Jeremiah Quick (32 page)

His spirit was ancient,
and it knew her, wanted to consume much more than her
tears
.

This she suddenly understood with a tingling
sensation. She would have called it a chill, except it was hot,
searing through her stomach to her spine, growing from all her
female parts and moving into her throat, her teeth, and settling,
finally, in the space behind her eyes, where it felt like it would
take up residence.

And this she realized: she had thought her
greatest moment of vulnerability would come while he was killing
her. But that wasn't going to be it at all.

In all of her life, she only felt regret for
the things she didn't do.

She could never hate him.

If she held the straight-edge to his flesh
and pressed until it drew blood, if she dragged blade-red channels
through his flesh until she set him free, it would always, always
be for love.

This once, if never again, ever, she could
love hard enough.

Chapter 42

S
he.

She's safe enough.

I tell her about Alaska so she knows that part.

I tell her all in one great rush
how I paid a guy to travel with me to Alaska using Jamie's name,
Jamie's identification. About the bush pilot who flew me back to
Washington state, and how I hitch-hiked back here. No one would
look for me, and certainly no one will ever think I
disappeared
not
on
purpose, because I have a lifelong habit of disappearing on
purpose.

Details, but I think maybe it helps
her to know them.

I never told anyone, ever, about what happened to
Jamie.

I can hardly even bear to know it myself.

It's too heavy, too lonely, too awful, too sad.

I want to go home.

Please, Sunshine, send me home.

Chapter 43

O
nce she agreed to
his request, Jeremiah became positively light-hearted. He leaned
carefully toward her and gave her a peck on the cheek, then dragged
her to the house, crowing his victory.

Pretty was more subdued. Terrified, if the
truth was to be known. She'd run over a squirrel with the car once,
but killing things wasn't in her interest or her repertoire. She
was, actually, heavy with the awful.

At first, Jeremiah seemed to ignore her
quiet dread. He was happily brainstorming his own demise, filled
with cheerful chatter as he tossed out options.

"Do you want to slit my throat?" he asked.
"Just cut me open from ear to ear and give me a second smile, all
red and drippy?" He frowned for a second. "Well. I've heard the
spray can pretty much douse a room, so maybe not."

What, he wanted to be kind to the landlord
or the bank, whomever inherited the place?

"And too quick," he added with a snort of
laughter. "Fast is okay, but not that fast."

So slit throat was nixed.

"I don't want you to slice open my wrists,"
he said. "Might not work, like… might not bleed out fast enough,
you know? And it's so… just so… average."

He paced while he thought about it.

Pretty sat on the couch, watching him,
feeling almost disassociated from the whole situation. Had she
really agreed to this?

"I could get you a gun. But I hate that
idea, so frightening, and loud, and impersonal. It has to feel
closer than that, more intimate, to be right."

She didn't like guns much either. So far she
didn't like any of this. It seemed like too great a weight to kill
him, even with his permission. Even if it was a plea for
rescue.

She thought about how she would tell this
story to her husband, then wondered if she ever
would
tell
him the details of... any of this. What would she say, a blast from
the past came looking for her with nefarious purpose, and she did
what he wanted? And how would she justify that sort of loyalty if
she couldn't admit to some kind of love?

"Ah man, honey – darling – you will
never
believe what I learned how to do." Just thinking about
saying that started a laugh bubbling out of her. "No, really, it
makes perfect sense in a universe that isn't this universe. Stay
with me, let me explain."

She could almost see his sharp look, the
roll of his eyes to the ceiling, the long aggrieved sigh. "Yes,
dear, explain please, how killing someone is a practical, acquired
skill."

Jeremiah was still pondering. "Starving will
take too long. Beheading is probably too gross and will freak you
out – but I could rig up a hanging station, like, would it be some
kind of poetic justice for me to die the way Jamie died? I mean,
damn, the symbolism…"

Pretty shook her head, and stubbornly wanted
no part of any of this. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. And
yet...

