Jeremiah Quick (25 page)

"Have I seen that?"

"Not on me," and his mouth crooked into a
little grin, the one she was starting to realize was his form of
true happiness, anticipation, excitement… it meant he could hardly
wait. For whatever was coming.

Back in school, he'd called her the night
before Halloween. "Just wait until you see me tomorrow," and she
could hear that crooked grin in his voice. And the next morning,
yeah, she saw.

It was astonishing. His hair spiked up into
the spines of a Mohawk, each spike standing at least eight inches
into the air – ludicrous, ridiculous. And… perfect. Perfect because
he hated Them, all of Them, and all They could do was stare. There
was less snickering than she would have thought, though maybe just
because it was Halloween.

Now the grin made her slightly nervous. Here
she was dressed all in white, like a virgin sacrifice.

She lifted her hands to cup his face, let
her thumbs trace his perfect bowed lips, lips that were too pink
for a boy, and especially too pink for him. The reason he preferred
dark lipstick she found herself thinking.

She crooked her thumbs then, and pressed
them past his lips so the tip of each rested against his teeth. He
did one of those quick, teasing snaps that clicked his teeth, the
way her brother used to do, pretending he was going to get her, and
that made her laugh all over again. "No biting," she said, and
watched his pupils flare.

Oh.

She stopped laughing.

He stared at her and something was happening
within him, something she didn't understand and would never
understand.

"You want to, don't you?" Pretty was
suddenly much more scared than she'd been just seconds ago.

"You would hate me," he said, his tone
whisper quiet, matching hers.

Hers was breathy and scared.

His was just breathless.

She wanted to tell him to do it, give this
to him, but fear crawled up her throat and prevented words, so she
pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth instead. He didn't kiss
her back, didn't move at all.

She pulled back and let her fingers slide
from his cheeks into his hair, adoring the feel of the silk black
waterfall.

She studied his face, looked for signs of
aging, crow's feet, frown lines… he hardly had any. He looked
almost the same as he always had.

He rolled on top of her, pinning her to the
bed, and once again she remembered that one night in the woods,
imagined his spikey jacket poking into her, only this time it was
his knee bones, hip bones, elbows… if he were hers, now, she'd make
sure she fed him sandwiches. Regularly.

He held her hands above her head, his
fingers twined tightly around hers.

"I have to tell you the rest about
Corrie."

She nodded. Waited. Didn't say anything,
because this was the lesson of Jeremiah Quick – he taught her how
to listen more than to talk.

"I loved her," Jeremiah said. "As
much as I've ever loved anyone in my whole life. You have to
understand that, or you won’t understand what happened the last
time I saw her."

His voice was tight with pain, and she could tell it
wasn't going to be a nice story.

She wasn't ready to hear more about
pain. She thought maybe she already knew more of his pain than she
could bear to know.

"Wait," she whispered, pleading.
"Don't tell me. Not yet."

Chapter 26

S
he.

She begs me to wait, she doesn't want to
know more quite yet. But she has to understand how
important
Corrie was, how Corrie saved my life, and that what I did, I did
because I had no other choice, because anything else was not
kindness, but cruelty. This is imperative to the magick.

If she can't get this part, she won't get
any of it.

She.

She needs to know what terrible things can
be accomplished out of love.

I've never told this to anyone, not even
Jamie.

But she deserves to know this, she
has
to know this, to understand what I'm going to ask of
her.

And I… well. I can only hope she loves me
enough.

Just that.

Chapter 27

"W
hy did you come
with me?" he asked, still draped over her, letting go of her hands
to run his fingers through her hair. It was like petting, sort
of.

Soothing and distracting the Sacrifice.

Pretty shook her head. "I don't know."

"Bullshit. You know."

What did he want, some kind of
confession?

"We weren't finished. You know that. You
abandoned me."

The look on his face.

Those words hit a nerve, damaged him
somehow, but she didn't know why.

"I could only do what I could do, Sunshine.
You think I could change a lifetime in the little pieces of time we
had? Obviously not. I mean, look at your fucking life."

The bitterness in his tone made her cringe.
He thought he'd failed.

She let her own bitterness come through.
"Yeah, I think you could have. If you'd have wanted to. But I
wasn't worth the time. The other girl, girlfriend, whatever – she
was easier and got your time. I just got whatever was left.
Crumbs." She spit the truth at him, vicious. "Whatever I am now, I
am because you didn't finish me."

Jeremiah Quick's face changed, eyes shining
and dark, as if he were going to cry. But he didn't. And yet, it
wasn't because he was fighting it, it looked more like because… he
couldn't.

This stunned her. Hurt her. She thought he'd
been making that part up.

It hurt her more than him calling her
spoiled. Spoiled, to him, was like calling her retarded or stunted.
This she knew. Spoiled was the worst, as if she and her family
should, what, donate their worldly possessions to charity, and then
what? It wasn't all that clear.

It hurt her because he didn't want her, not
really. Not for keeps. So there was nothing he would appreciate
other than hardship. Suffering.

"You're wrong about me," she said. "I was
worth it."

When he spoke, he sounded so angry. Hateful.
"Everything given to you. Your father. Your husband. Little girl
holds out her hand, and whatever she asks for practically appears
out of thin air."

Pretty shook her head, although, in a way,
he wasn't completely wrong. He wasn't completely right, either.

She lifted her hands to cover his lips, to
shut him up. It wasn't like that.

He sucked her fingers into the soft wet
cavern of his mouth, caressed them with his tongue, and, when her
instinct was to pull away, he grabbed her wrist and held it so she
couldn't.

