After Ever (19 page)

I wait for Francesca to tell him to go to hell, or to ask him again where Sam is. The last thing I expect her to do is lean forward and say, “Share her? Do you have a
demonios
?”

“No,” says Peter, his eyes glowing with greedy delight. “But I can get one.”

“Wait a second,” I interject, not liking where this conversation is going one bit. Whose side is Francesca on, anyways? Not mine, if she is seriously thinking about going along with Crazy Peter. “No one is getting any demons or Unknowns or whatever you call them. I just want to find Sam, got it?”

Under the table something pinches my thigh. I peek down to see Francesca’s red tipped fingernails. They hold tight, a silent warning, and slowly release.

“We cannot discuss this here,” she says to Peter. “Let us go to the back. We will talk in secret.”

“What if the Fresh makes a run for it?” he says, glaring at me as if
I
am the problem.

“We will take her with us.” Francesca shrugs.

One thing is clear. I am not going to some back room with either of these two. I thought I could trust Francesca. Now I’m not so sure. Who is to say she isn’t just using me to make some trade with an Unknown?

With some vague idea of taking her by surprise and running out the front door I jump to my feet, flipping the bar stool over backwards. Unfortunately Francesca is smarter than I give her credit for. Before I can so much as move one inch in the direction of the front door she is standing in front of me, blocking my escape route. Shaking her head, she makes a quiet
tsk tsk
sound with her tongue.

“There is no running, Winni
fredi
. You will go with us or I will announce what you are to everyone here. You will probably be killed in the mad stampede before a
demonios
can claim you, so that is good,” she says philosophically.

“Sounds real awesome,” I bite out.

Ultimately left with little choice, I allow Francesca to push me around the side of the bar. Peter follows closely behind, all but salivating down my neck. We enter a narrow hallway and take the first door on the right, which leads directly to a large, messy kitchen.

Dirty pots and pans hang overhead. Foul smelling meat and rotten vegetables are piled high on the stainless steel countertops. All of the trash bins are overflowing and the entire place looks like it hasn’t seen a sponge in years. Francesca gives me a shove and I go flying forward, just managing to catch myself on the edge of a counter before I go colliding face first into a pile of dirty dishes.

“Listen bitch,” I snarl as I fling cold mashed potatoes from my fingers. “If you think for one second I’m going to let you treat me like – whoa! What are you
doing
?” I whirl around just in time to see Francesca grab a serious looking butcher’s knife off a shelf. In a move too quick for my eyes to follow she is behind Peter and holding the blade tight against his exposed throat. Her eyes meet mine from across the room.

“You are saying?” she say sweetly.

“I was saying… good work?”

“
Si
, this is what I thought.”

Gargling something unintelligible Peter tries to throw her forward over his shoulder. She clings to him like a cat, digging her nails into the top of his shiny head for traction and twisting the knife upwards in a gesture that looks well practiced.

Stunned – not to mention suitably impressed – by the sudden turn of events, I stay back, keeping a row of narrow metal tables between us. Francesca looks like she has everything well in hand. Crossing my arms, I lean against the wall and prepare to enjoy the show.

“Peter, Peter, Peter… You do not threaten Francesca,” she says in a low, sing song voice that sends shivers down my spine. “I ask you nicely for help. I come to you as a friend. Why do you have to be such a greedy
serpiente viscose
? You disappoint me.” The knife slips down half an inch, giving Peter room to talk without slicing open his jugular vein.

“I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’ll help you! I will, I promise. Just don’t kill me again.”

Don’t kill me again
? Does that mean Francesca has sliced this guy open before? I sit up a little straighter, keeping my eyes trained on the knife. I feel a little sick, the same way I do every time I watch a movie with a torture scene in it and even though Peter is a big fat jerk I hope for his sake – and the sake of my gag reflex – that Francesca doesn’t do anything too serious with the knife.

“Please, please, please,” Peter continues to blubber. Fat tears leak from the corners of his eyes and run down his red cheeks to mix with the snot that is pouring out his nose. “I’ll tell you everything I know. I promise. I promise!”    

