“Oh no,” Ivy whispered.
The shadow lurched toward us, and as it drew closer, the clumsy but quick limbs rearranged themselves to form a man. He was not much of a human. His eyes sank deep into his skull, and his cheeks looked as though the skin had been pasted directly to the bone beneath. He reeked of booze, body odor, and vomit.
Jacob took hold of his sister and piloted her around the corner, away from the monstrous man. Without thinking, I stepped in front of Ivy, who appeared rooted to the asphalt below her feet, until the man was nearly upon us.
“Ivy!”
He spat her name out like a dirty word. I pushed Ivy back, concealing her completely behind the thick wool layer of my Saint Mark’s coat.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said, forcing myself to speak calmly. “My little sister’s name is Amelia.”
“Bullshit,” the man growled. “You think I don’t recognize my own daughter when I see her?”
“Judging by the alcohol on your breath and your state of being, it wouldn’t exactly surprise me,” I replied, taking another step toward the mouth of the alley. His stench made my eyes water. It was no wonder Ivy had chosen to roam the dangerous streets instead of returning to whatever place she called home.
“Get out of the way,” he snarled, but he didn’t give me the chance to respond. Without warning, he pushed me over.
I tripped over Ivy, toppling us both, and landed on top of her. My muscles seized, fresh off the trauma of the elevator crash. Ivy scrambled to get away from her father as he loomed over us, her feet kicking mercilessly at my back to dislodge me. Once she was free, she sprang to her feet, but her father was quicker. He leapt over me and caught hold of Ivy by her coat, ripping the collar. He jerked her against him, leaned down, and tipped her head back so that she was forced to listen as he whispered in her ear.
“One bottle.” Spittle ran down the man’s chin. “That’s all I asked of you. You’ve been gone for hours, and all I wanted was one bottle.”
“I couldn’t find anything!” Ivy whimpered.
“You found yourself a new mommy, apparently,” her father replied. “You found a pretty new coat.” He toyed with the torn collar. “Is this the life you wanted, you little brat? Pretty parents and a private school?”
When he twisted Ivy’s neck at a dangerous angle, red-hot hatred coursed through my veins. I flipped over, ignoring the all-over pain, and drew the handgun once more. As the man tilted Ivy’s head even further, drawing a yelp of pain from the girl, I fired once. Into his leg.
He dropped Ivy at once, screaming as he collapsed on the asphalt. Like before, a wave of noise washed through the blocks around us. Anyone within earshot had panicked at the sound of the gunshot, including Jacob and Pippa, who had peered around the corner to see what had happened. Blood spurted from between the man’s fingers as he applied pressure to a spot above his knee.
“You bitch!” His eyes bulged out of his head as he screamed at me. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill her!”
The narrow alleyway amplified the shrill threats. The man’s fit would attract attention, and if anyone found us next to him, me with a gun in hand, it would raise questions and trouble. I pushed myself to my feet and grabbed Ivy’s hand, but she was stunned into silence, staring at her father as he bled out on the ground.
“Let’s go,” Jacob shouted from the end of the alley.
“I’m trying!” I called back.
Ivy wouldn’t budge. “Is he going to die?”
There was no point in lying. Her father’s screams had already lost their intensity as the blood pooled around him. “Probably,” I admitted. “There’s a big artery in the leg there. He’s losing a lot of blood, and no one’s going to come and take him to a hospital.”
Ivy turned her face to look up at me. “It’s that easy?”
The question and the glimmer of wonder and freedom in her eyes made my stomach turn. “No, Ivy. This wasn’t easy. Not for you and not for me.” The man gurgled on the pavement, slumping over his ruined leg. I tugged on Ivy’s hand again. “We have to go now.”
“In a second.” She pulled out of my grasp to lean over her father. For once, she loomed over him instead of the other way around. She pulled the collar of his shirt up so that he had to look her in the eye. “I hate you. That’s all.”
For a brief second before his daughter allowed him to fall again, a spark of something—remorse or realization maybe—flashed across the man’s face. Ivy didn’t look back as she fit her hand in mine and ran toward the mouth of the alley.
“Oh my God,” Jacob said as he and Pippa followed after us. We slowed down once we cleared the alley since Pippa wasn’t in the best shape to run. “Oh my God, Georgie.”
“Stop saying that,” I snapped.
“You killed him.”
“He was going to kill Ivy.”
“You don’t know that!”
“You didn’t see him!” I fired back, marching along the sidewalk without looking at him. “He was about to break her neck clean off! What would you have done?”
“She’s his daughter,” Jacob replied. “It’s none of my business.”
A bitter taste flowed across my tongue. “If you really mean that, then you’re a heartless asshole who only cares about the people who are closest to him.”
“No, I just don’t want the people closest to me to get arrested for murder!” he said. “Especially not my fianceé!”
I whirled to a stop outside the shattered windows of a pharmacy. “Look around you, Jacob! Do you see any cops? Do you? No, because guess what! They’re all doing the same thing that I’m trying to do, which is protect the people around them. I made a decision to protect Ivy. It was either her or piece of shit father who can’t stay sober long enough to take care of his own daughter.”
