7 Souls (26 page)

“Okay,” Amy said. “I still don’t understand what this farmhouse deal is all about, though—it sounds so complicated.
What
do we have to do, exactly?”

“Scott will explain, once he gets to school,” Ellen promised, reaching into her pocket and pulling out an enormous, heavy clump of industrial-looking keys. “I prepped him late last night. Once he gets here with all the equipment, he’ll fill you in.” Ellen tossed the keys across the circle to Amy, who fumbled them and nearly dropped them. “And you can give him these—I forgot to give them back.”

Patrick wondered what that was all about—
What are those keys, anyway? What did I miss?
—but as he quickly reminded himself, he didn’t need to know. All he needed to worry about was what Ellen had told him to do.

“There’s one more thing,” Ellen said, pointing to Dylan. “Stick around—I’ve got to talk to you. Everyone else, it’s showtime—let’s get moving.”

S
TANDING IN THE WRECKED
, deserted living room of the hotel suite, her nostrils—Patrick’s nostrils—stinging with the ambient smoke and the acrid stench of the party, Mary reeled from what Patrick’s memory had shown her. The efficient, cold-blooded way that her friends had ganged up on her, tricked her, planned the whole thing, was amazing to visualize even though she’d already
known
it had happened—since she’d inferred it from the spell itself, the curse that her own sister had unleashed on her.

(
The Sorcerer chooses 7 Minions, the 7 Men and Women who most despise the Victim)

Finally, Mary understood her own role … the fiendishly clever way Ellen had recruited
her
along with the others.

(WHOM DO YOU HATE THE MOST?)

Ellen was right: she hated herself, even more than the rest of them did (although hearing them laugh at her private
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
routine hurt so much that it barely seemed possible). Mary forced herself not to dwell on her self-pity, and to concentrate on the details of Patrick’s memory.

What were those keys?
Mary thought, picturing the glittering shape that had flown across the rooftop that morning and been caught by Amy.
And what the hell was the “one more thing” with Dylan at the end?

“Dylan’s going to die,” Ellen was whimpering. “This is all my fault. It’s turned into a nightmare, it’s gotten out of control….”

Oh, Ellie
, Mary thought. She was nearly trembling with repressed anguish. She wanted to grab Ellen and hug her, try to comfort her—but she didn’t move. She could feel her own grief erupting inside of her, and she had to muster all her self-control to suppress it and hide it. She was not herself—literally; she was Patrick Dawes, and she couldn’t let her guard down. She had to be as smart as she’d ever been in her life. Scott, Joon, Amy, Mary and now Patrick were five souls.

Five out of seven
, she thought grimly. She clearly remembered what she’d read in that antique, threadbare purple book.
7 souls—and then oblivion
.

“Ellen,” Mary said, flinching at the familiar bass echoes of Patrick’s smoky voice. “Ellen,
why?
Why are you doing this?”

“The same reason you are,” Ellen said bitterly. She was crying. “Because I
hate
her. Because I want to get
back
at her.”

“For what?”
Mary yelled, staring at her crying sister in shock and disbelief and sorrow. “Get back at her for
what?
What did I—what did Mary ever do to you?”

“She tried to kill my mom!” Ellen screamed.

What?

Mary was so stunned that she nearly forgot to breathe.
I did what? I tried to kill Mom?

“What do you mean?” she managed to rasp out. “Tried to kill her … when?
How?”

“Ten years ago,” Ellen sobbed. “The day my dad died … that’s when it happened. The day Mary ruined my mom’s life.”

I ruined—What?

“I don’t—I don’t know that story,” Mary said.

“Nobody does!”
Ellen raged. “Mary acts like it never happened! Mom and I are the only ones who know! Mom never talks about it, but she’s got to live with Mary, like, every day, knowing what she did!”

What in the name of God in heaven is she talking about?

“But Mary will know,” Ellen whispered. “When this day is over, she’ll know.”

