Bleeding Violet (26 page)

Wyatt stood in his doorway holding a Pop-Tart; he looked shocked. “What’re you doing here?”

I had thrown on a sundress before fleeing my house, a thin, summery thing unfit for the change in the weather. I stood shivering on Wyatt’s stoop in the early morning air, my elbows thrumming like crazy so close to his damnable Key. “I saw a dead body.”

“Yeah?” He bit into his Pop-Tart, waiting for me to get to the bad part. When I said nothing more, he stepped back to let me inside. “Well, that’ll happen, won’t it? Dead bodies?”

Instead of stepping inside, I stepped into his arms, but he shoved me away as if we were strangers and hurried away from me.

“Paulie, c’mere.”

I followed him dejectedly into his house as his little brother came out of the kitchen, still in his pj’s and nibbling his own Pop-Tart, with Ragsie curled around his leg. Wyatt pushed Paulie toward me. “Hold her till I get back, all right?”

Paulie shrugged, as though he had to hug freaked-out girls at least once a day. As Wyatt marched off, Paulie held out his arms to me. I had to get on my knees so we’d be the same height.

Holding on to a four-year-old boy wasn’t weird, as it should have been. It was comforting. Like holding an incredibly sticky teddy bear.

Ragsie clambered up Paulie’s leg and sat on my shoulder as Paulie patted my back and said, “There, there.” Ragsie’s little arms circled my head. Was I that pathetic, that even a stuffed doll felt sorry for me?

“Why’re you crying?”

“Am I?” Was I?

“See?” Paulie swiped one of my tears with his crumb-specked hand and showed it to me.

I squeezed him and let his little-kid scent of Play-Doh and sunshine tranquilize me. “I’m having a bad morning.”

“Me too. There was arms on our doorstep.” He briefly halted his comforting pats to take a bite of his Pop-Tart. “Bloody arms not even attached to anything.”

I thought of the lake boy helplessly dismembering himself and shivered. “Were you scared?”

“They was just arms.” Paulie looked into my face, reading me. “Are you scared?”

I nodded.

“Of what?”

“My mother.”

His round face filled with shock, as if the idea of being afraid of one’s own mother was somehow worse than finding bloody arms on the doorstep.

Eventually Wyatt came back and took over. “You go on upstairs and play,” he told Paulie, shooing him out of the room.

Wyatt sat me in the yellow chair and handed me a cup of tea, something lemony and herbal. “Why’re you here?” he asked again. “I know you’re not crying over a dead body. It’s not like you ain’t seen ’em before.”

“I need somewhere to stay.”

“You wanna stay here?” His lip curled. “You ain’t scared I’ll kill you?”

“You already did,” I reminded him. “At the dark park. The suspense is gone.”

But he was dead serious. “You should be scared.”

“You won’t hurt me.”

“Wanna bet your life on that?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t afraid for myself, but for Rosalee.

The quickness of my reply seemed to startle him. The coldness melted away, and he just looked confused.

And then his cell beeped.

He frowned at it, then at me. “I gotta go.”

“So go. I’ll stay here.”

“Ma’ll throw you out if she catches you here,” he said, exasperated.

“She won’t catch me. Your dad won’t either.”

“He’s at work. I ain’t worried about him.”

“Are you worried about me?”

The question seemed to piss him off. He shot to his feet. “So come on, if you’re coming. I can’t sit around here all day.”

He snuck me upstairs and led me down the hall, past the raucous harmony of Sera’s singing voice and the whine of the vacuum.

But once I was safely inside his room, he ignored me and gathered some daggers and a fresh stack of glyph cards from the shelf near his desk and shoved them into various pockets. Then he grabbed the hunter green coat I’d made him and shrugged into it. It fit him perfectly.

I tried to put my arms around him again, but he pushed me away. Again. Why were people always pushing me away?

“Don’t touch me,” he hissed, mindful of Sera’s proximity. “How can you even wanna touch me?”

“I saw what happened, Wyatt. Petra asked you to do it. I wish I had the balls to ask someone to put me out of my misery.”

“What misery?” he exclaimed. “You got zero problems, Hanna. You can do whatever you want. You never gotta make hard choices like—”

I burst messily into tears. I was too tired to even be embarrassed. Too unsettled and clueless about what to do to help Rosalee. I held my hanky to my face to muffle the noise.

