Save Yourself (37 page)

Suddenly—and
suddenly
was the right word, it was like putting on a pair of 3-D glasses and watching a distorted image resolve into clarity—the kindness and wisdom thinned, became transparent. Behind them, Verna saw calculation and pleasure. As if he were an overindulged child and they—all four of them—were toys, his to play with and break in any way he liked. Nobody had ever hurt Verna like this. Nobody had ever crawled inside her and cut her to pieces and
hurt
her. And Layla—what he’d done to Layla—

She had never hated anybody as much as she hated him. Not Kyle, not Calleigh, not anybody.

“Come out,” Justinian said. “There’s some pizza left.”

Pizza. Verna sat up. “I don’t want pizza. I want to go home.”

He looked at her for a long moment. Verna felt those Siamese eyes boring into her, trying to pull her apart. Finally, he sighed and said, “Come with me.” Calmly, sorrowfully. She knew she was supposed to feel embarrassed and forlorn, that her heart was supposed to break at the idea of disappointing him. Instead, she felt a hot flare of anger. He held out a hand. She didn’t take it. Her side felt like somebody had stuck a sword through it, but she stood up on her own and followed him stiffly into the living room, where the others waited. Criss and Layla perched on the edge of the couch, Eric stood, impatient, by the sliding door. Layla watched Verna anxiously and Verna noticed her sister’s bitten lips, the hollows under her eyes. That was what you looked like when Justinian loved you.

She felt a new burst of fury. Layla had let this happen. She had let it happen to herself and then she had let it happen to Verna, and now she was still letting it happen.

“Are we leaving?” Criss said. “I thought we were leaving.”

“Soon.” Justinian put an arm over Verna’s shoulders. She didn’t want him touching her but she bore it, anyway, so she could get out, so somebody would take her home. “There are a few more things we have to take care of first. It’s like being sick. If you stop the antibiotics too soon, the infection comes back. You can’t just drive it away. You
have to kill it.” The arm around Verna tightened. “Running from the world won’t do any good. It’ll just come after us.”

“So what’s the plan?” Layla’s voice was nervous and her skin was the color of clay.

“First, we’re going to kill the subhuman that polluted your blood and tried to ruin you,” he said. “And then we’re going to kill your parents.”

Verna screamed. Every part of her mind screamed along with her. She tried to twist away from him but Justinian’s grip on her was too strong. He glanced mildly at Eric. “Eric, help me out?”

Then Eric had her by the upper arms, fingers buried in her flesh, and she couldn’t get free. Layla’s eyes, black pools in her ghostly face, darted between Eric and Justinian and Verna. Her hands twitched as if they wanted to move and she was stopping them.

“Wait,” she said. “No.”

“That corruption is always going to be inside you, Layla. The only way to eliminate his power over you is to kill him. Same with your parents.” Justinian’s voice was calm, reasonable. “Besides, you’ve told me a thousand times that you wanted them dead. I’m just giving you what you want. I’ll make it easy for you, even. The only one you actually have to kill is the corrupter. Eric and I will take care of your parents.”

Layla’s voice shook. “When I said that, I didn’t mean it.”

Justinian smiled. “Yes, you did. They don’t love you, Layla. You’re a mistake, you know that. A plan that didn’t work out. They want to send you to that wilderness camp so you’ll come home dead or broken—I doubt they care which. As long as you’re not out there embarrassing them, because that’s all they care about. If we run, they’ll only hunt you down. You’ll never be free while they’re alive and you know it.” He turned his beatific smile on Verna, too. “Besides, you don’t need them. Neither of you do. We’re your family now.”

Verna writhed in Eric’s arms, willing herself desperately toward the back door and the black expanse of freedom beyond. But foul-smelling
Eric held her by the arms. And he was
strong
. Even as she struggled he picked her up bodily and pinned her against the wall. She screamed and then his hand was over her mouth, pressing her against the unyielding drywall.

“Leave her alone!” she heard Layla cry, but Verna could see Criss holding her sister, lips close to Layla’s ear, murmuring.

Justinian sighed. “Eric,” he said, “where’s the key to those handcuffs?”

Eric handcuffed Verna to the cold radiator in his bedroom. She fought and kicked the whole way. Right before he snapped the hasp home she got him good in the middle of the thigh, her boot heel driving hard enough into the muscle to make him cry out, but his grip on her didn’t slacken. When the handcuffs were locked, he drew back a hand to hit her.

