Shallow Graves (18 page)

“Willow's got a place in town. His dad's house. He never sold it.” Danny gave me an address, told me how to find it, grunted in confirmation when I repeated it back to him.

“That's it?”

“Don't call me again. Thanks to you I'm out of a job.”

“Wait! One more thing.”

“What?”

“How did you know? When you saw me at that truck stop. How did you know what I was?”

“I can see,” he said.

“What do you mean? What can you see?”

Danny didn't say anything for several seconds. “I can see what's under your skin.”

He hung up.

I handed the phone back to Ritter. He was still collecting himself, shaky and pale. He pocketed the phone, put his ukulele in its case without gathering up the money.

“You get what you need?”

I nodded.

“Then you're going to leave me alone. And you.” He clicked the case shut, stood up, and looked at Rain. “Next time you call, I'm not answering. Don't ever come near me again.”

Rain stood too, but she said nothing.

Ritter turned to me. “You shouldn't be helping her either. You're going to get yourself killed.”

“It's too late for that,” I said. “Thanks.”

What I didn't say was that I wasn't doing any of it to help Rain. I wasn't proud of it, but my knowledge of her kids' whereabouts was the only thing I had to trade for a way to get in touch with Violet again. I told myself I was playing by the rules of this new world I had woken up into. Valuable information for dangerous information.

I almost didn't feel bad about it.

Then I thought about those kids on the playground, the
creak
-
creak
of the merry-go-round as they pushed each other in circles, and I couldn't meet Rain's eyes.

“THERE'S NO WAY
I'm going with you,” Rain said after Ritter was gone. “I'm done here. Tell me what you know.”

“I didn't invite you,” I said. I sat down on the brick wall to dig through my backpack.

“I would say you should take him, even if he is useless.” Rain jerked her thumb toward Zeke. “But that would be kind of like bringing a cockroach casserole to a picnic. Sure, it might send everybody screaming, but they'd only come back with an exterminator.”

“I think you think that metaphor makes more sense than it actually does,” I said. I handed Danny's blue flier to her. Church of the Prairie. NEED HELP? Map and address at the bottom of the
page. “This is where I saw them. There's a woman with them. I don't know who she is, or what she is. I didn't talk to her.”

Rain unfolded the page and looked it over. For the first time, I saw a flicker of worry in her eyes, quickly shuttered.

All she said was, “See you around.” She walked away.

I zipped up my backpack and slipped my arms into the straps. “You're not going to try to talk me out of it?”

Zeke was looking at the ground by my feet. “Would it do any good?”

“No. Probably not.”

“You want me to go with you?”

He knew a lot more about monsters than I did. He could walk through magical barriers. He had killed somebody before. He had a car. Absolutely. Yes. If Danny was lying, if I had misjudged Violet, if this didn't go how I expected, I wanted him with me.

But I shook my head. “You promised Jake you wouldn't.”

“He'll get over it.”

“Maybe, but first he'll blame me,” I said. “I'll be fine.”

Zeke started to say something, changed his mind. He tossed his phone to me. “In case you need help again.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, whatever. Be careful.”

He walked away, hands shoved into his pockets. He hadn't asked me what I was going to do.

There were only a handful of numbers in the phone, most identified by letters rather than names.
J
was the one he used most often, so I guessed that's who I was supposed to call if I needed help.
I was sure Jake would love that.

The directions Danny had given me led me down the bike path along Broadway to south Boulder. I skated in the sun, dodging joggers and cyclists, until I found the right street. I identified the house but kept my distance. It was small but well kept. Clean white paint, green shutters, trimmed lawn. There were no cars parked in the driveway. I didn't see any signs of life, so I spent a little while skating around the neighborhood, doing my best to look bored and harmless. I passed the house three or four times and nothing changed. I didn't have any plan for what I could do if Violet didn't show up. I wasn't even sure what I was going to do if she did.

The next time I turned onto the street, there was a car parked in front of the house. Nebraska plates. I couldn't remember if it was one of the cars I had seen outside the farmhouse.

I stopped on the other side of the street rolled the skateboard back and forth, back and forth, the wheels rumbling softly on the asphalt, and I waited.

