“I don’t have to assume. He admitted it. And he was afraid to tell me any more than that. Well, I’m not afraid of you. If you think your little show the other day is going to intimidate me, you’re dead wrong.”
“Look, I’m sorry. Okay? I didn’t—”
“Yeah. Sure. Are you sorry about that other kid? The one you were talking about?” When I stay silent, clenching my teeth, Sophie’s lip curls. “That’s what I thought.”
“You don’t understand. I didn’t have any choice.”
“Uh-huh. And what happens when William pisses you off? When he figures you out? When he tries to get away from you? Is that what you’ll say then?”
I want to respond, to defend myself, but the unblinking shine of green eyes in the dark flashes through my mind, a small bloody body tumbling onto the stones. What I’ve already done to make William cooperate. But that was different. That was life or death. What else was I supposed to do?
“I’m not having this conversation.” I turn my back on her, start toward the house.
“Maybe you should be afraid of me, Skye,” she yells after me. “I’ve got leverage on you. And I’ll use it!”
I can’t walk away from that. And she knows it.
“Yeah, that got your attention, didn’t it? Who else knows about all that shit you told us?” She watches me through narrowed eyes, considering. “Do your parents?”
My voice locks in my throat. My parents. My clueless, grieving parents.
“They don’t, do they?” Sophie takes a step closer, sensing weakness. “Want to find out what they’d do with that information? Want to find out what they’d think?”
“Leave them alone. They’re falling apart as it is.”
“Sure, go on lying to them, I don’t care. As long as you leave William alone.”
“But I can’t!” I can’t explain. I have to try. I refuse to turn around, to scan the woods, though the faint silver sound of a bell dances out from between the trees. “Look, I had reasons for telling you. I’m…I’m in over my head here, okay?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
A hundred responses flicker through my head. All of them impossible. I know exactly how it’ll sound if I make any mention of them, and they won’t hesitate to stop her. “I can’t control what happens if you try to get in my way, Sophie. Do you get that?” I draw a long breath, force the words out. I have to try. “You’re my friend. They could—you could get hurt.”
“Is that supposed to be scary?” Sophie sneers. “What kind of friend are you supposed to be, exactly? Don’t think this is some sort of mutually assured destruction. I trusted you with something. And that was stupid of me, apparently. But sure, go ahead. Spread it around. See if anyone believes you. I can survive a few rumors. I think you have more to lose than I do.”
“That’s not what I meant. My sister’s already in danger. So is William. I—”
“Oh, right. Your sister. Boo-hoo, poor Skye, her sister’s missing. William fell for that all over again, didn’t he? Don’t you dare threaten him.”
“I’m not.” The words tremble; my heartbeat fills my head. “I’m trying to warn you. I never wanted—”
“You don’t visit him, you don’t call him, you don’t text.” She counts the conditions off her fingers. “You don’t talk to him at school. Leave him alone. The second I hear otherwise, I’ll be on your doorstep, and your whole act comes crashing down. Got it?”
“What are you going to do?” I cry. “Bug his phone? Read his messages?”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. Her house is right down the hill from William’s. She’s lived here her whole life, the whole neighborhood is eyes and ears for her. But how am I going to do this without anyone seeing me and William together, now that he’s gotten dragged into it too? Panic snakes over me like twining vines. I need William to make this work. But God, if my parents find out about Tyler… My heart goes cold and small, flinching from the thought. But the only way to avoid it is to break my deal with the monsters and let the woods come after us through the walls.
The Queen of Swords never has choices.
“Got it?” Sophie repeats, louder this time. It doesn’t matter what I say. At my back, the trees creak and mutter in the wind.
“Kevin was right about you,” she says when I stay silent, shaking her head in slow disgust. “I should have fucking known. You’re just as creepy as your sister.”
When she walks away, she knows she’s won. I can see it in her long steps, the toss of her hair. She reaches the road without looking back once. She’ll be out of sight soon, behind the screen of trees.
My chest is full of stones again, a crushing, choking weight. I have to apologize. I have to scream, or cry, or tackle her, anything to claw my way out of this impossible trap I’ve landed myself in. This is why William broke down and talked to her in the first place. He was desperate. Just not desperate enough to give in.
Wingbeats over my head make me jump. A crow, two crows, go sailing out over the treetops. Following her. And the sound of the bell darts away, across the lot, in their wake.
It could be coincidence. It could be nothing.
“Don’t.” It comes out a squeak, a plea. They won’t listen. I sound like prey. “Come on. I’ll figure this out. Leave her alone.”
How many of them can you protect, Queen of Swords? comes the mocking answer, a flicker of a touch against my ear. Like a snake’s tongue. Whose champion are you?
I jerk away from it and head for the house. Not running. I fumble for my phone in my pocket. But just like every other time I’ve looked at it today, nothing has changed: no calls, no messages. I dial William’s number with shaking fingers. I wait with my teeth clenched for the call to go through. It rings twice before going to voice mail. Blocked.
If he keeps ignoring me, I’ll lose. All this will be for nothing if I lose.
I can’t lose.
