Redeemer

by C. E. Murphy

  "How could you do that?" Irene whispered. "How could you even think to do that, Rosie?"

  "He was going to eat me, Rene. He killed and ate all the other girls. I'd have—"

  "He ate them? He ate Ruby?" Jean's cry rang down the street, lights in other houses flickering on. Rosie caught Jean again, drawing her close and whispering hushes into her hair as doors opened and a few cautious women looked toward the commotion. Hank jumped out of the Jaguar and came up the porch steps in two bounds. "Miss Ransom, we're drawing too much attention."

  Rosie glowered at him and urged Jean to her feet. "Come on. C'mon. Come on inside, Jeannie. I'll tell you when we get in. Goode was a monster, a straight-up monster, and I'm not just saying that because he ate people."

  Irene breathed, "Swell," as Hank followed them inside. "By tomorrow morning the whole block will be talking about us going inside with a man at 2 a.m., especially with us still looking like the cat's meow."

  "Well, I don't look so good," Rosie said, as if it would make a difference to the gossips. Hank muttered, "You look fine," and closed the door on the street. Rosie guided Jean-Marie to the couch, but Jean resisted sitting down, demanding, "How could he eat them?"

  "He was a vampire," Rosie said bluntly. "That's how he made all the girls think he was such a dreamboat, and why he ate them."

  Hank's jaw flapped. Irene whirled from peeking through the curtains at the neighbors, her eyes and mouth round with disapproval. "Rosie! This isn't the time to be making knucklehead jokes! How could you do that to Jean? How cou—" Hank snapped his mouth shut and momentarily silenced Irene into gaping at him. "You believe her?"

  Jean's hands were ice-cold in Rosie's. "Rosie, what are you talking about?"

  "PFC Goode was an honest-to-God monster and I can kill them. I didn't even know they were real until tonight, but even if I thought I'd been imagining things, Hank here walked me out of the police station and started asking me about them casual as can be. He works for people who hunt monsters and knows more than I do about it."

  Hank grated, "Miss Ransom, you can't—"

  Rosie cut him off with a glower. "I sure as heck can, library man."

  "Demons are to be kept secret, Miss Ransom, so as to avoid widespread panic—"

  "These are my friends. I'm not keeping secrets from them."

  "Rosie, you can't expect us to belie—"

  "Are they really real?" Jean's voice, so much quieter than Irene's, undercut her completely. Rosie nodded. Jean swallowed and finally sat, her round face gone pale. "A demon killed Ruby? And you killed the demon?"

  "Yes."

  An angrier kind of hope than Rosie had ever seen lit Jean's eyes. "Can you teach me how?"

  Rosie shot a glance at Hank, who made a short explosive motion of exasperation with his hands, and shook his head. "Almost nobody can kill them, Miss. Only a special kind of warrior called a Redeemer. Miss Ransom is a Redeemer."

  Jean's gaze swung toward Hank. "Then teach me how to hunt them like you do."

  "You're a girl."

  Jean surged to her feet, color flushing her cheeks. "I'm a woman and if this whole country doesn't know by now that a woman can do every damn same job a man can do—!"

  "They catch them in art, Jeannie," Rosie interrupted. "He says demons are born when artists lose control, and the only way they can capture them is in music or paintings or books. I don't even know how you herd a demon into a sculpture. I guess that's what he's going to have to teach you."

  "I'm not teaching anybody anything!"

  Rosie gave Hank another flat look. "You're not going to teach me how to find them so I can Redeem them?"

  "Of course I am. Ex Libris needs you. We don't need her—"

  "Fine. If you won't teach Jean, I will."

  Jean turned a heartbreakingly grateful smile on Rosie and sank back onto the couch to put her face in her hands. Rosie put an arm around her shoulders and whispered, "We girls have to stick together. That'll make it okay."

  "Okay?" Irene stood by the window, her arms wrapped around herself as if it had gotten cold. "Nothing about this is okay. I don't believe there are demons, and you killed somebody, Ro. How can that be okay?"

