Dead Man's Stitch

by Meg Collett

  Mom, I’m going to be a mother too, and I miss you. I’m scared, and I need you. I’m that little girl in that closet again, waiting for you, and I need you to come back this time. I need you here with me because I’m terrified that I won’t be good enough. That I won’t be as good a mom as you were.

  “Ollie!” Sunny screamed.

  Sibyl brought the blade down.

  I caught it with my hands. My palms flooded with warm blood. It ran in thick streams down my forearms as Sibyl leaned against my hold, bearing all her weight down on the blade. The tip hovered just below my ribs. My arms shook.

  I rolled us, letting the blade come down and slice across the side of my ribs. As Sibyl fell off me, I punched the side of her face as hard as I could, feeling the popcorn crack of my knuckles breaking across her cheekbone.

  But she was already recovering her balance as if I’d merely smacked her.

  I scrambled away, getting my legs beneath me and putting distance between us. She staggered upright, managing to stand on her badly cut leg. Her face was already swelling, and blood coated her jeans. She stumbled, but she was grinning. And she held her blade evenly.

  My palms were so coated in blood that my grip on the silver knuckles would never hold through anything more than a simple parry. My ribs were flush with warmth. My right hand was already swelling from punching her. And my stomach was heaving as if I were out at sea in a ferocious storm.

  I backed away, retreating down the street.

  Sibyl laughed.

  From the shops, the pack poured out in a silent wave of unblinking eyes and blank stares. They watched me back away toward the barricade. There were hundreds of them. Too many. They were all here. No wonder the town was so quiet.

  My pack had killed everyone.

  I’d barely turned my head to the side when I retched, dry-heaving and choking on bile.

  An arm swept around my waist, warm and solid. I leaned into Luke as he took my weight and pulled me back. Sunny appeared on my other side, a rifle pressed against the side of her face as she stared down the sights at Sibyl.

  “This isn’t the end, Ollie!” Sibyl shouted down the street. Her voice was as bright as the sun peeking from the sky. “These aren’t words of peace. I’m coming for you. We will have our fight. I promise you that.”

  Behind her, farther out over the water, the bodies of A.J. and Squeak swayed in the breeze. There would be no burial for them. Nothing proper. Nothing deserving of their lives. I would have to leave them here in this place while I ran for my life.

  I gagged again.

  A door opened over my shoulder. Inside the truck’s cab, Hatter started the engine. Behind us, all the other trucks did the same. Luke shifted his grip on me, ready to lift me onto the seat as if I were a loose puddle of flesh in his hands.

  My eyes locked with Sibyl’s. She knew she’d won as surely as if she’d driven that blade into my belly.

  As clear as the summer sky above us, she called, “I will taste that baby of yours, young Volkova. And I’m certain its bones will be delicious.”

  Luke froze.

  As my vision dimmed and the daylight shuttered to solid darkness, I saw his stricken face turn to look at my belly.

  Then everything went black.

  T H I R T E E N

  Ollie

  I woke up all at once with a choking gasp.

  I’d been dreaming I was in the cabin with Max again, his blade digging for my heart, his tears splattering on my cheeks.

  “I love you,” he whispered as he bent over me, hacking away.

  I blinked rapidly to clear the darkness. I waved my hand in front of my face like a shroud was over my head. Finally, the nightmare released its clutches, and the room’s light filtered through my vision.

  Heart racing, I looked around, though I already knew where I was by the smell alone.

  Marley sat beside Luke’s bed, watching me closely. She’d seen everything, then. I gritted my teeth. I hoped I hadn’t screamed in my sleep. I did that sometimes.

  “Nightmare?” she asked.

  “No,” I snarled. “Wet dream.”

  “Ollie.” She ran her hand through the ends of her auburn hair, shifting the strands across her pale, slender fingers. “We don’t have to be enemies.”

  “Why not? Enemies are my favorite thing in the world.”

  “More so than friends?”

  “Obviously.”

  She turned her face away from me and focused on her hair as if it had all the secrets woven into its silken shine. Maybe it did. God knew I couldn’t ever get my hair that untangled.

  “I’m afraid everyone knows about your pack.”

  My stomach cramped, and with the sinking feeling came an instant, horrible surge of panic. My hand flew to my belly, my mouth hanging open around a silent scream.

  Beside me, Marley reacted almost as quickly. She brought her hand to my arm and squeezed. “Your baby is fine. Sunny checked you earlier. Everything is okay.”

  The relief came slower than the spike of terror, but when it did, my eyes swam with tears, and it felt like my entire body had softened like butter left out in the sun. I sank into the bed, into the sheets that smelled like Luke, and I never wanted to move again.

  “You shouldn’t have fought Sibyl. You can’t beat her in your condition.”

  I rubbed my hand across my face. I didn’t even want to know how she knew Sibyl’s name or how she knew about Pinto. “I had to.”

  “She wanted to kill you.”

  I sliced my gaze to her. “How would you know? You weren’t there.”

  Her eyes went back to her hair, her fingers combing through the ends. It was almost mesmerizing. “Be careful, Ollie. The pack is gone. Your protection is gone.”

