Pretty Little Dead Girls (16 page)

“Would you really be willing to do that, Peter? For me?”

Peter nodded. “Well, sure. I mean, why not, right? That’s what friends are for, and stuff.” He grinned. “It’s kind of like I’m your guardian angel.” Then he felt awkward, and shuffled his feet back and forth like he was a fourteen year old at his first school dance.

Life, like puberty, can be wretched.

And then Bryony was in his arms, and she was crying, and Peter patted her back inelegantly and his eyes met Eddie’s over her head.

Eddie reached inside the door and grabbed Bryony’s suitcase, already packed. He went inside and shut the door gently, leaving Peter to carry the suitcase and guide Bryony down the steps, who was hiccupping and rubbing her eyes like a small girl, dizzied by her disenchantment and her tears. She sobbed all the way to the airport.

***

Back at their apartment, Eddie stepped into their room and lay down on Bryony’s side of the bed. What if this is was the last time he ever saw her? What if she never made it home, and the desert finally knocked her to the ground and sucked the marrow from her bones, and he was
here
? How would that be? How would that be?

Eddie curled on his side and pulled Bryony’s pillow over his head. He wanted the scent of her for as long as he could have it.

Rikki-Tikki had been furious when he heard that Bryony was going alone, and had struggled to get out of bed so he could at least accompany her, but some things weren’t meant to be.

“You’re being stupid, man. A career isn’t worth losing the love of your life. You can always work on your career afterward, you know?”

Afterward. After she was dead. No, he wouldn’t be able to forward his career afterward because there would be no afterward, not for him. Not for any of them, really, but especially not for Eddie. But he’d never say this to anybody, it was simply too precious. And anyway, Rikki-Tikki didn’t fully understand his situation.

“It’s . . . not really the career, Rikki-Tikki. There’s something I need to tell you, but don’t tell Bryony. It would kill her if she knew. Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of work, that’s true, but not as much as she thinks. That’s not where I’ve been all of this time.”

“I’m not liking the sound of this, Ed.”

“You’re not going to like it, but I can’t take it anymore, I have to tell somebody.”

He told Rikki-Tikki, and Rikki-Tikki was silent. Then he asked Eddie to pass a message to Bryony, to tell her something before she left, something Eddie himself had chosen not to say, because the words made him feel sad. It seemed so final. It seemed so hopeless.

The message was this:

It is time.

Run, Star Girl.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

Bryony Sleeps on Peter’s Shoulder

This is what the murderer thought:

He thought, “I can’t believe my luck! They’re so trusting. Useful.”

He thought, “Perhaps she is fated for the desert after all, only . . . with my help.”

He thought, “It’s not long now.”

Beneath the flying airplane, the desert howled and hissed and coiled around itself in painful anticipation. It somehow sensed Bryony’s arrival, somehow tasted the soft flesh hidden under her skin. It sucked greedily at what it knew would sate it.

It is time. It is time. The desert always knew it would come.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

Kill Her

Bryony knew he wouldn’t be there, but she checked the house first.

“Daddy? Daddy?” she called, and ran from room to room.

“Wouldn’t he be at the hospital?” Peter asked. It alarmed him to see Bryony worked up to this state, to see her flying wildly around the house like a bird newly thrust into a cage. Where was her serenity? Where was her ethereal acceptance? This panic seemed so unlike her, and it was equally endearing and disconcerting. He silently begged her not to change so that it was like killing an unfamiliar person. He knew exactly how he wanted it to be, what expression he would read in her face and eyes. He wanted to see her hands flutter to the knife and then stop, accepting her fate and his role in it. No, not merely accepting. Embracing. He wanted her to look at his comforting face while her soul finally shrugged off this beautiful yet hindering body, and slipped off to the stars. He didn’t want to kill a stranger; he wanted to murder his dear friend.

Peter set the suitcase down and pulled Bryony to him. It was unusual, hugging a woman who wasn’t fighting for her life, and he tried to relax his arms in increments so he didn’t harm her. This would take some practice.

“We’ll find your dad, Bryony. We’ll see him and then you can call Eddie and Syrina and Rikki-Tikki, and tell them that he’s fine, that you’re fine, that everything is fine. All right?”

She pulled her head back to look at him and the dark circles under her eyes ran down her cheeks until the pale oval of her face was lost in despairing shadow.

