Dead Man's Hand

by Otto Penzler

  A few days later, the girls were standing catty-corner in the buffet line when they heard a teacher telling the chef that a body had risen in the river. The girls locked eyes.

  Sharon whispered, "Let's go to the Sunken Garden."

  "Good plan," Daphne whispered and put a cupcake on her tray. "No one goes there, and if anyone comes, we'll see them on the steps." She eyed Sharon's loose-fitting clothes and put a cupcake on Sharon's tray. "You're losing weight, you know. Your face looks drawn."

  Sharon huffed and followed Daphne out the dining hall's French doors, across the terrace and beyond the Georgian campus buildings to a series of immaculate outdoor rooms, tennis courts, the ice rink, football field, and running trail that ran alongside the service road. The footpath led them directly to the orbed gateway of the Sunken Garden, now blanketed with red roses. A central fountain spouted water from a fish's mouth in the middle of the recessed quadrangle whose sections were said to represent the four corners of paradise. Down the steps, they found a bench near a bed of flowers that filled the air with perfume.

  The instant Sharon put down her tray and sat, she let the tears fall. "I'm so scared. This game is driving me crazy." She dabbed at the spots that kept blooming on her cotton skirt. "You should come with me tomorrow to church. I'm going to confession."

  "Are you crazy? All we have to do is stay quiet. Don't admit anything or volunteer information. Never admit guilt. That's what Piper's lawyer tells him. Life sucks." Daphne picked a rose and inhaled the scent. "We just have to deal with it." She put down the flower and said, "They don't even know we were with Christina that night. You'll be fine."

  "Who are you, the Oracle at Delphi?" Sharon sniffed. She kept rubbing the stains, but they only multiplied as more tears fell. Like the rock Sisyphus rolled, the task seemed endless. "What if they find something?"

  "No way. It was an accident. Happens every day. Christina fell in and drowned." Daphne nodded.

  Sharon returned an empty green-eyed stare. "So what do we do? I feel like I'm dying inside. I feel like hell."

  "You look like it. We should do your hair." She nibbled a hangnail. "We need manicures. And force yourself to eat something. If you start wasting away and looking like crap and crying all the time, everyone will know."

  "I won't." Sharon shook her head. She lifted the fork and cut her chicken enchilada into little pieces, choking on the tears. "I want to go to the river and say a prayer." She chewed as if she was eating cat litter. "I want to see where they found Christina."

  "Are you certifiably insane?" Daphne licked a blue-frosting flower off the top of her cupcake. "We can't go there. Bad idea."

  Another bit of enchilada went into Sharon's mouth. "Then we have to cast a spell." She looked up at the sky as if an answer would appear in the smoky letters of a skywriter plane. "Last year you stole frogs from the lab, right?"

  Daphne frowned and bit into her cupcake. "They never proved it was me."

  "You said it was because of your spell, that protective spell." Sharon crossed herself in the Catholic tradition. "Why don't we cast a spell like that so no one finds out about this? To protect ourselves?" Sharon watched her finish her cupcake. "We could at least say a prayer for Christina. Light a candle?"

  Daphne nodded. It was scary how she believed every mystical charm. If some detective asked her what happened, Sharon could actually tell the truth like some kind of idiot. "Okay. If you insist, let's go to higher ground." She picked up the rose and waved it at the green apple on Sharon's tray. "Are you gonna eat that?"

  "I thought you wanted me to."

  "Save it." She faked a smile. "We'll bring it to the bluffs as an offering."

  High above the river, the air tasted like grassy topsoil and decay, but the view of the leafy hilltops and flowing river below was so exhilarating that Daphne felt she could fly away. There was something intriguing about the impulse, though she knew if she tried she would crack like a melon on the rocks. She inhaled and beamed. "Heavenly, isn't it?"

  "Heavenly." Sharon nodded as she stepped to the edge. Her green eyes sparkled as she turned back. "Is this where you always cast the spells?"

  "Not always." Wriggling out of the backpack, Daphne spread her jacket on the ground so she could sit and watch the idiot. She fished out her supplies: a lighter, some candles, and the trick deck. "It's a tragedy so few of us know about this, but that's why it's so nice, too."