I will?
Mary wasn’t sure what to ask next—Ellen’s stunning accusations had made it very difficult to think. “What—”

A familiar metallic clatter suddenly filled the room. Mary knew exactly what it was.
Someone’s here
, she realized, recognizing the sounds of Patrick’s suite door being unlatched and opened—a noise she’d learned to recognize and anticipate after countless room service and valet calls, and all the other Peninsula Hotel benefits she’d shamelessly sponged while dating Patrick.

“Shit
—is that Mary?” Ellen said frantically, grabbing Mary’s—Patrick’s—wrist. “Too soon, too soon—we’re not ready….”

The door swung wide and bashed into the wall, and Joon, Amy and Scott hurried into the room. Mary stared, wide-eyed. Scott and Amy looked haunted and pale—as pale as Ellen—and their movements betrayed their erratic mental state. Joon was soaking wet, still wearing her sodden party dress, looking almost exactly as she had outside Dylan’s fire escape, her hair hanging over her face like black moss. But Mary’s eyes fixed on Joon’s right hand and what it was holding.

The gun.

That’s what’s-his-name’s gun—Mason’s gun
, Mary finally realized, remembering Trick’s awful dealer friend, the meth head with the ripped body—recalling Patrick’s memory of the rooftop meeting.
The gun he brought to the party—the one Joon was supposed to get from him
. It was the entire reason Mason had been at the party—maybe the entire reason there
was
a party. She hadn’t recognized it when she’d lifted it to her own head, but now, staring across the wrecked hotel room, she realized it was the same one—the same satin-finish Smith & Wesson automatic.

“Finally!” Ellen shouted. “Where the hell have you
been?
Mary’s on her way!”

“Good,” Joon said quietly. “Good.”

“What do you mean, good? Everything’s gone wrong! Dylan’s been shot!”

“Yeah,” Joon said, smiling with one side of her mouth. Mary couldn’t take her eyes off the gun—the gun that hung from Joon’s slim hand like the clapper of a funeral bell. “Serves her right, doesn’t it? Now we’ve
both
lost a guy.”

“You fucking
crazy bitch!”
Ellen screamed, grabbing Joon by the throat.
“What the hell did you do?”

No—no
, Mary thought, feeling her breath catching in Patrick’s raspy, cigarette-stained throat.
No, please, no—

“We don’t have
time
,” Joon shouted back, grabbing Ellen’s wrists and easily shaking her hands free. The gun swung around and Ellen and Mary and Amy and Scott all ducked. “Get your hands off me, damn it—and get your shit together. You said she’s on her way—we’ve got to finish this.”

“Okay—okay.” Ellen was panting, starting to cry again. Mary watched as her sister got control of herself. “Give me the gun,” she said, holding out her hand.

Joon met Ellen’s eyes and held out the gun, and Mary stared, mesmerized, as her sister reached out and took it, holding it like a trophy, tilting the weapon so the lamplight gleamed on its smooth black surface.

“The rest of you, hide,” Ellen ordered. Her voice had changed, Mary realized, powerless to stop herself from walking forward, watching as Ellen carried the gun through the open doorway into Patrick’s bedroom, toward the bed … and the wooden box that lay on its sheets.

(Because I hate her
.)

Mary stood there in Patrick’s body and clothes with the smell of Krylon spray paint filling her nostrils and stared at her sister as Ellen carefully opened the wooden box, placed the gun inside it and then pulled a folded note from her pocket and put that inside the box next to the gun. The ceiling spotlights flared in Mary’s eyes, the white glare filling her vision, expanding like the pain and sorrow in her heart until she had disappeared within a numbing platinum void.

6
DYLAN

B
RIGHT WHITE LIGHT WAS
shining in Mary’s eyes, glittering from the glass spyhole set directly in the center of the white door in front of her. A pounding noise was coming from the other side of the door, shaking it visibly. Mary could feel cold brass in her right hand; she looked down and saw her own hand—a boy’s large hand—turning the knob and pulling the door open while the pounding continued. She wanted to stop herself, but she couldn’t—there just wasn’t time. Dylan’s muscles were already moving, turning the knob on the Shayne apartment’s front door and pulling it open, and Mary had something like one second to realize where, when, and who she was—and to try to
stop herself—
but it was too late.

