Bleeding Violet

by Dia Reeves

  “I can’t believe Poppa warned me not to hurt you!” I hitched the head higher on my hip and stormed off.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Away from you, murderer!” I began to jog, the heels of my boots ringingly loud against the sidewalk.

  “You can’t run around in the streets this close to the dark park! Are you crazy?”

  “What do you care? Afraid I’ll get killed? By someone else? Do you own that privilege, Wyatt?”

  He grabbed me from behind and hustled me across the street toward the dark park. Probably to push me in with all the monsters and let them finish me off. When I whirled on him, to clobber him with the head, I realized I was about to take my anger out on Shoko, not Wyatt.

  I also realized that she and I weren’t anywhere near the dark park, but down the street from my house. She must have taken me through a hidden door; I hadn’t even noticed.

  But my stomach noticed. The disorientation made me hurl again.

  Shoko watched me unload all over the sidewalk, impassively, and when I was done she marched me up the street to my house.

  She said, “I don’t give a damn one way or another, but Wyatt would be crushed if something happened to you, and then he’d be no good to us.” She looked me over. “It’d be a shame to lose a good fighter over something stupid.”

  She pushed me toward my porch, and I nearly toppled over, the weight of the head unbalancing me. She waited for me to go inside, so I did just to get away from her.

  Rosalee sat in the living room, reading. Pretending to read. Whenever she was home and I was out, she always waited up for me in the living room. Seeing her reminded me why I had put myself through all the past weeks of danger and weirdness. Because I knew she cared deep down, and now she could admit it.

  “Catch.” I heaved the head at her, and she dodged out of the way. A good thing, as something in the chair snapped beneath the weight of the hard head.

  Rosalee stared at it wide-eyed, watched it leak onto the chair. “What’s that?”

  “I went on a hunt with the Mortmaine.” Just Shoko and Wyatt, who was only an initiate, but Rosalee didn’t need to know everything. “I killed a hardhead queen. That’s her head. Now you know I can take care of myself. Now you can stop treating me like a ghost.”

  Rosalee put her hands over her mouth, the way beauty queens do just before they burst into tears. Had I moved her to tears?

  I reached for her. “Momma?”

  Her hands fell away from her face. She wasn’t even close to tears. Just the same stony expression as she grabbed my slimy arm and pulled me toward the front door.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Dallas. I’m driving you there right now.”

  I felt as though I were inside the queen again, upside-down and suffocating. “Why?”

  Rosalee brought me to a halt and shook me. “You went alone into the dark park—”

  “I wasn’t alone!”

  “—and fought a monster! You think that’s what I want? You think that makes me happy? That after Joosef went through all the trouble to bring you up right, two weeks with me and you become this?”

  She took me in, the goo and filth. “Maybe you think this is an improvement, but I don’t. You’re going back to Ulla. I’ll work something out with her so she’ll—”

  “Aunt Ulla doesn’t want me!”

  “I don’t care what she wants! I don’t care what you want!” Her stony expression had cracked wide open, her true feelings plain to see, but none of those emotions was happiness. Or love. Only fear. “You’re not staying here in this goddamned town!”

  As Rosalee yanked me toward the door, I snatched up a table lamp and swung it at the back of her head, hard enough for the bulb to explode.

  She hit the front door and bounced off it, falling over backward to the floor.

  I froze, the lamp cold in my hands.

  I was caught in an endless loop—first Aunt Ulla, now Rosalee. Maybe I would always come back to this place—a weapon in my hand, a body at my feet.

  Poppa stepped up from behind me, a cold presence in his vanilla suit and violet tie. “This is your hell,” he said, “and this time an ax won’t free you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Pieces were still missing from the left side of Poppa’s face, as though something had been nibbling on him. But he was a welcome sight just the same. “Oh, Poppa, what did I do?”

  “You bashed your mother over the head,” was his prompt reply.