  “Have you seen the boy my friend is looking for?” she croons, caressing his neck with the side of the blade until he jumps. “Tell the truth and I will let you go, Peter. Tell the truth and I will not slice your throat open and watch your blood drain onto the floor.”

More tears. More snot. It’s getting a little embarrassing to watch. I wonder if Peter is going to pee himself. I saw a special once on some detective show that said if a human being is elevated to a state of fear higher than their mind can cope with they lose control of their bodily functions. The bladder usually goes first. Is it the same when you’re dead? I really hope not. The last thing I want to see is a full grown man piss his pants.

“I saw him,” says Peter. “I saw the boy you were talking about. Brown hair. Glasses. Weird shoes. He came in here right before your friend, then he left.”

“Where did he go?” Francesca demands. “What direction?”

 “I – I don’t know! I didn’t see. I – okay, okay. Across the street!” he howls as blood spurts from a shallow cut across his throat. “He went across the street to the bowling alley.”

“You have done very good, Peter. Maybe I do not kill you tonight after all,” says Francesca.

“How are you… how are you going to leave?” Peter says. “You can’t just walk out. You know he won’t let–”

Whatever else Peter was about to say is abruptly cut off as Francesca flips the knife around and slams the heavy wooden handle into the back of his head. Peter’s eyes flash white before he slumps to the dirty floor, knocked out cold.

“We have to go,” she says, looking straight at me. Her eyes are huge and dark in her otherwise pale face and when she sets the knife down on the counter her hand visibly trembles. Maybe holding a knife to a man’s throat isn’t as easy as it looks. “Hurry. This way.”

We leave the kitchen through a different door then we entered. This one takes us straight to a storage closet piled high with boxes and crates. I shut the door behind us and jam a long piece of wood under the handle for good measure. When I turn around Francesca is standing in the middle of the room, completely motionless. At first I think she is staring at something, except the wall in front of her is completely empty. Then I see her eyes are filled with tears.

“Uh… Francesca? Are you okay?” I ask tentatively.

“This is where it starts,” she says. Her fingertips trace across the crates as she wanders in a slow circle, looking everywhere except at me, as if in this moment I have ceased to exist. “I was upstairs doing my homework. It was Saturday night. Late.
Mamá
was already asleep. My father he was still at the bar.” Her mouth tightens. “Still making his money. A man came in. An angry man. I could hear him yelling from my room. Peter dragged him out back. Beat him. Broke his arm. I watched this from my window.

“The man, he crawls away. But he comes back. Through there,” she says, raising her arm and pointing to a door partially obscured by boxes. “Through that door he came. I see him, but I say nothing. I do nothing.” Her voice thickens with anguish. “He starts a fire in this room. The boxes and wood go up quickly. He is smart, this man. He locks the front doors with a chain. There is no way out. I hear people screaming. Crying. Begging for their lives. I can smell the fire. The smoke comes under my door and—”

“Francesca, stop it.” I grab her shoulders and give her a little shake. She flops in my hands like a rag doll. Her head lolls to the side. Her eyes are dim, unfocused. I don’t know how long Peter will remain unconscious. I do know that when he wakes up we better make sure we are as far away from this place as possible. I can feel the wrongness of it all now. It creeps over my skin like cobwebs, invisible and sticky to the touch. I am not supposed to be here, even as part of me yearns to remain.

I shake Francesca harder. When that does nothing I take a deep breath and slap her across the face.

She comes to with a gasp. I release her shoulders and step away, out of range of the girl who can wield knives like they are going out of style.

“What happened?” she asks, looking around in confusion.

“I have no idea. We really have to go, though. How do we get out of here? That door with the boxes in front of it?”

She blinks slowly. “I was there again, the night of the fire. I saw the man who started it. He was… He was…”

“Hey. Hey!” I say when her eyes start to glaze over again. “Get a grip, okay? We have to go. We have to find Sam.”

“Find Sam,” she repeats. Recognition flickers in her eyes and I sigh with relief, knowing that I can’t make it out of here without her. Like it or not Francesca and I are going to have to stick together if we want to make it out of here alive – or at least not any more dead than we already are.

