by Rysa Walker
She manages to restrain herself, however.
“Yes, Miss Martha. Thanks for the cookies.”
Two
TUCKER
Tucker digs around in the console, hunting for the stack of fast-food napkins he keeps stashed there. He didn’t even realize he was bleeding until he was half a mile away from the Pinewood.
That was one crazy fucking bird.
Blood trickles down the side of his face, which means it’s going to be on his collar, and this is his last clean shirt. He’s just thinking that he should pull off the road and actually look for the damn napkins—how many wrecks are caused by this kind of distracted driving?—when his fingers brush against the thin paper beneath the phone charger.
His cruiser is already half a block past the girl before he realizes it’s Daisy Gray. She’s leaning against a light post holding a plate of something, and she looks… Tucker can’t really define that look, but it worries him. So he backs the car up and rolls down the window.
“Always thought it would be Dani I’d have to haul in for truancy.” He gives her a grin. “Need a ride?”
Now that he’s closer, he sees the trace of fear in her eyes and wishes he’d kept driving. Is she on to him? Does she think he’s a creeper for being interested in a girl still in high school? Maybe he needs to dial it back?
But then her fear gives way to relief. Daisy steps forward and opens the car door, glancing nervously back down the block before getting in. Tucker looks in the rearview mirror and sees Martha Yarn’s screen door closing. The sound seems to have startled the cat sleeping on her porch. It jumps down from the rocker, arches its back, then takes off like a bullet to hide beneath the house.
“Did you and Miss Martha have this arranged?” Daisy asks. “Like, you saw her earlier this morning and she…Oh my God, Tucker! You’re bleeding. What happened?”
“Long story that ended with a kamikaze crow. I’ve had a hell of a morning.”
“That makes two of us,” Daisy says, glancing again toward Martha Yarn’s house.
“So…am I taking you to school or back to your place?”
“My place first so that I can disinfect and bandage that cut.” Her face grows red. “I mean, unless you were planning to go to your house or back to the station to do that, in which case…”
“No,” Tucker says quickly. “I don’t think I have disinfectant at home, and that would save me a trip to the office. Plus, if those cookies were baked by Miss Martha, I’m going to expect at least two as payment for this taxi service.”
“You might want to test them for LSD first.”
“Martha Yarn? She’s in her nineties.” He laughs and then gives her a confused look. “Wait…you’re serious?”
“Well, not about the LSD. At least, I don’t think so. But there is some truly weird shit going on in this town.”
He’d been thinking the same thing only a few moments ago. It’s both troubling and reassuring to hear her echo those thoughts.
“Such as…?” He takes his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at her. Her eyes are narrowed in concentration, like she’s weighing her options. Trying to decide what to tell him. Whether to tell him the truth. He doesn’t like that, because it probably means she’s thinking of him more as an adult or an authority figure—both true, says that annoying voice in his head—than as a friend.
Finally, she smiles at him, a smile that lights up her dark-green eyes, despite the underlying current of worry. “I have an hour before I’m due at school. If you can take a break, I’ll make coffee, and we can swap stories about our mornings over delicious-but-possibly-acid-laced cookies. After I patch up your head, that is. But first, I need to check something.” She pulls out her phone and says, “Call Dad.”
The phone obeys, but her father doesn’t answer. So she sends a text, but that doesn’t seem to be getting through either.
“He’s heading to Atlanta, right?” Tucker asks when he notices her frown. “I don’t know what plan you guys are on, but coverage is horrible along some stretches of I-40.”
She nods but is clearly still thinking about it, because she doesn’t say anything else until they arrive home. He parks the car in his own driveway—no need to give nosy neighbors extra cause for speculation—and then they walk next door to her place.
Five minutes later, when his forehead is patched and the coffee brewed, Daisy slides the plate of cookies across the kitchen table. “Okay. Story time.”
“You first. I have cookies to eat.”
“All right.” Daisy pulls in a deep breath. “I was at Miss Martha’s to interview her for the school paper. Today is her ninety-third birthday, and it’s one of those human-interest stories that Mrs. Farmer pushes us to do because they’re the kind of heartwarming thing that all high school students are into.” Her tone is so sarcastic that he laughs.
“I was fine with it, though,” she continues. “Anything after eighty is a milestone, and I like Miss Martha. But as soon as I get there, she starts making a bunch of really strange comments—”
“Well, that’s par for the course with Martha Yarn, from everything I’ve heard.”
“This was weird even for her, though. The stuff about this being her last birthday I sort of shrugged off.”
“Because she’s ninety-three?”
“Yeah. Also because she’s always had that knack…” Daisy trails off, and he suspects she’s thinking about when her mom died. “But there were a lot of questions she answered oddly. Weird memory lapses, too. I’m a little concerned she might have had a stroke, even though she insisted she’s perfectly healthy.”
“Does she use…Doctor…” Tucker stops. The local doctor’s name is on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t find it. “Damn, what’s his name?”
Daisy opens her mouth to answer, but she draws a blank, too. They just stare at each other for a moment, and then she laughs. “Whoa. Apparently, Martha’s memory lapse thing is contagious.”