The front door opened. Violet walked out to the car and lifted a couple of plastic grocery bags from the backseat. She was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt rather than the flowery dress, and her red hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She turned to go into the house again, but when she reached the door she stopped, and she turned. She met my eyes across the street.

I picked up the skateboard and walked over to her.

“Is anybody else here?” I asked.

“No. Nobody. Danny called me. He told me you were looking for me.”

“And you're still here alone?”

“It's just me, I promise,” Violet said. “Lyle and Edward are in Cheyenne. They found Brian.”

“I know. I saw the news.”

“Edward went to the hospital. He said Brian is dying. There's nothing the doctors can do.” I couldn't tell if she was upset or relieved. “The nightmare didn't do that.”

“No. That was me.”

We stood there in uncomfortable silence, Violet in the shade, me in the sun.

She inhaled carefully. “What you did to Brian . . . can you do that to anybody?”

“Oh.” I almost wanted to laugh. “I get it. That's why you're here alone.”

It didn't matter if I had a plan or not, because Violet had one of her own.

When I was in tenth grade this kid named Anthony Chung brought a gun to school. It wasn't the gun that shocked everybody; he wasn't the first and he wouldn't be the last. What surprised everybody, what they couldn't get their heads around, was that it was Anthony Chung who did it. Anthony Chung, cross-country star, Science Olympiad team captain, honors student, no older siblings in gangs, no delinquent friends. He was well liked. He wasn't a bully and nobody bullied him. Everybody kept asking, “Where did a good kid like that even get a gun?” It didn't belong to his parents. Mom and Dad had asked me and Melanie one day after school, “You wouldn't know where to find a gun, would you?” We promised
we didn't. I was thinking about all the friends I knew whose parents kept guns in their bedside drawers, in their coat closets, under their beds, and wondering why everybody was more worried about where Anthony had gotten the gun rather than why he had it in the first place.

I looked up and down the street. Nobody was watching. Bees hummed lazily around a bed of white and yellow daisies beneath the front window. The sun was hot on my head and shoulders.

“Where would a good kid like you even get a gun?” I murmured.

“What?”

A fat bumblebee settled on a blossom. Violet's green eyes were so wary, so scared.

“Why don't you ask what you really want to ask?” I said.

“What are you?”

“No. Not that.”

Violet hesitated, then said, “Let's go inside.”

VIOLET LED ME
through the living room and into the kitchen. The house was neat but dusty. The only books on the shelves were Bibles and Christian self-help books, and the only decorations were inspirational posters of sunrises and footprints in wet sand, with phrases like TRUST IN FAITH and NEVER GIVE UP printed in a bold font. There were small angels embroidered onto the pillows on the sofa. Looked like they had put some effort into their cover story of being a church group, if only in their interior design choices. It didn't look like a place Mr. Willow's family or anybody else had ever lived.

There were no photographs.

Violet gestured for me to take a seat at the table.

“I saw you once,” I said. I didn't continue until she sat across from me. “In this video a friend of mine got from her church. An exorcism video. That was you, wasn't it?”

“That was never supposed to get out.” Violet's voice was calm, but her eyes tightened with an old pain. “I thought they were trying to help. They
were
trying to help.”

“Why? Why would they think you needed an exorcist?”

“It's not important.”

“It's important to me,” I said. “Tell me or I'm leaving.”

Violet's lips twisted, not quite a smile. She didn't call my bluff. “I killed my brother.”

“No, you didn't.” I was certain of it, but she shook her head.

“I did. I did. You don't understand.”

“So tell me.”

“His name was Teddy. He was two years older than me, and he was everything to our family. He was so good and so bright. We all loved him. He was our light. But he was sick.” Violet's broken smile drained away. “There was something wrong with his heart. He collapsed one day playing with his friends. The doctors did all kinds of tests. They said he could still live a long, happy life if he was careful. And Teddy, he had always loved riding his bike and player soccer, but he was so good about it. He just laughed and said he would have to find another hobby, like making pottery.”

She stopped to draw in a few rough breaths. I waited.