… his jubilant attitude was morbidly
catching for periods of time, too, and she found herself laughing
with him until she remembered that he actually wanted her to
perpetuate violence upon his person until he died. That quieted her
into thoughtful silence.

Truth was… the thought of getting his blood
all over herself was hardly distressing. Been there, done that,
have quite the story to tell. She didn't think she'd be squeamish
about that part. Not anymore.

It was…after… that she was most worried
about, most afraid of. She'd be sad, and alone, and it would be
hard work. She didn't yet know if she would feel she had to clean
him up or not. He said, "No, just toss me in a hole," but she
wasn't sure she could be that casual.

She had some thought that washing his body
with love and care might be some kind of appropriate goodbye.

"Here," he said gleefully, holding up a red
permanent marker while she was in the midst of all this thinking.
"I'll draw on myself the places you can cut or stab that will most
surely kill me."

He stripped off his shirt. "If you cut a
hole here," he drew an X below his ribcage, near his sternum. "You
can shove the knife blade in, then drag it up toward my chin,
cutting the connective tissue between the right and left sides of
my ribcage. This will be map number 1," he said, drawing the line.
Where the line ended, he drew a little star. "Drag it up with both
hands if you have to. Stab again at the star, angling the knife a
little to the left. Well, my left, your right. You know. That'll be
my heart, see?" He grabbed her fingers and held them to his
chest.

She felt the thrum of his heart.

She said, "Yeah, well, I didn't think you
were a vampire or anything. Your heart is about where I'd
expect."

His laugh was unexpected and cute.

"When do you want me to do this?" she asked,
thinking a few days, maybe a week.

"I'm ready now."

Well, she wasn't. No way. She shook her
head. "No. You have to let me touch you again, however I want to.
That'll be my price." There. If she had to maul and manage his body
when he was dead, at least she'd get to explore it again while he
was still alive.

"Of course," he said, and seemed too ready
to comply, his hands scrambling for the snap locks that held her
wrists to her waist.

"Why are you so agreeable all of a sudden?"
she asked, as her hands were freed and he removed first the belt
and then the wrist cuffs. "It was only an hour ago that you took
away my hands so I couldn't touch you at all."

"Because you're willing to do for me
something no one else in this universe would be willing to do." His
gaze was steady.

"Yeah," she said back. "Because I'm
insane."

"If you love me," he said, his voice softer
even than the brush of his lips against her cheek, "please kill me.
I can't bear to be here without him."

Pretty wanted to scream at him.
What
about me?
Why wouldn't he even try to let her love him all
better?

"Pre-ordained," he whispered. "This is your
legacy. The power to love, the willingness to kill. Good
medicine."

No, it wasn't good medicine, and would never
be. It was just that she understood about regret now, and how she
regretted more the things she didn't do than any of the things she
did. She'd already promised him. That part was done. And if she fit
nowhere else, she fit here with him, these past weeks,
perfectly.

They were a perfect complement of light and
dark, beauty and terror, life and death, happiness and sadness.

Polar opposites.

It didn't matter. She would love him
always.

Silence grew, and it was the comfortable
kind, not the silent screaming fuck-you kind, and it was good.

This, then, is when she made her
approach.

First, hands on his shoulders, kneading
hard, like a massage. He crossed his arms over his chest,
protecting himself. After a minute or so Pretty relaxed her
fingers, changing the massage to soft petting. He sighed and
dropped his arms, a little more open.

As she let her hands explore his skin, she
thought about all of this.

Could killing him really be good medicine,
in this or any universe?

She didn't believe in one God, so it wasn't
that. She'd given up that belief years ago, long before she could
ever articulate about belief systems, agnosticism, atheism – when
she was still a small child counting hats in church, already aware
that whatever 'faith' was, she didn't have it. There was no God to
stop her.