For a long time, Wyatt stood awkward and unhelpful in the face of my unhappiness. But then a burst of inspiration crossed his face.

“Hey. Look. Look what I got for you.” He grabbed something off a dresser from which clothes sprouted like half-eaten spaghetti. He shoved something into my hands—a purple, gift-wrapped box.

I sniffled and opened the box, uncovering a silver necklace from which a teeny swan—no bigger than my thumbnail—dangled.

“I was gone give it to you that day at church,” he explained. “But then I got called away, so …”

I held the swan to the light beaming through the window
and watched it sparkle. “It’s sweet.” I sniffed. “Really sweet, Wyatt.”

He shuffled his feet, pleased, but not wanting to be. “You told me you liked swans. In the truck that day?”

When I put my arms around him this time, he didn’t push me away. But he didn’t hug me back. He stood still and stiff and quiet. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t.”

I silenced him with a kiss. Strange how he didn’t understand that his ability to do what was necessary was something I admired. I sucked at doing the right thing, especially when it was hard or painful.

His phone beeped again, and he moved away reluctantly. But he looked more like the boy I was used to seeing, although more sorrowful than I liked.

He took off, and I stayed quiet in his room and read all morning, mostly his graphic novels. I was missing school, and I would almost certainly miss tomorrow as well, but I was so far ahead in all my classes, I really didn’t give a damn. I wasn’t in the mood to face anyone.

Around two that afternoon, a knock at the door nearly stopped my heart, but it was only Paulie in his Superman
T-shirt, carrying a tray that was almost bigger than he was. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a handful of potato chips, three cookies, a huge glass of milk, and a carrot. Obviously he had put this feast together himself.

“Wyatt said to wait until Ma was doing her exercises and then bring you food, so I did,” he explained as I took the tray. “Wyatt said you’re a stowaway in our house and that you’re a secret.” He looked excited by the idea. “
Are
you a stowaway?”

“Sort of.”

“Nuh-uh.” He grabbed Wyatt’s footboard and swung on it, eyeing me skeptically. “Stowaways hide in boats, not houses, so they can go somewhere. You can’t go nowhere in a house.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to be nowhere at all?”

He thought about it and nodded. “When I broke Ma’s BlackBerry. I made a wish on the Key to fix it, but the Key don’t work for us.” The memory seemed to make him bitter. “I wanted to run away. What did you break?”

“My mother’s head. I have to figure out how to fix it.
Really
fix it this time.”

I watched shock fill his face again. “Is that why you’re scared of your ma?”

I bit into the carrot. Nodded.

Paulie looked thoughtful. “Well, don’t use Elmer’s glue,” he warned. “It sure didn’t work on the BlackBerry.”

Rosalee woke me up. I was shocked to find her standing over me. I thought she would be angry at my having stayed out all night, and especially for not calling her to let her know where I was, but she didn’t seem angry, didn’t even look at Wyatt lying naked beside me. She made a shushing gesture when I tried to speak and pulled me out of bed. I threw on Wyatt’s ratty green robe and followed her downstairs.

My luggage was by the front door.

I turned to Rosalee, heart thumping. “What is this?”

“You have to leave now.” We were the same height, but she seemed to be staring down at me from some great distance, wholly dissatisfied by what she saw. “Nothing personal. I just can’t trust you anymore.”

“Why?”

“You came here and told that boy my secret.”

“I didn’t!”

“You did,” said the tall, smoke-colored man who drifted up behind her, looming over her shoulder, heaving and roiling like
a thundercloud, blue eyes bright as lightning. “
I’ll
be needing that room now,” he hissed.

Rosalee smiled and clapped, turning to him. “We can make the bed rattle just like Linda Blair did! We can charge admission!”

“Only if you’re good, Rosalee,” said Runyon indulgently.

“You can’t choose the devil over me!” I screamed. But they’d already forgotten me. I was a ghost.

Rosalee and Runyon danced away and disappeared into Rosalee’s office. I tried to follow, but the door was locked, and despite being a ghost, I couldn’t pass through the wood. I didn’t have a key—one of those Mayor-issued keys that would prove I belonged.

I beat against the office door when I heard them laughing in there, beat hard until a piece of the door broke off, sharp and long enough to pierce my heart. I reached for it.

