Bleeding Violet (31 page)

My stomach growled. Crazy how your body insisted on making demands even when everything was circling the drain. I shot to my feet. “I’m going downstairs.”

“I’m not. But …”

I looked at him, saw him eyeing the pillow still in my hands.
I ran my fingers along the words once more, and then I gave it to him and went down to the dark, bloody kitchen.

I know Wyatt’s angry with you
. Poppa said, continuing our conversation from the relative comfort inside my head,
but it’s his job to be objective. That’s why he was able to kill his own friend, because it was his job
.

“Would he consider it part of his job to help
me
?” I said, grabbing a handful of granola bars from the cupboard.

For the Key? What do you think?

“Maybe.” But how could I get to him without alerting his folks? Especially his mom. I was not in the mood for another ass kicking.

I opened the fridge to snag a bottle of milk and saw the cherries. Dark red. Deliciously ripe.

Cherries.

Why didn’t you think of me?
said Poppa, distracting me.

“What?”

When you cut your wrists. When you lay there thinking of Rosalee and no one else
.

I sighed and set the cherries opposite the blood smears on the counter. “Poppa, don’t guilt-trip me. We know how we feel about each other. But Rosalee … ?”

It’s okay
. His words soughed desolately inside my skull.
My last thought was of her too. I didn’t mean to pass it on to you, this obsession
.

“It’s not an obsession; it’s fascination.”

The Price fascination
. he said, as if he knew it well.
So powerful not even the devil infesting her will give her up
.

“He might,” I said, fingering the container of cherries as a plan began to take shape. “For the right price.”

Carmona Boulevard was wrecked, the lights broken out, the traffic signs snapped in half. A crater-size hole dented the street; I knew because I’d driven Rosalee’s red Prius into it and had to walk the last few yards to Wyatt’s house. Just as well—the Ortigas might know Rosalee’s car by sight.

Thin rain gleamed in the flowerless vines hugging the wrought-iron fence circling Wyatt’s house. I slipped through the gate and crept to his backyard. Through the living-room window of his tall, skinny house, I saw Sera ranting from the couch as Wyatt and Asher sat nearby, listening. Asher nodded sympathetically after every word that left Sera’s mouth, but Wyatt only looked empty, staring blankly at the floor.

I backed away from the window and searched until I found a jasmine-covered trellis; I climbed it, my French heels forcing me to be careful.

In the lit second-story window to my right was Wyatt’s room. The body parts he’d stuck to his walls, the plaster legs and hands, now littered the floor, curled and shrunken like dead bugs, as if my theft of the Key had sickened the house. Or killed it.

But I couldn’t fix that now. First things first.

On the left side of the trellis was Paulie’s room. The blue glow of his night-light washed over him as he lay sleeping beneath his Superman bedspread, oblivious of the turmoil downstairs. Ragsie lay in his arms, wild orange hair spilling over the pillow.

I tapped at the window, and though I tapped gently, Ragsie immediately lifted his head. Carefully, trying not to pitch over backward off the trellis, I removed the plastic bag of cherries from my coat pocket and shook it in front of the window.

Ragsie scrambled out of Paulie’s arms and hurried to the window, making quick work of the lock with his floppy arms. He threw open the glass and made a grab for the cherries, but I held them out of reach.

“Not yet,” I whispered. “First I need you to get Wyatt for me. Can you?”

He nodded.

“Good boy.” I held out the bag and let him take a cherry.

Ragsie opened his slit of a mouth and popped the cherry in whole, stem and all. When he reached for another, I again held the bag out of reach. Ragsie’s shoe-button eyes regarded me reproachfully.

I leaned closer to the doll, close enough to see the creases in the woven cotton that he was made of. “Bring Wyatt out to the backyard, and make sure he’s alone. If you do that for me, I’ll let you have
all
the cherries. Okay?”

Almost before I’d finished speaking, Ragsie scurried off the windowsill and out of the room. I followed suit, scurrying down the trellis, hoping he hadn’t run off to sound the alarm.