  "Yeah. It's nice up here except for that." Sharon pointed at a hundred-foot tree below. "That's the Killing Tree, where my cousin bled his first deer. He was so proud, he brought me to see it, but I hate hunting. I was glad when they finally gave that land to the government."

  "Tax write-off?"

  Sharon nodded and stepped toward Daphne, who was laying black tapers out on her jacket. "How did you know?"

  "My father does that whenever he needs a tax break. Problems of abundance."

  Sharon nodded. "Hey. I didn't see him at the parents' picnic. How is your dad?" Daphne was grinding her teeth again and Sharon must have sensed her irritation. She changed the subject. "Do you always use black candles for spells?"

  "Only death spells." A flicker of fear in Sharon's eyes passed as quickly as it had come. She believed all Daphne's lies about magic, but nothing practical about protecting herself from jail.

  "Is that why you used them at the poker game?"

  "No." Daphne stabbed three candles into the topsoil, in a triangular formation. "That was accidental."

  "Oh." Sharon pursed her lips, eyes watering as though she was about to weep. "Sorry." She picked up a fallen limb and poked it into the bobbing doilies of Queen Anne's lace that fringed the cliff. "Don't you need, like, tarot cards or something occult?"

  "Would you stop talking for a minute?" Stupid girl. "Am I the Mistress here?" Sharon nodded. "Then keep quiet. We have to clear our heads before any of this will work. Don't say anything while I sort out the altar. Got it?"

  Sharon held out the apple and raised a brow at the ocher stain of rot caving in around the stem. "Do you need this now?" Daphne glared a wall between them that stopped Sharon from breathing. "I'm sorry," Sharon said as she put the apple back into her pocket. "I'm asking too many questions."

  "You're nervous." Daphne faked a smile. "Let's talk. Tell me how I chose my name."

  "You mean Daphne? Daughter of the river god." Sharon nodded, eyes agleam. "You took it from Apollo and Daphne in Mythology 101. Because of the current and the way the story seemed to juice you up. You said it gave you a charge."

  "Right. Her delight was in sport and the spoils of the chase. The river was her rapture, that and the woods." Daphne lit the candles and said, "Go stand by the cliff. Clear your head. Imagine the river god in the current. Just listen to the music of the water. Feel it carry you away."

  "I like the sound of water." Sharon nodded and turned and walked to the edge. She turned back. "But you know what? I still miss Cornell. And you won't believe this, but I miss Christina, too. I hate what we did, but at least we have each other." Facing the gorge, she said, "How long do I do this?"

  What a moron. "However long it takes." Daphne rubbed her aching temples. Sharon had been a lamebrain during the cover-up and now again since Christina's body had risen. Like her mythological namesake, Charon the ferryman to Hades, Sharon could lead them both to hell, but Daphne was not going down, now or ever, and especially not because of some dumb chick named Sharon. She pictured the freak as Medusa, paddling into the underworld, and giddiness took hold. Swallowing hard, she stifled a laugh. Wouldn't the entire human gene pool improve without Sharon Hicks, Lamebrain of the Century? Daphne's future looked a lot cheerier without that imbecile in the picture. She took a step toward her.

  Sharon shuffled backward and said, "How do you know when you're finished?" Pebbles tumbled down the cliff.

  Seeing Sharon on the ledge was too much. Daphne's cheeks glowed, her stomach tingled with urgency. "Have you been baptized?" She took a giant breath and exhaled, feeling stronger by
the second as she walked toward the cliff.

  "No. Why?"

  "Maybe you should pray for forgiveness."

  Sharon turned around. "What?"

  "Pray." Something surged inside and Daphne lunged.

  Sharon's body betrayed her. Her back twisted. Her knees buckled. Her shocked face gave Daphne a strange sense of satisfaction as she stepped forward to watch the fall. Sharon had dropped twenty feet when her coppery head smacked on something, making her body jerk before splashing down another forty feet into the eddy.

  She looked a lot better underwater. Her white jacket puffed out around her like wings. She wouldn't be worrying anymore.

  Daphne heard something. She turned to check the staircase for any witnesses, but no one was there. Just distant thunder. Lightning charged the sky. Five counts later came the bang.

