The Blue Girl (34 page)

They’re going to drain the light right out of us, and then there’ll be nothing left of us.

Nothing left at all.

At least Imogene’s not here, I think.

Maybe they’ll be satisfied with us. Maybe once they’ve taken us, they won’t have the same hunger for Imogene.

Except then I hear the sound of running footsteps from behind us. I can’t turn my head.

Go back, go back! I want to shout.

But nothing comes out of my mouth.

And then I hear Imogene say, “Get them open, Pelly.”

Now I had no idea if blue paint was going to do anything, but that’s what Pelly and I picked up in the art room. Four big plastic pails of liquid poster paint. I thought we could pour the paint around ourselves to make a protective circle, because we know blue works, and who really knows about this salt business? Or maybe we could just pour it over Maxine and Pelly, so that they’d be protected, too.

But when we finally reach Maxine, I have a better idea.

“Get them open, Pelly,” I say as I work the lid free from one of the pails I’m carrying. “Then follow my lead.”

Oh, they’re big and scary, all right, these
anamithim,
and don’t look anything like I expected. I was thinking the Ringwraiths from the
Lord of the Rings
movies—just these horrible
shapes
in tattered black cloaks. And maybe they’re super powerful and everything. But they’re messing with my friend.

I’ve spotted Adrian, too. It figures he’d be here. He probably led the
anamithim
to Maxine. But I figure we can deal with him later. He’s a ghost. What’s the worst he can do? Call some more bad guys down on us?

I check to make sure Pelly s ready. There are three of the tall-white-and-uglies and a whole mess of squirmy shadows moving around by their feet. The big one in front starts saying something in a language I don’t get. He seems surprised about something—maybe he was mouthing some spell?—but now I’m right in his face.

Up goes the pail, and blue paint goes flying all over the three of them.

“Pelly?” I say.

When I turn around, I see he’s frozen in place, so I run back and get another pail.

The uglies are all yelling something now, but I don’t pay any attention. I just pry off the lid of the second pail and start back toward them. The front guy sticks his arm out and points at me, still shouting something, when the second pailful of blue paint goes washing all over him and his buddies. The front ugly gets a mouthful and he stumbles back, choking.

The mess of wriggling shadows is gone now. And it seems brighter in the room. I couldn’t figure out why it was so dim compared to the rest of the basement.

The creature in front’s still trying hard to do some kind of magic thing to me. If the rage in his eyes was a physical threat, I’d be dead.

I throw the empty pail at him. I miss, but whack the guy standing behind him, who gets this startled, stunned look.

Well, what do you know?

I was thinking the paint would—oh, I don’t know— damage them in some way, but this is turning out way better than I could have planned. Because I can tell from the looks on their faces that we’re not supposed to be able to touch them. I guess it was part of their magic—the same enchantment that lets them travel through shadows and just take shape when they want to.

But they’re locked in their physical shapes right now. And the shadows won’t be taking them anywhere.

“Rules have changed, boys,” I say.

I take out my switchblade and thumb the button. The blade
sniks
out.

Time to finish this.

As I step forward, Pelly s suddenly by my side. I guess the
amamithim
s spell wore off, or they’re too busy right now to maintain it. Pelly flings the contents of his pail over the creatures, covering them with yet another coating of blue paint.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says to me. “I didn’t lose my courage. It was magic that stopped me.”

“I know,” I say.

It was those words that the leader was saying, which is also why Maxine wasn’t able to move. But those magic words didn’t work on me.

I glance at Pelly. “Keep an eye on ghost boy while I put an end to this.”

They’re tall and they’re repulsive, and not big on courage, either, it seems. I mean, any one of them is twice my size, and there’s three of them. But I guess they can’t touch the blue-skinned girl, and she’s got the knife.

I move toward them, and they back away from me until they’re right up against the wall. That tells me everything I need to know.

They can be hurt.

They can die.

I shake my head. “I can’t believe we were supposed to be scared of you sorry losers.”

I remember Frankie Lee’s coaching. Sharp edge of the blade up. Put your whole shoulder into the thrust. Plunge it into the stomach, then rip it up.

I step up to the closest of the
anamithim.

“Imogene, don’t!”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“Maxine, they were going to
eat our souls?
”

“I know. And I could actually feel it starting to happen.”

“So your problem is?”

“If you kill them, that makes us no better than they are.” I shake my head. “I’m not too concerned with which of us is morally superior. Do you think they cared?”

“No, but we should.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” I say. “I know all about how the bad things you do come back on you, believe me. But this is something that has to be done. So for the record, it’s my doing, not yours, not Pelly’s.”

“The Imogene I care about wouldn’t do it,” she says. “Maybe the Imogene you thought you knew never existed.”

“I don’t believe that. And neither do you.”

I’m not entirely sure she’s right. I dealt harshly with Brent. I never stopped to think about it. I just cut him and then left him to bleed.

I know if I survive this, I’ll have to deal with the fallout.

With what I did to Brent, I’ll have to deal with the police and the legal system, and probably Brent trying to get his own back, because he’s just dumb enough to need to do that. But here  ...  here I have no idea except that I know Maxine’s right.

It’s my own words to Adrian about karma, coming back to haunt me.

I’ll have to carry the weight of what I’ve done, and the worst-case outcome of killing the
anamithim
will be that the Imogene I’ve been trying to be, the one that Maxine considers her friend, won’t exist anymore. If she ever did. Maybe this past year has just been some pathetic joke fate’s been playing on me, letting me pretend to be a good kid. To be normal.

