The Burning Man (12 page)

“You have killer legs,” Chelsea said. “I’ve seen them. Why not share your secret with the rest of the world.” She tossed Olivia a pair of black socks that were folded together. “Try it with these.”

Olivia pulled down her old comfortable jeans and shimmied into the skirt. She’d worn bathing suits that were more modest. The socks turned out to be extra long, reaching well above her knees, and had little bows with silver skulls.

“What am I supposed to be?” she asked. “A goth schoolgirl stripper?”

“You said you wanted to look slutty,” Chelsea said. “Your wish is my command.”

Olivia laced up her Doc Martens boots over the socks, already feeling like someone else.

“I’m gonna freeze my ass off,” she said.

“It’s a short walk,” Chelsea responded. “Here, try this sweater.” She passed Olivia a handful of black fluff. “But first, get rid of that dreary, Soviet Olympian sports bra you’re wearing. That thing is like a crime against humanity. You’ll just have to go without for now, but we are so going lingerie shopping this weekend. It’s time for you to experience the miracle of the push-up.”

Olivia removed her bra, and then pulled the black sweater on over her bare chest.

“It’s too small for me,” she said, yanking at the hem. It stubbornly remained several inches above the waistband of the skirt.

“It’s perfect,” Chelsea said without even looking. “Now, let me do your makeup.”

She held Olivia’s chin in between her thumb and forefinger, turning her face one way and then the other, then pulled a large plastic tub of cosmetics out from under her bed and went to work.

“Look up,” she said, running a black pencil along the inner rim of Olivia’s lower eyelid.

Olivia did as she was told. It felt weird, and it was a struggle not to blink defensively. Chelsea dusted her lids with charcoal shadow and slicked her lips with something sticky and vanilla scented. She did Olivia’s hair, too, shielding her eyes with a cupped hand while dousing her head in bubblegum-scented hairspray.

After several long minutes of fuss and fluffy brushes, Chelsea finally seemed to be satisfied with the beautiful monster she had created.

“Check you out,” she said, gesturing toward the full-length mirror.

Olivia almost didn’t recognize the girl she saw there. Smoky eyes, black-cherry lips, and mile-high legs. Chelsea had pinned Olivia’s long blond locks into twin buns like mouse ears, each with a little fan of stiffly sprayed hair poking out of the center. The only familiar things in the mirror were Olivia’s trusty Docs, so her gaze kept going back to them, like that would ground her somehow. Make her feel less like a stranger.

Tearing her gaze away, she walked over to the bed, took the little tape recorder out of her bag, and slipped it down the side of her right boot.

“What about you?” she asked Chelsea. “What are you going to wear?”

Chelsea picked up Olivia’s discarded jeans and wriggled into them.

“Me?” She smiled and buttoned the jeans. “I’m dressing down. This is your show, Han.”

She pulled her favorite leopard print faux-fur jacket out of the closet and handed it to Olivia. Olivia slipped her arms into the sleeves and pulled it tight at her waist. It smelled like Chelsea, like jasmine oil and cigarettes. Like a bad girl.

It made her feel like she could do this.

* * *

Outside, the cold wind on Olivia’s bare thighs made her gasp.

“Come on,” she said to Chelsea. “Hurry.” Her roommate didn’t even seem to notice the chill.

Olivia held out a little flashlight to show the way as they took a shortcut. It illuminated the snow along the path. They were about halfway through a little spur of woods and over to the back of the rec hall when Chelsea stopped short.

“Dammit,” she said. “I forgot the camera.”

“I told you you’d forget it if you didn’t put it in your purse,” Olivia said. “We need that camera, so you can get some photos of me with Brent and Tyler!”

“Chill, will you?” Chelsea said. “I’ll go get it.”

“Well, I’m not going back,” Olivia said. “It’s too damn cold. I’ll just see you there.”

“Fine,” Chelsea replied. “God!” She turned around and headed back toward the dorm, while Olivia continued on to the party.

Chelsea was such a bubblehead. Honestly, Olivia had probably made a mistake relying on her to be part of such an important mission. Knowing her roomie, she’d probably meet some cute guy on the way back to the dorm, and decide to go do tequila shots out of his navel. Then drive down to New York for bagels. She was always pulling stunts like that, and skating by without any consequences.

