Bleeding Violet (25 page)

“The spindle tree,” said Rosalee. “They call it Satan’s Fountain Pen.”

“Why?”

She pulled on a pair of black gloves, snapped a red thorn the size and shape of a knitting needle from the tree, and used it to carve into a neighboring pine. The thorn scorched the bark from the tree as Rosalee wrote
HANNA + ROSALEE = HOT
. She stood back to admire her work. “Look at that perfect spelling. The Little Rascals’d be so disappointed.”

“Who?”

“Never mind, young’un.” She tossed the used, sizzle-less thorn aside and snapped off another, wrapping it in sacking I hoped was fireproof before placing it into the basket. “Let’s go.”

In the car I had another laughing fit, one so bad Rosalee had to pull over. But she was cracking me up. She kept cocking her head and listening to Runyon,
arguing
with him. Saying “no” and “make me,” like a little kid. A crazy little kid. Just like me.

When she noticed me laughing at her,
I
noticed that she
had one blue eye and one black eye. Looking at her like that almost killed me. I seriously almost died laughing.

“Sorry,” I wheezed.

She had to blink really hard to chase that blue eye away, make it black again. “Don’t apologize,” she said, as she wiped my eyes and nose clean. “I think your mania is heightening the effect of the drug. I should’ve thought of that.”

“I don’t feel manic. It’s just … everything is so great. You’re great. I’m great. Portero is great. I used to feel like such a freak, but I’m not a freak here. I don’t even register on the freakometer.”

“Freakometer” threw me into another fit of giggles.

Rosalee held my face, an unfamiliar look of tenderness and warmth in her eyes. Protectiveness. It would have been sweet if everything hadn’t been so goddamn funny.

Her eyes flashed blue. “No!” she said, and made them go black again. She let go of me and punched the steering wheel. “I said no!
I’ll
find someone.”

If I could have stopped laughing, I would have asked her what the hell she was talking about. But the laughing continued almost unabated until we reached the lake.

As night fell, Rosalee drove us to a rural area with unlined
roads snaking through trees and rolling hills. By this time, the laughter had tapered off enough that I could pay attention. “Where are we?”

Rosalee gave me a strained smile. “Way upsquare.”

We got out of the car and walked down the road to a huge lake circled with houses, like the lake at my old summerhouse in Finland, only the bloated McMansions surrounding
this
lake weren’t at all like the simple, rustic cabins I was used to.

The deep blue sky was clear and the stars were bright. The moon was out, just a sliver of light. I laughed at the moon and the moon laughed back, a high, whistling sound like the wind blowing over the tundra.

Rosalee was on her knees near the edge of the lake. “You okay over there?”

I twirled, finally finding a use for those long-abandoned ballet classes. “Perfect.”

“Do you see?”

“See what?” Air blew cool off the lake; unseen things sang in the dark and hopped in the grass at my feet. “Oh, it’s pretty up here.”

“Hanna,” said Rosalee sharply. “Pay attention. Do you see the swimmer?”

Starlight stippled the lake and reflected eerily on the lone figure cutting slowly through the dark water. “I see him.”

“Hanna.” Her voice compelled me to look at her, her eyes fiery in the golden light of the flash lantern she’d set on the ground. “Bring him here.”

“Okay.”

I walked down the long pier, teetering in my heels. When I reached the end, I dropped to my knees, bruising them on the wood. The pain made me laugh.

“Hey!” My voice carried clearly across the water to the swimmer, who paused midstroke and then swam toward me.

The lights at the end of the pier made it easy to see him once he was close enough; I got quite an eyeful, actually.

“You’re skinny-dipping!”

“Sorta.” His deep, almost sexy voice didn’t match his appearance. He was my age, give or take, with too many zits.

“Who goes skinny-dipping alone?” The thought made me laugh. “Come up and talk to me.”

“Um …” He was eyeing his discarded clothing next to me on the pier.

“Aw. Are you shy?” I took pity on him and shimmied out of my clothes and shoes and threw them atop his. My nipples,
like two big goose bumps, brought home to me how truly cold it had gotten. “Now we’re even,” I said, through my chattering teeth. “Don’t be scared.”