Twenty-Three
A rattling buzz yanks me out of sleep the next morning—my phone, vibrating on the night table, again and again. It’s barely light out. But William’s been texting me. Sending pictures, a whole series of them, flash-lit and bloody, of two corpses heaped side by side on his front walk. I grit my teeth and flick past them, not looking too closely at the fur matted with red, the white flash of brain and bone.
It was easier this time, hauling dead things around. Would anyone get used to it this fast? Maybe I just knew what to expect now. The porcupine was a pain in the ass because I didn’t dare touch it; I had to heft it into Mom’s wheelbarrow with a shovel. At least it wasn’t too hard to keep the red, runny mess that was left of its head out of sight. Without the two long, yellow teeth jutting out of the lower jaw, it wouldn’t even have been recognizable. The rabbit with its throat torn out was almost easy, though its head flopping at an unnatural angle—held on only by gristle—made me swallow hard. At least it didn’t smell like the raccoon did.
I had to take the wheelbarrow right up onto the Wrights’ lawn. Thankfully there was no frost to leave tracks in. I couldn’t just leave them there in a heap, though. I had to make it impossible to ignore. So I lined them up carefully, shoving the porcupine around with a branch, so they lay prone side by side, pointing at the door. Like Mog’s offerings used to be. Just bigger.
Maybe it worked.
The phone buzzes again, and William’s number eclipses the photos. Reluctantly, I swipe at the screen to pick up.
“Did you see?” he demands without preamble, his voice half an octave higher than usual. “What is this? What the actual fuck is this?”
There. That’s more like it. I lean back against the headboard, gone shaky under the waterfall of relief. If it takes me a second to come up with an answer, that only makes sense, right?
“It’s supposed to scare you, I guess.”
“Well, it’s fucking worki
ng! There was a dead raccoon here yesterday. That could have been a coincidence, right? That wasn’t necessarily—but now—”
“William—”
“The big one’s a porcupine. Something ate its fucking face, Skye, it doesn’t have a face anymore!”
“William. Calm down. You’re going to hyperventilate or something.”
“I am calm! I am. I’m fine. I just—oh my God—it was them, wasn’t it? Obviously it was them. What is this supposed to be, some sort of message?”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“Listen, I know I said—”
“William. You know why they’re doing this. All right? They already told you what they want. It’s like—it’s like the roots in my basement. You know?”
There’s a long pause; his rapid breathing is the only sound. That’s enough. Surely that’s enough. What more can it take?
“I had three days,” I say, finally, when he still doesn’t speak. “Maybe they’re counting for you.”
“Oh my God,” he says, the words choked. “This can’t be happening. Look. I need—I need your help. Can you come over? Please?”
“I shouldn’t even be talking to you. Sophie’s blackmailing me into cutting you off.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“She said she’d tell my parents about Tyler if I didn’t. You must have really freaked her out when she came over yesterday.”
A silence. “Look. No one’s up. No one needs to know, okay? She won’t find out from me. I promise.”
“William.”
“Ten minutes.” His voice is fraying. “That’s all I’m asking for. Please. I can’t do this by myself.”
I shouldn’t risk it. Not for this. But when I close my eyes, the creak of the wheelbarrow echoes in my head. And I need him to trust me.
“Ten minutes,” I sigh. “I’m on my way.”
“Okay,” he whispers. “Just—hurry. Please.”
* * *
William, in sweatpants and a ragged T-shirt, is sitting on the front step with his head in his hands. Partway down the walk, a faded sheet is spread over two humped shapes.
“I couldn’t look anymore,” he says as I skirt around it, through the grass.
“Yeah,” I manage. “Understandable.”
“They didn’t leave anything at your place, did they?”
“No. But the roots…they’re all through the wall. They came right through it, the night before last. My parents are freaking out. Tree roots aren’t supposed to do that.”
“The night before last?” The glasses make his face rounder, somehow unguarded. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I tried to call. Yesterday.”
I speak gently, but the words are arrows. He folds his arms across his stomach, sinks forward a little, and doesn’t answer.
“Come on.” I pick up the edge of the sheet. “Let’s get this over with. We can use this to carry them, right?”
Neither of us wants to look too closely, much less touch them. In the end, I pull a shovel from the shed and roll the bodies onto the sheet. We haul them across the yard that way, in a long sling. I assign William to take the lead, so he can keep his eyes forward. We tip them into the brush at the back of the lot, and I drop the bloodstained sheet, stuck through with porcupine quills, carefully into the trash.
When I come back out of the garage, William is leaning on the shovel, staring down at the dark stains on the stone. That was me. That heartsick look he’s wearing—that’s what I’ve done. What I had to do. Before I can think better of it, I put an arm around him. He doesn’t shrug it off.
“They’re not going to let this go,” he says, not looking up. “Are they.”
“Everything okay?”
The call comes from behind us. Bill Wright steps out the front door in slippers, a mug of coffee steaming in one hand, frowning at us.
“You look like somebody died,” he says.
Under my hand, William’s shoulder goes rigid. “It’s fine, Dad.”
“We just…we found a dead animal.” I let my hand drop. Try to speak naturally. Shit. I knew it, I knew this was a bad idea. It’s not like I can tell Bill not to mention my visit. “On the steps. We took care of it.”
