The Artist of Ruin

by Matthew S. Cox

  “What the hell am I supposed to say to them?” asks Michelle. “What possible explanation could I give them that someone’s trying to hurt us because they want to get at you?”

  “I dunno… your father blames the Mafia for everything. Use that?”

  She sighs. “Not funny.”

  “I’m working on it as fast as I can, okay? Just… stay alert.”

  Michelle grumbles. “Yeah. Easy for you to say. Now I’m gonna be a paranoid mess ’til you give me the all clear.”

  Alas, she’s at work, so we can only talk for about fifteen minutes before she’d get in trouble for being on the phone. I check in with Ashley next. She’s off today, so our call lasts only five minutes before she decides to come over.

  Okay. I lied. It should last only five minutes since she lives so close, but we do limit phone time to about a half hour. When she arrives, our conversation picks up where it left off. I make sure she’s okay emotionally after the situation with River, then go into my weird-ass experience visiting the 1920s. I can’t adequately put into words how Sally Ann felt the moment her mother died, and I don’t want to send the thoughts into Ashley’s head. She’d sob for weeks. Hell, for the next like month or so, I’m probably going to randomly think about it and wind up needing to hold my mother. Ash will have to make do with a basic explanation. Mostly because I don’t want to make myself think about it too much.

  “Wow. That’s so…” Ashley shivers. “Such small things. That doll saved those kids.”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, if the kid didn’t insist on having the doll, their mother wouldn’t have looked for it and she would’ve been asleep in bed, right? The woman would never have walked in before that guy, umm, like axe-murdered them.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Ashley grabs my teddy bear and squeezes it. “I’m going to be one of those overprotective mothers who wraps my babies in packing foam.”

  I chuckle. “Well, you’ll probably not wind up marrying someone who has to hire random people to build a fence on your ranch.”

  She grins. “That’s true.”

  We hang out in a state of relative normality for most of the afternoon. Once the daylight begins to weaken outside, I go upstairs. At the realization the clicking of Dad’s keyboard is the loudest sound in the universe, it occurs to me that the house has been unusually quiet all day.

  Worried, I do a quick pass around from room to room and discover all siblings unaccounted for.

  Dad looks up when I stick my head into his workspace. “Hey, Dad. Where’s everyone?”

  “Well, your mother’s at the office. The girls went to Nicole’s. Sam, last I saw, was out in the yard with Darryl and Jordan.”

  “Hmm. Okay.”

  “Sarah,” calls Ashley from the kitchen.

  I shrug at Dad and walk out, across the living room, and down the main hall to the kitchen, where Ashley’s standing, a cup of iced tea in her hand. “What’s up?”

  She points at the patio door. “Why is Sophia tied to a tree?”

  “What!?” I blurt, and run over to the glass.

  All the way at the back of our yard, Sophia stands against the trunk of a tree, squirming, trying to escape an almost cocoon of clothesline lashing her to a tree trunk. She isn’t screaming and throwing a fit, so I assume there’s some ‘princess about to be eaten by a dragon’ situation going on, but the way she’s fighting to get loose doesn’t look like she’s playing.

  “Good question…” I slide the door open and step outside.

  There’s still enough sun in the air to make my everything hurt, but I grit my jaw and hurry across the yard to her.

  “Sarah!” says Sophia. “Help. This isn’t fun anymore.”

  “What happened?” I have a little trouble seeing in the bright light, but fortunately, the knots are the sort of thing annoying little brothers come up with.

  “Sam and his friends needed a princess for the giant to kidnap.” She huffs as I pull the clothesline off her. “They were supposed to like play fight the giant and then save me, but they ran off and left me here.”

  “What? Why?” I scratch my head.

  “Sam was yelling at them to come back, but they didn’t.”

  I brush bits of bark off her shirt. “Why didn’t Sam let you out?”

  “They dragged him with them.” She folds her arms. “I think the boys are fighting, and not for a game.”

  “Where’s Sierra? Weren’t you two at Nicole’s?”