“You shot him, Georgie,” Jacob snapped. “He’s going to die because of you. You can’t do that. Not everyone has daddy issues like you do.”
The remark was like a crisp slap to the face. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”
“Yeah, well—”
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to use my vulnerabilities against me, especially not now. I told you about my dad because you practically begged me to. It took me a lot of time to get over what happened to my parents, and I won’t let you treat me like a joke you tell to your gym buddies just to get a laugh out of them.”
I walked off with Ivy.
“Where are you going?” he called after me.
“Back to your fucking parents’ house!” I replied. “You may be a jerk, but that doesn’t change what we have to do.”
“Georgie—”
Pippa interrupted him. “Jacob, just stop. Shut up. You’re making it worse.”
I picked up the pace, leaving their squabbling behind. Ivy squeezed my fingers.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
“No.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you shot him.”
I blew out a sigh big enough to puff out my cheeks and ruffled Ivy’s oily hair. “I know that, kid, but it doesn’t change what I did.”
Ivy scrunched up her nose. “Why do you like Jacob?”
I checked behind me to make sure that Jacob and Pippa were still out of earshot. They were buried in discussion with each other, and by the looks of it, Pippa was reaming him out for what he said.
“It’s a long story,” I told Ivy. “When I met Jacob, he had everything I wanted. A place in the city, a sense of purpose, and a normal family. Everything seemed so easy for him. His life was set up for him at birth. Graduate college, work for his dad, get married. That’s what normal people do, right? I wanted that. I wanted something normal.”
“Normal is so boring though,” Ivy said.
“Fine. I wanted something steady then,” I clarified. “Something that I could count on so that I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about what I left behind.”
“What did you leave behind?”
> “I’m probably going to find out in a couple of days—”
“Ivy!”
A middle-aged woman emerged from the remains of a walk-in clinic as we passed by, her gaze trained on the twelve-year-old at my side. I reached for the gun again but stopped myself. This woman was not like Ivy’s father. She was well put together, wearing sensible boots, jeans, and several layers of sweaters. She was clean and smelled of fresh linens. A small boy peeked out from behind her waist.
“Miss Williams!” Ivy tore her hand free to sling her arms around the woman, who lifted her into the air and twirled her around before setting her down again. Ivy hugged the little boy next. “Leon, I missed you.”
“We heard a gunshot,” Miss Williams said. “Are you all right?”
“It’s my dad,” Ivy replied stoically. “He’s dead.”
“Oh dear.” Though she tried her best, there was absolutely no remorse in Miss Williams’s tone. She held her hand out to me. “And who do we have here?”
“Georgie,” I answered, shaking hands. “I was looking after Ivy.”
Miss Williams planted a kiss on top of Ivy’s head. “Thank you so much. She’s safe now.”
The little boy, Leon, ducked under Ivy’s Saint Mark’s coat and started laughing, his little giggles muffled by the thick wool fabric. She buttoned the front, trapping him inside with her.
“You’re going to look after her?” I asked Miss Williams, watching as the two kids stumbled aimlessly around. “I didn’t know—”
“That she had anyone else?” Miss Williams finished. “She doesn’t. She and her father lived in our building until they were evicted. She came to our unit when he got too violent. I called the cops multiple times.”
“So you know her pretty well?”
“I practically raised her,” she said. “I even asked for child services to release her into my custody a few times. I guess now we’ve got a better shot.”
A lump rose in my throat. Despite the fact that I’d known Ivy for less than half a day, the thought of parting with her unnerved me. “You should leave the city. It’s not safe here.”
“I know, dear,” Miss Williams said. She reached out and stroked my cheek. “Look at those lines on your face already, baby. You’re an old soul, aren’t you?”
The unexpected affection had an immediate effect. The tears that had been waiting to fall finally made their appearance, and Miss Williams produced a pocket-sized package of tissues. As I dabbed at my face, she squeezed my shoulders.
“You hang in there,” she ordered. “You’re a good person. You brought Ivy home when I’ve been the only one on her side for years. Don’t you forget that.”
“Are you leaving?” Ivy asked, having finally freed Leon from the confines of her new coat.
“Yeah,” I said, sniffling. “You want to stay here with Miss Williams, right?”
Ivy beamed proudly. “Yes. She’s better than a mom.”
“She is,” I agreed, kneeling down to give Ivy a hug. “You behave, okay? Stay safe. Maybe when all of this is over, we can find each other again.”
“I’d like that,” she replied. “And you shouldn’t let anyone boss you around. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
I laughed and straightened up. “How does someone so young know a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt?”
“Miss Williams taught it to me.”
“Smart lady.”
Miss Williams ushered the children back inside the walk-in clinic, waved goodbye to me, and disappeared into the gloom. Ivy was gone, and hopefully, with Miss Williams’s skills, she would be able to ride out the other effects of the EMP blast.
“Who was that?” Pippa asked.
“The woman who looks after Ivy,” I told her, wiping the last bit of moisture from my cheeks. “She’s going to take care of her.”
“That’s good, right? That means we don’t have to take her with us,” Jacob said. Pippa elbowed him in the ribs. “Ow!”