  My skin prickled. “Are you threatening me?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m being honest with you. But threats and honesty can be more similar than we think sometimes.”

  “Enough with the riddles. They’re pissing me off.”

  “Just be careful.”

  “For someone who wants to burn the school down and kill everyone inside it, you’re warning me an awful lot.”

  A tired laugh fell from her mouth. “I don’t want to burn this place down or hurt anyone. You just assume that.”

  “You did, like, draw it all out. In graphic detail.”

  “I told you I have visions.”

  I stared blankly at her, blinking slowly. “I didn’t think you were serious.”

  She returned my stare with a steady one of her own. “Deadly.”

  “Are you a halfling?”

  “No.”

  I waited her out. Normally, when I stared hard at people, letting them marinate in the silence, they got uncomfortable. But Marley just sat there, blinking prettily at me, twining her hair around her finger like she was spinning stars into the sky.

  Zero was human. Granted, her brain had been chopped apart and put back together, Frankenstein’s monster style. But Dean had always spoken about the state of evolution. How there would always be an answer to a threat in nature. But still … seeing the future was different from shifting through the shadows, right?

  “And the fire.” I fought against the urge to shiver. “You saw the school burning?”

  “Yes.”

  “And people dying.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Dean? He’s on the island.”

  “Yes.”

  I gritted my teeth and looked away. I wanted to think she was lying. I wanted to see the deception in her eyes. Instead, I saw a raw, nervy earnestness that worried me. “You say you’ve been running from him because he wants to use your visions?”

  Marley’s expression dimmed, her normal spark leaving her eyes. “We struggled to figure out what was wrong with me the first few years I was here. But by the fifth year, we figured it out. We learned together what I was.”

  The way she spoke told of a far darker, far deeper story. The wounds were still raw, even after all t
his time.

  “Did my mother know?”

  This time, Marley only nodded. She didn’t meet my eyes.

  Someday, I vowed, someday I would know this story. But not today.

  “It helps to sketch them out,” Marley explained, tapping her temple with a lock of hair twined around her finger. “It helps me sleep if I get them out of my head and onto paper. I can let them go easier that way.” She said it so calmly. Like, of course, if she drew out her visions she could sleep at night.

  “Can you change them? These events you see in the future?”

  She pressed her lips together so tightly I thought she wouldn’t answer, but then with a long exhale, she said, “No.”

  That single word contained a lot of pain, and it surprised me. I really, really disliked that Marley was surprising me so much. “And the red ribbon?”

  She cocked her head. “You’ve been following me?”

  I let a little smile pull at my lips.

  “I saw the well in a vision, but nothing else. Sometimes, I mark things just in case.”

  “Just in case of what? We need water in the future?”

  My smart-ass reply slid right off her back. She was probably used to it. If I believed any of this, I wouldn’t admit I did. “Just be careful, Ollie,” she repeated, though it carried more weight now that she’d professed to be a damn fortune teller.

  “So why does Dean want to use your visions if you can’t do anything to change the events you see in them?”

  “Because fear consumes him,” Marley said, almost whispering. “He craves to know what will happen almost as much as he dreads it. He obsesses over his future.”

  “Have you seen my future?”

  She swallowed. “Bits and pieces.”

  “That good, huh?”

  She smiled softly. “It won’t be easy.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  She ran her fingers through her hair again. I realized it was a nervous habit. Did I unsettle her? “How do you move a mountain?”

  “Another riddle? Really?”

  “I asked your mother this same question once. She was just as contemptuous.”

  That shut me up. I scowled, thinking hard. “You don’t move it. The mountain.”

  “So, what do you do?”

  This was hurting my head. “I don’t know. Walk around it?”

  “Exactly. You’re walking around it right now. Once you’re on the other side, we’ll confront your future together.”

  “And how long will this walkabout take exactly?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  She flinched when I fired the question back, and dammit if it didn’t feel like kicking a puppy. “I wish you had more time.”

  “This has something to do with Dean being on the island?”

  “It has everything to do with it.”

  I wanted to know, I did. I wanted to demand answers and rush out into the night ready to fight and kill and rip apart the world until I’d made it safer for everyone in it, especially my friends and Pinto.

  But Pinto.

  For Pinto, I could do none of that.

  “I don’t do well with this fate bullshit,” I explained. “I don’t like the thought that I have no control over my future.”

  Her cheeks dimpled with a hint of a smile. “Your mother felt the same way.”

  I hated how casually she mentioned my mother. I hated that she knew her better than I ever would. That an entire person, an entire life, had existed right in front of Marley’s eyes, such that she could casually toss around anecdotes. Your mother felt the same way. Your mother. Your mother. Your mother.

  It bothered me. Actually, the entire conversation was bothering me. I needed to get out of this room. I needed to physically shake Marley’s words off my body before they stuck to me forever.

  “Where’s Luke?” I asked. It felt like the most important question.

  “I haven’t seen him since we got back.”

  With a nod, I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Okay.”

