Pretty Peg

by Skye Allen

  I didn’t recognize the other man at first. In the light his clothes just looked black, the scar of a white T-shirt showing under his black collar. He had a round face, a body that could be soft stockiness but was probably pure muscle, dark hair cut military-short, round glasses. He wasn’t as tall as the gray man, although his shadow thinned out double on the uneven ground and turned him into three. A body and two shadows. The father, the son, and the holy ghost. I didn’t know where that thought came from.

  Something metal swung on a chain around his neck and flashed in the vicious light, and then the man was standing right in front of me, boots together, close enough to see his face clearly.

  “Family reunion,” my brother Robert said to me.

  He lifted an arm out from his body, making a motion to hug me. I flinched and stepped beyond the arc of his arm. The glaring light hit his lenses and obscured his eyes. I took in the straight line of his lips, the cheeks that were heavier than I remembered, the tendons cording down his neck.

  I had been ten the last time I’d seen him, for half an hour at Marco’s Diner outside the San Francisco Airport. Laura and I had snuck out there to see Dad when he was on a layover, and Robert had been with him. That was seven years ago.

  You’re my brother. You’re my brother. And you killed Margaret. I felt sick.

  Robert’s head moved so I could see his eyes, black in the witchy light. I couldn’t get a read on his expression. He didn’t look directly at me.

  “My sunburnt apprentice here has proved most useful.” The Queen’s voice was the murmuring clatter of a dozen birds as she directed a joyless smile at Professor Hill. “It is remarkable what flattery will bring a weak mortal girl to. Laura Grant was gullible from the start. I have you to thank for that, you sisters and brother, for your pliant stock. All mortals die, but your deaths will bring glory to the Realm.” Her sunken eyes took in both me and Robert.

  A breath gusted through the giant trees beyond the creekbed, and the crowd of Winter Folk who were clustered behind the Queen moved like beach grass. Weapons shifted from claw to claw. The wolf paced and snapped with the long teeth in its human face.

  “Time to go,” Robert said, and he spun on a bootheel toward the bridge, jerking his head at the gray man as he moved. Robert’s loose jacket lifted as he turned, and I saw the array of things in leather cases attached to his belt: a rectangle for a phone, a long rounded triangle that looked like the hunting knives I’d seen on TV, and then I froze. Beside the other leather holders was the unmistakable outline of a gun holster.

  Maybe it’s not loaded. Maybe it’s just that famous Beretta M9 from the service that Dad says he carries for sentimental reasons. Or because it makes him look tough. Maybe what’s going to happen in the next five minutes is not that Laura is going to get shot.

  Laura and me.

  My stomach went liquid, and I felt my heartbeat at the back of my throat. I’d been running all night, not letting myself think the thought that was chilling me now. I am going to die tonight. There is no way to get out of this.

  The Winter Queen’s squat muscleman unfurled a scaly rope from somewhere in his clothes and advanced a few steps until I smelled rotting breath. He hummed thickly as he slid around behind me, too close, and tied my hands behind my back.

  “Come up here with me, my fair one,” the Queen said to Professor Hill, and he scuttled forward. The gray man prodded my ass, and I walked behind the Queen’s swaying coat toward the bridge. That’s Robert. Those square shoulders, the knees in those cargo pants, that’s the flesh and blood of my brother. That’s the man who killed Margaret. Right there in front of me.

  The ashy faces of the Winter fey cast their eyes down as their Queen crossed in front of them. I heard hisses and the skittering noise of stones being kicked as I took up the rear.

  Mounted on the underside of the bridge, there was a row of lights I hadn’t been able to see before, white-green candles like in the Winter Court theater. I felt a long shiver as the cold breeze worked its way up my pant legs. Above the bridge was a steep slope covered in bay laurels and redwoods. I blinked at the shaggy outline of the trees against the sky and realized it had changed from black to deep blue while I’d been in the creekbed. I’m going to die. I’m going to die before the sun comes up. There’s supposed to be a smackdown at sunrise between the two courts, but I’m not going to see it, because by that time I’m going to be a pile of lifeless fat.