The wooden slats beneath my icy feet creaked and groaned as he climbed the ladder onto the pier. The harsh white light revealed him. His entire body was covered in zits—red, angry ones. Even his toes. He flushed beneath my scrutiny.

“Moonlight is supposed to help,” he mumbled, edging around me to get to his clothes. “Gran says …”

“You don’t have to explain.” The boy was nothing to look at, but Rosalee wanted him, and that made him sparkle. When he reached for his clothes, I kicked them into the lake, his and mine, and fell over laughing at the look on his face.

“Hanna!”

The boy ducked down behind me. “Who’s that?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, chuckling. “It’s just Momma.”

“Your mother?”

“She’s very sympathetic,” I assured him, “and she really wants to meet you. Come on.”

We walked to where Rosalee was sitting, the boy hesitant and dragging his feet and kind of hiding behind me the whole
way. My giggling had tapered off in my efforts to coax the boy along, but when I saw Rosalee, I started laughing all over again.

Rosalee’s bare skin was so honeylike I was surprised not to see a swarm of bees buzzing around her. The wind blew off the water and played fetchingly in her hair. She had spread a blanket on the ground, and with the wicker basket nearby, it looked like we were about to have a picnic, nudist-style.

“Here he is, Momma,” I said. “I would have gift wrapped him, but there was no time.”

Rosalee smiled at the boy. “Nice work.”

The boy, like a peeled shrimp, looked from her to me and then back, trying to hide his erection. “Are y’all … witches?”

“Do we look like witches?” Rosalee asked.

“Y-yeah.”

We laughed, and the boy backed away from us.

“No, you don’t.” Rosalee held out her arms to him, and when he didn’t rush into them, I gave him a push.

“Go on; she won’t bite.”

Rosalee took his shaky hands before he could bolt and drew him down to the blanket. She offered him a drink from a silver cup, which rattled briefly against his teeth as he drank.
He immediately gagged and spat a mouthful of brown liquid onto the blanket.

“What
is
this?”

“Magic,” I said, stifling my giggles so he’d take me seriously. “A potion. Much better than moonlight swims.”

“Really?”

His hopeful expression made me reach out and pat his wet head. “Of course.”

He drank deeply.

Rosalee and I exchanged a conspiratorial grin, never mind that I had no idea what the conspiracy was. “
Is
it a magic potion?” I asked Rosalee while the boy choked down his drink.

“There’s no such thing as magic, Hanna. You’re worse than he is.” She plucked the cup from the boy’s hands and pushed him onto his back on the blanket while he sputtered in surprise.

“Why’d you take your clothes off ?” she asked me as she straddled him, moving his erection aside so she could sit comfortably on his stomach.

“So he wouldn’t be embarrassed to come out of the water. Why did you?”

“Because
you
did. I wasn’t sure what you promised him, but
I figured you might need help.” Rosalee smiled down at the boy. “You?”

He had to swallow several times before he could speak, his eyes glued to her breasts. “T-to get rid of my zits?”

I explained, “A moonlight swim in the lake is supposed to help.”

She pulled on the black gloves once again and removed the spindle from the basket. “Green tea would have done more for his zits than lake water.”

The boy’s gaze sprang from Rosalee’s breasts to her eyes. “W-would have?”

Rosalee fed a towel into the boy’s mouth. Her eyes briefly flashed blue as she cut into his zitty forehead with the red-hot spindle. “Should’ve waited for the mushroom juice to kick in,” she muttered, and when the boy began to fight her, she dug her knees into his sides as though he were a fractious horse and continued cutting.

Who knew a person could scream while gagged? The boy was making an odd
eeeeeeee
sound in his throat that was hilarious.

Rosalee flipped her hair from her face, smiling at me. “Wanna help?”

I smiled back. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Just me and your aunt?”

“It’s easy to hurt people you love.”

“Is it? I could never do this to you.” Rosalee’s fingers pressed the boy’s face so tightly that his skin had turned paper white. He would have her handprint marking his face for years if she ever decided to let go.

“Why are you hurting him?”