It’d probably be better to figure out a way to make this work without the photos.

Still, Chelsea had done such a great job on the hair and makeup, and Olivia couldn’t really stay mad at her.

When Tony saw the girls split up, he knew this was his chance.

He should have been scared, standing there in the darkness, so close to the demoness who had destroyed his life, but he felt unnaturally calm. The night was bitter cold, but he felt warm all over. He could feel his brain humming from Olivia’s closeness, with a phantom burning that was pulsing through the hand and arm he no longer possessed.

He raised what he had instead, the seven-inch hunting knife he’d carefully modified and bolted to the business end of his prosthetic. The blade was matte black and nearly invisible—a deadly shadow, like the vengeful ghost of a fist.

Olivia’s trampy roommate held a tiny flashlight, and Tony watched its delicate fairy ring of illumination drift away through the naked winter trees for a few seconds. Then he was alone with Olivia.

He had to act quickly. In just a few more feet, she’d be out of the dark woods and out into the open. Reaching out to grab her felt inevitable, like falling.

He stepped onto the narrow trail behind her and clamped his good gloved hand over her mouth. She let out a surprised squeak, muffled down to nothing against his palm. He could feel her hot breath through the leather.

She was so tall now. Almost as tall as he was, he mused as he cranked her chin up and back. She felt like a woman as she struggled against him. He had clearly caught her just in time. The devil child was well on her way to becoming a full-grown monster.

He brought up the blade and drew it swiftly across her exposed throat, cutting all the way down to the bone and releasing a bubbling hiss of escaping steam.

Her last breath,
he thought.
Now I’ll be free.

She sagged in his embrace, boneless and empty as her lifeblood soaked into the snow around their feet. He let her drop and took a deep shaky swallow of the icy night air.

His arm still burned.

Panic set in, driving his heart like a whipped horse. He could still feel her razor-edged glitter shimmering inside his skull. Her poisonous heat still burned through him even as her body grew cold at his feet. He clutched at the place where his flesh met the dull rubber of the prosthetic, overwhelmed with a sudden conviction that he really
was
crazy.

Could Doctor Chalmers have been right? Was his psychic connection with the devil child really all in his head?

It couldn’t be. It felt so real. So true.

But if it was real, how could he still feel her, even after she was dead?

He fell to his knees beside her and turned her body face up. Her features were caked with bloody pink snow. Her familiar coat had fallen open and the shirt beneath was crimson with sticky gore.

But something wasn’t right.

It just wasn’t right.

Her bloody, steaming shirt clung to her body, revealing a flat, almost boyish chest beneath. Olivia was no Dolly Parton, but she had more than this.

Tony combed his fingers through the snow, fumbling for her fallen purse. When he finally found it, he unzipped the main compartment and pulled out a fluffy fake fur wallet and a disposable lighter.

He couldn’t hold the lighter and go through the wallet at the same time, so he had to take each plastic card out in the dark, set it on the snowy ground between his knees, and then spark the lighter to read it.

The first one was a video rental ID. The next was a credit card. Then a Deerborn student ID. They all had the same name.

Chelsea Speigelman.

He’d screwed up. Big time.

Olivia was walking around the back of the rec hall toward the entrance, when a sudden spike of a headache pulsed behind her right eye. She’d always been a little scared of headaches, after what her mother had been through. She often wondered if her mother’s condition might be dormant inside her own head, like a hungry seed, just waiting to blossom.

But this felt different from anything else she’d experienced. More like the way your ears hurt if a noise was too loud. It was like her brain was trying to squint against some painfully intense stimulation. She staggered a bit. The snow all around her boots suddenly melted in a warm rush, revealing the frozen yellow grass beneath.

But as quickly as the strange headache appeared, it was gone. And she was so keyed up, going over and over her plan, that she quickly put it out of her mind and started walking again.