The door burst open, practically knocking her backward, and then she was staring out into the fifth-floor landing, where Joon Park stood in her ruined clothes pointing a gun right at her and pulling the trigger.

The muzzle flash and blast were brilliant and loud. The gun jerked, its barrel slamming backward and forward as the cartridge was ejected and a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke filled the air. Mary was blown backward and she felt white-hot agony in her abdomen and then a blast of pain all up and down her body as the wooden floor slammed into her from behind; she was on the floor now, staring up at her apartment’s hallway ceiling, with a pool of warmth spreading behind her and her mind nearly comatose with pain and shock.

“Aaaahh!”
a male voice was screaming—Dylan’s voice, echoing inside her skull.

That’s me
, Mary thought. The pain was so intense that she was convinced she would go insane if it continued.

Joon came forward, into the apartment, still brandishing the smoking gun. The look in her eyes—viewed from floor level—was terrifying. Mary could hear the clatter of footsteps and a slamming door as Real Mary dashed into her bedroom and slammed and locked the door.

“There,” Joon whispered. She was looking down at Mary—at Dylan—contemptuously. “Now
you’ve
lost a guy you cared about, Mary—how does it feel?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Mary screamed. She couldn’t help it. “Oh, God, it fucking
hurts—”

Joon had stepped over her and was heading down the corridor toward Mary’s bedroom door—Mary could hear her footsteps creaking on the floorboards.

Think
, she told herself through the pain.
Think—figure it out
.

Ellen had said that she’d cast Horus’s vengeance curse—the Curse of 7 Souls—on Mary because Mary had “tried to kill Mom.” Mary couldn’t make heads or tails of that remark. She’d come to understand what all the others had against her—why they’d been enlisted in Ellen’s curse—but she still couldn’t figure out what Ellen, her sister, had against her.

“I’ve called the cops!”

Mom’s voice, coming through her bedroom door. Mary remembered—she’d experienced this same moment already, not that long ago, from within her own bedroom.

“Whoever you are, the cops are coming! I called nine-one-one!”

The next few minutes were hard for Mary to keep track of. She realized that she might be going into shock—she was paralyzed, staring at the ceiling, but she vividly remembered the pool of blood that was spreading on the floor around her. She tried to keep awake, to keep herself rational, but it wasn’t easy—she had a strange, hallucinogenic awareness of Joon heeding Mom’s warning and running past her, a black and silver blur, waving Mason’s gun, and then she realized that her mother was there, crouching over her, a big blur smelling of tobacco smoke and flowers, and she was crying again, staring up at her mother’s face from the floor and realizing just how close she was to death—how she’d spent what seemed like an endless amount of time in proximity to death, thanks to an ancient Egyptian sorcerer she’d never even heard of before today.

“Mommy,” she was crying. “Mommy, Mommy …” She knew that her mother saw Dylan Summer lying on the floor, not her daughter, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.

“No, no, no,” Mom murmured, stroking Dylan’s scruffy hair away from Mary’s—Dylan’s—eyes. She was still holding the handset of the cordless phone. “No, please, not again, not again …”

“Mommy … Mommy …”

The hallucinatory feeling continued as Mary lay on the floor in the pool of Dylan’s blood and heard her own bedroom door bang open, heard Real Mary come out of her bedroom and scream at the top of her lungs.

“Mommy …,” Mary moaned in agony. “Mommy, help me….”

“The ambulance is coming,” Mom told her in a soothing voice, the one Mary remembered her mother using when she was a little girl. “I’ve called nine-one-one; I told them gunshot—they’re on their way.”

Mary was fading in and out of awareness as her mother and Real Mary talked and Mom explained that she’d heard the gunshot and come out of the room. She tried to ignore the pain and focus on their voices. “Ow, ow, ow …,” she moaned. “Mommy, I’m dying; I’m really dying….” She wasn’t in control of what she was saying; the strange, dreamlike state continued as Real Mary’s BlackBerry rang and Real Mary took the call from Ellen that sent her downtown to her death. Mary tried to interfere—she grabbed her own ankle and said, “No, don’t—don’t go,” but her voice came out in a whisper and Real Mary easily pulled herself away and said something Mary couldn’t hear, and then she was gone, on her way to the Peninsula Hotel for the very last time—and Mary was alone with Mom, lying on the floor in Dylan’s dying, gut-shot body.