“After my parents brought him home from the hospital, I came home from school and Teddy was watching TV. He was supposed to be resting. And . . . you know when you're out in the sun and a
cloud comes in, but you didn't see it coming, you didn't know the weather was changing, all you know is the light is gone and the colors are gone and you're cold when you should be warm?” Violet spoke rapidly, her breath catching between words. “I started crying. I was having a fit. I was out of control. I was always bad, I always had tantrums when I didn't get my way, and my parents tried to make me stop, but I didn't care. I was screaming so much it hurt them. My mother was bleeding from her ears and Teddy was covering his head with his pillow and I was doing that to them, but I didn't care. I didn't stop. It took both of my parents to carry me up to my room and . . .”

“What?”

Violet looked down, scraped her fingertips over the table. “When they went back downstairs, Teddy was dead. His heart just stopped. He was supposed to be okay. The doctors said he would be okay, but he died. My parents—they said it wasn't my fault, they didn't understand, but they took me to their priest. Father Matt and . . . you saw the video. You know what happened.”

The priest had died too. I asked, “Your parents aren't like you?”

“I'm adopted. They didn't know anything about my birth mother. They were so afraid of me. Of what I could do. They didn't know what else to think.”

“But they were wrong. You weren't possessed.”

“They believed in possession. That was something they could understand. People can only see the world as they know it. It wasn't their fault.”

“You're a banshee, right?”

She flinched as though the word itself could hurt her. “I'm not anything anymore.”

“I thought banshees wailed
because
somebody was dying, not the other way around. You weren't—”

“But I was! Don't you understand?” The look Violet gave me was bleak. “Teddy should have lived. He was going to live, but I killed him. He could have had his whole life, but now he never will, because of me. Father Matt was only trying to help me and now he can't help anybody else. I did that.”

“No, you didn't,” I said again, but still she didn't hear me.

“They knew what they had to do.” She said it so earnestly, with so much guilt, I wondered who she was trying to convince.

“How did you meet Mr. Willow?” I asked.

“After Father Matt died, they heard about a man who helped kids who were troubled. Spiritually troubled.”

“How old were you?”

“Eleven,” she said.

“You've been with Mr. Willow since you were eleven?” I couldn't keep the shock from my voice. “Your parents sent an eleven-year-old girl to a stranger?”

“I still talk to my parents sometimes. They know I'm okay.” Violet sat forward and spread her hands on the table. “Edward's the one who helped me understand what I was doing.”

“But you weren't doing anything. You were only trying to warn them.”

Violet didn't seem to hear me. “Magic is unnatural. We're unnatural. It's wrong to be like this. We
kill
people. Don't you understand?
There are people everywhere in danger. They don't know we exist. They don't know what we can do. How can you bear it?”

I thought about the little girl in the baseball cap crying as Brian led her into the darkness. About Jake checking through the front window for unnamed dangers on the street and the fact that in spite of their dietary requirements he and his brother had only ever killed one person between them. About all the empty shells of people in the house in Nebraska. About Rain's children, protecting themselves from their grandfather, a man who didn't need magic to be a monster.

“How can
you
bear it?” I retorted. “Did you know all along he was kidnapping and killing people?”

“He's not—”

“Are they all like me? People who are just looking for a place to stay? For some help? That's why you pay Danny to trick them?”

“You don't understand. It's not like—”

“Do you even care if they've ever hurt anybody? Do you care if they have families? Do you ask them if they want to go home? Do you even give them a chance to live their lives and never hurt anybody?”

“We're not like—”

“Yes, you
are
,” I said, my voice rising. I caught myself, took a breath to keep from shouting. “I know everything Brian did. What all of you did. Don't lie to me about it.”

Violet pressed her lips together. She still wasn't looking at me.

“What I don't know is how many ended up like that girl at the house. Like Esme.”

“Edward says it only happens like that when they . . .”

“What?”

“When they're not accepting,” Violet said quietly. “When they fight it.”

She knotted her hands together on the table. Her face was pale, her shoulders slumped.

“You really believe that?” I asked.

Violet didn't answer.

“Did Esme want it?”

She said, very softly, “No.”

“She came to you for help,” I guessed, “and you did that to her.”

Violet was quiet for a long moment. “Esme and Lyle never hurt anybody.”

“Never? You want to see my scars?”