  "I don't know. I know I should be all torn up, Rene, but I'm not. The way I saw him … it was like he was already dead. The person was gone. All that was left was this awful stain, and when I shot him with the rivet, the stain lifted and his soul was … saved," Rosie said helplessly. "It sounds silly, I'm not a priest to go around absolving people, but—"

  "No," Hank interrupted, more quietly than before. "You're a Redeemer. Priests can only absolve mortal sins, Miss Ransom. Redeemers take on the immortal ones."

  "I thought immortal meant not dying at all."

  Hank shrugged. "Demons don't die except at the hands of Redeemers. It's a pretty small loophole."

  "I think you're all crazy." Irene's voice sounded thin. "I'm sorry Ruby's dead, I really am, and I'm sick that Rosie killed somebody, even if he was bad. But I think you must be crazy to believe this story, Jean, even if it's so fantastical that it's easier than believing the truth, which is that Rosie's bananas and she's making things up so she doesn't have to think about what an awful thing she's done, and this creep is looking to take advantage of it. I don't think you should trust him, Rosie. I think you should go right home to your folks and take a while to get your head on straight, because you're all screwed up right now, honey. I'll stay with Jean."

  Uncertainty creased Jean's forehead, wrinkles visible around the pressure of her fingertips. Rosie worried at her lower lip. She could argue all night and not come any closer to convincing Irene. "Your version makes a lot more sense," she admitted to Irene. "I can't help it if it's just not true. Jean, will you be okay? If Rene stays with you?"

  Jean nodded without taking her face from her hands. Rosie stood reluctantly, patting her back again. "I'll come back in the morning to check on you."

  "You should call a taxi, Rosie. Don't let this jerk drive you home."

  Rosie judged the careful indifference in Hank's blue eyes and sighed. "He's okay, Rene. I know you don't believe me, but …" She turned her hands upward helplessly. "Try to get some sleep, okay? I'll … I'll see you tomorrow." Hank headed for the door, Rosie a few steps behind him, but she stopped in the frame to look back at Irene, whose eyebrows pinched with worry. "Thanks for looking out for me, Rene."

  An unhappy smile pulled at the corner of Irene's mouth. "Us girls have to stick together, right? Be careful, Ro. Be really careful."

  "I will be." Rosie followed Hank out to the Jaguar, smiling to see that this time he held the car door for her. "Trying to convince Irene you're not the bad guy?"

  He closed the door behind her and glanced at the house, where the curtain twitched closed again, obscuring Irene from view. "Think it'll do any good?"

  Rosie sank her fingers into her hair and pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, trying to decide if her head hurt or if she was just tired. "Not really. I don't know why I thought she'd just believe me."

  "Because you believe yourself." Hank took the driver's seat and started the Jag, backing out of the driveway. "But there's a reason Ex Libris is a secret society, Miss Ransom. People don't take well to being told there are demons. Your friend Jean probably won't believe you by morning, either. Where are we going?"

  Rosie looked east, as if she might find guidance from a sunrise still hours away. "Do you know where Pearl Daly lives?"

  "Even if I did, they're not going to have let her go, Miss Ransom. She'll be at the station all night, maybe longer. Why?"

  "But I told them I wasn't pressing charges!"

  "Yeah, and if she's real lucky, that'll mean she won't get any jail time. She was Goode's accomplice, though, and there are a lot of dead girls that somebody's gonna have to answer for."

  "They need to let her go. She said she'd gotten some of Goode's blood splashed on her. That it made her want more. Need more. He said my blood might give him enough to change
her all the way. What if she's already had enough? She can't stay at the station. She might kill somebody."

  "You telling me we gotta break a vampire out of jail so you can kill it?"

  Rosie sat back, shaken by the idea. "Can't I Redeem somebody without killing them?"

  "Not that I ever heard about."

  "You've already said you haven't heard much," Rosie snapped. "I can't just go into the police station and kill the woman. There's got to be another way. Would they even let me talk to her?"

  "Alone? No. Look, she'll be out by tomorrow evening if they decide they're not going to go after her as Goode's accomplice. Just hang on until then. You need to get home and get some rest anyway."

  "I can't show up at my folks' at three in the morning and wake them up to tell them I killed somebody, library man. I have to wait until they're awake, at least. What am I supposed to do until then if I can't talk to Pearl?"

  "Is ‘home' with your folks?"