“Peter, I love him. I love him and I have missed him terribly while I’ve been away, and I left him to this desert which is a hateful, horrid thing. I should have come home. I should have run from Eddie and Syrina and everybody else long ago, and now it’s too late. I have friends, and a husband, and people that I look forward to seeing at the flower shop. They are in danger, and my father worries about me. I stayed too long, and now I have ruined everything for so many people.”

His bird, his Star Girl, was splitting apart. He held the flesh of one in his arms but the other was flitting around, unable to be calmed, incapable of landing. Her clawed feet kept catching at his hair as she ricocheted from wall to wall, ceiling to floor.

“Bryony, we’ll find him.”

“It’s too late, it’s too late. What have I done?”

“I said we’ll find him.”

The desert crackled with laughter.

Peter’s head ached, his back hurt, his arms were tightening of their own accord around the fragile skeleton running beneath Bryony’s skin, it would soon be powder, it would soon be dust, and everything would end. She’d scatter to the wind and the desert would open its mouth eagerly, catching her on its tongue, and it would be satiated.

Bryony’s breath had gone shallow. Her eyes were wide and unseeing. Peter abruptly released her.

“Oh, Bryony, I’m so sorry. It’s this house, this land outside of it. It’s telling me to kill you, to feed you to it, and I’ve never had anything quite like this happen before. I’m not myself, it’s not letting me be myself, and I’m not a tool for it to use. I refuse.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. The Bryony birds formed one complete Bryony again, and her gray eyes were focused on Peter’s white face. He tried again, quieting all of the voices and the screaming of the desert.

“Let’s find your father. Then let’s get out of here.”

She nodded, once, and was out the door without another word.

Peter was shaking, he had to admit it. And he was furious. How dare this land of sand and bones call to him like that, bow him down to it? He would not. He would not. Bryony was his kill and his kill alone, and the desert would simply go without. That’s the way that it was. That was the way he would make it be.

Peter ducked out of the door after her.

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

Stop

Stop was indeed in the town’s tiny hospital, which was little more than a glorified clinic, really. They delivered babies there and bound up broken bones and put Branny Jacob’s eye back in after Tom Kidd had popped it out with the butt of his knife, though. Twice. “The first time you pop out my eye, shame on you,” the nurse said to Branny after he came to, “but the second time that you do it, shame on me

Stop lay in bed, hooked up to tubes and monitors and wires. His hospital gown was on backward so they could easily reach in and adjust all manner of medical doodads on his chest, and he had an IV slowly dripping a clear, benign looking substance from a bag into a long tube that ended on the back of his hand.

“Oh, Daddy,” Bryony said, dropping to her knees beside the bed. She kissed her father’s shriveled hands and smoothed his white hair away from his gray face. “I have missed you so much, and talking to you on the phone isn’t enough. I need to see you with my own eyes and feel you with my own fingers, and you need to do the same. We’re alive, Daddy. We’re alive.”

Stop smiled at her wanly, and then his eyes traveled up to the man who stood in the doorway. His smile quickly became a frown, and Bryony wished she had not seen it: a tired trace of a smile that slipped and fell farther and farther until it was a rainbow of ill feeling.

“Who is this?” he asked. “Where is Eddie?”

Peter tried to look strong and helpful, but the old man’s expression didn’t change when his daughter explained.

“This is Peter. He’s the man who saved my life on the trail. Eddie couldn’t come. Things are going very well for him with his music, and he simply couldn’t . . . he wasn’t able to come, Daddy. But I’m here, and Peter came to make sure of my safety.”

Stop’s expression darkened as he eyed Peter, and Bryony said brightly, “So how are you feeling now? You certainly gave me a scare. What did the doctor say?”

Stop sighed. “The doctor says it’s a heart attack, brought on by stress, most likely. Says he.”

Bryony, being the type of daughter she is, read her father very well. “But you think it’s something different. What is it?”

Stop looked her dead in the eyes. “It’s the desert, honey. It is time, and it is coming for you, and it doesn’t want me around to stop it. I am an old man but I still have power, and the desert is sweeping me away.” His eyes flicked back at Peter. “He shouldn’t be here, sweetheart. Eddie should.”

