What should she do? She had no idea. Go rushing home to her dad and Elaine, telling them . . . what? That a dead woman had written messages on a television screen? That she’d seen a face on her camera’s screen and heard a heart beating in a grave? They’d have her talking to a psychiatrist so fast her head wouldn’t have time to spin.
Should she call Mel? But it would be the same problem. The same pity. The same sweet and sympathetic disbelief.
There was only one person who’d always listened to her. Haley tied Sunny’s leash to the handlebars of her bike and set off down the street as fast as the dog could run.
Her dad and Elaine would be expecting her back for dinner, but she could call them from Jake’s.
Haley was panting as hard as Sunny by the time she reached Jake’s street, and the last of the light had faded from the sky. The cold, dry air hurt her lungs and made her cough.
She had her own key to the front door of Jake’s apartment building. Sunny flopped down on the cold concrete of the front walk to rest as Haley shook the key free from the others on her ring and slipped it into the lock.
But as she turned the key, Sunny suddenly jumped up and yelped, yanking Haley’s arm. The keys dropped to the doormat with a muffled clank.
“Sunny! What—? Ow, quit it!” Haley bent down to pick up the keys and the dog nearly pulled her over. She was barking now, loudly. “Stop it!” Haley insisted, giving the leash a good pull to bring Sunny back to her side. “Hold still—come on, quit making this so hard.” She grabbed Sunny’s collar with her left hand, using all her strength to keep the dog from moving, and turned the key in the lock with her right.
Sunny resisted as Haley dragged her into the lobby, and redoubled her barking. Oh, great. Neighbors were going to be looking out of the doors any minute now to see what was up. Jake might even appear, laughing as Haley wrestled the dog down the hallway, claws scrabbling and slipping on the linoleum.
At least Jake’s apartment was on the ground floor. She wouldn’t have to drag Sunny up the stairs.
In front of Jake’s door, she clung to Sunny with one hand and shook out her key ring with the other, trying to find the right key. But then Sunny growled, and the sound was so fierce that Haley dropped her collar and actually flinched away. She’d never heard Sunny make a sound like that.
Sunny’s upper lip was pulling away from her teeth, the fur on the back of her neck was bristling, and suddenly she seemed to change her mind about not wanting to go near Jake’s apartment. With a single-minded ferocity, she lunged for the door.
Haley, expecting to see her bounce off the wood, was caught off guard when the door crashed open. The leash, still looped around her wrist, went taut, and Haley was dragged inside.
The room was dark, not a light on anywhere. A rug slid under Sunny’s feet and nearly tripped Haley. The leash went slack for a moment and slipped over Haley’s hand. Sunny’s barking was a torrent of sound, battering the walls of the little room, battering the thoughts out of Haley’s head.
She couldn’t think, but she could still see.
The only light in the room came from the window, spilling in from the streetlight outside. Jake’s armchair was by that window. Haley could see his shape outlined in it, as if he’d fallen asleep there, his legs stretched out, his head leaning back.
Something straightened up, something that had been bending over him. For half a second Haley saw it, outlined against the dimly lit rectangle of the window. A thin, upright figure. Hair smooth against the skull, a long dress. Her mind took the picture like her camera took a photo. Click.
And the figure vanished from the window, gone like a shred of mist snatched by the wind. Something slammed into Haley, something as heavy and solid as iron. She didn’t feel herself falling; she only felt herself hitting the floor. It almost felt like the floor hitting her, a thump that knocked the breath out of her.
A gust of clammy air blew in her face, a smell choked her—clay, earth, something foul, rotten, buried deep. A vision sparked in Haley’s mind, lit up as if with a flash on a dark night—white maggots, pallid and damp, crawling blindly over something black and crumbling, writhing, squirming, eating hungrily—
Icy fingers grabbed hold of Haley’s face. Something stung her cheek, a thin, distant pain. Haley forced a breath into her lungs and shrieked Jake’s name just as a siren screamed outside and a red blade of light stabbed into the room.