Jail – or prison, even, should be
considered. No matter that Jeremiah was asking her to love him
enough – enough to do this thing – no matter that she heard Jamie's
voice, plain as day, "I made a mistake," and knew in her heart that
he was real and he meant it, and that Jeremiah meant it when he
said he couldn't live another minute without Jamie. This was all
true. But she could still be guilty. She could still be arrested
for murder. Hell, it was more likely than not, wasn't it, what with
the advances of forensic science and all. But oddly enough, that
all seemed so far away, so distant from this present moment, that
she couldn't wrap her head around worrying about it.

Moral implications, then? Her husband. Would
she tell him what she'd done? Could she?

He was the only one who'd ever accepted her
as she was, and continued to love her, day in and day out, through
all of her changes, for almost twenty years. But could he love her
after this?

She had no idea.

Silly, isn't it? She should know him well
enough to decide, but found herself wavering between one or the
other. He was an honorable man. Straight-forward, no games. Simple
in a lot of ways, emotionally, but sometimes still surprised her
with emotional reactions to unexpected things. But this she know –
he would definitely have an emotional reaction to his wife having
had raunchy, bloody, unprotected sex with Jeremiah Quick. Yeah, no
matter how loving, how forgiving, he wasn't going to be okay with
that.

What if he left her?

She couldn't think of it. Too terrifying,
too alone.

She tried to push it out of her head and
kept petting Jeremiah and half-smiling at his antics with the red
pen.

"Earth to Sunshine," he said, and she
startled to better attention. "I think a knife. My knife, into the
heart, would be the most… well, I'm not sure 'pleasurable' is the
word I want. Fitting, maybe."

Pretty shrugged. "If that's what you
want."

"You won't mind the blood?" he asked.

She shook her head. "My sacrificial virgin
days are long behind me, aren't they? Blood is wet, and messy, but
other than that, just a fluid."

He grinned. "That's my girl." Proud.
Pleased. He'd done this to her, and he was glad. That same perverse
pleasure he got upon finding out she'd mourned him when she'd
thought him gone.

Now he really would be, and her mourning
period would be all too real. Somehow she suspected that pleased
him, too.

Her fingertips found their way across his
bare stomach, and his muscles rippled a reaction. She wasn't sure
if he was tensing and flinching away from her touch, or if he was
reacting in a more positive way. And the more she thought about it,
the worse she felt about coercing him into accepting this.

"You don't have to tolerate this," she told
him. "I'm sorry. It's not fair of me." She started to pull her hand
away from his skin, but he grabbed it and trapped her fingers
against his flesh.

"I'm not… used… to being touched. At least
not nicely, not without Jamie."

Pretty tugged, trying to free her hand.
"That's what I mean, about not being fair. You don't even like
girls."

"I like you, Sunshine. It's okay to want to
touch me. It feels like a compliment – like love and care and
home."

Truth? She adored his almost-too-thin body,
his long slender bones and smooth skin, so she took him at his
word. She skimmed both hands up his ribcage, almost hearing
xylophonic notes in her head, the low, deep vibrating wooden ones.
And then she noticed – he was making that noise, the rumbling
coming from his chest, his throat, that it wasn't inside her head
at all. He was humming scales as she explored him.

She started to giggle, and his eyes opened,
all clear and guileless the way they could be sometimes. "This
would feel so much less wrong if we were in the woods," she
said.

He smiled at her, then, and it made his face
look young and beautiful, and maybe for the first time ever in her
sight, the smile did seem to reach his eyes. They crinkled at the
corners – she'd never noticed that before – and he said, "The woods
aren't any good for this," and he looked at her for a beat too
long, then unzipped his pants and pushed them off.

However would she… could she… do what he
wanted her to do? How could she, ever, be the one to make him
gone?

He was naked, now, and her eyes traveled the
length of his body. He was hard. Her eyes flew back to his, and he
was grinning, showing the white shine of his teeth. He laughed out
loud. "Like what you see, Sunshine Girl?" She knew what he meant,
but ignored it, and just nodded.