  “Oh my God.” I dropped to the floor beside Rosalee’s body, beyond grateful to see the rise and fall of her chest. I scrambled to my feet, hauled her closer to the end table, and positioned the broken lamp beside her head, careful of the squishy dent I’d made in it.

  “Now when she wakes up,” I whispered, “she’ll think she tripped, fell, and hit her head on the end table. She won’t know I did it. She won’t blame me.”

  “Who says she’ll wake up?” Poppa said, with his fearless ability to face facts.

  Not like me.

  The anger, the fear, everything fled, whooshing out of me as though I were a tire and someone had run up behind me and slashed me with a knife. I escaped upstairs, sank into bed, and pulled the covers over my head so that no one would see me. I stank of blood and sweat and hardhead gloop. Maybe the gloop was toxic; maybe it would poison me, like radon.

  Poppa crowded next to me on the bed, the way he did sometimes when I was scared. He said, “We have to talk.”

  “What’s there to talk about? Rosalee’s dead. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To take her with you?”

  “Then why I am up here with you?”

  “Because I’m going to die too. Because I’m going to slit my throat. Better death than a hospital for the criminally insane.”

  “You need to fix this.”

  “How?” I was surprised he wasn’t in support of the throat-slitting idea. Then I remembered his run-in with Swan, how she’d altered his views on suicide.

  Or maybe Poppa had changed his mind about wanting to be with me. After what I’d done to Rosalee, I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to be with me either.

  Poppa said, “Remember what Wyatt said about the door knocker on his house?”

  “He said it’s a Key.”

  “What else?”

  I had to think about it. “He said … it opens doors?”

  “That’s not all it does. It grants wishes. All Keys do.”

  “Like a stupid fairy tale?”

  “It’s no fairy tale.”

  “It is. You’re not even here. You’re not real. I’m dreaming. It’s all a dream. Please?” I thought of Rosalee lying downstairs, and a layer of ice formed in my belly. “Please, be a dream.”

  “In Portero, many strange things are real. And so if everything is real, why not wishes?” Such logic my Poppa had. “Wouldn’t it be nice to wish away the crater you put in Rosalee’s head?”

  “Really nice.” I hardly dared say the words. Hardly dared believe it could be true.

  “All you have to do is touch the Key and make a wish.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well”—he ripped the covers off me and shooed me out of bed—“there are always complications, aren’t there?”

  “Like what?”

  But he was too busy rifling through my armoire to answer. “All this purple is ridiculous,” he told me, handing me a nightgown. “You don’t even like purple.”

  “You like it.”

  “I never immersed myself in it the way you do. You need to learn moderation, Hanna.”

  “I know.” I removed my sticky dress and boots and washed up in the bathroom. I wasn’t embarrassed for Poppa to see me naked. We’d sauna’ed together, after all. What was nudity between family?

  I put on the nightgown and went downstairs, careful not to look at Rosalee sprawled on the floor—if I couldn’t see she was dead, she wouldn’t be.

  I went to the garage for the bike. No. Where w
ould Poppa ride? The handlebars? I went back inside and snagged Rosalee’s car keys from the rack by the front door.

  I remembered the way to Wyatt’s house and soon found myself on Carmona. Poppa rode shotgun, less animated than before, light snaking over his pale face.

  “What’s it like being dead?”

  “Like anything else.”

  “Are you … did you go to heaven, at least?”

  “There’s no such thing as heaven. Or hell. Not for me.”

  “So what do you do all day?”

  He turned his gray gaze on me. The longing in his eyes was bottomless. “I think about you. And Rosalee.” He looked out the window. “We’re here.”

  I slammed on the brakes, surprised, and hit the steering wheel hard with my chest because I had forgotten to buckle up.

  As I went up Wyatt’s stoop, the stone beneath my bare feet still warm from the day’s heat, I heard sounds from the open windows of his neighbors: a sitcom laugh track, people arguing about a burnt roast.

  The smell of the burnt roast turned my stomach, and I realized I was frightened. The twisted Key swam before me, gleaming darkly. If this didn’t work …

  “It will.” Poppa stood at the curb near Rosalee’s red Prius. The light from a nearby streetlamp gave him a weird broken shadow. “Make your wish.”