“Please stay awake,” Mom begged as she caressed Mary’s—Dylan’s—forehead. “Don’t pass out—stay awake. I can’t take it—I can’t take this happening again.”

That’s the second time she’s said that
, Mary realized. It was hard to think with the pain flowing through her body and her ears ringing and the warm stain spreading beneath her, but she suddenly registered what her mother had said.

“What do you—what do you mean ‘again’? Mom—”

“Don’t talk,”
Mom urged in a weak, faint voice, and Mary realized that Dawn Shayne was on the edge of panic—and not just because of the gunshot and the blood. It was something else. “Don’t talk, or you’ll accelerate going into shock.”

“What—”

“Shhh!”

Mary’s mother was beside herself—Mary had never seen her in such a panic. She was crouched on the floor with Dylan Summer’s blood soaking into her bathrobe like scarlet paint, stroking Dylan’s hair and staring with wide eyes like her worst nightmare was coming true. “What do you mean ‘again’?” Mary rasped painfully—the effort of speaking each word made her light-headed. “If—if you tell me what you’re talking about I’ll be quiet.”

Her mother gazed down at her, tears in her eyes, her face white, and nodded. “This happened before,” she whispered finally. “Just like this. I—I lost somebody I loved. I lost somebody I
really
loved, the same way. He was shot to death.”

“You mean Da—you mean Mr. Shayne?”

Is that how Dad died? And nobody ever told me?

But Mom shook her head.

“I did love Mary’s father. I did, truly. But”—Mom moved her head then, turning her face to one side as if ashamed or embarrassed—“but I was in love with somebody else. His name was Lawrence—Lawrence Schwartz. And he …” Mom’s eyes focused back on Mary. “You don’t want to hear this, Dylan. It was so long ago; ten whole years ago. Nobody remembers anymore; nobody cares except me and Ellen.”

Lawrence?

Mary was stunned. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined such a thing.
Mom was in love with a man named Lawrence?

But the amazing thing was, she
remembered
Lawrence. The name brought an image into her mind: a middle-aged man in a dark green suit with no tie.

Uncle Larry
.

All at once, the complete memory was there, as if it had never faded at all. He was always hanging around Mom when the girls were young, and they were supposed to call him “Uncle Larry.”

I must have repressed it
, Mary thought dazedly.
Sure, I’ve repressed it, like all those shrinks on television say. Because it made me angry
.

The ten-year-old anger was coming back now; the pain and dizziness were like vodka, poisoning her blood as it drained onto the floorboards, making her drunk with remembered fury, the kind of deep, unchecked rage that only a neglected child could feel, even if she didn’t understand it.

She remembered being forced to spend dismal hours with Mom and Uncle Larry and being told to keep it a secret from Daddy. Mom spent all her precious time with Uncle Larry. That was why she was always running late when she was
supposed
to be picking Mary up from gymnastics. Of course, she managed to pick Ellen up from school every day at three on the dot—all Ellen wanted to do was go home and read books. But once Ellen had been safely delivered back to the apartment, Mom would disappear off to Larry Land. That was where she was every day at five o’clock when Mary would sit waiting for her on the school steps, shivering in the freezing cold, her mittens tucked deep under the arms of her pea coat and her teeth chattering. Mary would convince herself that every passing cab would surely be her mother, but sometimes Mom wouldn’t come for hours. And sometimes she never came at all. Dad would show up—after Mom had called him with some lame excuse—and Mary would ride home in a taxi with her father, pressing against him, warming her hands beneath her arms and gratefully inhaling his Borkum Riff tobacco smell, telling him how much she
hated
Mommy for leaving her out there in the cold so often.

