Pretty Little Dead Girls (4 page)

Of course not. Sometimes these things happen, and there is little or nothing that can be done about it. Chad the Fish Guy grew up to be a handsome, selfish man, and that is simply the way of it.

Chad was walking through the local Safeway, peering at the colorful packages on the shelves. He threw a couple of frozen dinners into his cart, and a few cans of soup. Tonight was to be a rare lone night for him, one where perhaps he could spend the time peering deep into his soul and ponder the future of his life and whether it was heading where he wanted it to go. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing!

Alas, it is not how Chad will choose to spend his evening.

He will eat his frozen meal that he will only cook partially because his microwave is on the fritz, and he will watch an old movie with some rather crude and derogatory humor that will leave him strangely hollow inside. He will take a shower and dry himself off with a garishly patterned towel that he will then throw on the floor. He will crawl into his bed and he will curl up on his side and fall asleep alone. He will have a rather odd dream about mechanical porpoises and white trains speeding through tunnels with robots cavorting about on top. He will wake and think about the pretty, ethereal girl at the market, and again puzzle about why she rejected him, but shrug his shoulders and decide that a soon-to-be-dead girl sounds like trouble, anyway.

Let us hurry ahead to the morning.

Chad checked out, and loaded his groceries into the trunk of his car, keeping a Mountain Dew to drink immediately. He chugged it in under four seconds (almost breaking his own soda-chugging record; way to go Chad!) and then tossed the empty can into the dumpster behind the Safeway. It didn’t land with a thunk or a clink or any of the delightful onomatopoeic sounds that an aluminum can makes when it hits the metallic floor of an empty dumpster. Therefore the dumpster was at least somewhat full.

“Why on earth would we care?” you ask in exasperated confusion. “Does it matter to me if the garbage men haven’t emptied the dumpster beside a Seattle Safeway? And what does this have to do with Chad the Fish Guy? Why am I following him only to find out that he’s throwing cans in dumpsters? Why, that’s hardly sinister at all!”

Ah, truly brilliant reader. You are so accurate, and yet so misled at the same time.

The drinking of the soda is not nefarious, nor is the tossing of it into the dumpster. Rather, this is a good thing to learn about our Chad, for now we know that he chooses not to litter, and if life is about keeping score, then this is a point in his favor.

But the fact that the dumpster is not empty, well, that turns out to be a very poor thing indeed, at least, for somebody.

No, more than that.

It turns out to be disconsolation for several somebodies.

CHAPTER TEN

Of Murder and Flowers

The very day that: 1) Chad threw a stuffed fish at her, and 2) Eddie ran away, Bryony landed a delightful little job assembling bouquets of flowers at the market.

“Excuse me,” said a small round-faced girl with beautiful, dark almond eyes, “you seem very nice, and you also seem lost. May I help you somehow?”

Bryony was quite taken with this child. “Why, yes. I am looking for a job. Do you know anybody who is hiring?”

Suddenly every shop and station and table had a desperate need for more employees, sometimes kicking present employees out in order to make more space. Who didn’t want a tragically sorrowful girl who chose to wear a happy smile around? Human nature dictates that we want what we want, and we want what is scarce. We want to enjoy things before they are taken from us. And this girl was defying fate by standing there this very minute. She should be dead by now, she was already lost. They grasped onto her life like a string of pearls.

The little round-faced girl worked at a flower stand, and they needed more help (really, truly, they actually did), and Bryony was named for a flower, and saw very few in the desert, so she was delighted to accept the position. The vendors around rehired their old employees (“Come on back, Joe, I was only kidding,”) and things fell into a pleasant routine at the market.

Until the woman in the stall next to Bryony’s was found one rainy afternoon, stuffed into a dumpster behind Safeway.

Her hands and feet were bound, and her thick black hair had been shaved. Her eyes were missing, and were never found, actually, although the police looked for several years. Beautiful young women need their eyes, that’s just the way of it. But, alas, this was never to be. An empty Mountain Dew can lay atop the body, with DNA on it. The owner of this DNA was hauled in for questioning by a Detective Ian Bridger and was treated rather meanly, when it came right down to it, but eventually he was let go. A man drinking a soda and throwing it away in a dumpster is most likely not a criminal, although his name will be filed away in the department’s files for the future, if it is necessary.