  The cave was farther away from the bridge than I’d thought at first, maybe about ten feet, and high enough that all I could see was the dark surface of the boulders that formed the entrance. Branches furred around the bottom, making it impossible to tell how low the cave mouth went. I couldn’t see Laura.

  “Up you go.” Robert still wouldn’t meet my eyes. I looked around and saw that the Winter Queen and Professor Hill had stepped to the side and stood under the bridge, illuminated from above so that his greasy gray hair and her flowing black hair took on the same eerie white halo.

  Robert stood beside me, looking straight ahead. In profile I saw his long upper lip, the one he and Margaret both inherited from Mom. The low-set bones of his skull were like mine and Dad’s. Both our parents wore glasses: Dad’s were a pair of Buddy Hollys so old they were back in style now. Mom’s were little lavender frames. Robert’s glasses were wire-rimmed. That fact hit me like a wall—the shared vulnerability of weak eyesight, our shared blood. He’s my family.

  I knew he’d killed Margaret, that he had been planning to kill me and Laura too, for who knew how long. Had he been waiting until Mom went to India to put his plan into motion?

  But we were still his little sisters. There had to be a way to get him to see that he didn’t have to kill us. Robert had to speak to me. I could stop this nightmare if I could get him to snap out of it. I was sure I could.

  I took a breath and said, “Big brother, it’s me. C’mon. Don’t do this. I know you’re allergic to peanuts and you can do Dad’s taxes in your head and—look, it’s me and Laura. Don’t let this happen.” Even though you hurt Margaret. Tell me you weren’t yourself, tell me you had a mental breakdown.

  “Stayed away all this time so I didn’t have to know you. Doing what I have to do,” he answered, addressing the enormous bunch of keys in his knuckly hands.

  Didn’t have to know you? I felt like he’d punched me. “I—look, I know some messed-up things happened.” I couldn’t make my mouth form any more specific words than that for what he’d done to Margaret, not right now, not with the movie playing across my mind of her body curled up at the side of the road. “But I never even had the chance to know you. Laura either. You should hear her play, she’s like some kind of piano goddess, or that’s what her teachers say—” And I stopped talking because Professor Hill was a few feet away. He would have let Laura die. He still could.

  “I am tainted,” Robert mumbled to the stones at his feet. “I am tainted. But I can rise.” It sounded like a mantra.

  “What do you mean?” I said in a quiet voice.

  He swallowed. I saw his jutting Adam’s apple move in the white of his throat. “All mortals are tainted. Mortal sin. I know I am a worse man than most.” His voice was hollow, like the core of it had been cut out. He still hadn’t looked me in the face.

  “But you can rise?” I tried to make my voice still, like I was coaxing out a wild animal.

  “He will be immortal by dawn, if he does what he has promised to do. And now enough” came the Winter Queen’s granite voice.

  I looked at Robert. His arms were crossed over his stomach, like he was keeping himself warm. He didn’t say anything or turn his head in my direction.

  Her bald man shoved me forward again. “In,” said his too-close, wet voice in my ear. He untied my hands, and I shook them out and grasped the thickest branch in front of me. I had no choice. I clambered up the slippery branches, palms stinging where the evergreen needles bit, swearing out loud when a chunk of rock sliced into my knee.

  Lau
ra whimpered a short way above my head. I looked up into a faceful of dark leaves and gravel and then hauled myself up with one more huge pull of my stomach muscles until I was lying facedown in silty mud. Laura’s long skirt was pulled back from her shins, and my face was inches from the thick silver cable that held her foot to the floor.

  I pulled my legs in and curled them around beside me. The ceiling was high enough that I could sit up, but I had to practically sit in Laura’s lap. “No. Move,” she bleated.

  “Are you okay?” I couldn’t see clearly, but her face looked puffy. There was a cut near her right eye, on the side facing the inside of the cave when she sat in profile.

  “It’s my hand,” she said. She lifted her shoulder. “Ow.”

  “Don’t move it. What happened? Is it broken?”