I kept watch in the shadow of an oak tree, water dripping off the scant red leaves and down the collar of my coat. I’d traded the hooded indigo for the fitted fuchsia coat I now wore, which, though hoodless and less warm, was much cuter and matched my shoes. Looking stylish always put a girl at an advantage, especially when she was in the wrong.

After some time, Wyatt came out to the backyard, Ragsie leading the way.

Good ole Ragsie.

“What is it, Rags?” Wyatt asked, his arms crossed over his T-shirt against the cold.

Ragsie scanned the yard, and when he spotted me under the oak, he ran to me.

“Good boy,” I said. and patted his wild hair … and then cringed, taking my hand back. Ragsie’s hair felt … human.

When Ragsie held out his arms, I gave him the cherries. He almost buckled under the weight of the bag, but managed to carry it back into the house on his strong cloth legs.

Wyatt, meantime, looked dazed as he came toward me, sleepwalker-slow. “Who’s there?”

“Me.”

My voice briefly stopped him in his tracks … then he marched under the tree and grabbed my chin, turning me so that the light from his bedroom window touched me. With his back to the light, I couldn’t read his face, but I could read his touch, the ceaseless drift of his hands over my face.

“The Mayor opened a suicide door,” he whispered. “Ma said it was for you, because of what you did.” His warm fingertips
pressed the pulse beating beneath my jaw. “Are you a ghost?”

I kissed him, and even though it hurt my mouth, I didn’t mind; Wyatt’s kisses were worth suffering over. I’d been prepared to never be this close to him again, and now I was breathing in his sighs. I wanted to inhale all of him, but he pushed me away, panting.

“Don’t kiss me like that,” he hissed. “Like you care when I know you don’t.”

He’d pushed me away, but he was still holding my arms, so I pulled him back into them. I could tell him I cared, but couldn’t he feel it? He must have, because he stopped resisting me and let me kiss him the way I wanted to.

“How are you not dead?” he asked, when I let him breathe.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” I said, kissing his ears. The rain hung from his earlobes like delicate jewelry. “I’ll tell you later. Right now, we have to save Rosalee.”

This time when he pushed me, I went flying back into the tree trunk, nearly cracking my spine against it.

“So that’s it,” he said sardonically. “You came back here to use me. Again.”

The self-disgust in his voice made me feel as low as the mud I stood in. I wanted to throw myself at his feet and
beg forgiveness, I really did, but I didn’t have time for that. “Wyatt—”

“I thought you could take care of yourself,” he said, throwing my words at Evangeline in my face. “Remember? You don’t need to be rescued.”

“I don’t. I’m trying to rescue someone else, and for that I do need help.”

“Piss on what you need! How long you been planning to steal the Key, Hanna? Since the first day we met?”

“I wouldn’t even have involved you if you hadn’t interfered with me and Wet William!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for
forcing
you to steal from me and my family!”

I pushed away from the tree, rubbing my back, but my pain didn’t seem to bother him. “You said I never have to make hard choices, but I do, Wyatt. You think it was easy choosing between you and Rosalee?”

“Easy as hell, obviously!” On the verge of tearing into me, he paused, seemed to consider something. “Why would Rosalee need our Key?”

“Because Rosalee was possessed.
Is
possessed. Runyon’s been hiding inside her for twenty years, and the only way to help her
was to get him the Key. He promised to leave her if I did.”

When he turned away, the upstairs light caught part of his face. He looked stunned. I guessed his Mortmaine mates hadn’t clued him in. Maybe because he was still on the two-day vacation Sera had arranged for him.

“You didn’t have to steal from me. Why didn’t you tell me if you were in trouble?”

“Tell you that Rosalee was possessed? You killed Petra, and she was your friend. Who is Rosalee to you that you would spare her?”

He didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t take the Key to hurt you. I took it to save my mother. You understand about duty, right? Well, I have a duty to her. That’s why I risked coming here, even though I knew you would hate me, maybe even tell on me. I had to try. Can you understand that?”

Still he said nothing.

“And it’s not like we can’t get the Key back along
with
Rosalee—they’re in the same place—but I can’t do it without you.”

Nothing.