  “We had a fight, too.” Sierra starts crying. “Nicole said mean stuff about me and Sierra hit her. Nicole told us she hates us and never wants to see us again. We’re not friends anymore.”

  I gasp and pull her into a hug. “Sophia?”

  “Yeah?” she snivels.

  “I think that wasn’t really Nicole talking.”

  “Is she possessed too?”

  “Kind of.” I scowl at the forest. “There’s another vampire who’s upset at me, and she’s trying to mess everything up that I love. If she can hurt you guys, that will make me sad.”

  Sophia sniffles, but calms. “You think she made Nicole hate us?”

  “You and Nicole are pretty good friends, right?”

  She nods.

  “You guys didn’t do anything that would have made her mad, did you?”

  “No.”

  “I think so. I’ll check when it gets dark.”

  “Okay. Umm, Sare?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re on fire.”

  She points at my forearm, hazed with smoke.

  “Crap.”

  I race across the yard and into the kitchen, swatting at my arms. Sophia sprints after me and pulls the sliding door closed once we’re inside, then waves at the fumes.

  “When did you take up smoking?” asks Dad.

  “Not funny,” I mutter.

  Ashley coughs and swats at the fumes. She looks worried for me, but also frightened. Ugh. I need to change. These clothes smell like burning meat.

  Dad leans close, looking me over. “Something wrong?”

  “Sophia needed a little help. Bit too bright for me out there.”

  He looks at her. She re-explains her fight with Nicole and the boys essentially tricking her into allowing them to tie her to a tree, then dragging Sam off. He frowns. “What’s gotten into them?”

  “Petra,” I mutter.

  Mom shows up while I’m in the midst of explaining the whole Alex situation. She demands more details about what happened with Sam. Speaking of my brother, he drags himself up to the patio doors, bloodied and bruised not a minute after I start telling my mother about re-homing Rebecca with Aurélie.

  My ’rents scramble to open the door for him and go ballistic. Evidently, he got into a scrap with Daryl and Jordan over them being buttheads to Sophia. They left him trapped in a giant trashcan that took him over an hour to get out of because they wedged it against a wall. Ashley proceeds to play nurse since she’s ‘experienced.’ Not sure how scooping animal poop from kennel cages counts as medical training, but whatever. It’s not like she’s reaching for a needle and thread. They didn’t rough him up that much.

  Mom starts to fume about involving the cops, but I cut her off.

  “It’s not them. I’ve got a nemesis.”

  “What?” asks both parents at the same time.

  And, so I spend the next half hour talking about how much I want to tear Petra’s face off.

  Dad winds up ordering pizza since no one has the time or inclination to cook.

  “Sierra’s on the way home,” says Sophia. “I just called her.”

  “Where was she?” asks Dad.

  “In the woods, being sad. I told her what Sarah said about Nicole not being really mad at us, so she’s gonna come home.”

  Mom can’t stop pacing for the almost fifteen minutes it takes Sierra to arrive at the front door. Seeing her with a backpack full of canned food does not help Mom’s mood. We run over and pull her into a group hug. Evident
ly, whatever Nicole said to her after the fight had Sierra convinced she’d go to jail, so she’d decided to run away and hide from the cops.

  A short while later when the pizza guy rings the doorbell, Sierra about faints, expecting the police to drag her away. Sam refuses to come out from behind Dad’s recliner. He looks stoic, but I can tell he’s destroyed over his two best friends deciding they hate him.

  While the rest of the family, including Ashley, have pizza, I sit on the rug and try to make him feel better. Generic cheerfulness works about as well as trying to get a cat to eat granola. In as kid-friendly a way as possible, I explain about Petra. As soon as I mention that she basically mind-controlled them, he brightens up.

  “You gotta fix ’em!” he says in kind of a whisper-yell. “Please! I want my friends back.”

  “I will.” I ruffle his hair. “You know I can’t do anything until it’s dark. Now eat.”

  I’m too angry to have a slice. The only reason for me to take normal food is to enjoy the flavor, and that’s not possible right now. As soon as the sun sets, Ashley decides to run home and keep an eye on her mother in case something else happens.