  “I can’t move the fingers, and it’s all swollen.” She had been crying. Her voice was full of trying not to start again.

  “I thought they were supposed to—hey!” I hollered down in the direction of the bridge. I couldn’t see the ground directly under us anymore at this steep angle. “You said you were going to release her if I came!”

  “Oh God, please don’t,” Laura whispered.

  “Yep” came Robert’s voice, and then a flying missile hit me in the hip. I scrabbled for it just in time before it tumbled into the little rocks below the cave mouth: the keys. Talking to him must have worked. He wants us to escape. We’re going to get out of here.

  The cable around Laura’s ankle was locked with a padlock between two of the heavy links. I fumbled through four or five keys that looked like the right size before finally feeling the lock give as I twisted one. “Okay, she’s free,” I called when I had eased the cable off her reddened ankle.

  Silence. I squirmed on my stomach to the ledge and stuck my head out as far as my balance would allow. “She’s coming down!” I called.

  The bald man was below the cave, down on one knee on the muddy ground with a crossbow aimed at me. I was close enough to see that the arrow, only a few feet from my eyes, was glistening with something iridescent. Like the poison in those jars in Timothy’s tree house.

  I looked from red-eyed Professor Hill, who clenched his lips and slid his eyes down away from me, to Robert. He was a soldier: thousand-yard stare, hands clasped behind his back, with the easy posture of someone who could stand at attention for hours.

  The dwarf started forward. “She’ll be killed if she comes down.”

  “You said you’d release her.” I spoke directly to the bony Winter Queen.

  I heard her take in a long breath through her teeth, saw her fur-covered chest rise. “She is not bound now. Mortal.” There was contempt in her echoing voice.

  “It was a trade. Me for her. That was the deal!” I was incredulous. Laura had to go free now. Or what was I doing here?

  “Recite the terms of our agreement, if you will, child.” The Queen plucked at one silver fingernail in a bored motion, without meeting my eyes. The sight of that pointed nail made my intestines go watery.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, as much to block out her sunken face as to remember what the Summer Lady had said at the bonfire. “The mortal for the prisoner. The prisoner will be released in exchange for the mortal favorite.” I was pretty sure I had that right.

  “I rejoice to see that each party has fulfilled her end of the bargain,” the Queen said.

  I went back over the words. Laura was released as far as they were concerned. But if she tried to leave, they’d kill her.

  Despair fell like a stone down the well of my insides.

  The Winter Queen went on, “Now if you will permit me, my champion has final preparations to make before his own contract can be made complete.” There was a shrill bark of laughter from somewhere beyond the bridge. I craned my neck and saw a cluster of Winter fey standing two or three deep, a few leering faces lit from below by the pots of white fire at the base of the bridge. The Queen swept through them and disappeared over a rise in the bank, and they trailed behind her like cats following a bucket of fish.

  I heard scraping noises and the rhythmic ring of a hammer from the direction they all vanished to. Not being able to see what they were doing hardened the panic in my gut.

  “They’re building something. I heard them talking about it,” Laura said.

  I looked at my sister carefully. Long brown hair partly covered the side of her face that was puffy where she’d been cut. Her ankle was rubbed raw where the chain had been, and in the deep red grooves, I saw darker spots that must be blood. Her hand was cradled in a fold of her dirty white sweater.

  “You have no idea how sorry I am,” I started to say, but she shrugged and then winced and ducked her head to her shoulder on the hurt side. Veiny lids covered her protruding eyes, and I saw a flash of how she would look if she was dead.

  “My fault. I let Professor Hill hoodwink me. I thought we were going to—ow—a chamber concert.”

  “This is kind of a chamber.” I felt lightheaded with fear and lack of sleep. I heard giggling and realized it was coming from me. Do not start coming undone.

  “You won’t. You’re the strong one,” she said. I must have spoken out loud. Okay, I am going crazy. Laura shifted her long legs, rubbed the sore ankle with the heel of her other foot. She’s barefoot. She must be freezing.