  Rosie stared at Hank, not quite understanding the question, then shook herself. "Oh. No. No, you were right before, I don't live with my parents. I guess I just still think of that as home, in a way. Anyways, I'm not sure there's any point in taking me home. I don't think I can sleep.

  "I think you'd be surprised. You get some rest, talk to your folks, and I'll call you when they release Miss Daly."

  "And if they don't?"

  Hank gave a sharp smile. "Then we'll figure out a jailbreak."

  SIX

  The idea of a jailbreak lingered as Rosie crept into the house she shared with Irene and four other girls. She didn't see how she and Hank could manage one, not really, but maybe if she talked to Detective Johnson again she could convince him that Pearl had been a victim too, and that the best thing for her would be to let her go home and try to get her life back together.

  High heels, bleached of their color in the streetlight that flooded through the front window, lay in a tangle beside the door, indicating Rosie was the last one home after a Friday night out. Rosie slipped her own shoes off and padded to her bedroom, grateful that she could at least turn the light on without disturbing Irene. She wanted a bath so badly her skin itched, but noisy water running through the pipes would wake someone up and she didn't want to face the ribald teasing that would accompany her coming home so late.

  Her side of the bedroom had a pair of black flats and some white Keds tucked into corners, and one of her dresses thrown over the back of the chair that sat in front of her vanity. Her closet door stood partway open, revealing the shoulder of her favorite blue shirtwaist. Rosie wedged the dress farther in and pushed the door shut, wishing she kept things a bit tidier, like Irene's side of the room. Irene always hung her dresses up and put her shoes away, no matter how tired she got.

  At least Rosie's bed was made, neat and pretty with a checkered pink bedtop that matched the bedclothes on Irene's bed and complemented the deeper rose paint on the walls. Rosie closed the curtains long enough to change into her nightgown, then opened them again. The pale pink rayon curtains were thin enough to let the room brighten as the sun rose, but she couldn't risk oversleeping. Not when Pop would be up by seven, listening to the news radio as he waited for Mom to wake up and make his coffee. Rosie considered the alarm clock, but the bell rang so loudly half her housemates would hear it too, and none of them would forgive her for a 6 a.m. wake-up on Saturday. She'd just have to sleep lightly and wake up with the sun, assuming she could sleep at all. She lay down, ready to worry the rest of the night away, and a few seconds later, sunlight glowed warm and red through her eyelids.

  She rolled to her feet without letting herself think about it, swallowing away the nausea of an abrupt awakening after too little sleep. The clock, ticking away so loudly it should have kept her awake all by itself, read a quarter after six. The sun hadn't hardly come up yet, not really. She'd been just as sensitive to it as she'd hoped. Rosie bumped along the wall all the way out of her room and to the bathroom to stare at her hollow-eyed reflection in dismay.

  Fifteen minutes of cold water, hair curlers, makeup and tooth-brushing later, she reckoned she wouldn't scare the horses, although even with blush, she still looked nearly as pale as Pearl Daly. Back in her room, she found a red plaid shirt that she reckoned might help her color, and tied her hair up in a kerchief to match. Jeans with the cuffs rolled up, bare feet into the black flats, and she slipped out the front door without her housemates ever knowing she'd been home. She'd catch heck for that later too, but she didn't want to have to face anybody else before seeing her parents.

  The sky lit gold all along the horizon, catching a low band of clouds that sprayed pink toward the river. The heat hadn't broken overnight, but it had cooled off just enough that early-morning mugginess felt nicely warm instead of like breathing a lake. Rosie nodded greetings or waved to the one or two other people out so early on a Saturday morning, but she had most of the walk to her folks' house to herself and the sunrise. It didn't help her figure out how she would tell them what had happened, but at least it made for a nice morning.

  Their house looked quiet, just like all the others along their street. A pretty little front yard with carefully kept flowers was bright after the night's relative coolness, not yet struggling with the day's heat. A car sat in the driveway, and curtains were pulled across the big front window to keep prying eyes from looking in at night. Rosie went around to the side door, letting herself into the empty kitchen. Another big window above the sink looked over the back yard, where two apple trees shaded a yellowing lawn. Rosie filled the coffee pot with water and wiped down an already-clean counter to make the white surface gleam, then twitched pretty yellow curtains over the smaller front window open. She had two cups of coffee ready when her father wandered in with the air of a man following his nose. "Blessed are the coffee sprites." He kissed her hair, then took a seat across the kitchen table and leaned in to first inhale deeply, then sip tentatively at the hot drink. "Perfect. You always use the right amount of sugar. What are you doing here so early, honey?"

