought.

That
got me laughing. I must’ve been losing it because I was going to kill my
brother and myself later on. All the crap I’d done to survive in this town and
I was going to shoot myself in the head—assuming I was fast enough to do it
after I shot Colt and before Mikal did one of her super-speed jumps and took
the gun away. But if she saw the gun before I shot Colt, she could probably
just appear in front of me and grab it. Then what?

And
what about Desty? Kathan wanted her for some take-over-the-world bullshit. If I
did kill myself, I couldn’t protect her or figure out a way to keep her away
from him.

Kind
of makes you wish you’d woke up a little earlier, huh?

Hell,
if I’m going to wish, why not just wish for the answers? And some morning sex.

Maybe
I had bleeding in the brain. There wasn’t any other time in my life that I really
talked to myself.

I
got up, got dressed, and shut off the fan. I used to just leave it running, but
Harper got all pissy and chewed me out because it would run up our utility
bill.

One
empty room in the house after tonight, Harper. You can finally get that tanning
bed you always wanted.
Then I thought I ought to write a will or
letter or something so she’d know she could sell my stuff. My Gibson had to be
worth a little and Mom’s acoustic would bring some serious money. And I should
write a note to Dodge about not moving Willow. She was a killer drummer and a
terrible guitar player. There had to be one other person in Halo who played
guitar—Rowdy could fill in until they found somebody.

And
a separate letter for Desty.

But
how the hell was I supposed to protect her from Kathan if I was dead?

I
rubbed my face with both hands and winced at the cuts and bruises that flared
up. All this last-day-alive shit was going to make me crazy.

The
condom wrapper from the night before was on the floor by my John Deere hat. I
put my hat on and picked the wrapper up, thinking I should probably do some
cleaning so Harper and Jax wouldn’t have to when they emptied out my room.

BawdyHeat—the
condom was a leftover from Mitzi. I’d made the mistake of buying human ones the
first time with her, but she set me straight pretty damn quick. The good vamp
condoms are supposed to double human body heat, so obviously they’re a lot
stronger than the novelty stuff you’d get for your living girlfriend. No wonder
it burned Desty.

No
wonder,
I thought, flicking the wrapper. Mitzi wanted heat because
she was cold. Cold, dead, and strong as hell. Mitzi was five-foot-two,
one-oh-five soaking wet, but she had kicked my ass when I was rage-crazy and
trying to stomp the shit out of Jason. She was at least twice as fast as me and
who knows how many times as strong. I wouldn’t put my money on Mitzi to win a
fight with Mikal, but I’d damn sure give her better odds of surviving one than
I would give me.

The
only way to get a familiar away from a fallen angel is to kill him,
I
thought.
Fallen angels can only enthrall living things. Vamps are dead.

Desty

“‘The
last chosen soldier of God must visit death upon his brother before a holy
champion can rise and the final battle for Earth can begin,’” Jax read.

“That’s
it?” I asked.

Bailey
nodded and used the earpiece of her reading glasses to scratch the back of her
head. “Prophecies—accurate ones anyhow—are usually pretty short and to the
point.”

“You
don’t have any notes or alternate translations?” Jax asked. He held up the
water-stained notebook paper and tapped the single line of blue writing. “What
about historical context, idioms, anything? This is pretty clean as far as
straight-from-the-oven translations go.”

Bailey
shrugged. “This copy was recovered near the old Baumeyer cabin—”

Jax
interpreted for me, “Where Colt was living, before the whole thing with Mikal.”

“Right,”
Bailey said. “Which I guess is at least one type of irony, considering Brandt
and Raelyn nicknamed it the Whitney Death Prophecy. Anyway, Rian brought it in
because Mayor Dark wanted it authenticated. We have the original on file in the
server here, and since it’s obviously Sancati—”

“Obviously,”
Jax said.

Bailey
pointed at the paper with her glasses.

“Don’t
get smart with me, Ajax, look at the text,” she said. “They’re one of the few
ancient divining sects that used the more earthly ‘soldier’ instead of
‘warrior.’ The Sancati wrote in a coarse language so there wouldn’t be any
confusion to future generations.”

“Fucking
accommodating,” Jax said, which is pretty much what I was thinking.

“I
always did like their practicality and foresight,” Bailey said. Then she smiled
at us like she couldn’t understand why we weren’t laughing. “Foresight. No
one?” She shrugged. “I thought it was good.”

I
looked at Jax.

“Can
you cross-reference stuff?” I asked. “Like use words in this prophecy to bring
up other stuff you’ve memorized?”

“Let’s
do it,” he said. He closed his eyes and the lids started flickering like
someone lost in a dream. “Hit on the Hell Windows. They ‘recount the story of
the angel who led the rebellion in Heaven. He was cast to Earth where he will
bring forth the legions, then rise up against the chosen armies of God in the
final battle for Earth. Kathan is represented as a king of earth in these
accounts (reference: Whitney papers) and Mikal as his second in command, keeper
of the Sword of Judgment.’ That’s it.”

“Sword
of Judgment?” I said. “That sounds pretty serious.”

“Yeah,
if you think a fiery sword that can send any being, human or NP, to its final
destination—i.e. Heaven or Hell—is serious,” Jax said. “It’s kind of what makes
Mikal such a badass.”

I
didn’t laugh.

“Come
on,” he said, bumping my arm. “I’m just trying to make it go down a little
easier.”

“Sorry.
I guess I don’t research well with others,” I said. “I like to lock on, you know?”

“Then
you’re in luck,” Jax said. “There’s nothing more locked-on than the Whitney
papers. Tough’s dad wrote them back when he first started that whole thing with
Kathan. The guy was pretty longwinded—even for a preacher.”

I
remembered. I’d read some of Daniel Whitney’s work when Tempie started getting
interested in fallen angels. He was convincing, methodical, and thorough. But
then, if you were trying to get everyone you knew to follow you into war
against creatures you couldn’t kill, you would have to be.

“Okay,”
I said. “Let’s lock on.”