Shadow Creek (29 page)

Nikki loved going over the details of each kill. They made her feel closer to Kenny, bound him to her forever. She loved reliving the strict sequence of events, careful not to leave anything
out: the initial setup, or “meet-and-greet,” as Kenny liked to call it; the pleasant, innocuous conversation that invariably followed; the slight wariness that began to creep into those conversations as they progressed, the wariness gradually giving way to fear, the fear melting into terror, as cruel reality replaced fairy tale and knives made short shrift of happily ever after.

Nikki had never liked fairy tales. The idea of a beautiful princess in a gossamer gown was nothing short of repulsive to her. She’d hated stupid, whiny Cinderella, much preferring her nasty stepsisters; she’d rooted for the Wicked Queen over that insipid Snow White, and loathed Sleeping Beauty, who waited a hundred years for her handsome prince to find and rescue her.

Nor had she ever had much faith in the Tooth Fairy, the Cookie Monster, or even Santa Claus, despite her parents’ best efforts to convince her they were real. “Look what Santa brought you,” she could still hear her mother squealing with almost manic enthusiasm each Christmas morning, waving the latest Barbie doll in her face. God, she’d hated those ridiculous dolls, with their outlandish outfits and huge plastic breasts. She’d pretended to be enthralled with them for a respectable period of time, then ripped off their designer clothes, hacked off their shiny blond hair, and ultimately pulled their stupid heads off altogether. “Oh, no. Look what happened to poor Barbie,” her mother would inevitably wail, as if the doll’s sorry condition were an act of God.

Luckily, her mother had an enormous capacity for ignoring the obvious.

Unlike her grandmother.

“Maybe you should take her to see someone,” she’d overheard her grandmother whisper to her mother on more than one occasion, the tiresome refrain becoming more and more
frequent the older she got. “There’s something not quite right about her.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing wrong with her,” her mother would protest.

“I don’t know. That business with the mole …”

“Can you just forget about that stupid mole already? She was a child, for God’s sake.”

“And the awful things she made up about your father?”

“We’ve been through this—how many times? It was an unfortunate misunderstanding. The school fills their head with stuff about good touching and bad touching. She got confused, that’s all.”

“I’m telling you, she’s not like other children. I can’t put my finger on it. I just know there’s something … missing.”

“You’re wrong,” her mother said.

But Nikki knew her grandmother was right. And that she’d have to be increasingly diligent. She learned to study people’s faces to gauge their reactions, and to mimic emotions that were obviously expected from her. Emotions other girls seemed to come by naturally. Emotions she simply didn’t have.

She pretended to love her parents when what she really felt was indifference; she feigned interest in her playmates when, in fact, they bored her to tears; she made friends easily and discarded them with even greater alacrity, replacing them on a regular basis. What difference did it make? One person was as good as the rest. Everyone was interchangeable.

And when her grandfather died just days before her thirteenth birthday, and her mother canceled the party Nikki had been looking forward to for weeks, she’d buried her anger at her grandfather’s thoughtlessness and even managed to squeeze out a few impressive tears at his funeral. “She must have loved
him very much,” she’d heard a mourner comment. And she’d smiled to herself. Well done, she’d thought.

Then she’d looked over to where her grandmother was standing, watching her from beside her grandfather’s open casket, and the smile had frozen, then faded, from her face. But the damage was already done. Her grandmother had seen into her soul. She knew the truth.

There’s something … missing
.

And something
was
missing, Nikki thought now, turning over in bed. Until Kenny. Then everything had fallen into place.

Her grandfather had been the first dead person she’d ever seen. She remembered approaching his coffin with a deliberately solemn face, her hands shaking with what a casual observer would no doubt interpret as a mixture of trepidation and grief, but was actually excitement. She’d stared down at his pasty skin, heavily rouged cheeks, and thin lips that had been dusted with an unflattering, somber-colored lipstick, and thought he resembled nothing so much as one of those weird wax statues in Madame Tussaud’s famed museums. His eyes were closed, and she’d had to fight the impulse to reach in and pry them open with her fingers. “Look at me, Grandpa,” she’d wanted to shout, her gaze drifting toward his dark blue suit and unfashionably wide, red-and-navy-striped tie. She was disappointed to discover there was no visible indication of the heart attack that killed him, so she closed her eyes and tried to picture his heart ballooning up to ten times its normal size, then exploding like a hand grenade. She would have liked to see that, she thought. Paid money, in fact.