  "I knew Mom wouldn't be up yet and you'd be suffering without your coffee," Rosie said with a smile. "How are you, Poppy?"

  "Content." He raised his cup to her, returning the smile. He didn't look so old, her Pop, dressed in checkered cotton sleeping pants that matched the robe he wore over them and a white T-shirt. His hair was still real dark, cut handsomely, and his eyes were bright and thoughtful. He'd fought in the first war. When he went back at the age of forty-six to volunteer for the second, they assigned him a 4-A, thanked him for his service in the Great War and told him he was too old now, and sent him home again. He'd come back both relieved and disappointed, but Rosie, who had just seen Rich off, had been nothing but glad. Her mom had been too: Rosie thought she'd aged five years the day Pop went to see about joining up. She still had silver in her hair where she hadn't before, and Rosie thought she'd been even more relieved than the younger women when the European war ended. It meant Pop was all the less likely to get called up, because the Japs couldn't hold out forever. They just couldn't, not with the Nazis defeated and the world setting itself back to rights.

  Her expression must have gotten bleak, because Pop smiled again, more gently this time. "Worried about Rich, sweetheart? Don't be. He'll be safe at home soon. Is that what got you up so early today?" His smile grew teasing. "Or have you not been to bed yet? Ah, to be young and free …."

  "I slept," Rosie said defensively. "No, it's not Rich, Poppy. Some crazy things happened at the factory last night and I wanted to tell you and Mom before rumor got around."

  Pop put his coffee cup down, suddenly worried. "What happened, Ro? Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. I really am. I—"

  "Don't tell me you finally learned how to make coffee, Steven." Rosie's mother emerged from the hall to blink sleepily at her daughter. "I should have known better. Good morning, sweetheart. What are you doing here so early?" Like Pop, Mom had dark hair and eyes, though Rosie had gotten some of Pop's height an
d breadth of shoulder. It hadn't been until she started working in the factory that her waist had whittled down so she had some of Mom's curves, too. Also like Pop, Mom kissed Rosie's hair before shuffling over to the coffee pot in her blue slippers to pour herself a cup. Her robe had frayed at the hems and worn thin over her bottom, like she'd spent a lot of hours in it. Pop's didn't show that kind of wear, but then, Mom bought Pop's clothes for him. Rosie bet she either hadn't thought of one for herself, or thought Pop would eventually buy one for her. He wouldn't, though, not unless somebody put it in his mind, because men didn't often notice that things like that needed replacing.

  "You're up early," Pop said to her.

  Mom's eyebrows rose. "I smelled the coffee and thought I must be dreaming. It's really not difficult to make, Steve."

  "It's better when you make it."

  "Everything is better when someone else makes it." Mom kissed Pop's head, too, then sat down beside him with her coffee. "Well, Rose?"

  Rosie's heartbeat surged and she had to put her coffee down so it wouldn't spill. "First off, I'm all right. Okay? You see that I'm fine, right?"

  Mom went pale, putting her own coffee down. "What happened?"

  "One of the supervisors, PFC Goode, just back from Europe, went crazy at work. He attacked me last night." Her Mom inhaled sharply and Rosie rushed on, afraid she wouldn't be allowed to finish. "I had a rivet gun. I … I shot him with it. He's dead. And I thought you'd better hear it from me before it got out into the news."

  Mom jumped up, knocking her coffee into a spin as she ran around the table to pull Rosie to her feet, inspecting her for injury. Exclamations of concern rattled out of her, so predictable Rosie hardly heard them through her own protests that she was fine. Pop, though. Pop only put his hand out, keeping Mom's cup from spilling entirely, and looked at Rosie with a terrible sympathy and regret in his eyes. Rosie found herself mouthing "I'm okay" at him around the louder promises to her mother, but his expression didn't change. He only shook his head, not enough to gain Mom's attention, and looked as if his heart had broken.