Every place we lived, I usually snuck out of my room the first night and traced the windows and outer doors with the wand Gran left, feeling my will bleed through the rowan wood and into the fabric of the walls themselves. She called it “wardin’” or “closin’ up the house.” Dad called it “that old Appalachia foolishness,” but never very loudly, and he never stopped me.
Too much of what Gran taught me was useful. He just made a token protest, that was all. I never pointed out that the protest was ridiculous, considering his line of work. It was just one of those things.
Sometimes I almost saw those thin blue lines running like lightning over the physical texture of the walls and windows. This time, it seemed like they were getting stronger, the lightning crackling together and concentrating, repelling something.
Holy shit.
The stairs creaked. The house responded, singing its almost-morning song under a blanket of snow. Yesterday the front yard had been a carpet of white, only barely broken by nubs where the picket fence stood guard, buried under a drift.
The front door did not creak. It just stood there, radiating the secret of something behind it, running with blue light I could almost, almost see. My palms had gone slick with sweat, my mouth cotton-dry and tasting funny, like morning and rust all swilled together.
That’s not rust, Dru. That’s blood. The voice of instinct announced it quite calmly. It’s something weird and it smells like blood. It’s on your front porch, maybe looking at the dead plants in plastic pots you never bothered to move. If you look out the window in the living room, what do you want to bet you’ll see it grinning back at you?
A faint rattling, scratching noise touched the door. I began to feel woozy, thinking of Dad’s bone-scraped fingers screaking against glass.
Little pig, little pig, let me in.
There’s a lot of things in the Real World that can’t cross a threshold without an invitation. Zombies aren’t one of them—but maybe this thing was, and maybe the old ritual of closing up the house Gran had taught me was doing some good.
Maybe? No, definitely. “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin,” I mouthed, as Graves tried to move quietly down the stairs behind me. A board groaned sharply under his weight, and he let out a breath and froze.
The sense of presence leached away, like oily water sliding down a drain. I heard a thin sound that might have been a chuckle or a scream, depending on how far away it was.
I sat down hard on the stairs because my legs wouldn’t hold me up. They were shaking too bad, and weak as wet noodles.
Graves handed me the gun over my shoulder. I took it, not having the heart to tell him the thing at the door was gone. My legs jittered like I’d had a jolt of pure caffeine laced with terror.
Well, I certainly had the terror. It spilled through me, dark as wine and tasting of ash and metal.
“It smells bad,” Graves whispered. “What is it?”
I don’t know enough to even guess. Except just one thing—it’s bad. Really, really bad. I swallowed four or five times, my throat dry as silicon chips. “You can smell that?”
“Yeah. It smells nasty. Something rusting.” His nostrils spread slightly as he inhaled, taking in a gulp of air that flared his rib cage. Muscle stood out in his neck and shoulders. He was shaking, too.
“That’s not rust. It’s blood.” We both let out the breath at the same time, me at the end of my sentence, him as if he’d been waiting for me to exhale. “Are you psychic?”
“Me? No. I can’t even get a date.” He gave me a glance, and his eyes burned sickly phosphorescent green. Against his deadly paleness, the ethnic coloring of his skin drained away to stark white, the glow of his eyes was an insult. “It’s gone, isn’t it.”
“It is.” I wished my legs would stop shaking. “I don’t know what it was.” But I can guess, can’t I? It pretty much means one thing—something so bad even Dad would turn tail and run hard from it.
I just hope I’m wrong.
Dawn came up clear and cold, snow throwing back thin sunlight under an aching-blue sky brushed with high white horsetail clouds. I put on Dad’s Army sweater and his surplus coat, threw on a pair of jeans, stepped into my boots and stamped downstairs. I squinted at the ammo box, which was better than staring at the grease-dusty stain on the carpet.
Did I want to go around armed in broad daylight? It was looking more and more like a good idea. But still, the thought of getting caught with a firearm, no good ID, and no good explanation why I was packing heat was daunting.
