The Stargazers (16 page)

“I know who you are,” said Ivy. “You’re Oleander. Lily and Dahlia warned me about you. You’re… an abomination.” Spittle flew fro
m the woman’s lips, but Oleander didn’t mind
.

“They send a child to impregna
te herself and kill her own child
, and
I’m
the abomination? Let’s not pretend we’re all high and mighty, Miss Ivy. We’re all selfish bitches. I’m just the only who isn’
t afraid to admit it
.” She grabbed a large rock lying nearby and raised it over her head. Her victim’s screams and thrashes began anew, and she
bucked her hips in a fruitless attempt to escape, and Oleander had to fight harder to avoid the orgasm that so wanted to come. Oh how delicious!

“Now lie still, Miss Ivy. I can take it from here.” Oleander brought down the rock in a
swift and
crunching blow against the woman’s temple. She stopped moving, but thankfully her heart was still beating. It wouldn’t have done well to kill her just yet.
In fact, it would have ruined Oleander’s long years of work.

She stood
and wiped sweat from her brow. The
next business would be gruesome, even for such as her, but it extinguished any sexual excitement she’d had, and she was glad to be rid of that distraction
.
If she didn’t do this part right, the potion would reverse itself and leave her as ruined as the old biddies back home. That was a gamble Oleander had been willing to take.

From her knapsack, she removed a long, serrated blade kept sharp from years of butchering animals. Dropping back down to her knees, she raised the knife and plunged it into
the unconscious woman’s chest, just shy of the heart.

Ivy’s eyes flew open, and a gurgling scream exited her mouth followed by a spray of blood that coated Oleander’s new face in warm red
lacquer. Working fast, she
sawed through the breastbone with both hands wrapped around the haft and reached in through the bloody gash.  The life inside the organ was a feeble tremble, really nothing more than reflexive, but it was as fresh as she could hope to get. Yanking the heart free from its prison with a meaty snap of its arteries, Oleander held the ball of muscle before her face and licked her lips, inhaling its raw coppery smell. She had never dined upon a human heart before, but it was a small price to pay for the reward to come.

As she chomped through the tough gristle, blood dripping down her chin like the juice from a devilish fruit, her spirit fused into its new skin.

-13-

Aster paced back and forth while Ruby sat on the bed reading a book by flashlight. Larkspur lay curled up next to her, sleeping or at least pretending to.

“You seem awfully uptight for somebody who just got some a little while ago,” said Ruby.

Aster refused to take the bait about Bryon.
The girl had been trying to get her spill the details ever since she got back, but Aster had been subjected
to all forms of goa
ding throughout her life, so ignoring Ruby’s needling was easy enough
. “I’m worried about Ivy. It’s late. She should have been home by now.”

Ruby put down her book and sat
forward
. “I don’t know what has you in such a twist. You’ve been here one day. You would hardly know what Ivy is like. Are you having a psychic moment or something?”

Although Aster wasn’t bor
n with any sort of clairvoyance
, she’d always
valued her intuition.
That earthquake being centered right near the door between their two worlds was a coincidence too great to ignore. “Don’t you ever get a bad feeling about something that you can’t explain?”

Ruby laughed. “You pretty much just explained my whole life.”

“I just feel like something about this earthquake is, you know, a bad sign.”

“You sound like my mom. She was all about signs and omens.”

Aster looked at her. “You’re not?”

Ruby shrugged. “I dunno. Shit happens. Sometimes you can smell it before
it hits, but I think most of that is hindsight.”

“Well, something stinks.”

Ruby
stood up. “Look, you don’t know Ivy like the rest of us do. She comes and goes a lot, especially if she’s on a
rescue mission of some kind,
and
after what happened
today she’s probably rounding up a whole herd of newly displaced strays to bring home.”

“I guess so.” Aster wasn’t entirely convinced, but Ruby was right about one thing. The other girls knew her better, and no one else seemed worried.

“Tell you what. Let’s go grab a few snacks
downstairs
and wait up for her. She’ll probably come rolling in right when the power comes back on.”

In the living room, they found Tonya, Cynthia, and a girl whose name Aster couldn’t remember sitting around a board game illuminated by a lantern. “Where’s everybody else?” asked Ruby.

Tonya looked up after rolling her dice and moving her metal car six spaces around a game board Aster didn’t recognize.  “Bed. Most of them were too bored to stay awake without computers or TVs.” She looked back down at the board. “Hmmm, Marvin Gardens. That’s the shit. I’ll take it.”

Ruby took Aster’s arm and led her toward the kitchen where they ate peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies and drank big glasses of milk from the cooler.
Save for the bread and milk, all of it was new food for Aster, and its sweetness was both cloying and comforting.

“So is Bryon your guy now?” Ruby asked, dipping a cookie into her glass of milk.
Aster decided to try that next.

“I don’t know.” Her apprehension started to creep back
up at the thought of upsetting Ruby again. “I mean, I guess so. But I’m still trying to figure out what that means.”

Ruby gave her a sidelong glance. “Look, don’t be so uptight
about everything because of whatever, you know, happened between us.
I can be a passive-aggressive twat sometimes, in case you didn’t already notice.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay.
It’s summer. Have a little fun. Lord knows you
probably
need it.”

“Do I really look that miserable?”