One of the neighbors, it turned out, had heard Sunny’s frantic barking, had seen the door to Jake’s apartment swinging open, and had called the police. That much Haley understood later, when the room was full of light and noise and people. Police officers in uniforms, a couple of neighbors, two EMTs who put a bandage on a bloody cut on Jake’s neck, just under the corner of the jaw.
Maybe a knife, one of the policemen had said, coming over to look and take a photograph of the wound before the bandage was taped down. Although the knife must have been pretty blunt, she added, to make a cut as ragged as that.
“You should see your doctor for a tetanus shot,” the EMT said as she smoothed the gauze into place. “If you’re sure you don’t want to come to the ER now?”
“I’m sure.” Jake’s face looked sickly pale, but his voice was steady.
“Miss?” A policeman holding a notebook turned his attention to Haley. Haley had been told his name and had promptly forgotten it. “You can’t add anything to your description? Hair color? Eyes?”
“The light was off. It was dark.” Haley hugged her arms across her chest. Her voice was less steady than Jake’s.
“Height? She was standing against the window, you said. How high did she come up?”
Haley measured a spot on the window frame with her hand. “About to here, I think.”
The police officer quirked a slightly skeptical eyebrow. “But strong, you said?”
That force slamming into her, that hand on her face, those fingers like cold iron—Haley touched the sore spots on her jaw gently. “Yes. Strong.”
She knew why the officer had lifted his eyebrow. The spot she’d touched on the window frame would make Jake’s attacker only a few inches over five feet. She’d already described her as a woman, thin, slightly built. How could somebody like that have hit her with such force?
“Well, addicts looking for a fix—they can surprise you.” The officer shrugged. Haley stared at a mole, a dark blotch near the corner of his eye, as if it had hypnotized her. “We’ll talk to the neighbors, see if anybody saw her on the streets. And we’ll be back in a few days to see you both again. Meanwhile, don’t fall asleep again without locking the door. Medications can bring a good price on the streets.”
“I thought I—well. Obviously I didn’t. Lock it. I will.” Jake rubbed a hand over his face. The EMT who’d put the bandage on glanced at him, frowning a little. Then she looked at Haley.
“What’s that on your face?”
Haley blinked and put her hand up to her cheek. She stared in surprise at the blood on her fingertips and looked down to see a few small spots of red sprinkled over the front of her white T-shirt.
There was the sharp sting of alcohol as the EMT cleaned the scratch, then smeared it with a sticky ointment and stuck a bandage over it. The room emptied out, neighbors telling Jake to call if he needed anything, the EMT reminding him of a tetanus shot. When they had all gone, Haley shut the door behind them, locked it, and turned the dead bolt. Its heavy, satisfying metallic clunk was the sound of safety.
Except that Jake thought he’d locked the door before . . .
Jake was leaning back in his chair, eyes half closed. The white bandage didn’t stand out as it should have against his skin.
“You okay?” he asked.
Haley nodded. She couldn’t be sure he’d seen her, so she put it into words. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah.” Haley’s nerves were twitching and jumping, her body fizzing with adrenaline and shock. That hand on her face. That stench. And later, when sh
e’d slapped the lights on, Jake sitting up, staring blankly at her as if he didn’t know who she was, with blood running down his neck.
“I’m staying,” Haley said firmly. She called home, told her father and Elaine what had happened, told them she and Jake were both fine. The big Band-Aid the EMT had stuck over her face tugged at her skin and her jaw ached with talking before she’d explained it all, and they’d agreed that since it was a Friday and there was no school the next day, she could stay overnight.
When she hung up the phone, Jake was asleep in his chair.
Haley pulled him up by one arm and steered him over to the bed. She knelt to pull his shoes off and heard a long, drawn-out whine from under the bed.
“Sunny?” Haley bent down to look and Sunny poked her head out, a wisp of dust clinging to her nose. She huddled against the floor, as if hoping to melt into the wood. Even her fur seemed limp, and her ears dropped against her head.