  I touched the Key, and a hideously unpleasant zap rocketed through my elbow, as though someone had whacked my funny bone with a ball-peen hammer. But I held on. “I wish—”

  The pain was immediate. Searing. I screeched and skipped backward, but I couldn’t skip far. My hand stuck fast to the Key, sizzling.

  “Poppa!”

  No answer. I looked back for him, but he was gone. Of course Poppa was gone; he’d never been. But I wasn’t alone. Someone raced up the stoop toward me.

  Wyatt’s dad.

  He dropped a flat box at my feet, spilling leftover pizza near the door. The aroma of sausage and garlic eclipsed the burnt roast smell. He put his hand on the door above the Key. “Let go.”

  “I can’t!”

  But he wasn’t talking to me. It was weird, but the Key let go of me. I collapsed to the stoop, cradling my hand to my stomach.

  Wyatt’s dad crouched beside me. “Let me see.” He coaxed me to uncurl my hand. The skin of my palm was blackened and peeling like charred paper. Inflamed tissue peeped here and there, red and angry-looking.

  Sera climbed the stoop and joined her husband, Paulie asleep on her shoulder, a blue balloon tied around his tiny wrist. She rolled her eyes at me. “Stupid transy.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Asher retrieved the dropped pizza box, opened the door, and stepped aside to let his wife and child move past him into the house. He took me by the elbow. “I think you’d better come in too.”

  “My hand.” He seemed confused until I showed him my burnt flesh again.

  “We can take care of that,” he said as he took me inside.

  Even worse than my hand was the pain of knowing that I’d failed, that Rosalee was dead or dying and I hadn’t even made the wish.

  Wyatt’s dad parked me in a chair, shushing me and patting my back because I was crying and useless and alone.

  A moment later a cool, soothing tingle settled over my burnt palm. I wiped my eyes as Asher knelt before me and slathered the popcorn-colored contents of a brown jar into my hand. “Better?”

  I nodded. Much better. Only a vague memory of pain remained. I fingered the paste. “What is this?”

  Asher frowned at me, and I understood then that he was confused because I was still speaking Finnish. I had been all along with Poppa and hadn’t switched gears. I repeated myself in English.

  “Just something Wyatt whipped up.” He looked chagrined. “Did he tell you about making wishes on our Key?”

  Actually my dead father had told me, but I knew better than to say that aloud. “It came to me in a dream,” I said, almost truthfully.

  Sera came downstairs. She’d changed clothes and, as if she weren’t scary enough, now looked like a ninja. She went to Asher. “Paulie’s fast asleep, so I’m gone join Wyatt and Shoko, okay?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Upsquare near the mill. Depopulating hardheads. How did she know about the wishing?” She frowned at me. “Did Wyatt tell you?”

  “It came to her in a dream,” said Asher, impressed.

  Sera was not. “Well, don’t think you can get a bigger allowance or a new car by sneaking wishes off our Key.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  Asher said, “I’ll handle it, dear.”

  Sera gave me one last glare, then kissed Asher’s forehead. “Please yourself. I’ll see you later.”

  “Have fun.” When the door closed behind his wife, Asher shot me a conciliatory look. “Trust me. You do not want to get her riled. Now.” He rubbed his hands gleefully. “With her and Wyatt out of the way, there’s no one to interfere.”

  “With what?”

  He shot to his feet. “There’s a spell I’ve been wanting to try out. If it works, it’ll fix the unfortunate sticking side effect of the Key. You want a cool drink?”

  I nodded, and after some time, he returned with a cart, wheeling it over to the couch. A number of items littered the cart, including a pitcher of lemonade, several bundles of herbs, a mixing bowl, a long, thin knife, and several jars.

  One of the jars rattled.

  “A feisty one,” said Asher.

  “A feisty what?”