Justinian stopped him. “No. She’s confused, but she’s one of us.”

“Bitch kicked me,” Eric said.

“She’s scared. Go check on our supplies. Let me talk to her.”

Eric scowled, but left. When he was gone, Justinian crouched down next to Verna. “I’m sorry. I know this is freaking you out. But it’s for your own good. You just have to trust me.”

He put a hand on her shoulder and she pulled back, as far as she could. The radiator was covered in dust and grit. “Come on, Verna,” Justinian said, sounding exasperated. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to
rape
you. That’s for Calleigh Brinker and Kyle Dobrowski and your father.” He saw her face. “Oh, please. Don’t tell me it’s never occurred to you that there might be a reason why your father is so afraid of you two becoming sexual beings. He’s been fucking your mind for years, anyway. It’s really only a matter of time.”

“My father never handcuffed me to a radiator,” Verna said.

“But he did. That’s totally the problem here. He did handcuff you to a radiator, psychologically, and you don’t even know it.” He shook
his head. “Look, just be patient and try to relax, okay? This will all be over in a few hours. Then we’ll go to Montreal and a week from now you’ll be thanking me.” He leaned down toward her; she tried to pull back even farther but there was nowhere to go. He kissed her cheek. “I love you so much, Verna. You just have to trust me.”

Verna was crying. “Where’s Layla? Where’s my sister?”

He reached out, found the cut he’d made on her ribs, and pressed down. Pain surged through Verna and her mouth opened and she wailed, a high, wavering sound like an animal would make.

“Feel that,” he whispered. “It’s real. It’s life. Open yourself up to it. If you let it in, it’ll illuminate all the darkness.”

She squirmed, arms uncomfortably twisted behind her, feet scrabbling at the filthy carpet. The expression on his face was probably meant to be kind but she saw it for what it was, now, she saw the pleasure, the cruelty.

“My blood is inside you,” he said. “This is where we join.”

And he pressed harder, and Verna screamed.

FOURTEEN

Patrick wanted Caro to come by that night. He didn’t know what would happen between them, he didn’t know how they would end up, but he needed to see her. The encounter with Layla’s father had left him rattled and angry and he needed to tell Caro about it, about how lost and broken they all were: Layla, her father, Patrick himself. He needed her to tell him it wasn’t true. She’d said he was good, that night in the car. He needed to hear it again.

But when she did come—only minutes after the cop left, the one who stopped in every night for a scratch-off and a Snickers—when the door jingled and it was her, the burst of relief he felt withered and died as soon as it was born. She didn’t look right. Her hair was falling out of the careful twist she always wore at work and the legs under her black skirt were bare. It wasn’t October yet, but it wasn’t warm enough for bare legs. Her eyes were too wide, her cheeks too pale.

He came around the counter. “Are you okay?”

“I have your car. It’s outside.” Her voice sounded high-pitched
and strange. “Also, I hit your brother in the head with a beer bottle. He’s okay, though. I don’t think I really hurt him.”

When the old man had cowered on the couch, moaning, the words running through Patrick’s consciousness had been
what did you do this time, what mess are we in now and how am I going to fix it
, but in the private spaces of his mind, that mental territory he could barely admit existed, he’d been thinking,
I am so tired of you, so tired of this
. But this time, in that instant when it had seemed like Caro had done something dire to his brother—his oldest friend, the only family he had left—he’d wondered frantically where they would run, how he would hide her. The difference terrified him. He knew he had done the right thing when he called the police to come and get his father. He didn’t want to think that he’d only done it because he was tired of cleaning up after a sad old drunk.

“I think we broke up,” Caro said.

Would he have hidden her? Would he have sold his car and fled to Mexico with her? Patrick took a deep breath. “Tell me what happened.”

“We had a fight. He told me I was crazy.” She looked at him. Her eyes were bombed-out, desperate. “That’s not why I hit him, though.”

“So why did you?”

“Because if I didn’t, I was going to stay with him. And I didn’t want to stay with him. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am crazy,” she said. “I do the same shit over and over again and it always turns out bad and I keep doing it anyway.”

“You’re not crazy,” Patrick said.

