Nevermore (19 page)

“And one other thing—you’re right, with me it’d only be one night, maybe two.” He grinned. “But it’d be a helluva night.”

He ran back to the table before she could reply.

Of course, she was right—there was no chance of anything beyond a good romp in the hay or two. He had learned the hard way with Cassie that his life wasn’t built for a relationship. And that was why he’d mostly focused his sexual energy on young women who were only interested in hooking up for one night. He was sure that half of them didn’t believe the crap he spun to 192 SUPERNATURAL

start talking to them, but just liked playing the game.

As soon as he sat down, Sam got all worried looking at him. “Dude, what happened? You look like someone ran over your cat.”

Dean just drank his beer.

THIRTEEN

The Afi ri house

The Bronx, New York

Sunday 19 November 2006

It needs to stop. Why won’t he love me?

It had all started with the strange-looking man who looked a lot like Uncle Cal. Said he was a Reaper and his job was to prepare her for the afterlife.

But that was wrong. If she was going to the
after
- life, it meant she was done with her
before
-

life, and that meant she was dead, and that was something she just couldn’t just
accept,
that was crazy, after everything she went through, she just couldn’t just be
dead
!

She refused. No way, no how, she was
not
going with him, even if he
did
look like Uncle Cal, who 194 SUPERNATURAL

was always so sweet to her, and the only one who’d still talk to her when she went into rehab, everyone else just
abandoned
her, the bastards, but Cal was always there for her and she trusted him completely.

She wouldn’t go with him. That was where she drew the line. After
that
happened, she couldn’t let go. She wouldn’t let go. Couldn’t couldn’t wouldn’t wouldn’t.

The Reaper who looked like Uncle Cal tried to convince her that she was being foolish, that there was nothing left for her, that she couldn’t do anything to change what happened, but she refused to believe that, refused to accept it, refused to even listen to it. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead.

It needs to stop. Why won’t he love me?

Throughout life, she hadn’t asked for much.

When things had gone wrong, she had owned up to them and fixed them. She was cured, as much as anybody could really be
cured
. She hadn’t drunk anything since she got out of rehab, so that should’ve been that and that was all there was to it, period, full stop, end of sentence.

So there was just no way, no way, no
way
,
no
way,
no way,
she should die like
that
.

Something had to be done.

At first she just waited, figuring that everything would play out.

But no.

Nevermore

195

Manfred went out every morning to work. He went to the Park in Rear every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to play with the damn band, and then he just came home.

Every time he came home, she hoped.

Every time he came home, those hopes were dashed.

After a while she couldn’t take it anymore. How could she? How could she expect to just sit there and
take
it, just sitting there, just being there, just
existing,
not alive, not really dead, either, just fl oat-ing around while
life went on without her and nobody cared!

Eventually, she snapped.

Now, when the Scottso gigs were done, she was there. Over and over, every time he came back from the goddamn Park in Rear, she hoped, she prayed, she begged, she pleaded, but nothing, nothing,
nothing!

It was terrible. It was awful. It was the worst thing in the world, worse even than dying, and she didn’t think
anything
could possibly be worse than dying, but somehow this was.

She wondered if maybe she should have listened to the Reaper the way she’d always listened to Uncle Cal, who looked just like the Reaper—or was it the other way around? She didn’t know anymore, didn’t care anymore, she just wanted it to stop stop stop stop stop stop!

196 SUPERNATURAL

And then it got worse.

Yesterday, someone else came in who wasn’t anyone from Scottso. It was two new people, and they
shot
her!

It was the worst feeling ever in the whole world, worse than dying, worse than rehab, worse than knowing nothing changed, worse than when she discovered her shellfish allergy, worse than
anything ever.

And she would make them pay. Oh yes, she was
not
going to take this any longer, nosireebob, she would have what she wanted and that’d show
all
of them the truth!

As soon as she pulled herself together.

It had been
really
weird, actually. She saw the two guys, and they shot her, and then—

Nothing.

Emptiness. No longer tethered to Manfred’s house, no longer tethered to anything, no longer able to see or hear or touch or—

Well, actually, she couldn’t do most of that stuff anyhow, but she had
something.
She had consciousness. Didn’t she? How else did the Reaper that looked like Uncle Cal
talk
to her if she wasn’t able to be talked
to
?

But after those two guys shot her, pfft. Gone.

She had to get herself back together. They were coming. She could
feel
it. She couldn’t feel much of anything, but she could feel that. They were com-Nevermore

197

ing. They were coming. She had to show them what was happening before they shot her again.

So she tried to focus.

That was a challenge—focusing was hard, even back when she was alive, and the more time passed after she died, the harder that got. She had no idea what it was that those two guys shot her with, but whatever it was was deadly stuff. Probably some kind of poison or something.

No, that didn’t make sense. Poison? She was already dead. But it wasn’t regular bullets. Or buck-shot, or whatever it was that shotguns shot. What the hell did she know about that, she was a girl from Morris Park, all she knew about shotguns was that guys in cowboy hats carried them in old movies.

Uncle Cal always showed her those movies when he babysat her when she was a kid. Mom and Dad were off getting stoned somewhere every Saturday night, so Uncle Cal would take care of her, showing her his favorite old movies.
My Darling Clementine.

Calamity Jane. Rio Bravo. The Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly. The Magnificent Seven. A Fistful of Dollars. Unforgiven. Tombstone.
All the men wore funny hats and all the women wore poofy dresses and they were just so cool, she loved it so very very much.

They were coming.