“What a guard dog.” Jake’s voice was faint. “Defending her master against all danger . . . ”
By the time Haley had coaxed Sunny out into the room, Jake was nearly asleep again. The dog nosed frantically at his hand, lying limp on top of the sheets, and he stirred enough to rub her ears.
“S’okay, mutt, you’re not a Doberman or anything.”
“Jake?” Haley, still sitting on the floor, looked up.
“Mmmm?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? You look . . . ”
“I’ve really spent enough time in hospitals, Haley.”
“Listen, there’s something—” Haley faltered. But Jake waited patiently, not moving or speaking, for her to go on. “I think maybe something weird is going on. I don’t know. Can I tell you? Do you promise not to laugh or—”
Jake’s quiet, deep breathing was her only answer. Haley sighed. She covered him with a blanket and took the one folded at the foot of his bed for herself. Curled up in Jake’s armchair, her feet tucked under her, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she found that her eyes wouldn’t close. She didn’t know how long she stayed awake, staring into the dark.
In the morning, in Jake’s bathroom, Haley splashed water on her face and peeled the bandage from her cheek. The scratch from last night had healed really quickly. She rubbed her fingers over the smooth, wet skin. No soreness. No scar.
She was glad now that she hadn’t told Jake about her suspicions last night. In the light of day it all seemed ridiculous. What had happened out at the cemetery was bizarre, sure, but maybe nothing more than her nerves and imagination. After all, what proof did she have? A message on a dusty TV screen that might have been a dream? A spooky sound in a cemetery?
And somebody breaking into Jake’s apartment—but that had nothing to do with any of it. Probably just an addict after Jake’s medications, like the policeman said.
Certainly not what she’d been halfway to thinking last night, seeing Jake with blood on his throat, thinking back to that dark figure bent over him, outlined in the dim gray light from the window. Thinking of Mercy, so hungry for life that, even in her grave, she’d taken it. Stolen it from the people who’d loved her most.
Of course not. She’d have to be crazy to think that in Exeter, Rhode Island, in the twenty-first century, there could be such a thing as—
Her brain got as far as the “v” and then quit, out of pure shame. Haley saw her face in the mirror turn red.
“Vampires.” She forced herself to whisper the word out loud, as a punishment for stupidity, and watched her blush grow deeper.
Vampires. Great, Haley, just great. What would be next—monsters under the bed?
She dropped her eyes from the image in the mirror and squeezed some toothpaste onto her finger, rubbed her teeth, and hurried out of the bathroom.
Jake looked better that morning, a little color back in his face. “So I never asked you.” He leaned against the kitchen counter. The hand that held a mug of his pomegranate tea to his lips barely trembled. “Why you came by last night?”
“Just. Uh. Bringing Sunny for a visit.” Haley made a big fuss of finding her jacket, shaking it out, putting it on.
“Glad you did, anyway.” If Jake suspected she wasn’t being quite truthful, he didn’t seem inclined to push her. “Haley. Wait a minute.”
Near the door, Haley looked back.
“You probably saved my life,” he said. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
Haley felt a shivery jolt deep in her stomach. Why did he have to put it like that? What was she supposed to say?
“Sorry. I know you don’t like jokes.”
Haley looked at her cousin, leaning against the counter, smiling a little, absentmindedly rubbing at the bandage on his neck, as if it itched. But she was seeing him slumped in his chair last night, blood on his neck, soaking into his shirt. She’d thought that was it. She’d thought he was gone.
And the last time she’d seen him, she’d—
“I’m sorry I yelled,” she said hoarsely. “About you smoking. About—”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Jake interrupted her. “It’s fine if you’re not fine. It’s okay if you get mad. If you yell.”
But not at you, Haley thought.
“Even at me. I’m not going to come back and haunt you, just because you got pissed off one time. Or two. Or twenty.”
Haley flinched. But Jake was taking a big swallow of his tea and didn’t notice.
