Over Your Dead Body (13 page)

“John,” she said, “your eyes are terrible.”

“There’s another crossroads,” I said, pointing ahead. “Chevron station. Um, so, A.”

She laughed, and I wondered if the moment had passed—snipped off before it could grow too fierce. “What word?”

“Station?” I said.

“Nope,” she said, and laughed again. “You can’t just guess about which words are up there, that’s cheating.”

“Then how about that big building?” I asked. Next to the pumps was a large white building, several times larger than a regular gas station. It was too far off the side of the highway for me to read clearly, but it was obviously a restaurant. I took the gamble that it said so on the sign. “A: Restaurant.”

“That doesn’t say ‘restaurant,’ it says ‘The Armadillo Grill.’”

“I didn’t say it said ‘restaurant,’ I said it was ‘a restaurant.’ Called the Armadillo Grill, which has an A in it.”

“Fine,” said Lucinda. “I’ll give you that one. But no more freebies.”

“What do you mean freebies? I had to fight for that A.”

“J,” she said triumphantly. “Right under the Armadillo Grill—it says ‘Buster and Jackie,’ or ‘Beef and Jerky’ or something like that.”

“Boots and Jackets,” I guessed. “B.”

She peered at the sign. “And K, and L, and M, and N, and O, and … dangit, that’s as far as I can go.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “See how easy it gets once you break past J?”

She seemed fine now, distracted from her momentary flash of darkness, but I didn’t dare to just drop the game completely. If I’d been playing in the first place, she might not have started talking about death. “That same sign had C, D, and E,” I said. Now that we were passed the crossroads, signs were scarce, but I saw a road sign and pointed it out. “‘Ogle Cattle.’ I didn’t realize we were that far removed from civilization.”

“You did not actually see a sign like that.”

“I totally did.”

“It said Montague Jacksboro.”

“Not the one I was looking at.”

She swatted at me lightly, then whooped in terror as the truck bumped and we grabbed the sides, holding on as we caught just a millimeter of air. She laughed. “I missed this.”

“They have a lot of pickup trucks in the Roman Empire?”

“Roman … who do you think I am?”

Had she shifted again? “You’re not Lucinda?”

“Who’s Lucinda?”

“You were, a few minutes ago.”

“That must get really disconcerting,” she said.

“Not as disconcerting as you refusing to tell me who you are.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I just assume you know.”

There were only two personalities, aside from Brooke, who would expect that level of closeness. “Nobody?”

“I guess I was wrong,” she said, and winked. “It’s me again, babe. Marci.”

All the levity drained away.

“Where are we going?” asked Marci. “And don’t say ‘to ogle cattle.’”

“To Dallas,” I said. Marci was back. Would this happen all the time now?

“What’s in Dallas?” she asked. “Another Withered?”

“We’re going to pick up another supply drop.”

She looked incredulous. “Someone’s dropping us supplies?”

Apparently not one of the memories that transferred over. “One of the FBI agents we worked with was a former … something,” I said. “Secret agent, Jason Bourne, man-of-mystery kind of person. He died in Fort Bruce, the night we ran away, and we took his go bag—like, all his fake IDs and passports and things like that. There was a list of other little stashes around the country—I assume not a complete list—with little care packages for himself. We’ve been hitting them when we’re in the neighborhood, and Dallas is on the way to Gartner, where the next Withered is supposed to be, so we’re going to stop and see what’s in the stash.”

Marci nodded, thinking about it. “What’s usually there?”

“More IDs—you have no idea how many different IDs this guy had—and some money. It’s our only real source of income. Usually a change of clothes, which never fit us but we can pawn them, and then a gun and some bullets, and sometimes other stuff. The one in Cincinnati had a whole wilderness survival kit: a shovel, a tent, some waterproof matches, a couple of wool blankets. All in a big duffle bag.”

“What happened to it?”

“We still have some of it,” I said. “We moved what we could to our backpacks, and used the tent a bit, but had to leave it behind one night to make a quick exit.”

“Withered?”

“FBI.”

She thought about that a moment. “So they found the campsite, and they know we were using a secret agent tent.”