He glances down at the cookie in his hand, now actually wondering if it isn’t laced with something. “Dr. Loomis,” he says when the name finally comes to him. “That’s right. Do you know if she’s his patient? Or does she see someone in Viola City?”
“No clue,” Daisy says. “But Julie Kennedy might know. Miss Martha is a member of her church. I doubt she makes it to services all that often anymore, but I do know Julie checks in on her from time to time. She’s at the library this morning, so you might be able to catch up with her there. But, anyway, Martha acting weird was just the tip of the iceberg. She’s got these alphabet magnets on the bottom half of her fridge, and when I first arrived, I noticed that some of them spelled out the word BAKER.”
She continues, telling him how the letters kept changing into new words, once right in front of her eyes. “And yes, I know how crazy that sounds. It’s almost like the letters were responding to our thoughts. I don’t know what the word RAUM means, and I don’t believe Martha did either. But I was thinking about her baking when I came in, because the place smelled like gingerbread. I remember her mentioning something about meeting her Maker, too. Plus…my dad played a few bars of ‘Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll’ before he left for his convention this morning.”
“That’s why you tried to call him.”
“Yeah.” She pulls out her phone to check her messages. “And…still nothing.”
“Bill’s okay, Daisy. He’s only been gone a few hours.”
“I know. The thing with the song just has me rattled.”
“I’m sure. The whole thing is freaky. Didn’t something like that happen in—”
“Bag of Bones, yes. And several others. It’s a pretty standard trope. But there’s more. Martha wanted to show me pictures of the students she taught. There’s this whole wall of class photos in her bedroom, from back in the 1940s through when she retired. One of my grandmothers was in her class. Both of my parents. But all of their faces—really, all of the details—in those photos were sort of blurred.”
&nb
sp; “Faded?”
“No. Blurred out. Like—”
“The Ring,” he says. “There was another one where that happened, too.”
“Yes, but this was more like… Did you ever see Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Not the old black-and-white one, but the one from the 1970s?”
He shakes his head. “I read the book, though. Pod people.”
“Right. The movie’s good. You should see if it’s streaming somewhere. Anyway, it was more like when the pod things in the movie start turning human. They’re this shapeless mass, and then they begin to look like the person they’ve taken over. After a moment, I was able to make out most of the faces in the images, but they still seemed to kind of flicker—not in and out of view, exactly, but more like when the refresh rate is wrong on a monitor.”
Tucker is silent, trying to think of some rational explanation. But he really can’t.
“If you’re trying to figure out how to respond,” Daisy says, “I’m pretty sure this is the part where you tell me there’s a good psychiatrist over in Viola City.”
Tucker snorts. “How about we hold off on any conclusions concerning our sanity until after you hear my story? Maybe we can find a place with group rates.” He stirs some sugar into his coffee, takes an experimental sip, and then adds a bit more. “It’s actually a relief to be able to talk this through with somebody. The chief is out of town, and…I’ll be honest, Marty is about as sharp as a sack of warm Jell-O. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there was a murder at the Pinewood last night.”
She shakes her head, and he goes on. “The worst thing I’ve ever seen, Daisy. I mean, we don’t get many murders around here—only one actual murder since I’ve been on the force. But I have worked a couple suicides and some pretty grisly wrecks. And I’ve never seen this much blood.”
“Was it anyone we know?”
He shakes his head. “California tags. Antique car. Neil said she came in around ten, night before last. He was busy at the diner yesterday, didn’t even think about the fact that the woman never checked out until around dinner time. You know how the Pinewood is. Those rooms are hardly ever rented overnight except on the week…ends.”
Daisy grins. “You don’t have to look embarrassed, Tucker. I’m eighteen, not eight. Half the kids in the senior class have spent at least a few hours at the Pinewood.”
Tucker really wants to know if Daisy is in that half. He also really doesn’t want to know, so he goes on quickly. “Neil went in after closing up the diner to see if maybe she’d just left the key on the dresser. Her car was still there, but she could have taken off with someone else. When he gets there, he finds the light on in the bathroom. Someone had stabbed her repeatedly. In the shower.”
Daisy winces. “Let me guess. The car was a 1957 Ford Custom 300 Fordor.”
“It was a 1957 Ford, and it…had four doors, yes. How did you—”
“No. A Fordor. F-O-R-D-O-R. That’s the car from the movie Psycho. I know you’ve seen that one.”
“Yes,” he says, a little defensive at having his horror-film creds called into question. “Original and remake. I’m not a giant geek like you are—”
“You mean expert?”
“—who remembers the specific make and model of freakin’ cars, but I saw the similarities. I told Neil when I was at the scene, and later Marty, that it looked like we might have a copycat situation going on.”
“Do you have any leads?”
“Not a one. But here’s where things start getting weird. Sheriff Hoyt told me last night he wouldn’t be able to send forensics over until this afternoon. He’s got people out with this flu and a bunch of other excuses. So I cordoned off the room, and the one next to it, with police tape. This morning when I go back, there’s no body. No car. The tape is still in place, but that hotel room is fucking spotless. I checked with the county, and also with the funeral home. No one admits to taking the body.”