“Yeah, it’s good,” I said. “It’s one less person to feed and worry about. Let’s get back to the condo. This is starting to feel like the longest day of my life, and we haven’t even tried to get out of the city yet.”
We trudged on, sticking to the less populated side roads rather than walking up the main stretch. I wished I had my bike. It was slow-going with Pippa. Though she was in good shape, she was unaccustomed to speed-walking with the weight of the baby. We had to stop a few times to let her catch her breath.
“Almost there,” Jacob said, using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe sweat from his sister’s forehead. “Another block maybe.”
The Masons’ building was visible, and the sun had climbed high enough to beat down on us again. I shrugged free of my borrowed coat and draped it over my shoulder in case I needed it for later.
“I don’t know how the two of you think you’re going to get me out of the city,” Pippa said. “This is taking way too long.”
“We do have a wagon,” I offered.
“Which is currently loaded with water bottles,” Jacob reminded me. “Maybe we can find a stroller. We could tie it to the back of someone else’s bike. That’d be fun. Right, Pip?”
She glared at him as she got back to her feet. “Try and put me in a baby stroller, Jacob. See if you survive the experience.”
“Don’t your parents own a tandem bike?” I asked. “Pippa can ride on the back of that. No stroller or wagon necessary.”
“See?” Pippa said to Jacob. “At least Georgie offers a real solution to the problem. Let’s keep moving. I’m fine now, and I bet Mom and Dad made breakfast.”
Pippa strode ahead, leaving Jacob and me to deal with the thick, palpable tension in the air between us. Our hands bumped together. I shoved mine into my pocket.
“Georgie, listen—”
“We can’t keep doing this,” I said, strolling after Pippa. Jacob hurried to catch up. “We can’t argue over stupid shit. It’s not going to turn out well for us.”
“Then let’s talk about it.” Jacob threaded his arm through mine in an attempt to get me to slow down and walk evenly with him. “Hmm?”
His grip felt too tight. I shrugged out of it. “I tried to talk to you about it. I told you about my parents like you wanted me to, and not an hour later, you threw it back in my face like it was something I had to be ashamed about.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
I whirled around to face him, forcing him to stop walking. “Yeah, but you did it. You took something that you knew would bother me and used it against me because you were mad in the moment and wanted to hurt me. That’s not right.”
“Fine, you’re right.”
“Don’t just say that because you’re trying to make this go away.”
“I’m not!” His hot reply startled a flock of birds from a nearby telephone wire. Jacob took a deep breath and tried again. “What I said was stupid, and I’m sorry, okay? But I just watched my fianceé, who I’ve known as a specific type of person since we met in college, shoot a man in the leg and leave him to bleed out and die. Georgie, every time we found a spider in the apartment, you made me trap it in a cup and carry it outside. Now, all of a sudden, you’re GI Jane.”
I scuffed the toe of my boot against the sidewalk, mindlessly filling in a crack with the dirt from an ant pile. “What you don’t understand is that I’ve always been that person. The GI Jane one that knows how to shoot at a moving target and pick locks and steal without remorse. All these years, she’s been right there, just below the surface, but I never needed her until now.” Jacob stared at where my boot worked against the ground. I lifted his chin, his whiskers rough against the pads of my fingers. “You need her too. You need me to get out of this mess alive, and the faster you accept that terrible things are going to happen to us, the easier this is going to be. Can you understand that?”
“I’m trying to.”
The sun turned his brown irises gold. He was doing his best. That was true. I could see that in the
puffy bags under his eyes and the lines around his mouth that seemed to have deepened since last night’s blast. Jacob was a trust-fund kid who’d been thrown into the deep end without a floatie. He wasn’t used to death and gore unless he was watching it in high definition on a gigantic television. That would all change soon. Clouds drifted across the sun, casting a chilling shadow.
Jacob pressed his forehead against mine, looking for my lips, but I drew away before he could find them. He wanted something normal to rely on, but I couldn’t give it to him. The truth, rather than the blackout, had made room for something darker to lie between us.
Chapter Nine
I found Pippa on the third-floor landing of the stairwell in her family’s apartment building. She had stopped to catch her breath, holding the support railing with one hand and cradling her belly with the other.
“You know, I used to be in great shape,” she said when she noticed me plodding up the stairs. “I was captain of the field hockey team. I ran a five-minute mile. Now a few flights of stairs have me completely whipped. It’s ridiculous.”
I forced a grim smile. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll go right back to your five-minute mile after you deliver the baby.”
She looped her arm around my shoulders when I offered. “Did you talk to Jacob? Where is he?”
“He gave me a head start.”
“So you didn’t talk.”
“We did,” I replied as we started up the steps to the next floor. “The problem is that we can’t really do anything about the things we talked about right now.”
Pippa flipped her curly blond hair, the same color as Jacob’s, over her shoulder to see the stairs better. “Because of the blackout?”
“Partially.”
“You have to give me more than that, or I can’t help you.” She tugged on my bright purple locks. “I hate to break it to you, but you’ve always been cryptic. It’s no wonder Jacob has a difficult time communicating with you. That boy is dense, like most men, but he does try.”
Blackout: Book 0 Page 12