  And, it’s Mission Possible time.

  I head out the door and go straight to Nicole’s house. Her mother answers the doorbell after a minute or so. The ‘you got a lot of nerve being here’ expression tells me she’s also been tampered with. I don’t bother talking, and dive straight into her thoughts. Yeah. Petra was here. The woman’s been compelled to regard us as bad people for unspecified reasons. I wipe that thought out, as well as her memory of Sierra going full rabid wolverine on Nicole.

  When most people think of tween girls fighting, they probably imagine a lot of shrieking and hair pulling—kinda like how Petra and I got into it. Not Sierra. She punches, and she’s pretty damn strong for a skinny thing, too. With Mrs. Pierce dazed, I barge upstairs and find Nicole sitting on the floor in her bedroom staring into space. I approach and sit next to her before gazing into her eyes. She’s heartbroken that Sierra and Sophia hate her, but also filled with a false need to insult them constantly.

  Oh, holy crap. That woman made Nicole accuse my ten-year-old sister of doing it with a boy from school that Nicole likes—in the bathroom at school. What the hell, woman!? These kids aren’t old enough for that crap!

  “Hey,” I say.

  Nicole looks up at me. “Your sister’s a whore.” She blinks and clamps her hands over her mouth, cowering away like I’m about to give her a second black eye.

  “I know you don’t mean that. And they don’t hate you.” I dive into her head again and hit the erase button.

  A few minutes later, she doesn’t remember anything more than Dad calling my sisters home early for some reason. To explain the fat lip, bloody nose, and black eye, I insert a bicycle accident. I feel bad for her, but also just a little bit proud of Sierra for being such a tiny force of nature. Considering what Nicole had been programmed to say about Sophia, she restrained herself quite a bit.

  Anyway. None of them are going to remember those accusations. I may break my rule and snip that little memory out of my sisters’ minds, too. In fact. Yeah. Sorry guys. I’ll let them remember the fake fight, but no talk of having sex in the school bathroom or stealing boyfriends who aren’t even boyfriends yet.

  I leave Nicole in a happy daze and dive out her window to fly home. While explaining to Sophia and Sierra that Nicole is back to normal, I rework their argument to give a nice G-rating to their memories: Nicole called Sophia adopted and said our parents don’t really want her. There. Nice and tame for young minds—and still worth Sierra giving her a shiner.

  Sophia bursts into tears of happiness that her best friend is still her best friend, but Sierra looks guilty.

  “She doesn’t remember you hitting her.” I squeeze Sierra.

  “I still remember hitting her after she said Soph was adopted.”

  I press a fist to her chin and give a playful shove. “Hey, if anyone said that about you guys, I’d hit them too. Don’t feel guilty over protecting your sister. And remember, Nicole didn’t say anything. That came from that woman giving me trouble. Your friend doesn’t remember anything.”

  Sophia sniffles. Sierra still looks guilty as hell.

  “Okay, guys… I’m trusting you here,” I say. “Nicole does not remember you fighting. She thinks she tried to jump, and the bike ramp you built fell apart so she went face-first into her mother’s car. Got it?”

  Sierra and Sophia nod again in unison.

  “Great. Now cheer up. She still likes you.”

  “Whew.” Sierra exhales with relief.

  Sophia, however, melts into a puddle and starts crying. I don’t panic because that’s her form of ‘extremely relieved.’ Instead, I pick her up and hold her until she calms down, which takes only a few minutes.

  Now for the boys.

  Leaving Sophia to her Kindle and Sierra to the PlayStation, I head outside via the kitchen patio door and go on the prowl. From the air, I find them pretty quick, together in Daryl’s backyard fooling around with a remote-control drone. They don’t notice me swoop in for a landing behind a giant Ford pickup. Much like the night hunter I’ve become, I ambush and grab them both in a double headlock. Their startled screams last only seconds before their brains turn to jelly at my command. Petra gave them both a compulsion to harass and bully Sam every time they saw him, as well as to be generally nasty to my sisters.