It needs to stop. Why won’t he love me?

She gathered up everything she had, however 198 SUPERNATURAL

she could, forcing herself to come together again as the two strangers who shot her walked through the door.

There they were—she saw them. She couldn’t talk to them, though. Whatever they shot her with when they shot her last night was keeping her from talking, but she could
see,
dammit, and she saw that they were coming in, the tall one with the shaggy hair and the short one with the short hair. They both wore little black bracelets and dressed the same sloppy way kids in their twenties dressed these days.

Dammit, when she was in her twenties, she knew how to dress
cool,
not like these post-Grunge losers.

She’d show them. She’d show them real good.

Concentrating harder than she’d ever concen-trated in her life or in her death, she focused on that stupid picture of Manfred and his kids upstairs where Manfred had that stupid smile on his face and the kids were all squirmy like they wanted to be anywhere but with Manfred. Why did Manfred even
have
that picture anyhow? It was so pathetic. He didn’t raise them and they didn’t even care about him, so why have the stupid picture?

The picture flew off the wall and headed straight for the tall one. Unfortunately, he heard it coming—

and he had, like,
killer
reflexes—so he batted it out of the way with his forearm, which took
all
the fun out of it.

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199

“I think she’s pissed at you, dude,” the shorter one said.

The tall one she almost hit said, “Pissed, period, I think.”

She tried again. She had to
hurt
these guys after what they did to her.

“Roxy, you there?” the tall one said suddenly.

“Look, we don’t wanna hurt you.”

How’d they know my name?

And yeah,
right,
they didn’t want to hurt her.

How could anybody say that with a straight face twenty-four hours after they
shot you
?

Then the short one said, “But we will if you throw more picture frames at our heads. Look, this house belongs to a friend of ours, and—” She hadn’t been paying any attention to him, busy as she was trying to focus on the Fillmore East poster in its metal frame. Eventually she got it to fly free of the wall and hit the short one in the back of the head.

The tall one helped him stand back up, and the short one put his hand to the back of his head and winced. “Okay—
ow
.”

“You all right, man?”

“No, I’m not freakin’ all right, some spirit bitch just hit me in the back of the head with a priceless concert poster!”

She couldn’t help herself. She laughed at that. She laughed long, she laughed hard, and she laughed 200 SUPERNATURAL

loud. It was even funnier than that time when her brother actually snorted glue, thinking that “sniff-ing glue” meant you took actual glue up your nose like you did cocaine.

The walls of Manfred’s house shook, she laughed so hard.

Both of the strangers lifted their shotguns, and suddenly she stopped laughing. She couldn’t face that again, not yet.

Instead, she went away, like she always did once Manfred left. She’d bide her time, be patient, like they kept telling her to be in rehab, and then she’d show them what she was made of the next time they came back from that stupid bar. She had no idea when that would be—days of the week no longer meant anything to her, she just
knew
when all of Scottso were together at the Park in Rear—

so she’d wait until it was time again.

It needs to stop. Why won’t he love me?

Dean stared down at the EMF reader and shook his head. “Nothing. There was that fit of the gig-gles, and then nada.”

Sam lowered his shotgun. “Weird.”

“Yeah. And those two shots she took at us were pretty weak.”

Nodding, Sam said, “Yeah, I’m thinkin’ she hasn’t come all the way back from the rock-salt dispersal.” He knew that it was different for every Nevermore

201

spirit. Some only stayed dissolute for a few minutes. Others were permanently torn apart by the rock salt, though that was pretty rare.

“Well, it looks like she’s gone,” Dean said. “We can tell Manfred it’s safe.”

“Yeah.” Sam sighed. “Tomorrow, I’m gonna do a little digging online, then Monday check the libraries, see if I can find out anything about this house. I mean, we’re assuming it’s Roxy because of that King’s Reign T-shirt—”

Dean winced and snarled at the same time. “It’s Queensrÿche.”

“Whatever.” Sam managed not to break into a grin, since he’d messed up the band’s name completely on purpose just to annoy Dean. “But there may be another spirit here that we just don’t know about.”

Giving Sam a dubious look, Dean said, “That happens to look just like one of Scottso’s ex-girlfriends, down to the same love for Queensrÿche?” Sam had to concede that point. “Yeah, it’s a stretch, but it’s not like the band’s been all that forthcoming. And I don’t know about you, but
I
can’t tell if she reacted to us calling her by name.”

“Yeah, me either. Okay, we’ll try that. What about the Poe thing?”

Sam shrugged. “Keep looking for Arthur Gordon Pym. I’ll make some calls tomorrow—or Monday, I guess, since tomorrow’s Sunday—and 202 SUPERNATURAL

see if I can track down who owns the server space that website’s on.” Then something occurred to him. “Hey, didn’t McBain say she was with missing persons?”

Dean tensed up. “Yeah, so?”

“Maybe we can run Roxy’s name by her.”

“We don’t need to bring her into this, Sammy.” Sam sighed. “C’mon, Dean, I think we can trust her. Like you said, she didn’t arrest us, and she knows Ballard.”

“What the hell does
that
have to do with—”

“If it weren’t for Ballard, we’d both be in jail right now, and you know it. She helped me dig up the body we needed to fi nd, and she shot her partner and let us go. We trusted her, I think we can trust McBain. Besides, she
is
Missing Persons, and that means we can
check
for missing persons without having to make something up.” Dean was still antsy, so Sam came up with a compromise. “Look, we’re gonna need her help on Monday anyhow, so let’s ask her then.”