“I meant to hit him as hard as I could, but I pulled it at the last second. I pulled it because I was scared that if I hit him too hard he might not take me back. I don’t even want to be with him.”

He put his hands on her tense, trembling shoulders. “Caro, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. It’s a long fucking way from okay.”

“You said he was fine.”

She laughed. It sounded brittle and pained. “He is. I’m not.”

“It’s okay,” he said again, and put his arms around her; but even as he felt her start to shake against him, he knew he stood at a crossroads. In one direction lay Mike, Division Street, the old man, his mother, all of the bricks and pebbles that had piled up through the years to make him the person he was. In the other: Caro. Caro, and an empty stretch of uncertainty. He could still go back. Let Mike think she stole his car and vanished. Try to pick himself up, somehow. The way Caro clutched at him, the way her nervous fingers couldn’t keep still, he wondered if she was thinking along similar lines. Nothing held her here. She could leave. Be free. Start again.

She smelled like the restaurant. Brine, sweat, perfume. He kissed the corner of her eyebrow, the space between her temple and cheekbone.

The bell over the door rang. Patrick and Caro didn’t step away from each other, but their heads turned at the same time and they both saw Mike standing in the doorway, holding an aluminum baseball bat that Patrick dimly remembered from their childhood, his wide eyes taking in the two of them.

“You?” Mike said, staring at Patrick. “It’s you?”

“This isn’t real,” Layla whispered to Verna, as the three girls pressed together in the back of Justinian’s car. “They won’t really do it.” But Verna’s wrists were still handcuffed in front of her and she thought the conviction in Layla’s voice was more wishful thinking than true belief.

“Shut up,” Eric said from the front seat. “You don’t get to talk.”

Justinian, behind the wheel, said, “Eric.”

They were driving across town. Verna was in the middle, between Criss and Layla. There were other cars on the road and if Verna had been sitting at the window she would have pounded on it for all she
was worth, written
Help
in scarlet lipstick letters across the glass. But it was like Layla had been drugged, or knocked semiconscious. She just sat staring at her hands in her lap, as limp as a broken doll.

And maybe that was what she was. Broken. Verna understood, sort of, how a person could get that way. Remembering the look in Justinian’s eyes as he had watched her try to squirm away from him, the fierce spear of pain in her side as he’d squeezed and pinched her cut flesh in Eric’s room. Criss had heard her crying afterward, had come in and hugged her and suggested that they share blood. She’d looked insulted when Verna recoiled.
This is all for your own good
, she’d said, trying to sound like Justinian, but even through her pain Verna saw the fearful dart of Criss’s eyes, and if Criss was scared—loyal, devoted Criss—then when Layla said this wasn’t real, Verna didn’t believe her. Not one bit.

In this world, in this car, the rules were different. For Verna, the change had been instantaneous, but Layla was like a lobster in a pot, not noticing how hot the water had become, not understanding the danger she was in. Or understanding it too well, maybe. Either way, Layla did nothing.

The car pulled into the gas station. Justinian stopped on the far side of the lot, away from the flood of light through the store windows. The last time Verna had been here was the day they’d dyed her hair, when she had wanted nothing more than to absorb even a little of Layla and Justinian’s cool, a little of their nerve. Two other cars sat in the lot—a battered blue compact and a showy, jacked-up truck—and she let herself imagine for a moment that their drivers would be able to help her. But Justinian had two shotguns in the trunk and she thought Eric had a gun, too, and most of Verna knew that no rescue was coming.

Justinian turned around in the front seat and looked at Layla. “You should use the shotgun. The derringer would be easier for you to handle, but the shotgun is a surer thing. All you have to do is stand in front of him and pull the trigger. Then you’ll be free.”

“Justinian.” Layla’s voice was pleading. “Please. This is ridiculous. I don’t need to kill him to be done with him. He’s not inside me. He’s barely even inside himself.”

His voice didn’t change. “He had enough power to make you lie to us. He had enough power to make you fuck him.”

Verna felt Layla shrink back. The older girl said nothing.

Justinian sighed. “Here are the options, Layla. We get out of the car, you and me. We go to the trunk and we get the shotgun and then we go in there and you kill him. I’ll be with you the whole time. You’ll never be alone. And then it’ll be over. Convenience stores get robbed all the time. Nobody will think twice about it.”