  Oh, this bitch is done.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a little temptation to pay them back for beating Sam up, but I force myself not to. It really isn’t their fault. They wind up with a memory of my Mom having to take Sam to the dentist to explain why they stopped hanging out with him early today.

  With the immediate damage under control, and my siblings’ friends back to normal, I return home to pass along the good news to Sam.

  About an hour or so later, Mom shoos the sibs to bed. I’m tempted to call Aurélie and insist she do something about Petra, but I don’t want to become annoying. I already asked for help, and nagging an almost 400-year-old vampiress is probably not smart. Getting to it a year from now is fast to her.

  Since I’ve got the fires at home put out, I decide to surprise Hunter at work. It’s getting close to 10:00 p.m., the time his shift ends. It’s kinda weird, but helping Ashley the other night makes me want to take Hunter to a lakeshore and stargaze. Maybe I’d even be open to making out with him in the grass. Or doing more. I doubt he’d go for that though. He’s way too shy. Kissing at the concert almost exceeded his comfort level. No way would he want to go all the way in the grass by a lake. And come to think of it, I should be mortified at the idea too. Dammit, what is wrong with me? Alcohol is supposed to reduce inhibitions… is vampirism like being permanently drunk?

  Anyway… after the day—err night—I’ve had, I need to spend some time with him.

  I step into my sneakers and go outside, around back, and fly.

  Orange and green lighting makes Mi Tierra stand out quite obviously from 200 feet up, not that I could ever forget this part of Woodinville. My first full night as a vampire, I got stuck outside with no clothes, walking down this street right in front of the place he works. Ugh. There has to be hundreds of cell phone pictures of me. Or not. My Facebook page hasn’t exploded with teasing. Okay, maybe my luck isn’t all bad.

  I land in a secluded part of the shopping center and jog across the parking lot. I don’t really notice until the door refuses to open that the restaurant is black and white (hence, dark) inside. Whoops. It’s a little later than I thought. Damn. I guess he went home already. I’m about to call him from my iPhone when I catch sight of Hunter’s land boat of a car still parked around behind the building. Oh, he must be inside doing cleanup or something with the rest of the crew. Might as well go wait by the Buick.

  About halfway down the side of the building, I freeze at the sound of his voice calling someone beautiful. A girl coos in response. Slurping an
d kissing noises fill in the silence.

  “Really?” I mutter, staring at the stars. “Does she seriously expect me to flip out and blame him for this? I’m not in a stupid teen movie.”

  I seethe in anger that she actually thinks something this obvious would bother me. I’ve seen enough of those movies, the ones where the good guy love interest winds up stumbling accidentally into a situation that makes it look like he’s cheating, and the girl invariably assumes the very worst about him and breaks up before he can explain himself. Yeah. That’s stupid. And cliché. And infuriating.

  I storm around the corner and stop short at the sight waiting for me.

  Hunter, and that hostess girl I got into a little tiff with the other day are making out hot and heavy by the dumpsters. His hand’s way up her shirt. Her hand is down his jeans. And their tongues are doing a re-enactment of Darth Maul vs. Obi Wan. They’re all but screwing standing up.

  “Charlotte, you’re so damn hot,” rasps Hunter.

  She gasps into his mouth, whatever she tries to say muffled by their lips sealing together.

  As much as I know this is Petra’s doing, seeing this happen in front of me still hurts. An emotion that starts off as the urge to cry explodes into anger. I storm over and pull the two of them apart… maybe shoving Charlotte a little harder than necessary. She spills over backward, legs in the air.

  “Hey, what the fuck?” barks Charlotte.

  Hunter’s expression is ‘who the hell are you’ for two or three seconds before it goes pained. He tilts his head. His thoughts say he should know me but he doesn’t remember who I am. The conflict—that he’s challenging her implanted programming at all—reassures me. Granted, I haven’t been a vampire for long, but I’ve never seen a mortal even come close to breaking a compulsion before, or even doubting one.

  “You, sit still for a bit,” I say, glaring at Charlotte.