“Before,” Violet said. “When they came to us. They were being hunted, and they were just trying to get back to their family. Esme is the bravest girl I've ever met. She only wanted . . .” There were tears in Violet's eyes, a rough catch in her voice. “Before I met her, I didn't even know that people like . . . like that, I didn't know we could have families. I didn't know there were people who protected each other. Edward always said, he said they were all outcasts, because nobody wanted them. But Esme told me he was wrong.”

“So what you're saying,” I said, my voice shaking with anger, “is that you were totally okay helping Mr. Willow murder people until you realized somebody might actually miss them.”

She wiped a tear from her eye. “She was going to show me. She was going to take me home to their family.”

I sat back in the chair. I could still feel a twinge in my side where Lyle's gashes had healed. I was tired of talking around the point. I didn't want to feel sorry for her, for the scared little girl she had been, the one who had only ever wanted a family that wouldn't send her away for being different in a way they refused to understand.

“I have one more question,” I said.

Violet nodded.

“Why is he doing this? Why did Mr. Willow wake up one day and decide to start hunting down monsters?” She opened her mouth, but I went on, “And don't tell me it's because we're irredeemably evil. I haven't even met very many monsters yet and I already know that's bullshit.
You
know it's bullshit. Did he used to be one too?”

“No!” Violet looked shocked. “He does it to protect people. He knows—he's known since he was a child what damage monsters can do, and the humans who let them live. Monsters destroyed his family. And it used to be that he had to kill them, when his father was in charge, but now he wants to help them.” To her credit, Violet lowered her gaze and amended, “Or he used to. He's lost his way. I've tried to talk to him, to make him understand that what he did to Esme was wrong, but he won't listen.”

“So you want to stop him. Fine. Why don't you do it yourself? You don't need my help.”

Violet shook her head. “No. No. I could never do that to him.”

“Why not?”

“I
can't
,” Violet said, miserable. “I can't. He's done too much for
me. It's because of him I'm not a monster anymore. I can't.”

Too grateful to act herself, or too brainwashed, but I didn't think it really mattered. She was disillusioned now, but there was still a frightened eleven-year-old girl inside Violet, abandoned by her parents and taken in by a man who promised to make her better. There was no way to reason with that scared little girl.

“Get Lyle to do it,” I said. “It's his sister who got messed up.”

“He thinks we might be able to help her,” Violet said. “Edward told him it might be possible. That there might be a way to ask for a . . . favor.”

“Is there?”

“I don't know. We don't know.”

“So that's where I come in,” I said.

“It's different for you,” Violet said. “You're not like us. It wasn't an accident that you came to us. Don't you see? You're a gift. You're exactly what we need.”

It was the worst thing she could have said. It was precisely what I expected. Violet and I weren't that different from each other. We both divided the world into
killers
and
everybody else,
and she knew which side of that line I was on.

“Katie—whoever you are—”

“You don't need to know my name.”

“You can help us.”

“Say what you want.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I want you to say it to my face.”

Violet couldn't meet my eyes. “He'll come here if I ask. You
don't have to—it can be like Brian. Whatever you did to him. That's enough.”

“So you can sit by his hospital bed and hold his hand and tell him how sorry you are?”

“No! I don't—”

“What do I get out of this?”

“What?”

“You want to hire a contract killer, you have to offer something in return. I don't work for free.”

Violet's mouth dropped open. “You want money?”

“No,” I said. “That's not what I want.”

“But what—” She stopped.

“I want you to take me where you take the rest of them,” I said.

In Brian Kerr's memories I heard the clang of metal on metal and a low, low laugh rolling along a throat of stone. She waited at the end of a dark tunnel. The shiver of fear might have been my own, or it might have been an echo of his. He had never gone all the way to the end. He was human. He never had to. His job was to take the others and wait for them to emerge changed, or broken, or not at all.

Violet was shaking her head. “You don't know what she'll do.”

She was right. I had no idea what would happen. But I had to find out. Wherever I went next, whatever I chose to do with the rest of my afterlife, I couldn't begin without knowing. I had to see for myself.

“Take me to her and I'll do what you want.”

Violet didn't try to talk me out of it. She said, “You'll have to ride in the trunk.”