“You know if we leave this now,” I say, “we’re just going to have to deal with it later.”

She shakes her head. “No, we’ll deal with it now.”

She steps up beside me and faces the leader of the creatures. “Are you ready to hear the terms of your survival?” she asks.

He turns his head and spits out some blue paint. When he looks back at her, he says something in that unintelligible language of his.

“Speak English,” Maxine says.

I’m impressed. There she is, with her back straight, her voice firm, standing up to him like she never did the bullies at school.

He glares at her, but says, “What are your terms?”

His voice is guttural and heavily accented, but we can understand the words now.

“If we let you go,” Maxine says, “you leave us alone. You leave us and our families and our friends and anybody we know or might come to know alone. In other words, it’ll be like you never were a part of our lives and you never will be.”

“And ... and in exchange?”

Oh, I can tell he had trouble getting that out.

“You get to live,” she tells him.

He stands up straighter, towering over us. Even with that blue paint splashed all over his sickly white skin and robe, he manages to look pretty damn scary.

“Do you have any idea with whom you are dealing?” he says.

Not even the accent and guttural tone of his voice can hide the prideful disdain he holds for us. I can feel Pelly trembling beside me.

But Maxine just says, “Actually, I do. You’re the creatures who picked a fight with the wrong people.”

For a long moment the two of them lock gazes. Then the creature smiles—or at least I think that grimace pulling at his lips and showing his teeth is a smile.

“You have a bargain,” he says.

I shake my head. “Maxine, how are we supposed to trust these things?”

He turns to look at me, and this time I can tell that he’s really pissed.

“You question our word?” he demands.

Maxine didn’t bat an eye when he was staring her down, and I’m not about to, either.

“Well, yeah,” I say. “Maybe you’re some big important guy where you come from, but here you’re just an ugly monster that came gunning after us for no good reason that I can see. That doesn’t make you particularly trustworthy in my book.”

The leader turns his attention on Pelly. “Tell them,” he says. “Tell them how our word is our bond.”

“It ... it’s true,” Pelly says when I look at him. He sounds apologetic, like I’m going to blame him. “Across the borders, one’s word is one’s only currency. It’s not like here.”

Maxine gives a slow nod. “Esmeralda said something about that in her last e-mail.”

The soul-eater holds out his hand.

“Cut my palm,” he says, “and I will give you my blood oath.”

I glance at Maxine and she shrugs, so I let the edge of my blade kiss the palm of his hand. A greenish red blood seeps from the wound.

“Now you,” the creature says to Maxine.

“Wait a minute,” I say.

But he shakes his head. “Our bargain is with her.”

The other two
anamithim
make rumbly noises that 1 take to be agreement. Reluctantly, I offer Maxine the switchblade, hilt first.

“Just hold it,” she tells me.

“Careful,” I say, turning the knife around again so that the blade faces her. “It’s really sharp.”

She lightly touches her own palm against it. When she pulls her hand back, blood wells from the cut. Red, normal blood. Which makes me wonder if mine would be blue and that’s why the creature wants to seal the bargain with Maxine.

He offers her his hand and they shake, the creature repeating his promise to hold up their side of the bargain. I go to where the piles of clothing lie on the floor. I clean my blade on a pair of shorts, put it away in my jeans, then pick up a T-shirt and give it to Maxine. She wraps it around her hand. I hesitate a moment before picking up a second one.

“So do you have a name?” I ask.

He refuses the T-shirt and shows me his blue-spattered hand. The cut’s already disappeared.

“We do not give out our names,” he says.

We stand there for a moment, nobody moving or talking.

“Okay,” I tell them. “You can go.”

“We cannot. Not until we clean this abomination from our skin.”

I realize that I’m enjoying this. “Oh, right. Well, there are washrooms upstairs ... maybe a sink down here somewhere.”

He just looks at me.

“You know,” I say. “With water. To wash off the paint?”

“I will show them,” Pelly says.

The soul-eater nods and lets Pelly lead them away.

“Remember,” I call after them. “Pelly is definitely in the friend category.”

He just gives me a look, and then they’re gone. When I turn to Maxine, she grabs hold of me and hugs me like she’s never going to let go. I can feel her shaking and realize then just how scared she was. In my book, that makes her way braver than me. I was too pissed off to be scared.

“I thought we were all going to die,” she says with her face buried against my neck.

“Me, too,” I tell her.

I look over my shoulder at Adrian. He hasn’t moved or said a word since I came into the room.

“What are you still doing here?” I say.

Maxine pushes back from me.

“Oh, don’t be mad at him,” she says. “He was only trying to help.”

“By siccing those uglies on us in the first place.”

“He made a mistake,” Maxine says. “Everybody makes mistakes.”

“But not everybody’s mistakes  ...”

Put people’s lives at stake, I’m about to add, but I let it go. She’s right. Everybody screws up. Just look at me: I’m the poster child for screwing up.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Adrian finally says.

“He speaks,” I say.

“Imogene,” Maxine says.

I look at her. “I’m just razzing him. Can’t I even do that?”

“He was going to give up his soul for you,” she says.

“That’s what his plan to make things right was.”

I blink and slowly turn to Adrian.

“For true?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Not that it matters.”

“Of course it matters.”

“Plus he’s real,” Maxine adds. “I mean, he’s corporeal.”

I keep thinking that we should be way too freaked to be having an ordinary conversation like this, but I guess the very normalcy of it is what’s helping us the most. I walk over to him and reach out with a finger to touch his chest. Sure enough, my finger presses against real flesh. He gives me an uncertain smile.