“Cuz Runyon wants him marked. And cuz it’s fun.” She laughed. “Sure you don’t wanna get in on this?”

I shook my head, giggling.

Rosalee tsked at my squeamishness. “Can you at least do something about his erection? It’s distracting the hell outta me.”

I laughed so hard, I had to crawl away and vomit again into the high grass edging the lake, to the startlement of several crickets.

I fell onto my back on the cold ground and laughed until I cried, hope bubbling within me. If it was okay for a boy to hold on to his erection while being tortured, then it was okay for me to hold on to my love for Rosalee.

No matter what she did.

I awoke to pink dawn light, a soft light that nonetheless stabbed my eyes and threatened to split my head open. I buried my face in my pillow, but the stickiness of the pillowcase repelled me. Tacky red smears stained it. Tacky red smears everywhere: my hands, the sheets. The dead boy on my—

I sprang to my feet, dragging the sheets with me, exposing the body.

I remembered the boy from the lake, remembered his zits. He still bore the glyphs Rosalee had carved into his forehead—tiny, precise shapes like chains. I remembered his ordeal, how he’d fought, but I didn’t remember the boy having no arms.

Laughter startled me.

I whirled, and although Rosalee sat naked across the room in my plum-colored reading chair, it was Runyon who looked out at me sniggering, blue eyes full of mockery.

“Momma!”

She blinked, and like that, he was gone. She looked around my room dazedly. “Uh … good morning …”

I crept over to her, as if one hard step would shatter me into a million pieces. I pointed at the boy in my bed. “Is that good?”

But she was already staring at him, tugging at her red bracelet. She seemed horrible to me. Unknowable. The most horrible thing was how much she reminded me of myself.

“What happened at the lake?”

Rosalee explained, starting and stopping, listening, telling me a story that she was also hearing for the first time.

“Runyon needed someone to remove the Key. So he had me carve special glyphs into the boy’s head that would make him do whatever he was told. When Runyon told him to pull the Key off the Ortigas’ door, the boy had no choice but to try and try again. Until his arms ripped off. It took a real long time, but after his shoulders dislocated, they just pulled right off, like drumsticks off a chicken. But the Key never even budged.”

I tried to imagine it, the effort it must have taken the boy
to tear away from his own arms. “Why wouldn’t I remember something so … ?” The horror of it stole my voice.

“You passed out at the lake,” said Rosalee. “This happened afterward.” She smiled humorlessly. “The Happiness was a bad idea, I guess.”

“You guess?
Why is he in my bed?
”

The smile fell away, was shamed away. “Runyon thought it would be … funny.”

“Did
you
think it was funny?”

Rosalee tugged on her bracelet so hard the key snapped off. “No.”

“But you let him anyway.”

“He wanted to use you,” she said, fiddling with refastening the key so she wouldn’t have to look at me, wouldn’t have to see what she’d done to me. “He wanted to use you, put the glyphs on
you
. For convenience’s sake. I had to nag him into finding somebody else.”

“Should I congratulate you? For making me help you lure a boy to his death?”

She struck her fist against the chair arm. “He wanted to use you! Don’t you get that?”

“
You’re
the one who doesn’t get it! What about next time?
I’m assuming he’s already planning another way to get the Key, right? So what is it? Does he want you to scare up a few babies for him to strangle?”

“I can’t be responsible for the whole world. I’m only responsible for you.”

“You’re doing a kick-ass job so far!” I threw out my arms so she could drink in the naked, bloody state she’d left me in. But she refused to look at me. “You’re not responsible; you’re a puppet.
His
puppet.”

“I’m just me.”

“Then tell him to leave.”

Instead of telling him to leave, she cocked her head and
listened
to him.

I stormed into the bathroom. Turned on the shower. Turned around and saw her standing in the doorway watching me, but now
I
couldn’t look at
her
.

“You need to trust me, Hanna,” she said softly. “I won’t let him hurt you. I promise. After last night, he knows how I feel about that. Knows what I’ll do and what I won’t do. So please don’t worry. Okay?”

But it wasn’t okay.

Everything was a zillion damn miles from okay.