Daisy is silent for a moment, thinking. It’s one of the things Tucker has always liked about her. Even when she was a kid, she’d stop and think before she spoke, rather than rushing in to fill a silence.
“You don’t think this was someone punking you?”
“I don’t. Or rather, if it is someone punking me, they killed a woman in order to do it. She was dead. And human. A very dead human.”
“How did that happen?” she asks, pointing to his forehead.
It takes him a second. Reliving last night had almost erased the incident with the bird from his mind. “It’s unrelated,” he says, although part of him isn’t really sure that’s true. “I was with Marty, taking a few more pictures at the former crime scene, and this crazy bird swoops down from the hotel sign. A crow, I think?”
“Can I see the pictures? Or are they…evidence?” she adds when he hesitates.
“I can definitely show you the ones I took this morning. Maybe you can keep an eye out for the bird on the sign so I can haul his feathered ass in for assaulting an officer. But you probably shouldn’t scroll too far back. The ones from last night would give you nightmares.”
She slowly raises one exaggerated, sardonic eyebrow, and he laughs. He’s perfectly willing to admit that Daisy’s expertise far exceeds his own. There are quite a few films and an even greater number of books that he’d never have found if she hadn’t recommended them—and they range from subtle thrillers to full-scale hack-’em-ups. The girl doesn’t scare easily.
“Seriously, Tucker? I’ve spent the last week after school going through the film collection Trent Jackson inherited along with the Hart, trying to weed out the ones that are too scary for the festival. There were quite a few splatter classics in the mix, including Blood Feast, which was bloody disgusting. So…I think I’ll be okay.”
Tucker is tempted to tell her that it’s different when the blood and the bodies are real. He knows this from direct experience. But the words, even though they are very much true, seem a little condescending, especially given that Daisy is also no stranger to death. So he just pulls up the camera roll and pushes his phone toward her.
She scrolls through the images. The glare from the light above them reflects onto the screen from his angle, so he can’t see exactly what she’s looking at. He can, however, see the confusion growing on her face.
“Are the interior shots all from this morning?” she asks after she scans through a good thirty or forty frames.
“The first dozen or so before the exterior shots are. After that, it’s photos from last night. They’re pretty easy to distinguish.”
“But aside from the fact that it’s nighttime and the lights are all on, they really aren’t easy to distinguish from the ones you took today.” She pushes the phone back toward him and gives him a sad smile.
“I meant the body. And the…blood…” He stares down at the screen. The body, the blood, even the suitcase is missing. “But…Marty saw the pictures! I emailed them to Sheriff Hoyt. They thought maybe the body had been fake. That someone was punking me, like you said. But the pictures? Both of them saw those. The actual pictures from last night.”
He stops and runs one hand through his hair. “This phone hasn’t been out of my sight, Daisy. I have to keep it on the nightstand in case the office calls me out on an emergency. How could someone have changed out the images?”
“Maybe someone came in when you were in the shower?”
“The door was locked. It’s always locked. And even if someone found a way to get to my phone, it still doesn’t explain what happened at the Pinewood. I know what I saw. I’m not crazy.”
“Hey…” Daisy reaches forward and squeezes his hand. “You don’t have to convince me. I just saw photographs of pod people and self-animated fridge magnets. I believe you, okay?”
Tucker looks up from the phone and meets her eyes. She’s telling the truth. And…
She pulls her hand away from his arm and looks down at the table, but it’s a split second too late. Tucker saw something else in her eyes. Something he
didn’t expect. Something that makes his breath catch in his throat.
Daisy Gray is in love with him.
When did that happen?
This isn’t something he merely suspects. It is as clear as day, an unmistakable fact.
And what amazes Tucker most is that this fact—this indisputable, universe-shattering fact—doesn’t worry him nearly as much as he feels it should. He should be thinking about their age difference and what he knows people will say, but those thoughts barely even register. He refuses to let in any doubts or any thoughts suggesting that what he saw in her eyes is a bad thing.
Because it’s not.
In fact, Tucker thinks it may be the only truly good thing that’s happened to him in a very, very long time.
Three
ZOPHIEL
Zophiel jumps sideways to the safety of the grass, arching her tawny back and hissing at the car that swerved onto the sidewalk, barely missing her. It was a warning shot, which means it was most likely from Raum. If Andras had been in control of whoever was driving the vehicle, it would simply have flattened the cat, and she’d have been forced to search for yet another vessel.
The cat was the nearest creature to the portal when Zophiel shed the crow’s body. Or, more accurately, when Andras squeezed the crow and popped her out like a cork from a bottle. She would have preferred another bird simply for the ease of transportation, but that would also have made her easy for Andras to spot if he decided to take over the body of a hunter for a bit and do some target shooting.
Andras can’t kill her, but…
At least, he can’t kill her out there. It’s strictly against the rules. But she’s no longer out there. Do the same rules apply in here? Zophiel is not entirely sure, and a shiver runs down the cat’s spine as she remembers her narrow escape from the crow earlier. From the car, too.
Even if he can’t kill her, Andras can wreak havoc here.