“This is an evil place,” she says, echoing my thoughts exactly. “It is trying to keep us here. Trying to… to trick me. We must leave at once.” She grabs my arms and thrusts her face to mine until we are chin to chin, nose to nose, eye to eye. Her breath smells like red licorice.  

“Ummm…”

“No matter what happens you will not let me come back here.” She shakes me, hard enough to snap my teeth together. “Do you understand?”

“Ow. I hear you. Let’s just go, okay? I won’t let you come back here. I promise.” I remember another promise I made not too long ago. To stay with Sam. To not leave him behind. Maybe it wasn’t a promise I spoke out loud, but it was real. And now it’s broken. I will not break another.

Working in unison we pull the crates away from the back door. I am kicking the last of the boxes out of the way when there is a swell of angry voices from the kitchen. Peter is easy to hear above the sudden ruckus. He is shouting the loudest.  

“Come on!” I grab Francesca’s wrist and throw open the door. We stumble outside and hit the pavement running. The air is hot and humid and the sky overhead is dark. My first taste of night in the After. There are no stars. No moon. It feels unsettling and foreign to run beneath a sky of pure black, but I don’t have time to dwell on it.

We are at the end of a narrow alley. Hand in hand Francesca and I turn right, towards the street. Her high heels click out a sharp staccato as we run. My eyes adjust rapidly to the dark and I focus on a flashing neon sign across the street with missing letters.

BUD’S B OWLING AL EY

Adrenaline zings through my veins. The bowling alley! Less than fifty yards away. So close I can taste it. Tears burn my eyes. Sam. I am going to see Sam again. I don’t think I truly believed it would happen until now. Until this very second. This very moment. I draw in a ragged breath to fuel my lungs. So close. We’re so close.

I start to count off every stride as my sneakers hit the pavement. One, two, three… Each step bringing me not only closer to Sam, but to the one connection I still have to the world I once knew. My mom is in this place. Somewhere, she is here, and I will see her. Soon. Until then, there is only Sam to remind me of my life before. Sweet, sweater vest Sam – the boy who knew me when I was alive.        

We’re almost at the end of the alley when Francesca slams me into the wall.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I hit the brick hard. Hard enough to daze me as I spin away, reaching blindly for Francesca. My fingers latch onto the back of her shirt and dig in. She whips around and rakes her nails across my cheek.

“What the hell,” I gasp as I dodge a fist to the face. “Francesca, stop it. Francesca! STOP IT!” My pleas fall on deaf ears. Her eyes are blank as she fights me and I know it’s not really her who is yanking my hair and kicking her knee up into my belly, it is whatever is holding her to this place. I deflect another blow intended for my nose with my forearm and twist underneath of her, trying to get a better hold of her writhing body.

If she escapes now I will never get her back. For the briefest of moments I consider letting her go and making a run for the bowling alley by myself. Now that I know where Sam is I do not need her. But something keeps my clinging to her arm with a ferocity I didn’t even know I possessed. I can’t let her go back to the bar. Even here, at the end of the alley, a good five hundred yards from the door, I can feel its evilness. It slithers through the shadows like a snake, beckoning us to return with every whisper of breath.

Come back to me, my darlings. I will give you what you want. I will give you what you need. Come back to me, and your world will be complete. You shall never wish for anything again.

No. I need to find Sam. I need to get out of here.

Why? He does not want you. He does not need you. He left you, darling girl. He left you and you came to me. I will protect you now. I will keep you and love you. I will give you whatever your heart desires.

“NO!” I shout the denial out loud.

The air radiates with fury. It brushes against my skin, hot to the touch, like steam pouring off a kettle. I grab Francesca’s shoulders and whip her around, slamming her into the brick wall. She hits it hard, hard enough to wake her up from whatever level of unconsciousness the evil managed to drag her down to.

“
Lo que esta sucediendo
?” she asks.

“I don’t know what that means, but we gotta go. Can you run?”

She takes one step forward, then another. It’s good enough for me. Hand in hand we leave the bar behind, ignoring the howling voices that demand we turn around and come back. The instant we cross the street the voices go silent, as if an invisible veil has fallen into place behind us, and Francesca sags against me in week kneed relief.