She took a surreptitious swig from the flat pint bottle of cheap gin Kieran had given her, swished the nasty, medicinal-tasting liquid around in her mouth, then spat it into the snowy bushes. She cupped her bare hand in front of her lips and sniffed at her steaming breath. She could detect a hint of the junipery floor-cleaner scent of gin, but wasn’t sure it was strong enough, or how long it would last.

So she dabbed some behind her ears and into her exposed cleavage like perfume, and was instantly sorry. The alcohol evaporated rapidly in the cold night air, chilling her skin. She shivered, and figured she would have to rely on her backup plan. She had five white Good-n-Plenty candies she’d put into an old bottle of Vicodin Chelsea had nicked from her mother. She’d need to make sure she was seen swallowing those.

There was music playing, ‘Good’ by Better Than Ezra, and she could hear a group of girls laughing. Someone else was throwing up. Olivia had never been all that much into parties, and always felt slightly uncomfortable in large groups, hence Chelsea’s nickname for her—“Han Solo.” But the thick make up and borrowed clothes made her feel like an undercover agent on a secret mission.

Which, essentially, she was.

She’d known ever since the day she shot Randall that she wanted to be an FBI agent. The very next day she’d gone to the library and found a book with a list of the qualifications required to become a special agent. She’d photocopied it and had kept it in her pocket or purse ever since, meticulously updating it by hand as the qualifications were modified or enhanced over the years. That soft, ragged, and endlessly refolded piece of paper became a kind of talisman that she went back to whenever she felt unsure of herself.

She was constantly pushing herself to drop a few seconds off her 300-meter sprint, or add one or two more sit ups to her one-minute limit, not because she wanted to look good or be healthy, but because she wanted to make sure she aced the physical fitness test. She planned to join the Marines as soon as she graduated from high school, not just to get money for college or because her late father had been a Marine, but because military service would give her a leg up in the FBI application process.

It was as if her whole life was geared toward achieving that goal. And even though she couldn’t exactly put this kind of thing on her application, her little sting operation felt like the perfect way to hone the skills she would need later in life.

Not
if
she was accepted into the FBI, but
when.

* * *

Tony hooked his arms under the imposter’s armpits, and dragged her corpse down to the edge of the lake.

He’d underestimated his quarry’s fiendish intelligence. She had sent this decoy to trick him, to mislead him and allow her to slip—unscathed as quicksilver—between his fingers. And now he had this mess to deal with. If this girl’s body was found, it would create a media frenzy, followed by a security crackdown that would make it difficult—if not impossible—to get to Olivia.

He didn’t need months, or even weeks. He felt confident that he’d find a way to be alone with her within the next forty-eight hours, maybe less.

This girl would need to be missing for that long before the local police would initiate any kind of search. By then, Tony would have done his sacred duty.

After that, nothing else mattered. He’d go to the gas chamber with a smile on his face, knowing that the demoness had been vanquished, and the world was safe.

There was a fat, impassive moon hanging in the cold sky, veiled by an icy scrim of cloud, and its light made the dead girl’s skin seem to glow with a gentle, translucent beauty she’d never possessed while she was alive. Tony laid her out across a long, flat rock on the wooded shore and used one of its fellows to smash a hole in the thick ice. The water beneath was as black as the sky, and probably no deeper than waist high where he was standing. But it didn’t need to be deeper. It just had to be deep enough for him to slip the inconvenient body under the cloudy ice, where it would remain undiscovered until the spring thaw.

He used the rock to chip away the edges of the hole, in order to accommodate the width of her shoulders. A series of resonant cracks echoed across the frozen surface, and he had a bad moment where he thought the ice might give out beneath his feet. So he made himself stand completely still with his arms spread wide. After a few anxious seconds, the sounds subsided and the snowy hush returned.

Tony looked out over the surface of the frozen lake. There were a few scattered lights on the far shore, too far away to be a concern. The rowing team’s dock was visible to his left, but it was dark and deserted this time of year. The only real illumination came from the indifferent moon and the faint glow of the old-fashioned gas lamps that lit the winding paths of Deerborn.

Even though he was alone, Tony didn’t feel that way. He could still feel Olivia close by, her heart beating in tandem with his own. He carefully skirted the edges of the hole and went back up to the shore, where he’d left the impostor’s body.