To say the least.
“I still think I should go with you,” Graves said. He leaned against the door to the living room, hands stuffed in his jeans pockets.
I shook my head, my braid bumping my shoulder. I’d drenched my hair in conditioner and braided it back, wanting it out of the way. “Dad would kill me if I dragged a civilian into this.” I winced inwardly as soon as I said it, soldiered on. “Best thing for you to do is forget you ever saw any of this and go back to getting through high school.” Since something hinky is knocking at my front door and I can’t blow town unless I have the truck. You’re already too involved.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged, thin shoulders rising and dropping. “Fat chance. What are you going to do, anyway?”
I cast another longing look at the ammo crate and picked up my backpack. The glare of snow outside made the bare walls even whiter, the bullet holes next to Graves standing out in sharp relief. “I’m going to make a phone call.”
“Who you calling? Ghostbusters?”
I suppose you had to make that joke sooner or later. I mentally reviewed everything in my backpack, ran over how much money I had again. “I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know who you’re calling?” His unibrow peaked on either side, forehead wrinkling as he mulled this over. “Jesus.”
“Look, I’ve been doing this most of my life. I can do without the editorial.” I thought about it for a few more moments, then strode over to the smaller weapons crate and dug for a few seconds, coming up with a switchblade. I pressed the button and was rewarded with a snick! as the suicide spring unleashed the stiletto. I studied the silver coating along the flat.
Silver doesn’t belong on the edge where it can be sharpened off. If you load a blade along the flat, it might disturb the balance, but it stops a lot of things cold. And I could explain a military-surplus stiletto-style switchblade a lot easier than a firearm. I was pretty sure I could even talk myself out of getting detained if all I had on me was a blade.
I pressed the button and used the top of the weapons crate to close the knife, stuffed it in my jacket pocket.
Graves shrugged and peeled himself away from the wall. “I’m going with you.”
“Look—” But he was already gone. I heard him take the stairs two at a time and guessed he was heading for his coat.
What could I say? He’d already been bitten. Once the Real World gets its teeth in you, it’s hard to go back to nine-to-five and Happy Meals.
And . . . well, I listened to him moving around upstairs and could almost pretend he was Dad.
My conscience pinched me, hard, right in the middle of my chest. Dru, you can’t let him in on this. He’s already been banged around and bitten. He might get worse if he gets mixed up further.
But I was a kid too, and on my own. I wanted some help and he was looking like the best help I was going to get.
It wasn’t fair.
But I’d gotten him bit—I wasn’t naïve enough to think the burning dog and the werwulf had just been in the neighborhood and wanted an Orange Julius after closing hours. Not with something tapping at my door before dawn, too. Something the blue lines of Gran’s warding—which seemed much stronger now than ever before—had sat up and taken notice of.
It wouldn’t be decent of me to drag him along any further. He’d just end up getting hurt—he didn’t have any experience at all.
I swallowed, hard. Slid my bag’s strap over my head, pul
led on a stocking cap, and yanked my gloves on. It looked bastard cold out there. When I stepped out the front door the air was like a dry suckerpunch to the lungs; I gasped and started shivering immediately, hunching my shoulders and wrapping a scratchy wool Army-surplus scarf around my neck. Jesus. This isn’t people weather. It’s Popsicle weather.
I was fairly sure Graves would lock up on his way out, so I crunched carefully down the porch steps. I was miserably unsurprised to see the snow in the front yard was still pristine. Whatever had knocked at the front door hadn’t left any footprints.
Great.
I was already caked with snow up to my knees by the time I made it onto the street. The plows had come by again that morning, so the going was treacherous but not impossible. Dru Anderson, Fearless Teen Hunter of the Weird, slipping and sliding on crusted ice. But Jesus, if I had to stay home I’d start chewing on the walls.