Chad the Fish Guy hoped with all his might that it would never be necessary, and vowed to be A Very Good Boy from then on, only participating in Good Boy activities. He only kept up this vow for a week or so, but even that is better than nothing.

Word spread through the market quickly.

When she heard, Bryony sat down hard.

“It’s happening again,” she said quietly. Somebody ran to fetch a paper cup full of water.

“What is happening?” asked Clifford, the old man that worked next to her. His real name was exotic and hard to pronounce, and he didn’t want anybody to really try. He was especially fond of
Cheers
when he first came to the states and chose to go by Clifford forever more.

Bryony turned to Clifford and took hold of his withered hands earnestly. He flushed slightly under his leathery skin, but the storm light of the day hid it nicely.

“Clifford, wherever I go, women get murdered. Little girls. The first crush that I ever had, a beautiful boy on his skateboard, and a man who loved me enough to murder himself instead. It’s as if death is a bolt of lightning, and it’s striking all around me, looking for its target.”

“Death isn’t a very good shot,” said the round-faced girl, and everybody in the flower section nodded in agreement.

Bryony sighed. “I don’t know what to do. This always happens. I keep moving and moving, but no matter where I end up—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Clifford said kindly, patting her hands. “We’ll protect you. We’re not scared of no curse—”

“It’s not a curse,” said Bryony.

“—of no magic spell—”

“I don’t believe in magic,” said Bryony.

“—of no strange
birthright
—”

Bryony didn’t have anything to say to that one, and Clifford smiled and continued. “So don’t be worried for us, and we’ll take care of you. Nobody will have you, our sweet flower girl. Nobody.”

It was a fine sentiment, and greatly appreciated, even if everybody there knew it was completely untrue. Nobody could protect her, nobody could stop it. For a moment Clifford believed it himself . . . almost. Then his face faded as reality struck, and he was a bent, translucent man. His desire was pure and protective, though, and it made Bryony happy.

“Thank you, Clifford,” she said, and there were smiles all around.

Death had not touched her. Not yet.

“But it will,” said a voice, and they all turned to see Eddie leaning against a pillar. He scowled at them. “Don’t be fooling yourselves.”

He turned and stomped off, and the crowd reacted as if it were a miniature Running of the Bulls, diving and leaping out of his way to avoid the inevitable carnage that would ensue on contact.

“I don’t understand him,” Bryony said softly. “He seems to dislike me so much.”

Eyes met, heads nodded in silent communication. The young girl with almond eyes put her arms around Bryony.

“I think he likes you just fine. Probably more than he would prefer. You see—”

“No, don’t tell me,” Bryony said. She stood up, gathered a handful of flowers. “I am going to ask him myself. Wish me luck.”

Good luck and wishes and prayers abounded.

She pulled her red coat tighter around herself, held the flowers delicately, yet firmly under, her arm and started off after the tortured and unamicable Eddie.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Broken Glass and Jonquils

“I hate you, Bryony,” Eddie said.

It absolutely wasn’t true, and Bryony wasn’t there to hear it, but it was good practice.

Eddie stormed up the street away from Pike Place. He was looking for a bar, or a club, or somewhere he could duck out of sight and brood on exactly how much he desired to dislike Bryony. She with her wide eyes and sorrowful ambiance. He would find her one day in pieces, or not find her at all, and which would be worse? It was like the time—

“Eddie Warshouski, I brought you some flowers. Now why don’t you like me?”

Bryony offered the flowers to him as if they were a sword. He had never felt so threatened by jonquils before. He took a step back, nearly falling off the curb, and this made him angry.

“Why are you following me?” he demanded.

“I told you, I brought you some beautiful flowers.” Bryony shoved the flowers into his face. They smelled divine, or at least they would have if Eddie sniffed at them, but he didn’t. He was too angry. He merely inhaled to
breathe
, and the scent of the blossoms invaded his nose, uninvited. It was a Trojan Horse scenario, where oxygen was necessary and good, and riding upon it was the conniving perfume of greenery and flowers, and who was he to keep it out? He needed to breathe, after all. Breathing sustained life. Eddie chose life. And if life comes with the divine decadence of jonquils, then so be it.