"You're wrong. I took one big risk, and
ended up eating hot dogs and store brand potato chips for a month,
because it was the last food in the house and there was no money to
buy more. I shivered in the mornings because I couldn't afford to
turn the heat on. I counted out twenty-five pennies and traded them
at the gas station for a quarter so I could call about my promised
job. Every day."

It had been utterly humiliating, those
weeks, the one time, especially, that she stood in the welfare
office crying, begging for food stamps, mortified, but too hungry
for pride. One of her blackest days.

She didn't tell him that story. She couldn’t
bear it if he mocked her, not about that, not now.

Some things about her were still the same,
would always be the same. Pride was probably one of them.

But she wanted to fix Jeremiah. And thought
she could, in a place so deeply hidden that she would deny it.
That's why she was here, wasn't it? That's why he could do anything
he wanted, no matter how weird or fucked up, and she would accept
it.

If he was broken because no one had ever
loved him unconditionally, then she
could
fix him,
right?

Take his broken parts and love them.

Take his soul in her hands and breathe in
love.

Love love love love love. I love you,
Jeremiah. I've always loved you. I will always love you. Even when
you're mean to me, I will love you. Even when you rape and bleed
me, I will love you. Loneliness is killing you, and I can take that
away.

Jeremiah wasn't okay, not really. The way he
focused on eating her tears, that he would demand them all, coax
them out of her, drink them like they were the key to life. Spew
the kind of words at her designed to wound, then just… sit back and
wait, clinically, watching her face, her eyes, waiting for her to
process, waiting for her to cry.

He really was a fucking bastard.

She never understood how much she didn't
know him. She'd thought there was a connection between them, like
the thinnest filament line, from soul to soul. She'd thought he was
Hers, in some sense. She didn't know, until now, that it was the
opposite. She was his, and he had brought her here to make of her
what he willed.

And parts of it were working, even while
parts of it weren't. They were… learning each other.

But this she did know: When he fucked her,
it wasn't love or lust or desire. It was hate, revenge,
frustration. He used his body as a weapon, fully with intent to
hurt, and, partly, she supposed, because he knew she knew it.

She had always been so proud of her ability
to lure through sex.

Ha.

It had never worked with him, and it never
would.

He fucked her to demonstrate how far she had
fallen. To soil her, to… well, she didn't even know. Release,
maybe.

The unexpected parts made it harder, the
fact that he didn't express gratitude that she loved him still,
that she was willing to take all his poison and change it to
something better, prettier.

He didn't care. He mocked her, reveled in
his power over her, pushing her into the dark. And all she could do
was sink deeper, accepting it all.

She couldn't fix him. Only he could fix
himself.

"What would you have had me do?" he asked,
apparently stuck on her accusation of abandonment. "Stay? Repeat my
shitty Senior year of high school, endure more abuse and ridicule?
Or get on that bike and go looking for my Own? Because that's what
I did. I went looking for my people. For Jamie."

"Did you find him?" Pretty whispered.

"Not for a long time."

Silence for a few minutes. She didn't know
what to say next, so she answered his original question. "I came
with you because… well. Because I would have followed you anywhere,
if you'd have let me. Because I love you."

"You don't. You won't. Not always. Not when
I'm done."

"I will. I always will. I'll never
stop."

He made a noise, clearly derisive, and
Pretty was offended. He didn't believe her.

"Hate me," he said, mocking her now. "Just
start with the hate, because you will. You're not one of Us. Not a
pseudo, or a baby – you're nothing to Us. Because you don't fit,
and you never will."

Flashes in her head of boys wearing
eyeliner, skinny enough to see the outline of bones under skin,
contempt at their pretty perfect painted lips, wary hurt in their
eyes. Pierced lips and noses and eyebrows and tongues. Dozens of
holes in ears filled with safety pins, jewelry stabbed through like
ice picks and murder, some that curved the length of the outer
shell of the ear until they ran out of ear, and just hung there,
stabbing the air with sharp points.

Their demeanor, their dress, their scowling
sullen expressions that said
get the fuck away from me
and
I hate you
, and
please love me
, all at the same
time.

How she longed to be one of them. How she
was sure she had been one of them in an alternate existence.

She had an… affinity for this darkness, but
not a communion.

A fascination, an admiration, but was too
lily to pull it off – too much of a rule-follower. And much too
much female.

She wanted to
be
one of those boys,
not pursue one.

And then she knew. She would have to accept
Jeremiah's plan for her with as much grace as she could muster.
Submit to his every evil with willingness and love. Give him her
tears, freely, ask him to take them, tell him to force them out of
her to take into himself.

Give up all pride, all fear, all shame and
just… just be his.

"Take my tears," she said, staring into his
eyes and blinking them forth. "Have them all."

His pupils dilated, and something happened
to his eyes, some change that made them viper-about-to-strike
excited, and his fingers clenched into her hair and yanked her
forward, and his tongue traced the wet tear trail on her cheek,
from the tear drop at the corner of her mouth all the way up to the
tear duct. She didn't shudder or try to pull away. She sighed
against his neck and let herself go boneless in his hands, blinking
against his tongue and willing more tears to fall.

His hands left her hair to scrabble against
the white shirt, under it, fingers leaving mean little pinches in
her skin, and she found herself whispering against his throat,
"
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
," and "
please please
please
." His hands trailed from her flanks to between her legs,
where his finger and thumbnail pinched the soft delicate skin there
so viciously that she pressed herself harder against him, melting
even closer, her breath a shuddering whimper that prepared itself
to become a wail. Her tears flowed, and he kissed and licked and
sucked at them, his heartbeat increasing subtly against her breast
bone, his thirst never abating.

"Stop now," he said, and just held her.

It was hard to stop. The tears still kept
coming.

She was a fucking mess, and it made no
difference. She wasn't the right girl for this, because there was
no right girl when only Jamie would do.