Betwixt (44 page)

Slowly, carefully, she opened the envelope. Though the words seemed to swim in front of her, she tried to take in as much
as her eyes allowed her.

She is a cutter. She will eliminate you. She tried last night.

Despite herself, Ondine cast around for the black woman from the airplane the night before, the one she had felt so comforted
by, the one who had given her the club soda. All she saw were tourists; a few businessmen strolling; a couple of teenagers
skipping stones, one in a White Sox T-shirt. No one harmful. No one out to get her.

Farther down, on the highway median Ondine had crossed a moment before, a group of people shimmered. Distant traffic halted;
a few horns bleated; everything sounded slow and wavy. Then a smaller thing, shaking, trotting toward her, out of a bright
weave of moving cars. A dog. A little black dachsund, the one from the rose garden.

She stood up and walked up the granite blocks toward the highway. A car was lodged halfway across the median.

The old woman.

The sky was very blue; the sun shone. People stood around. She walked faster toward the crosswalk. Cars stopped, a few horns
hung in the still summer air. Red lights flashed, a siren mounted, and she remembered:

The old woman from the park, she had seen her again, after she got off the phone. Something about the woman’s voice — “Come
on, Henry. Come now.” — had scared her and she had run across the highway, not waiting for the light to change. The blocks
of granite at the edge of the lake must have drowned out the sound of the car veering off the highway, headed for …

“Excuse me —” She stopped a couple coming from the median. “What just happened?”

They shook their heads and frowned.

“Some car skipped the median and almost hit an old lady.
The driver is in bad shape. The lady lost hold of her dog — a little dachsund. Have you seen it?”

Ondine nodded, staring. The driver was in bad shape.

“He went over there.” She pointed.

“Tell the old lady that. She’s frantic.”

She arrived at the scene at the same time as the ambulance.

“Where’s the old woman?” she asked a stranger. He shrugged. “I have to tell her her dog is okay.” The man stared and she was
conscious of the fact that she held only two things: the opened letter and the brown eyedrop bottle. She curled her hands
into her sides.

“Ask the paramedics,” he said. “They probably are getting her in the ambulance. She was okay. The driver — she wasn’t so lucky.
Are you related to her?”

“No.” Ondine paused.

The man crinkled his mouth and looked down. “Oh. Just. Just that you’re both black.” He waved his hand. “Stupid assumption.
The old lady. She’s okay.”

A stupid assumption that she was related to the driver of the car that had almost hit the old lady. A black woman. The one
who was now in very bad shape.

Ondine looked around the dissipating crowd and saw an official-looking man in a red jacket standing near a car, mumbling into
a walkie-talkie. He did not look up till she was there standing in front of him.

“Do you know where the old lady is?” He smiled distractedly and Ondine continued. “I — I saw her dog.”

His ear to his walkie-talkie, he nodded. “She’ll be very happy,” he said loudly, as if he were talking over some other conversation.
“That’s great.” He tipped his head toward the ambulance, whose lights were fluttering in the corner of Ondine’s vision. Cars
still honked, but people were starting to walk away.

“Over there. She’s in the back.”

Ondine nodded and started toward the ambulance. She turned, almost forgetting, and called back: “Is the driver okay?”

“Can’t release that information, ma’am,” — he waved Ondine on — “but the old lady, she’s fine. She’s just back there.” She
headed in the direction of his hand, rolling the brown bottle in her fingers, then rubbing her thumb against the glass. Was
it the way he nodded? A certain flicker in his eyes?

No. She was imagining things. She was walking toward an ambulance to tell an old woman that her dog was fine. She was about
to go home and talk to her mother. She’d throw the stupid letter away. Everything would go back to normal.

She undid the top of the bottle with a shaky hand and put one drop in each eye. Just a drop. What would a drop hurt? She blinked,
still walking, toward the open doors of the back of the ambulance. They were thrown open, the universal sign of “this is being
taken care of.” She stepped toward them, still blinking from the silly thing she had done to her eyes.

“G
OOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN
, M
OTH
.”

Morgan’s delicate hands covered her head, and she was crouching near the end of the table Neve was belted to.

She could hear Bleek’s voice. Whatever had just happened to her left her feeling pain, everywhere, as if each of her bones
had been jammed. Her skin felt ill-fitting; her temples pounded. She was desperately thirsty. So this was what losing control
felt like. This time she would not look up. She did not want to see the coiling slippery thing that had been trying to ram
itself down her throat just a moment before. She nudged her tongue between her lips and could taste it there, under her nose,
Moth’s sticky leavings. She could not think about what to do next. Everything had gone awry. Nix was gone; Moth — whatever
he was now — had overheard her threatening Neve; and Bleek, she didn’t know what Bleek would do. They had stumbled into his
private torture chamber, that much was clear, and as Morgan crouched there, terrified, Neve’s broken crying began to seep
into her, slowly and surely as the blood on the girl’s sundress had bloomed over its center. “Nononono,” the girl moaned.
“Nonono, not again. Bleek, I don’t need any more.”

Need more what? What the hell had Bleek been doing? Morgan willed herself to look up. Get a hold of yourself. Whatever it
was that Moth had commanded her to do, whatever shapes he
had released inside her, she would not reveal any more. Not until she was ready.

Too soon, Moth had said at Ondine’s party, and he was right. It was too soon and she had much more to learn.

Fingers scraping the ground, she felt cold earth and forced herself higher against the wall she had backed onto. Moth was
straightening, too, his head turning back and forth, trying to locate Bleek’s shape in the flickering darkness. She didn’t
want to look at the cutter yet, but she could hear him.