“Dylan?” Mom sounded even more worried. “This is upsetting you—I can tell. Should I—”

“Tell me,” Mary gasped. “Tell me what happened. Tell me who shot him. Please.”

“Mort shot him,” Mom told her. “Mary’s father shot him—shot him dead.”

What?

Mary realized she was probably hallucinating; the pain and her mother’s touch and the glare of the overhead lights and the accumulated weirdness of the six souls she’d occupied were affecting her thinking.
Did Mom just say that she was having an affair with Uncle Larry and Dad
shot
him?

But she wasn’t hallucinating, or dreaming, and she knew it. She’d gotten over that comforting fantasy back when she was Scott Sanders. This was real, as real as it got.

“Please,” Mary whispered painfully. “Please tell me.”

“It was so long ago,” Dawn Shayne began. “Ten years ago, but I’ll never forget it. The worst day of my life … the day of our anniversary party. We don’t talk about that day. Mary acts like she doesn’t remember it.”

But I don’t! I don’t remember it!

“It was supposed to be a good day—our crystal anniversary. We had a big party, right here in this apartment. Mort and I had invited everyone. But something was wrong. From the moment I woke up, I felt … odd. Like the whole world was against me. Everything was off-kilter somehow. All of my friends—even my closest ones—were acting like they were out to get me.”

This is sounding very familiar
, Mary realized as Dylan’s body began shivering.

“They all did such … such mean things to me,” Mom was saying. “All of them, all of my friends. I thought it was just in fun; just pranks you’d play on someone. I could have dealt with it if it hadn’t been for my family. When your family turns against you, Dylan, well … there’s no recovering from that. It kills something in your heart, and you just never recover.”

“You mean—you mean your husband?”

“I mean Mary.”

And here we go
, Mary thought, with that same feeling of sick inevitability that she always imagined accompanied capsizing boats as they sank, airplanes that suddenly plummeted, cars that skidded out of control and slid into incoming traffic.
Here we go into the abyss—into the blank spot, the missing memory, the white field of snow
.

“Larry was at the party,” Mom said. “I never looked at him—I was sure of that. But Mort
knew
somehow. I could just tell that he knew, and that day”—she shivered, and Mary felt the shiver through Dylan’s shoulder—“that day, he was
different
. He had a look in his eyes, a murderous look, that I’d never seen before. I realized he was going to do something violent, something dangerous. I knew we had to get the girls and get away, to escape. Larry had a little place north of Riverdale,” Mom continued, still stroking Dylan’s sweat-streaked forehead as the hot pool of blood spread beneath him. “A little farmhouse, about twenty minutes out of town.”

A farmhouse. A farmhouse in the snow
.

Uncle Larry’s house
.

Mary was listening so avidly, her only real fear was that Dylan would die of blood loss before she got to hear the end of the story. The “visions” she’d been seeing all day weren’t visions at all—they were
memories
. Somehow the curse had dislodged the door in her mind that had been shut for ten years, and the memory of that day had spilled out.
I was seven years old
, she remembered.
And we fled through the snow to the farmhouse
.

“We thought we’d be safe there,” Mom went on, her voice drenched in the sorrow and dread of her story. “So we got inside and lit a fire and we
were
safe … for about ten minutes. Morton had followed us, and he—he drove right there; he got out of the car and banged on the door like he—like a madman. There’s no other way to describe it. I
begged
Larry not to let him in, not to open the door, not in front of the girls, but he just went over and reached for the doorknob”—Mom was crying openly now—“and when he’d flipped the latches Mort just
kicked
the door open and sh-shot Larry, point-blank. The worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life … I hoped I’d never hear it again, and I never did. Until just now; until tonight.”

“What did you do?” Mary croaked.

“I screamed for the girls to follow me and I
ran
, out of the house, out the back door, into the snow, into the trees. I turned to look behind me and Mary was there, but I’d lost Ellen somehow, and when I turned to go back for her I fell.” Mom had lost control of her tears. She was sobbing like a child, trying to find spaces to breathe. “I fell into a ditch, some kind of hole in the ground, and I couldn’t get out.”