“Miserable? Not exactly. Repressed to the point of being Amish? Definitely. Which is strange given that you dye your hair hot pink.”

Aster laughed. “I don’t dye my hair.”

Ruby gaped. “For serious? That’s fucking wicked. I’d like to see the family that spawned that.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Aster took another bite of her sandwich and tried not to think ab
out her family. Especially
Oleander.

“I guess you’re right. I mean, if you had a great family you wouldn’t exactly be living here.”

“They’re not bad. Well, not all of them anyway. My aunt Oleander is the biggest sore spot.”

“It’s like her name was prophetic.” 

Aster nodded. “It’s funny you say that. My Nanny Lily would also say she chose the name as a warning. I guess she ended up being right, because Aunt O is…”

“A poisonous
bitch?”

Aster grinned. “Yeah.”

Ruby hopped off the coun
ter and
put her arm around Aster’s shoulders. “Well, she isn’t here. And if she were, I’d kick her ass for you, because I’m that kind of friend.”

A moment of silence passed as the two girls smiled at one another, and Aster realized they must be the only ones still down on the lower level of the house. The rabble of the board game
had
since ceased. The two girls embraced and Aster felt that familiar warmth again as their bodies squeezed togeth
er. Her l
onging
and guilt
tore at her
, but she gave in to another kiss
.

Aster broke away. “We can’t keep doing this.”

Ruby sighed and stroked her hair. “Of course we can. We’re not doing anything wrong. Just go with how you feel.” Her eyes were like black pools. Aster thought of Mirror Lake at night, and how its silky water would caress her skin during her occasionally moonlit swims.

But I didn’t come here for this!
Oh what a mess this is turning into.
Aster fought to find the right words, but her thought were broken by
loud squeal
outside, followed by a crunching sound. Both girls jerked their heads in the same direction, their
quiet moment, along wi
th Aster’s indecisive agony, at least temporarily
broken.

They ran
to the f
ront window to see what had happened. Ivy’s bright red motor carriage was
sitting in front of the house
,
with its front end crunched into the maple tree at the head of the front walk.

“What the hell?” asked Ruby. “Is she drunk or something?”

The vehicle’s door swung open and Ivy stumbled out, holding onto it for a moment as if to make sure she could stand upright. Cold dread seeped into Aster’s veins as she watched the woman
shamble up the sidewalk in a lurching and swaying gait.

The front doorknob rattled in its lock and Aster heard a muffled curse as Ivy stumbled back down t
he porch stairs toward the car again. She emerged again with a ring of keys. “
Jesus, she must really be wasted,” Ruby said, a tinge of disappointment in her voice.

“Does she
ever get like this?” Aster asked.

Ruby shook her head. “Never. S
he’s purer than the Virgin Mary
.”

Ivy staggered up the sidewalk
again,
holding her keys o
utward like a blindfolded child playing a birthday party game.
Ruby pulled Aster back toward the kitch
en. After a few more seconds of the sound of jingling keys and jigging lock, presumably as Ivy tried to find the right one to open the door (
why wouldn’t she know the right key?
),
Ivy stomped inside. From the shadows of the kitchen, Aster could see her standing
in the foyer looking around, panting either from fatigue or rage. Probably both.

Illumination from the porch light fell in
through the open door
, revealing the dirt caking her dress, which had been ripped in several places and hung on her body like a bunch of rags tied together. Bloody scratches and scrapes covered her arms and face, and a great dark stain spread across the front of her dress from the neck down like a grotesque bib. Aster refused to believe it was blood, but she thought she could smell it, even from a distance.

This
woman
looked like Ivy, but she was definitely not the Ivy that
Aster knew and she suddenly realized
—though she struggled to figure out why—that if the other woman saw them, it would be very bad. “We need to hide,” she whispered.

Ruby frowned and opened her mouth, probably to deliver a snappy retort, but Aster slapped her hand against Ruby’s mouth and said, silently, “Trust me.”

Ruby nodded slowly and pointed
toward the basement door. After Ruby latched it, they came to a stop about halfway down the steps. It was pitch black, but since they had already been sitting in darkness, it didn’t take long for Aster’s eyes to adjust. “Is it locked?” Aster whispered.

“It locks from the inside. Ivy had that done in case there were ever any break-ins and someone needed to hide down here. Not that we should be hiding. What the hell’s with you?”

“Something is very wrong.” Aster’s voice shook
with terror and tears burned at her eyes. She couldn’t explain why her body was going into panic mode, but it was.

Ruby huddled in close and the two girls held each other. “Shhh… It’s okay.”

Aster struggled to quiet herself, though her entire body continued to quiver like a leaf. She was certain that someone or something had possessed Ivy or stolen her skin
. She wasn’t even sure if such magic was possible, but if anyone in Ellemire could do it…

Oleander
.
No. It couldn’t be.

Heavy footsteps shuffled into t
he kitchen a minute or
so later and then stopped so close to the basement door that Aster could
hear
Ivy’s raspy, shallow respirations. Then the footsteps moved away again
and next came the sound of
various jar
s and containers being moved
around
in the refrigerator
. Both girls jumped at the sound of glass shatt
ering on the tile floor. “Bah,
” grated Ivy’s familiar-but-not-familiar voice.

“Miss Ivy? Everything okay?”

Aste
r whipped her head around to Ruby. The other girl mouthed
word
,
“Ton-Ya.”

Gods!