“You’re looking … terrible as usual, old pal. No, really. Sticking around hasn’t been so good on the old bod, huh,
James
? And you used to have such a manly one. Such a chick magnet. Really, it’s sad, what happens to us. That’s why I’ve got Neve
here.” Morgan edged her eyes over to Bleek, who smiled cruelly, hovering over the tied-up girl. She had recognized the fiend’s
voice and was now gasping for air, begging.

“Please, please. No more.”

“She’s helping me.” Bleek looked up. Neve, on the ground and still belted to the table, followed his eyes.

“Please.” Morgan saw tears forming. “Please someone help me.”

He ignored her. “If you think you’re gonna get the girl, Moth, you’ve got another think coming. Morgan, dear. Thanks. No,
I mean it.
Thanks.
”

He turned, whispering, and Morgan started shaking and
could not stop. She backed against the wall farther; her palms felt cold, moist earth. Everything: the darkness; the dead
human smell; the horrible, raw crying of Neve. Her blood-spattered sundress. Morgan’s own guilt. They wormed into her head
and twisted there, nibbled and oozed.

No, it was too soon.

Now it was Bleek’s voice in her ear.

“Muchas gracias for aiding me with this little problem,
Morgue,
but you’ve failed in one crucial aspect.” He was up against her, his face pinched. “Nix. Where is he?”

She was trying to coil herself tighter into the shadows, but could not go any farther. She moved her eyes to Moth, who stared
at Neve, clearly wanting to help her. The girl had dropped her head and was weeping silently into her knees.

“I don’t know where Nix is, Bleek,” Morgan whispered. “But Neve’s not well. You need to let her go.”

“But you’re the one who tied her up, Morgana dear.” He laughed and turned back to the tied-up Neve. “So far she’s been so
easy. Easy-pleasy Neve. But now. Well, I suppose you know what happened.” He grabbed a fistful of blond hair and jerked. “You
ran away, didn’t you, silly little girl? I guess I should have expected it. The cave is … Well, let’s just say it gets a little
cozy
in there. Doesn’t it, pet? But fortunately Morgana found you.”

Bleek inched his stubbled muzzle into Neve’s neck.

“We want you to stay awake after all. We have a long nine months.
Hm
?” He laughed again, and Neve wailed hoarsely.

“Let me go. Please, Tim, let me go. Please. I’ll be good. I won’t tell anyone. Please let me go —”

“Well —” Bleek aimed his eyes now at Morgan, who felt her fingers again grasp the wall and her gut loosen. “You’ll have to
ask your friend.”

The light in the room had changed. Subtle, but altered. Morgan looked up, careful not to betray too sudden a movement. Ever
so slowly, as Bleek prodded his runaway slave, Moth lifted the lantern that had been on the table. He was not staring at Neve
anymore, but at the wheezing creature in front of him, with a look of hatred and determination so profound Morgan found herself
shaking. Would he hurt her too? Just as the lantern was at its highest point, Moth flicked his eyes to her. Though she could
not read them completely, she sensed what he wanted her to do.

“What about me,” Morgan heard herself say. “I thought you liked me.” And Bleek — hideous, vain Bleek — turned, a smile haunting
his lips.

“What, my love?”

“I said I thought you liked —”

The lantern came down on Bleek’s head in a sputtering crash.

“Me!” Morgan bellowed, and Moth lunged. For a moment, everything was chaos. Bleek, doused in fire, rolled onto the table.
Morgan bent to free Neve’s wrists, helping her up.

If she could just get Neve to the door, they could make their way out of the tunnels. Morgan would be the heroine. Moth wouldn’t
be able to accuse her. He would be the mistaken one. She would be right. Neve she could explain later — a sister’s insane
jealousy. Moth could take care of himself.

“Come on, Neve —”

While Bleek writhed, Morgan pulled the confused girl toward the hole in the wall that was blackest — beyond which she thought
she could see the barest suggestion of daylight. Neve dragged.

“Morgan?” She whimpered. “Morgan, help me — I’m sorry — I —”

“Faster!”

“I’m scared —”

One last look over her shoulder at Bleek, who was starting to stand now, the fire having skipped from him to the kerosene-spattered
table.

Just one more step.

“Neve!”

A shadow entered the frame. The last in the world Morgan had expected.

H
ELL WAS DIFFERENT FROM HOW
K.A.
HAD PICTURED IT.
He thought it would be hot, but it was cold. Cold and it smelled like
death, despite the fire that was now raging in the center of it, lighting everyone a putrid shade of yellow-green. Devils,
it turned out, had beautiful names. Like Timothy and James, Neve and Morgan.

Not his sister. Not her. She was saving Neve. She was there with her arms wrapped around the girl, heading out the door K.A.
had just entered, her hands tangled in his girlfriend’s hair. Yet how did she know Neve was down here, in the tunnels? And
Neve, why was there blood all over her?

Innocent, perfect Neve. Lightest, whitest, purest snow, melted by the fire that licked the walls of the death chamber around
her. Lovely Neve, scratched and bruised, and her big eyes hollow. And her white teeth bared. Running to him, her skinny arms
flailing,
Help me K.A., help me,
and behind her his sister.
Toward the light, K.A. Run toward the light.
A turn, and a presence in the doorway, hands on his shoulders, cold.

Bloody Neve. Lovely Morgue. Then a blow, to his chin, from below. Bone against bone, flesh against flesh, hurling K.A. backward.
Burning, enveloping pain. Swelling, magnificent pain. Blackness, and an even softer blackness, lit by tiny stars.