And who was to say that something wouldn’t come back once the sun went down, and bring someone with it that the warding wouldn’t stop? My best chance was to try to make contact with someone now.
“Dru!” Graves yelled.
I didn’t hunch my shoulders, just kept going. My boots had some good traction, but I couldn’t go faster than a sort of skating crawl.
“Dru! Wait up!”
Kept going. Once I hit the cross-street I could hook down and get to the bus shelter, and hopefully the buses were still running on time. Maybe he’d get tired of yelling once I made it clear I wasn’t listening.
Crunching sounded behind me, a fast light patter that sounded wrong. Then Graves all but plowed into me from behind, grabbed my shoulder, and we almost went down in a heap on the frozen roadway. I grabbed at his wrist, locked it, and found some solid footing, almost spinning him in a half-circle before he jerked his arm away much harder than he should have been able to.
I stared at him; he stared at me. His mouth was half-open, short light breaths puffing vapor into the chill. His cheeks were already raw and reddened, and his hair was even wilder than usual, almost standing straight up and spitting sparks. The effect was startling. He looked like a cat rubbed the wrong way with a balloon.
“Jesus,” I gasped. “What the hell?”
“I’m going with you,” he announced. Like I was stupid. “For Christ’s sake, Dru.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed. And maybe get me killed too. Let go!” And Jesus, how did you run like that? A nasty supposition halfway rose in the back of my head, but I killed it. I had enough problems. I yanked my arm free.
He set his jaw stubbornly, and the breeze turned knife-sharp. My hair felt like it was freezing to my head, and the layers I was wearing weren’t helping as much as I’d thought they would inside the house.
“You got me into this.” His hand dropped to his side, and he squared his shoulders. “I got bit by something that shouldn’t be real. None of this should be fucking real. And you’re telling me to be a good little boy and run along home. No dice. I told you the first one’s free, Dru, but this ain’t the first one. This one you’re paying for, and you’re taking me with you. You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything.” I knew it wasn’t true even as I said it. If I hadn’t been hiding in the goddamn mall, would the burning dog-thing have come to the house? Good luck getting the thing off my back then. He’d saved my life—and even if he didn’t know it because he was a babe in the woods, I did.
Andersons pay their debts, Dad always said. And quick, before they mount up.
But what about the thing knocking on the front door? Someone knew where I lived now.
Someone—or something.
My stomach turned hard and sour. Graves stared at me like he was trying to will a hole in my forehead. Little ice crystals touched his hair, and his cheeks weren’t just red now, but flaming. We were both shivering.
He didn’t even have a scarf. For a native of this place, he seemed woefully unprepared.
I didn’t even know what to do; I was just making it up halfass as I went along. “My dad is dead.” The tone I used—flat, normal, as if I was talking about dinner—surprised me. Snow muffled the words; they plopped down exhausted as soon as they left my lips. “I’m sorry I got you into this. Do me a favor and go home so you don’t get any further in.”
“Hey, I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t have a picket fence and fireplace to go back to. I’m on my own like you are, and for longer, too.” He hunched his shoulders, already looking miserably cold. “I could’ve just left you sitting there in the mall. I got involved because I wanted to, and now I’m in it. So can we get moving before I freeze to death, or is that too much to ask?”
I took a step back, found my footing, and turned. Headed off down the street. Some of the neighbors had cleared their sidewalks, but most of them hadn’t bothered. The gutters were mounded with snowplow ick.
Graves crunched along behind me. I tried to ignore him. Good one, Dru. What the hell do you need him along for? He’s only going to drag you down. Or you’re going to drag him down.
But he caught up with me as we reached the end of the block, and I didn’t step away or try to keep ahead of him. He didn’t say another word for a long time, and while that was okay, I kind of wished he’d talk to me.
It might have stopped me from thinking scary, scary thoughts.