Little Swan flapped in a silver circle around my neck and got tangled in my collar. I wasn’t wearing a collar, but she was tangled in it nonetheless, tugging at the back of my neck. Irritated, I reached back to swat her away.

“Ow!”

The sound pulled me from a sleep as thick as quicksand, the
room half-bright with moonlight. Wyatt turned over beside me—dressed in his bedclothes, unlike in my dream—rubbing his ear where I’d smacked him.

I hadn’t heard him come in last night; I barely remembered falling asleep myself. The best part of my brain had been hard at work thinking of a way to deal with Rosalee’s situation. I hadn’t had enough brainpower left over to notice trivialities like the passage of time.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I turned to my side and snuggled into his back, forcing him to spoon with me. The best part of my brain prompted me to ask, “Do spirits … have spirits ever voluntarily left a person?”

“That was possessed?” His voice was gruff with sleep. “Hell, no.”

“Is there a way to get the spirit out without killing the person?”

“You
have
to kill the host. I told you that.”

“Why?”

He yawned, and his hot breath whooshed against the back of my neck. “Because even if you remove the spirit, which is so close to impossible it might as well be impossible, the spirit leaves bits of itself behind. Like a virus that can build itself up
again. What it leaves behind, the body has no way to fight off; the immune system can’t handle it, so the person gets sick and dies anyway.”

“If it’s just a virus, couldn’t you cure it?”

He was silent a long time, as though the idea had never occurred to him.

“Wyatt, if you can make a card that can blow up leeches and lure, why not a card to heal someone?”

“Healing someone and getting rid of spirit leavings … it ain’t even in the same universe … unless …” He went silent again. I could almost hear the gears in his brain turning.

“I’d have to think about it.” He squeezed me around the middle. “
After
I wake up.”

“Wyatt Reynaldo Ortiga!”

I rolled over and bumped sleepily into Wyatt, who sat beside me, wide-awake and nervous, the early morning sun lightening his brown eyes. I armed my hair out of my face. “Reynaldo?”

He turned to me. “Hide! Quick!” But before I could move, he pulled me to the floor and rolled me under his bed. Seconds later, as I lay among dust bunnies and old socks, I heard Sera’s voice, saw her feet encased in black Doc Martens.

“Why are you still in bed? You know you have to meet the Mortmaine.”

Wyatt didn’t answer.

“Loafing around up here ain’t gone change what happened to that girl.”

“Her name was
Petra
.”

“You know the Mortmaine don’t believe in pining after—”

“Don’t tell me what they believe in. To hell with them. They won’t even let me mourn her.”

“Let her people mourn her. You don’t have that luxury.”

“Because I killed her.”

Something thumped loudly, out of my limited line of sight. Sera yelled, “I’m sick of this self-pitying bullshit, Wyatt. Petra was dead the second she let that breeder within two feet of her; it had nothing to do with you. The only thing you’re responsible for is doing your duty to this town.”

“If one more person says that to me”—it sounded like his teeth were clenched—“I swear to God—”

“Do you think your nana would’ve neglected her duties to hide in her room and mope?”

“Of course not. Bitches don’t mope.”

Sera slapped him, an unmistakable sound, as loud as a
gunshot. “You don’t deserve to wear her locket.”

“I never said I did!” Wyatt’s bare feet hit the floor as he jumped out of bed. Sera stepped back, away from him. “You want it back, take it! I’m nothing like her, and I don’t want to be like her. Some hard-hearted, unfeeling—” I jerked as something smashed, broken shards falling to the floor across the room.

I held my breath in the deep silence that followed.

“Wyatt,” said Sera soothingly. Her feet moved close to his. “It’s okay. Calm down. I’m sorry. I know the Mortmaine push you hard, but it’s only—”

“I know, Ma.” He sounded defeated. “Please, just … stop.”

Sera gave a deep sigh. “I’ll talk to your elder. I’ll tell him you need a day. Isn’t Carmin having his party tomorrow? Why don’t you go and have fun with your friends? Get some perspective back. Sound good?”

“I guess.”

“So today and tomorrow, and then business as usual.”

“Thanks, Ma.” Wyatt’s feet moved toward the bed, then disappeared from view as the mattress sank beneath his weight.

When the door closed behind Sera’s Doc Martens, I came out from under the bed.

Wyatt sat cross-legged against the headboard like a skinny, angry Buddha. “I get so sick of her throwing Nana in my face, like she was a saint.”