  She looked up, but the heavens gave no comfort. Clouds raced past and the wind shook the trees like Furies streaming down the river, the leaves shivering in gusts that moved from tree to tree. The foliage and sky were tearing themselves apart.

  She shouldn't have looked back down the bluffs but she did.

  In the river, Sharon looked up breathlessly, her body swirling like a leaf. The body whirled around and around, spinning, and dizziness swept over Daphne. She closed her eyes and shuddered at the thousand-mile-an-hour spin of planet Earth. Loose soil gave way underfoot and her reflexes pulled her back as her stomach churned, around and around, like Sharon, far below. She opened her eyes and wished Sharon alive. She wished she hadn't killed her. If only she could press the Undo button, like on a computer, and make it all reverse. Daphne hugged herself and held back the tears. If Sharon hadn't been such a freak, if she had only been able to control herself and keep her mouth shut, she would still be part of the Secret Circle. Daphne felt rotten, and for a moment, she wanted to let herself go, crash on the rocks, and float in the eddy. The whirlpool had become a black void in her soul, and she felt herself falling into despair.

  Then lightning cracked. In three counts came thunder, even closer than before, and beneath the gathering thunderhead she spotted a string of rosary beads—Sharon's. They must have slipped from her pocket. Daphne's breathing quickened as she went for them and the movement of her body snapped her out of her trance.

  However long she'd been there, she had stayed too long. She couldn't look at Sharon again, or the river. One only had to be within hearing distance of thunder to be within striking distance of lightning. Time to save herself.

  Daphne's jacket, candles, and cards still lay on the ground, so she scurried to pick them up. Zipping everything into her backpack, she walked to the steps perched on the cliff. No wonder she could smell the sweat on her skin. She was drenched in it.

  "Terrible shame," she rehearsed as she grabbed the railing. "Sharon was so mad and blue about her boyfriend Cornell after he'd dumped her for Christina. She said she was going up to the trail to clear her head and figure out how to get him back." That would wind things up.

  Through the woods abutting the Sunken Garden, catmint squished underfoot as she trudged. It marked the air with its scent like a cat marking its territory, and she told herself that she had become a mouser cat, killing where needed to safeguard the grounds and ward off the pests. What she'd done was awful, but it was for the greater good. It helped to remember that she was more potent and smarter than anyone, like Daphne, the nymph anointed from beyond. The electricity in the air invigorated her, and she didn't know how she'd ever gotten so low. Right now was the best time of her life. She had never been so free and in control. She could probably make anyone do anything if she put her mind to it. She would never have to kill again. It was all in the past; she had to live in present tense, no matter how painful her remorse.

  Rain sheeted down as she pushed through the locker-room door. Her mouth was pasty. A shot of tequila would have helped her relax, but her head throbbed too much. Maybe some water and a shower would rinse off the day.

  Indoors, where the smell of eucalyptus leaked out of the sauna, she tried to think back. Had she left anything behind to incriminate herself? Somehow she couldn't remember gathering her things, just the experience of vertigo and looking down at Sharon's spinning body. She tried not to think of the cliffs or the river at the water cooler, but the bubbles glugged as she filled her cup and she got a sinking feeling. The sound of water made her wonder. Did God really care about a bunch of stupid kids? She drank as she walked to her locker, and the cool springwater tasted sweet on her tongue. If He did, then wouldn't He in His wisdom understand why she had to get rid of Sharon, if there even was a God, which she seriously doubted? Of course He would forgive her, baptized or not, because she was sorry and He only helped those who helped themselves. She had heard that somewhere and hoped it was true. She had to get rid of the rosary, maybe pick Sharon's locker or stuff it into the vent.

  Daphne set the cup on the bench next to her so she could open her own locker door. The smell of cedar filled her nose as she stowed her backpack inside and ignored Christina's locker in the same row, two down. It was sad, but Christina had brought it on herself, driving them all crazy; she was pathologically pretty on top of being a man thief. As for Sharon, the nitwit had to be silenced so the Circle could continue—for senior year, at least, when she and Piper would host the games to restore harmony in school. The whole game had been for the greater good of her classmates. They had never set out to actually kill anyone. Slipping her dress over her head, she took off her bra and wrapped a towel around her chest. She was taking off her panties when she heard a bubbly freshman call to her.