“Again?” He comes over to look at the blood on the stones. “Huh. That must have been a hell of a mess.”
William nods, his eyes fixed on the ground again. His dad breaks into a smile, claps a hand over his shoulder.
“Well, as long as you kept your breakfast down, eh?” He leans toward me. “He’s got a bleeding heart, our William. We used to have to have funerals for dead snakes on the road.”
William doesn’t speak. A muscle jumps in his jaw. Bill laughs.
“Don’t worry, I won’t stick around and embarrass you. Just letting Skye know she doesn’t need to beat up on you to get her way.” He actually winks at me. “Eh?”
“Right,” I say faintly, “I’ll remember that.”
A honk from the road makes me jump, and I turn to see Sophie leaning out the window of a silver SUV.
“Well, good morning,” she calls. I flinch, and hate myself for it.
Bill nudges William. “Look at that, son. You’ve got all the pretty girls coming out of the woodwork.” Sophie laughs, on cue as always. She’s even convincing.
“I just stopped to tell Skye I’ll be over later today,” she says sweetly, her smile bright as the glint of keys clutched between knuckles. “We have a lot to talk about. Don’t we?”
I lift my chin and return her pointed look.
“I’ll be there.” My voice is even, at least. This is my own goddamn fault. I should never have come up here.
“Good,” Bill says, as Sophie waves and pulls away. “Excellent. I told your mom this would blow over, son, didn’t I?”
William takes a long, slow breath before answering. “Yup.”
“Exactly.” If Bill notices the tension in William’s voice, he ignores it, raising his mug in a sardonic salute. “You’re lucky someone around here remembers what it’s like to be a teenager.”
The door swings closed behind him. After an endless few heartbeats of thrumming silence, William hurls the shovel aside. It hits the rocks with a clang.
* * *
When the doorbell rings, it punches my breath from my lungs. So this is it. At least it’ll be over soon. What’s worse, having to bring the sky crashing down on yourself or waiting for it to fall?
Voices drift down the hall as I shuffle from Deirdre’s room. Mom’s sounds full of hopeful surprise at first, but gradually turns worried and wary.
“Skye, do you want to join us?” Mom calls from the kitchen. Her voice is dangerous but civil; she’s already on high alert.
“Not really,” I mutter, but I slide into the chair she’s pointing at. Sophie perches on the seat across from me, her composure flawless.
“Anything you want to say, Skye?” Sophie asks softly. Like an executioner allowing their victim a few last words.
“There’s no point,” I tell the floor. My heart is a wingbeat in my ears. “Knock yourself out.”
“I would really like to know what this is about, please,” Mom says.
“Well.” Sophie speaks carefully, like she’s choosing her words. “The other day, when Skye…lost her temper on us. She told us something that we’ve been talking about, and we thought you should probably hear.”
Mom doesn’t look at me. “And that is?”
Sophie opens her mouth, but she’s interrupted by the frantic, rapid-fire chime of the doorbell being mashed several times in quick succession. All three of us sit frozen for a moment before Mom pushes herself up from the table and hurries down the stairs to answer it.
“Mrs. Mackenzie?” a familiar voice pants. “Is Sophie here?”
“She is, ac
tually,” Mom says, “we were just sitting down to talk about something. Is everything—”
“It’s fine, it’s great,” William says. “Mind if I join you?”
He comes springing up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his cheeks and nose bright red from the cold, still breathing hard. He meets my stare, then Sophie’s. He looks like he ran the whole way here.
“All right,” Mom says, sitting again while William braces himself against his knees, catching his breath, “someone really needs to explain what’s going on here.”
“I was just saying,” Sophie picks up after exchanging a look with William, “that before she attacked us, Skye was telling us about this guy from her old school.” I close my eyes. Waiting for the axe to fall. “Someone who was bothering her sister. It sounded like she hurt him pretty bad, and we thought—”
Then William’s voice slices quietly through hers, through the scream building in my chest.
“That’s not true.”
There’s an endless, crushing silence. I can’t breathe. Mom looks back and forth between the two of them with a stone face that could rival mine.
“Excuse me?” Sophie says, with a winded half laugh, a sound of utter, furious disbelief.
“I said, it’s not true. I’m really sorry, Mrs. Mackenzie, but she’s making this up. I was there. That’s not what happened.”
“Are you kidding me?” Sophie doesn’t raise her voice, but anyone at school would have scurried from it like bugs hiding from the light. “You’re trying to cover for her now? What the hell, William?”
“Back off, Sophie. I mean it.”
“You’re seriously doing this. You’re seriously going to do this after I came over yesterday and—”
“She’s jealous,” William says grimly, raising his voice a little to cut her off. “That’s all this is. I don’t know if Skye mentioned it, but Sophie and I went out for a while last year. She’s been trying to blackmail Skye into staying away from me. And now she’s mad that it didn’t work.”
Mom’s eyebrows climb higher and higher as this exchange goes on, but otherwise her expression doesn’t change.
“You did not just say that,” Sophie breathes.
Here There Are Monsters Page 20