“You can hate me when I’m gone,” he added, putting the mug down on the counter. His smile, like the rest of him, looked thin and tired. Worn out. Like there just wasn’t much of him left. “If you have to. It’s okay. I promise. It’s fine.”
Haley opened the kitchen door and stared blankly at her dad, Elaine, and Mel, who all sat at the table, looking just as blankly back at her. She felt as if she’d accidentally walked into the wrong house. And the lost, bewildered feeling didn’t go away, even as they all jumped up and crowded around her, hugging her, patting Sunny, asking questions, telling her how Mel had called last night, and Elaine had told her what had happened, and Mel had been worried and had come over early this morning to be sure Haley was okay.
Haley sat down, took a mug of hot chocolate that Elaine handed her, and answered questions as best she could, considering how little she knew—how little anybody knew. Break-in. After drugs, maybe. Knife.
“And the police? What did the police say?” Her dad sounded almost angry, which was rare. Haley looked at his scowl in confusion.
“To lock the door. They’re coming back later.”
“To lock the door? Great. That’s great advice.”
“But Jake’s okay?” Elaine interjected, putting a gentle hand on her husband’s arm. Haley nodded. “Thank God you both are,” Elaine said, reaching out to hug Haley. “Are you sure, honey?” She pulled back a little to look at Haley’s face and brushed cool fingers against her stepdaughter’s cheek. “You look . . .”
Like I’ve seen a ghost. Haley finished the sentence inside her head.
Had she? Had she seen a ghost?
Because that wasn’t so crazy, was it? That wasn’t as insane as thinking vampires were wandering around Rhode Island.
Jake could make jokes about coming back to haunt her, but what if it wasn’t a joke? Jake had said she could hate him when he was gone. But what if it were the other way around? What if Mercy was the one who was still here, hating the people who had called her a monster and cut out her heart? What if she had been waiting a hundred years for revenge on her own family?
“Like you barely slept.” Elaine finished her sentence and gestured at her husband. “Come on, Nathan. You’re going to help me clean up that closet upstairs.”
“I am? Now? But—”
“Haley, there are some of those cinnamon rolls you like in the fridge. Get one for Mel. Nathan, let’s go. Eddie won’t stay asleep for much longer and I want to get that cupboard straightened out.”
“You said closet.”
“Whatever.
” Elaine nearly pushed Haley’s dad out of the kitchen.
“What’s up with them?” Haley stared after her father and stepmother.
“Um.” Mel’s cheeks were pink. “I think she thinks we want to talk.”
“We do?”
“I kind of told her we had a fight.”
“We did?”
Of course they’d had a fight. Haley just hadn’t thought about it, exactly. Not after what had happened at the cemetery, and then at Jake’s.
(You can hate me when I’m gone.)
“I’m so, so sorry, Haley,” Mel was babbling. “Don’t be mad, okay? Because I—”
At the cemetery, Haley remembered, before her search for Patience’s grave, before that face in her camera, before the heartbeat echoing up out of the ground, there had been something else, something that had made her think of Mel—a little flock of brown sparrows, their wings blurring in the air.
“I’m not mad,” she said to Mel. “It’s fine.”
“Because I didn’t mean to. It just kind of—” Mel’s cheeks were getting pinker and pinker.
“You were right. I’m not the only person—”
“And he did like you, he really did, only—”
“I didn’t mean to act like that. I know you miss her.”
“—he thought you weren’t interested, and then we were sort of talking, and we kept on talking, and—”
“Who thought? You were talking?”
“Miss who?”
The two separate conversations they had been having collided, and it took a lot of words to sort through the wreckage.
Somehow Haley found herself reassuring Mel that she didn’t like Alan O’Neil, well, she liked him, but she only liked him, and it was fine if Mel wanted to go out with him. No, she didn’t mind, it was fine.
“But do you think—” she started to ask.
“Oh, good.” Mel was smiling now, pinker than ever. “And we’ll all hang out, you know? We won’t get all gross and couple-y or anything. And—”
“—that someone might come back?”
“Come back? From where?” Mel looked completely bewildered.
Mercy Page 9