“Daddy, I told you that Eddie—”

Stop wrapped his frail fingers carefully around hers. “Honey. My heart is going to stop now. I can feel it slowing down, and it is my time to go. I am sorry to leave you, but I don’t want you to be sad. It’s hard, sweetie,” he said, as tears coursed down her face, “and I know that it is going to hurt you badly for a while. But know this: I love you, and I am very proud of you, and you have made me happy. I want you to live. I want you to live, my darling girl, and to do so, you need to run. Leave this place, for the desert speaks to me at night and it craves your bones in a monstrous way. The things it tells me at night, the things that it says . . . they are horrible. This is what has damaged my heart. It chips away each time the desert vomits out its plans for you. Now listen to me carefully: You must leave this man. Immediately. Tonight, honey.”

“But Daddy, he saved me. He has been watching over me and protecting me.”

Stop’s eyes were losing their sparkle. They were losing their luster. This distressed Bryony more than she could possibly express, but she wanted her father to remember her as a happy girl who was admirably pulled together, not as a weeping child-woman who threw herself onto his bed and begged him not to go, which was what she really wanted to do. He was both her father and her mother, he was the one that always loved her and cared for her, and taught her how to read and write and listen to the desert. He was strength, even in his physical frailty, and with Stop gone, she was going to be lost, she just knew it.

Daddy,
she thought,
don’t go. Don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you, and I have been so tired lately, and something is wrong with Eddie, and I am so scared to be here right now. Don’t let the desert win. Don’t let it take you! I want to be your little girl forever, and know you will always love me, and won’t turn away from what I have to do. Please, Daddy.

But she is a kind girl, our dear Bryony, and she kept these thoughts to herself, never to be heard by anyone else. Instead she chose to say, “I love you, Daddy. Don’t worry about me. I will be very careful.”

Stop’s gaze floated from Bryony to the man in the doorframe.

“You can’t have her,” he said with what strength he had left. “You can’t have my little girl. I know what you are, and I say she isn’t meant for you.”

“Daddy,” Bryony said, but the blipping machine ceased to blip and a distressing flat
beeeeeeeep
ran. Bryony’s tears flowed again in earnest. The quiet room suddenly became a place of pounding feet and harried nurses, and Bryony couldn’t move, but continued to kneel there and weep over the corpse of her father.

Peter stepped forward and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Bryony. I really am.”

She accepted his hand, but her heart shred itself into tinier and tinier pieces. Her father’s last words hadn’t been for her but for this stranger, and his eyes had been seeing him and him alone. This hurt Bryony, and made her jealous, which made her feel unreasonable, and then repentant, and then she thought of her father. She felt something strong and good inside of her turn its face to the wall and die.

“I think that my h-heart is b-breaking,” she said, and thought she had never cried so much, not in such a short amount of time, and it wearied her. Where was Eddie? Where was her husband? Why was she alone with the desert and Stop’s cooling body and this strange man that looked at her with a light in his eyes she now found disconcerting? Why was she alone? Why was she alone?

“You’re not alone,” Peter said, as though he could hear her. “I am with you. I am always with you. Come, Bryony, let’s go back to the house. Let them take care of your father, and I’ll take care of you. Let me take care of you.”

She was a zombie, she was undead. She was what she had always been, and that was thinly tethered to this world by a silken cord, and it was starting to unravel. Tonight. Tonight.

“Tonight is the night,” she whispered. “Tonight is when it all happens.”

“What was that, dear?” Peter asked in his most comforting voice. He had been practicing it under his breath, and it came out in a rather satisfactory manner. He was quite pleased with himself. He helped Bryony to her feet and put his arm around her, guiding her toward the door. Toward the desert, and away from her father.

She isn’t meant for you,
her father said. His final words, and they were so full of his stalwartness and protectiveness and the fire he always stoked in his warm, warm heart.
She isn’t meant for you,
said to the man that now had his arms around her. This was wrong, he shouldn’t be here. It should be Eddie or Syrina or Rikki-Tikki or even Chad the Fish Guy, but not this man, this man who pulled her out of the arms of a killer on the trail, but had been covered in blood himself. Bryony had woken up to Peter’s ethereal smiling face splashed with crimson. Her blood, sure, although more than once she wondered if it was truly all hers, or if some of it had belonged to her would-be murderer. There was so much and they had never found the other man after Peter chased him off...but how could she think such a thing when Peter had been so kind as to help her then, as he was helping her now?