  He poured my lemonade. “Even with the Key outside the house, sometimes a door opens in here and something gets through. Fortunately,” he nodded to the rattling jar, “we have ways of trapping them. Now, listen up.”

  He gave me a stern look. He didn’t do stern well—discipline was obviously more his wife’s thing. “I don’t want to have to explain this again: The Key isn’t there to be misused.”

  “By wishing for cars and bigger allowances?”

  “And old girlfriends back and rivals to die or loved ones to come back from the dead. You have no idea how chaotic things would get if people started getting their wishes granted willy-nilly. You use the Key to knock on the door, fine. You use the Key to make a wish, forget about it. As you saw, Keys have built-in defenses to keep them from being abused.”

  “If it’s your Key, couldn’t you give me permission to make a wish?”

  “Of course!” he said brightly. “But I won’t, so don’t waste your breath. Nobody’s made a wish on that Key since 1989.” I guess he must have heard every excuse, seen every trick, every angle.

  He probably thought he had.

  “I’ll have to insist, Asher. I’m in a real bind.”

  He seemed to really see me for the first time. I must have looked like a Dickensian orphan, with my dirty bare feet and voluminous nightgown. “You don’t have to stare,” I said, tucking my feet away. “I know what I look like.”

  “You look fine.” His voice was deep with feeling. “You look—” He cleared his throat. “You look like your mother.”

  I had seen that look on Poppa’s face too often not to recognize it. “Do you love her?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t even hesitate.

  “I bet you’d give her a wish.”

  “You’re not your mother,” he said, gentle but firm.

  I decided to back off. Temporarily. “How did you get control over the Key?”

  “I don’t control it. No one does. I watch over it and protect it, but I don’t control it.”

  “But why you?”

  “It’s been in my family for generations. It was fashioned from my great-grandmother’s bones.”

  I thought back to Wyatt’s story.

  “The creature Runyon tortured was your aunt? How’s that possible?”

  “She wasn’t a creature,” he said indignantly. “She was human. Human enough for him to get her pregnant.”

  My mouth dropped. “Runyon raped her?”

  Asher blinked at me, abashed. “Wyatt sai
d he told you.”

  “Not that Anna was raped. Jesus.”

  “Oh, yeah.” His smile was bright and bitter as poison. “Runyon got Anna pregnant so that if his Key-making scheme didn’t work, he’d have a backup in place. A spare to practice on. But a year after Anna’s daughter was born, the Mayor got wise to what Runyon had done and paid him a visit. She took the Key and Anna’s daughter and put them in the hands of the Mortmaine.

  “Eventually the daughter grew up and had daughters of her own, one of whom was my mother, who got possession of the Key. It used to be there, over the mantel, but having it inside the house opened too many doors. Couldn’t even open the pantry without something leaping out at you. Do you have a feather, by chance?” he asked, patting himself down.

  “No. Sorry.”

  He pulled a feather from his own pocket and dropped it into the mixing bowl, turning its contents a hideous hot pink.

  I watched Asher with new respect. “Wyatt said there’s no such thing as magic.”

  Asher harrumphed. “Typical teen. Thinks he knows everything. Doesn’t understand that the world’s full of mysteries. ‘You only call it magic when you don’t understand it.’” His mockery of Wyatt was spot-on. “If the world is full of mysteries, can anything ever truly be understood?”

  He shook his head at his son’s presumption, running the knife along his finger, letting his blood drip into the bowl. The contents turned from hot pink to the crystal clear of springwater. Then he wheeled the cart to the front door and opened it. The heat outdoors quickly sucked the cool air from the room as he painted the Key with the clear mixture, making it glossier.

  Asher then used an oven mitt to lift a red licorice-length needle from the cart. It smoldered when he touched it to the door and carved a small ring of shapes. Glyphs.

  He tossed the stick onto the cart and, without looking, reached back for one of the jars, the rattling one, which he smashed against the door as if christening a ship.

  A concussive boom blew him out of the doorway and flung me and the yellow chair I was sitting in backward to fetch up against the wall.