  She put her hand on my arm to stop me. “Should you be getting up? Maybe—”

  “Marley.” At her name, she closed her mouth, her eyebrows rising. “You’re new here. I get that. You knew my mom. You took the news of my not being able to protect this school anymore pretty well, and you took a lucky guess about my pregnancy. Do I believe you see the future? No. Do I think you’re full of shit? Yes. But I can’t prove it. So, you best get your hand off me before I rip it the fuck off, ’kay?”

  She pulled her hand back. “You got it.”

  I stood and strode past her—or I hoped I strode. I might have wobbled. Either way, I made it to Luke’s door and out into the hallway before I sucked in a deep breath. Stopping, I braced my hand against the barracks wall to steady myself. I wasn’t badly hurt. Pinto was fine. We were both fine. But I felt chilled to my bones, my heart pumping blood at a slogging pace. I blinked, staring down the hall at the door that led outside.

  I just had to make it there and then to Luke.

  I had to talk to him.

  And I knew where he would be.

  Before Marley could catch me looking weak in the hallway, I pushed myself off the wall and made my way down the hallway. It was probably shock and exhaustion weighing my body down, but it felt a lot like fear. Like dread. Like when I found Luke, he would look at me and tell me in his serious voice with his serious eyes and his not-so-serious caramel breath that he was done with me. That he didn’t want me. That he couldn’t be a father. That I’d kept a secret from him for the last time and he was done.

  Forever.

  I opened the door, surprised to find it was still daytime. The sun warmed my face. The courtyard was bustling with students and professors enjoying the warm evening. The sky was a brilliant sapphire blue, dotted with puffs of white clouds.

  The scene eased a good deal of the frost inside me. My nerves unspooled quietly. I took a long breath of summer air, and I tasted the coming autumn on my tongue.

  As I walked through the courtyard, the scent of Ms. Brightly’s fresh chocolate chip cookies filled my nose. A towering stack of them sat on a table, looking gooey and delicious. A group of lab kids had gathered around, stuffing their faces. I grabbed two as I passed. The kids waved at me before racing off. From a group of first-years at another table, I spotted Sam. I nodded at him. He didn’t return the gesture.

  Somehow, he sensed I often met with Zero out in the woods. That she, Sunny, and I hunted together. He knew I would never condemn her for killing his parents.

  And he hated me for it, but I didn’t blame him. I would hate me too if I were him.

  I turned at the edge of the courtyard and headed around the corner of the school, stepping onto a narrow dirt path that led through the cottonwoods. It was a rarely used path, but it was well maintained, narrow but passable. No limbs had fallen over it, and all the large rocks had been cleared away. It was easy walking, and the limbs shifted above me, letting in streams of sunlight to the forest floor.

  It didn’t take long to reach him. He was exactly where I’d thought he’d be.

  At his father’s grave.

  I walked up to him without a word. Stopping beside him, I stared down at the flat grave marker. The stone was a simple gray, engraved with Killian Lee Aultstriver. Though the grave was unadorned, the grass was well trimmed, the stone polished to gleaming. Luke kept it up and often came out here to be alone and think. I never came with him. It seemed like something he needed as his own. Like by being out here, I was now seeing his deepest wound.

  He sighed. The sound didn’t bode well for me.

  The chill returned inside me.

  Please don’t leave us.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He didn’t speak the words harshly, but I still flinched at their suddenness. “Because I’m a coward.”

  He sighed again, this time deeply, like he was as worn down as a well-used blanket. “You’re anyt
hing but a coward, Ollie.”

  “Because I was scared.”

  “Why is it,” he asked, turning to me and gripping my arms, “that every time you’re scared, you turn away from everyone who loves you?”

  I made a face. “Sunny knew.”

  “Why is it,” he amended, “that you turn away from me?”

  Because I’m most scared to lose you. Because I love you too much. Because I was never supposed to be the happy one.

  I looked down at my belly. If I pushed my hand hard enough against the flat plane of my stomach, I thought I could feel a little swell. I did it then, just to know.

  “This is big, Luke. It feels bigger than anything before.”

  He released my arms, slid one hand down to my waist, and placed the other over my own on top of my belly. “It is,” he whispered.

  “I can’t stop thinking about my mom.”

  He let out a bitter laugh. “I can’t stop thinking about my father.”

  I met his eyes. “Don’t.”

  The pine green hue of his eyes darkened. “Is that why you didn’t tell me? Because you were scared of what I would do? Am I that much like him?”

  My heart tore at its rickety, pathetic seams. With his softly worded question, I became the smallest, most selfish person in the world. “Luke, no. Please don’t think that.”

  “How could I not? You know what he was like. You know.”

  I pushed myself into his chest and wrapped my arms around him, holding him for all I was worth.

  In this place of fear, it wasn’t the monsters or the bad guys or the danger that wrecked us the most. It was our demons, the ones buried deep, that brought us to our knees.

  Over time, we became our own greatest enemy.

  “Luke,” I whispered against his chest.

  His arms were around me, holding me as tightly as I held him. “What?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  The laugh I won from him was real. It rumbled up from deep in his chest, rattling my cheek as it spilled from his mouth. I leaned back and grinned up at him.

  Bending down, he kissed me tenderly and murmured against my mouth, “Say it again.”

  My grin stretched deliriously wider. “I’m pregnant, and its name is Pinto.”