  She sucked her lips in, like she didn’t want to do whatever she was about to do. “I have to talk to you about something.” She met my eyes for the go-ahead. “I heard from the slimy toad down there that you tried to—that you did a bunch of stuff to help me. Try to keep these guys away from me. Some kind of deal you made?”

  The binding. “I tried to tell you, but you were a little fuzzy.”

  “Glamoured. I know. Something happened tonight. It just kind of lifted, I think when that guy came into the house, the Summer guard guy? All of a sudden everything was really sharp. And I feel like I screwed up. Letting Professor Hill into my life in the first place. I let all this happen. And I’ve been a bitch to you, I know it, and all you were doing was trying to fix stuff. Like always.”

  I was stunned. The last thing I expected was for Laura to apologize. “You didn’t let anything happen. We were both jerked around by the fey.”

  “I’m serious. I’m sorry for being so wrapped up in my own stuff.” She looked up from her knees to my face. “And these elf-whatever people might have played us both, but yours didn’t try to get you killed. Plus she’s a hottie.”

  “Oh, you noticed that?” A tough little knot in my belly unclenched. I forgive you. The knowledge of how lonely I had been in my own family started to unfurl. I didn’t want to think about that, not right now, with the rest of my life being measured in minutes. I toed her dirty foot.

  “I was under a magic spell, not blind.” She laughed. It went on too long. She was relieved and scared. Like me.

  “Look, we’re going to get out of here. I don’t know how yet, but we are. There’s a whole army coming down here as soon as the sun comes up, and they can get past that wall, and they’re going to bail us out.”

  “Not gonna help me if I can’t move my fingers. The longer this goes on, the worse it’ll….” Her voice drifted higher and trailed off.

  That was what was in her eyes, that drained look. It was defeat. She peeled back her sweater where it was protecting her hand. What was lying in her lap looked like a purple baseball mitt. I winced and looked away, but not fast enough. The white negative image of her broken hand swam in front of my closed eyes. Broken. You can’t play the piano when your hand is broken.

  “Well, one of them turns into a killer attack bird. Last time that guy down there had me in a pickle, she came and pecked his eyes out for me,” I offered.

  Laura laughed a faint humoring-my-sister laugh and then coughed a long, dry cough. “Watch out for Robert,” she said.

  “No kidding. Did you overhear all that just now?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but he didn’t really say much. I know he’s—ow—trou
ble, though. How could he not be?”

  “Look, when I left tonight… did you read Margaret’s diary?” It was in my bag. How had the Winter Queen’s creepy man left my bag alone? I fingered the bumps made by the book’s corners through the waxed canvas.

  Laura swallowed. It seemed to require an effort. “There wasn’t time. I was going to. Right when you left, Professor Hill came over. Like right when you left. He must have been sitting in the car waiting.”

  Oh God. She doesn’t know. “Lor, listen, this is pretty gruesome but I have to tell you something about Robert now.” I stared at the rock beside Laura’s shoulder. It was shaped vaguely like a mushroom, and the harsh black shadows from the bridge danced across it.

  “He was the one who tied me up, up here. I know about him,” she said softly, probing me with her eyes for confirmation that I knew what she knew.

  I knew I had to say it out loud this time. The spell only worked once. And I didn’t want Laura to have to read Margaret’s words, not now, when she was already so crushed. “He was the one who killed Margaret. He hurt her. I mean he, he raped her. When they were kids. I mean, we knew he did something. But him and his friends. Together. Over and over. And he killed her. In Afghanistan. It was him.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Laura said, low and full of emotion. It was jarring. Something must be really wrong to make Laura swear. But there was a note in her voice that said That’s just one more thing, and I knew that deep down she wasn’t really surprised.

  “What are you talking about? What do you know?” I heard myself ask, too loudly, and the sound of my voice scared me.

  “Professor Hill and the psycho lady in the fur coat down there laid it out for me, and Robert said it was true. That he killed her. I didn’t know the other stuff, but….” She hunched her thin shoulders inward and stared at me with an expression that was all I’m sorry I had to tell you. You’re the baby of the family. I knew that expression. I’d seen it on Mom and Dad and all three of my siblings. For once I didn’t resent it.