  "Daphne?" The girl scanned the room, her eyes flicking right and left as she bounded toward her in shorts and a tank of lapis blue. "You don't know me, but we need to talk." Daphne's seat shook as the girl plopped next to her with the energy of a chihuahua, and she looked like one, too, with skinny legs and arms and mouse-ear ponytails.

  Daphne closed the locker and pinned the key to her towel. "Not to be rude, but I'm in a hurry."

  "This is life or death." Tucking a hundred-dollar bill into Daphne's hand, the girl sighed and leaned in. "I'm serious. I have everything to lose."

  "Shush." Daphne felt refreshed as she sensed a flare of excitement deep inside her body. "Keep it down. Someone might hear."

  The girl whispered and cocked her head like a puppy. She smelled like strawberry flavoring. "Madeleine used to be my best friend, but she totally just stabbed me in the back. She's been stealing my clothes and turning my friends against me, gossiping. Not to call a spade a spade, but I swear she wants to take my life from me. She's even sleeping with my boyfriend." The girl squinted and stunned Daphne by patting her on the thigh. "Your brother said to ask you about the Secret Circle." She hesitated before shooting out the words: "Will you invite me? You know. Liquor up front and poker in the rear?"

  Piper had revealed the code. The surge returned. In that instant, the current of omnipotence fed her veins. A warm force surged through her body; she could do anything. She knew the craving and the alchemy. All she had to do was keep playing the game. "So, go ahead. Ask."

  "Okay. I've got more for you, if you trust me." The girl opened her purse. Inside was a bottle of Cuervo. "Are you really the Mistress of Poker and Shooter?"

  The Monks of the Abbey Victoria

  Rupert Holmes

  Heads had been known to roll in the RCA Building like cabbages in a coleslaw factory. The maroon hallway carpet on the twenty-first floor often doubled as conveyor belt to the waiting express elevator, which was always eager to facilitate an executive's plummet back down to the street. I'd hardly been at the network a month when I found my own fair-haired cranium poised fetchingly on the chopping block. But at least I didn't lack for company.

  "This memo in my hand."

  Ken Compton, Vice-President of Programming but second to no network chieftain in his wrath, flourished the document for the four of us to see. The four of us were attorney Shepard Spitz of Practices and Standard
s, Matty Dancer from Variety and Specials, Harv Braverman in Public Relations, and myself, Dale Winslow, from the catchall hopper dubbed "Broadcasting." As department heads, we formed the quartet that reported directly to Compton, with News, Sports, and Original Programming having their own hierarchy within both the network and the building. I'd been brought on board to achieve the goal of broadcasting in compatible color from sign-on right up through "Sermonette." Even the National Anthem and the test pattern were going to be in color.

  "This memo in my hand," Compton reiterated. "It's worth more to our enemy up the block than the sum total of your lifetime incomes, including retirement benefits. That's without even factoring in the possibility that one of you won't be working here tomorrow."

  We sat across his desk, four boarding-school students caught smoking behind the sports-equipment shed.

  "Let me tell you how ultra hush-hush this memo was." He leaned forward as if betraying troop locations in Korea. "I typed it myself."

  There could be no clearer proof of how seriously Ken Compton feared intranetwork espionage than that he would endure the humiliation of sitting at his secretary's desk to hunt and peck on her electric typewriter. He'd had this fixation since Ted Thissel, my immediate predecessor, had been suspected of selling the previous season's fall schedule to CBS, forcing Compton to relocate some audience favorites to unfamiliar time slots, a last-minute move which many thought had cost us dearly in the ratings.

  "Do you know where I found this memo?" he asked. "Let me tell you where I found this memo. Propped behind a bottle of Vitalis above the sink in the executive washroom. If I hadn't been the next one in there, this document could have been filched by the cleaning lady and sold to those vipers at CBS."

  The image of our Mrs. Dawkins sitting patiently in William Paley's outer office, bucket and mop at her side, was the only thing amusing about the moment.

  "Spitz, I gave it to you first. Who had it last?"