Bryony smiled. “You like them! They do smell wonderful, don’t they?”

“I hate jonquils,” said Eddie.

Bryony’s smile grew wider, more radiant. Eddie shielded his eyes from it. “Ah, but you know what they are called, and that says a lot about you. Few people take the time to learn the names of flowers, and jonquils especially aren’t well known. Everybody thinks that they are daffodils. You don’t hate them at all, or else you wouldn’t be so aware.”

“So I picked up a few things from playing next to a flower shop. So what?” Eddie grabbed the flowers out of her hand, daring her. Daring her to what? He didn’t quite know, but he was going to dare her all the same.

“I’m named after a flower,” she told him. “A plant used for healing.” Her spirit practically shimmered in front of his eyes and went out.

Just like Rita had, way back when. Only Rita hadn’t been marked for death, she was just an innocent passerby, like those caught in fate’s range of fire.

“Bryony can also kill you,” he pointed out bitterly. She opened her mouth to say something when suddenly there was a popping sound and a store window shattered behind her.

Glass flew through the air like vapid ballerinas. For a second, everything paused, and Eddie allowed himself to gaze at Bryony’s pale face as she was stopped in motion, her hair swirling through the air like mist. Her eyes were large and they hid nothing, broadcasting her emotions like a satellite dish. He could plainly see her wonder at the world, and a kind of shocked amazement that something was exploding behind her so unexpectedly, and a little bit of . . . Could that be true? Is there some anger there? Why, yes! There is anger! A type of smoldering fury that made Eddie’s lips twitch a bit, until he realized she was probably angry at him for making such a spectacle of himself, for being so harsh toward her all the time. And he had been cruel; he admitted it, distancing himself from this woman who dragged the mantle of certain destruction behind her like a ragged blanket. She wore it so well, with such grace, that he half supposed that she wrapped herself rather primly in it at night, that it was her choice. Never did it occur to him that perhaps this wasn’t something that she chose to bear, that she ran long and hard from it day after day, only giving in graciously after her brief break for freedom. Nobody really wants to be murdered.

After Rita’s bloody demise, which was traced to the man who lived two floors under her, Eddie ceased to live. The enormous change it wreaked on his life, the visions he saw behind his eyes when he went to sleep, the sly glances the police gave him as they ceaselessly questioned him down at the station, until the real murderer found, of course . . . This haunted a man. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t, do it again. Ever. End of story.

He nodded curtly at Bryony, who was still in suspended animation, glass diamonding her hair, frozen in the process of hitting the ground. Hitting the streets of Seattle, why? Oh, yes, because there was a bullet. A bullet ripping the air asunder as it looked for a place to land that wasn’t glass, wasn’t brick and stone, but was something warm, something that would give underneath its nose, something that would invite it in to ricochet around until it found soft veins to decimate and organs to puncture.

Until it found Bryony.

Suddenly the world sped up again, the background music of life lurched up to its normal, frenetic tempo. Bryony fell to her knees, covering her head with her arms and curled up into a ball on the sidewalk. Eddie huddled beside her, and there was more noise or maybe it was screaming coming from one or the other or both of them, he could never be certain.

A man was on the ground, not far from them, his cap knocked off and his hair running red. Shopping bags lay beside him, and Eddie noticed detachedly that he had been shopping at Nordstrom Rack, at Sharper Image, at Old Navy. A pair of small tennis shoes peeped out of one bag, tiny little things, shoes that would appear on the feet of a child just learning to walk. Strangers had gunned down somebody’s daddy.

Eddie realized Bryony was shaking the glass out of her hair frantically, while she rocked back and forth.

“Why? Why?” she screamed, and Eddie was shocked to see her in such a panic, surprised at how her earlier serenity and weary acceptance of her fate had crumbled away. He reached out a calloused hand to her, but stopped just short of stroking her hair, because he didn’t want to commit, didn’t want to touch her because then he would be drawn into her world, and he knew it. He knew it was a dark world of twisted mirrors.. It was a torturous place where she would forever be denied any semblance of rest, and would have to be vigilant. One night she would be too exhausted to lock every door and check every window. On that night, a neighborhood monster would sneak in and flay all that was living from her.