“
If
that was a standard-model tent commonly used by secret agents,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s a thing. It was a pretty good tent, I guess; it folded up really small.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what that would tell them, though.”

“As long as they don’t know where any of your friend’s stashes are,” she said, “it doesn’t tell them anything.”

“They might be waiting for us,” I admitted. It was a possibility I hadn’t considered; Potash had always been so careful, I couldn’t imagine even his bosses knew where he kept his supplies.

“Are we really that important?” asked Marci. “Why do they want us so bad—did you commit a crime you haven’t told me about?”

“Only if the law protects ancient demons,” I said. “I guess the car we took from Fort Bruce was technically government property, but we abandoned that in the next town, so they probably got it back.”

“What happened in Fort Bruce?”

“Our war came out of the shadows,” I said. “The only reason it didn’t stay out is that everyone who saw it is dead: dozens of people and a handful of Withered. Brooke and I were the only ones who made it out alive. Well, and you, I guess. And Nobody. The media thinks it was organized crime, some kind of mob war or something, but nobody knows who did it or why.”

“Including the FBI,” said Marci. “You’re the only one who knows what happened.”

“They know what we were doing there and they know what we were planning the night it all went wrong. But then our whole team died, and without anyone to report back in, the FBI has no idea
how
they died. At least not in any detail. For all I know they think I did it.” I paused. “And I did kill one human, so I guess they’re partly right.”

Marci looked at me for a moment, studying my face. “Was it self-defense?”

“Sort of.” I looked out at the passing hills, brown scrub grass dotted here and there with trees. “If I hadn’t killed him I would have died, so I decided that was close enough. But no, he wasn’t actively threatening our lives at the time.”

Marci paused a moment longer, but I couldn’t tell if she was still looking at me or not. “Was he at least bad?”

“Would that make it better?”

“I don’t know.”

“I needed his heart,” I said, looking back at her. There were parts of my life she knew so well, but she deserved to know everything. “The king of the demons was coming for us, and Nathan had already thrown in with it, so he was holding us until it came. I knew I could kill the Withered if I had a heart I could poison, so I killed Nathan and poisoned his.”

She paused again, watching me while she formulated an answer. Eventually she just said, “That sucks.” I wasn’t sure if she meant the situation itself, or what I’d done to get out of it.

“You never really knew who I was,” I said. “I wore a facade back in Clayton, and sometimes I still do, trying to look normal and act normal and pretend to be the person everyone thinks I should have been. That’s who you liked, not me.” I shrugged and looked away again. “Not the real me, at least.”

“The John I liked was never normal,” said Marci. “That’s what I liked about him.”

“He was still a lie.”

“Maybe you’re not as good a liar as you think you are.”

“So you fell in love with a psychopath?” I turned toward her again, feeling angry for reasons I couldn’t pin down. “Out of all the boys in school I was the only one with those dreamy, soulless eyes, and you said to yourself ‘I want to date a boy who might kill me.’”

She pursed her lips before answering. “Maybe you’re not as dangerous as you think you are, either.”

“You want my resume?”

“I was an attractive teenage girl,” said Marci. “No offense to Brooke, I think she’s beautiful, but I’m not being arrogant when I say that a lot of boys lusted after me. A lot of men, too. Maybe because my boobs came in so young, maybe because my mom had a nice butt and the genes were on my side. Maybe because I liked the attention sometimes, so I learned how to do my hair just right and wear my clothes just right and talk to boys saying just the right words in just the right ways. One time in seventh grade—I was twelve years old—I turned in some homework late to Mr. K., and he told me he’d give me full credit because he liked my eyes.”

“You gave me this speech before,” I said. “You liked me because I didn’t stare at you all the time like some kind of creep. Well, not staring doesn’t change the fact that I’m a creep, that I’m worse than a creep. I didn’t stare at you because I had rules designed to mimic the behavior of a normal, well-adjusted person. I actually counted the times I looked at you, per day: five times at your face, two times at your chest, one time at your hips. Is this really what you want to hear? I had dreams about killing you and Brooke and half a dozen other girls in school. Recurring, nightly dreams about cutting you open and listening to you scream. I set those rules because if I didn’t, I’d start to obsess over you and then maybe I’d start following you, and then maybe I’d start thinking it was okay to act on some of those dreams. I’m not a good person, and you were a fool to ever think I was. And I was evil to ever make you think I was anything else.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” she said softly. “Do you remember the first time I called you?”