I got down on my knees on the soggy, leaf-littered ground.
Apparently, I was going to have to make time for this. “I’m sorry I stole your Key, Wyatt. I’m sorry I used you. I swear I’ll make it up to you, no matter how long it takes. Even if—”

He pulled me to my feet, stood us both in the upstairs light. I watched a few worrisome emotions cross his face, mostly anger and shame, but strangely, they were all self-directed.

“You’re wrong. I don’t understand about duty. If I did, I would’ve told Elder to go to hell, would’ve tried to do something to help Pet. Anything before I just …” He sighed. “Your sense of duty is way less out of whack than mine.”

He rubbed his hands over his face, to wipe away the emotion brewing below the surface. “I’m sorry about your ma,” he said, when he had control of himself. “About her being possessed. But you gotta face the fact that no matter what I try, she might not—”

But I didn’t want to hear that. “I can face facts later. First things first. I think I can convince Runyon to leave, but when I do, can you help her not to get sick and die? You said you’d try to think of a way.”

“I did think of a way. I had just finished working on something that might do the trick when you stole the Key and all hell broke loose.”

“So then that’s great!” I said, ignoring the bitterness in his voice.

“
Maybe
. I never tried this before. I ain’t tested it—”

“You can test it when we get her back.”

“Do you even have a plan?” he asked, exasperated.

“We go into Runyon’s house and get Rosalee back.”

“That’s not a plan! That’s suicide. If the Mayor finds out—”

“Fuck the Mayor.” I thought of the suicide door and shrugged. “Besides, who’s afraid of suicide?”

He looked shocked … but then a species of non-high-minded admiration crossed his face. “If the Mayor ever heard you talking like that—”

His phone rang and sent Wyatt leaping almost out of his skin. He pulled the phone out of his pocket, cursing. “What the hell, Shoko? I thought I had the day off.” He looked at the lit face of his watch. “Oh.”

It was after midnight. Apparently, his two-day vacation was over.

“I have to go where?” He looked at me a long time. “I can’t. I have to do something. No, for a friend.”

I slumped against the tree, shocked that for once he’d chosen me over the Mortmaine.

“My friends
are
important, and I’m sick of turning my back on ’em just to uphold somebody else’s moral objectives. You think I don’t have my own set of morals? I don’t care what she said. Stop telling me what she said. For the last time, fuck the Mayor and fuck what she said!” He snapped the phone shut and shoved it back in his pocket.

Then his legs gave out, and he huddled on the ground, shaking.

He looked at me, wide-eyed. “Did I really just say … what I said?”

I brushed the wet leaves off his shoulders. “Yes.”

He shook his head, amazed at his own daring. “I’m so dead.”

“You and me both. So why don’t we go out with a bang?”

I waited while he staggered into the house to get supplies. When he came out in the green coat, he was much calmer, and he had brought something for me.

“I found her on the street after Shoko and me brought down that rock creature,” he said, handing over Little Swan. “I almost threw it down the gutter, but …” He turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me another second, and stormed off.

I fastened Little Swan around my neck and caught up to him. “I’m glad you didn’t throw her away.”

“Whatever.” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and refused to look at me.

We left his backyard and went down the street, passing slits and circles of darkness, the hidden doors all around us.

“That phone call just now … are the Mortmaine looking for me?”

“Are you kidding? Nobody’s ever escaped the suicide door. It ain’t even crossed their minds that you could be out here talking to me. They’re wondering why the suicide door won’t open. It’s never taken this long before. If the person doesn’t decide how to die in an hour, she runs out of air and suffocates.”

I remembered how difficult it had been to breathe.

“They called me because they want me there to see if I can figure out a way to open it.
Knowing
that you’re my girlfriend, they want me to open the door, and never mind if the sight of your corpse drives me apeshit, just as long as I get the job done!”

Despite his ranting and raving and hurt feelings, I couldn’t help feeling glad he’d referred to me as his girlfriend. Present tense.

“How
did
you get out?” he asked me.

I stopped and showed him my hip there on the street.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, fingering the ugly glyph burned into my skin that was nothing like the elegant green tracery on his arm.

But he was more impressed than disgusted by the mark. Proud, even. I told him about the hidden door that led to my family’s burial plot.