CHAPTER 17
The coffee shop was one I’d never been in before, and it was jammed with people in heavy winter coats, the windows fogging with collective breath. I watched the street for a bit, Graves sitting across from me and fiddling with a paper cup, his legs stretched out and his knee bumping mine every once in a while until I shifted.
“All right,” I said, finally, when I’d watched the traffic moving on the street for long enough. I took a gulp of my hot chocolate, found it was cold. “We go over it again. I’m going up to that pay phone. I’m popping in the change and dialing. I’ll see who answers and play it by ear. As soon as I hang up, you get up and meet me up at the corner. If I walk up on the building side, you peel away, take the 34 bus, and meet me at my house in a few hours. If I walk up on the street side, it’s safe to act like you know me. Got it?”
I got an eye roll and a shrug in response. “I got it, I got it. Very James Bond. You really have been doing this a while.” He didn’t look at me, staring at the line going up to the counter. His face squinched up as if he tasted something bitter. “This place really reeks.”
I shrugged. It was just a regular chain coffee outlet, with hordes of overpriced crap crowding the shelves and rickety tables, the kids behind the counter scrambling to keep up with the nonfat, soy chai, double shot, sugar-free, dry foam, drip please, do you have a sugar substitute? People shuffled up to the counter, got their froofy java, and shuffled out the door, usually jabbering away on cell phones about something useless or meaningless.
None of them knew about the Real World. None of them were so scared their bones felt like water.
“They don’t have a clue.” I scooped up my not-so-hot-anymore chocolate and scraped my chair away from the table. My back still hurt, twinges running down either side of my spine like a river.
A lady the size of a pickup truck in a massive blue parka—so large she looked practically square from the back—manhandled her kid up to the counter. The poor kid looked about five, bundled up against the cold, a wide slick of snot running down his upper lip, which he kept wiping at with a crusted sleeve. He stared raptly at the wall below the counter as his mom jabbered at the tired-looking blonde girl behind the counter. The curve of the wall seemed to fascinate him, since it bulged out to hold the coffee machines off to their left, and he ran his mittened hand along it until his mother jerked him back like she wished she had a choke collar on him. He let out an indignant sound and she shook him the way a dog will shake a puppy, but without a mama dog’s gentleness.
My stomach turned into a cold lump. “Not a single goddamn clue,” I repeated, and tossed my still-full cup into the trash o
n my way out the door.
The cold was full of exhaust and a bitter metal tang that probably meant more snow. I crunched down the sidewalk—a sheet of deicer pellets that looked like blue rock salt lay unreeled in front of every downtown business—toward the pay phone. I was pretty sure it worked; it’d given me a dial tone earlier when we walked past toward the coffee shop.
I dug in my pocket for quarters and the number, copied onto a blank anonymous scrap of notepaper. I ran over the plan again, trying to look for weak spots or angles, anything I’d missed, and I suddenly wondered if Dad had ever felt this way. This responsible. Throat dry, stomach churning, worry like a diamond-eyed rat chewing inside my head with bright, sharp teeth.
When I was little, I used to think he could do anything. He’d show up at Gran’s every few months, sometimes with bruises or walking a little slow, and Gran would bake a cake, lay out a supper with everything he liked. It got to where I could tell when he was coming in by how early Gran got up and started cooking in the morning. She always knew before he would come bouncing up the washboard driveway, even though the house had no phone.
I remembered him picking me up and whirling around until I was dizzy while I shrieked with laughter in the front yard, a field of daisies and grass Gran hacked at with a machete every once in a while. Or him taking me out into the woods a little later and teaching me to shoot—first plinking with a BB gun, then with a .22 rifle, and last of all with a pistol and a shotgun. That was my twelfth summer, the one before Gran died.
I shook the memory away and stepped up to the half-booth. The mouthpiece slipped against my gloves, and I consoled myself that not a lot of germs would be able to live on it when it was this goddamn cold. I plugged the quarters in and dialed, then stuffed the paper back into my pocket. Leave no trace, Dru girl. Think about what you’re doing.
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