“It was … during the trial,” I said. “After Forman kidnapped me and the others, and Curt tried to convince everyone I was an ally instead of a victim.”

“My father heard you testify in court,” said Marci. “He told me what you did, that you saved those women’s lives and hurt the man who hurt them. Brooke turned away from you, but I called you the very next day.”

“Because you liked the danger?” I spat. “The thrill of thinking I might snap and attack someone who hurt you?”

“Maybe a little,” she said. “After all the crap I’ve had to deal with I admit that has some appeal. But the real truth is that I knew you were the safest boy in that whole town.”

“Have you not been listening—”

“Every girl gets leered at,” said Marci, her voice fierce, Brooke’s eyes practically glinting with inner steel. “Every girl gets harassed. In American high schools sixty percent of all girls get directly propositioned for some kind of sexual behavior—I did a report on it—and the only thing surprising about that number is that it isn’t higher. One in eight teenage girls will be groped, and one in fifteen will be raped, usually by someone they know and often by the boys they trusted enough to date. One in fifteen: that’s one girl in every class you ever had in school. I’ve listened to boys brag about what they’ve done to my friends, so loud and careless they didn’t even look to see who was close enough to hear them.” She shook her head. “I didn’t date you because you were dangerous, I dated you because you were the only boy in school who
knew
he was dangerous, and was actively trying to stop it.”

I looked back out at the highway and didn’t say anything.

11

Our ride dropped us off in the outskirts of Dallas, then turned and headed to a suburb. Marci and I hung out by the freeway on-ramp for a while, hoping to hitch a ride deeper into the city, but nobody stopped. Hitching was always harder in big cities, especially at night, and though it wasn’t dark yet, the sun was setting, and the streetlights were coming on, and the shapes rushing past us were changing from cars and trucks to black blobs and bright points of light. The highway wove through the city like two wide rivers, one of white lights and one of red, and we stood on the bank and wondered what to do. We asked at a gas station for directions to the nearest bus stop then hiked almost a mile to reach it. We bought two fares and sat silently in the fluorescent light as we rode downtown.

Ninety-four dollars and sixty-one cents. We hadn’t eaten since Ms. Glassman’s house, the day before.

The notes for Potash’s Dallas stash had an address and four numbers, one with three digits, and three with two digits. I assumed it was a locker number and combination, probably for a bus station, but when we finally arrived two transfers later, we found a storage facility: all internal, four stories high, and closed after 10
PM
. It was nearly 11:00.

“Well,” said Marci. “What are the odds they have a drive-in theater we could crash at for the night?”

“We want to stay off the street if we can,” I said, watching scattered pedestrians still milling around in the darkness. Most of them looked ragged and filthy; homeless, or junkies, or close enough to make no difference. “Everything’s more dangerous in a city like this.”

“The small-town Withered would be offended.”

“The Withered don’t have a monopoly on evil,” I said and I thought about Derek and his friends. “They’re just the ones we’ve decided it’s okay to kill.”

“Where, then?” asked Marci. “If this was a bus station we could have slept on a bench inside and been fine.”

“We could look for one,” I said. “Or maybe a homeless shelter. We’d have to find one that doesn’t split up men and women, though.”

“Because you don’t know if I’ll still be me in the morning.”

I nodded. It had happened before.

“I’m going to need some tampons, too,” said Marci. “Does Brooke keep some in her bag?”

I nodded. “Just pads,” I said. It was about time for this to happen again. “Tampons freak out most of the older girls—anyone who died more than fifty years ago, really.”

“Ha!” said Marci. “I can only imagine.”

“This is the life we lead.”

Marci nodded, looking around. “Okay. We’ll need to find somewhere I can change in private, the sooner the better.”

“We’ve got another half hour on these bus passes,” I said. “Or we could look for a fast-food place with restrooms—most of those don’t close ’til late.”