She’d leaned forward, pretending she was about to kiss him goodbye. Instead her lips slid across the cold gray flesh of his
cheek to his ear. “Rot in hell,” she’d whispered, thinking of her ruined birthday party.

She wondered if she’d still collect any presents from the so-called friends she’d invited, having hinted for weeks about the great new perfume from Juicy Couture and the dark green V-neck sweater she’d seen in the window of Forever 21. Probably all she’d get now were some boring old clothes from the Gap, her mother’s favorite store, and a bunch of useless books from her grandmother. She doubted they’d even bother with a cake this year. Not that she cared about having a cake or disappointing her friends or even turning thirteen. What she enjoyed was being the center of attention, and now her stupid grandfather had gone and stolen her thunder.

Thunder, she repeated silently, thinking about tonight’s sudden storm. While it had been no match for the storm that had been raging the night she and Kenny had first discovered this place, it had nonetheless been a pleasurable reminder of the mayhem they’d unleashed. She’d always loved storms, their moments of high drama—lightning flashing, thunder raging, winds howling. Sometimes she would go outside in the middle of a particularly violent storm and dare the lightning to strike her. She’d feel the rain slapping viciously at her face and experience a euphoria that was almost sexual, a release almost as intense as when she took a knife to her flesh.

Nothing fake about those feelings, that was for sure. Nothing missing then.

But her grandmother had been right about one thing—she wasn’t like other people.

She was special.

Did Kenny still think so? she wondered, hearing his impromptu shower shudder to a halt. Kenny loved taking showers, sometimes as many as five in a single day, sometimes in the
middle of the night, like tonight, when he was too wound up to sleep. He’d been talking again about their having a three-way. “Aren’t I enough for you?” she’d asked plaintively.

“ ‘Course you are. Don’t be silly. I just think it might be fun to experiment, that’s all.” He’d climbed out of bed, headed for the bathroom. Seconds later, she’d heard the shower running.

She was waiting for him to emerge from the bathroom when she heard the tapping at the window. Not branches against the glass, she realized suddenly, opening her eyes and turning her head toward the sound. More like the sound of someone knocking.

Was it possible?

“Kenny,” she whispered toward the bathroom, pushing the covers back and climbing out of bed. “Kenny, I think someone’s here.”

The bathroom door opened and Kenny appeared, a ghostly apparition in a cloud of steam, a towel wrapped around his waist. He cocked his ear toward the window, listening as the tapping grew louder. “Busy night,” he said with a smile. “Guess you better see who it is.”

“What if it’s the cops?”

“Then we deal with them.”

Nikki grabbed Ellen’s old, pale blue bathrobe from the foot of the bed to cover her nakedness. She walked to the window as Kenny retreated to the bathroom. Cautiously, she parted the lace curtains.

At first she didn’t see him. Only gradually did a face emerge from the darkness, eyes first, opening wide with relief, then a mouth, as it broke into a huge, grateful grin.

Whoever he is, he’s awfully happy to see me, Nikki thought, pushing open the window. The young man immediately hoisted himself up and inside. “It might have been easier to use the
front door,” Nikki said with a laugh, catching him as he fell into the room.
Come in, come in, said the spider to the fly
, she thought, not bothering to adjust her bathrobe, which had become dislodged, partially exposing one of her breasts.

“I’m just glad you’re home,” he exclaimed. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

She slowly brought the sides of her robe back together. “Do I look scared?”

He gave a nervous little laugh. “No,” he conceded, eyes drifting back to the front of her robe.

He’s tall and kind of cute, in a bedraggled sort of way, Nikki thought. A little on the skinny side, perhaps. Not much older than I am. Might as well have some fun, she thought, knowing Kenny was monitoring them and allowing the front of her robe to creep open again, giving the boy another peek at what was inside. He didn’t look away.

“I’m Tyler. Tyler Currington.”

“Nikki.” She fluffed out her hair, causing her robe to gape open even more. “There’s a country singer named Billy Currington. Are you related?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“He sings about beer and stuff. I don’t like most country music, but I like him.”

“Cool,” Tyler said. If he thought their conversation was odd, considering the circumstances, he gave no such indication. “Are your parents here?”

“No. I’m all alone.”

“You’re kidding.”

She smiled, feeling even more powerful than when she’d risked being struck by lightning. It was a sensation she relished. “Tell me, what’s a nice boy like you doing out on a night
like this?” She found it amusing that he seemed to have completely forgotten the reason he was here.

A sheepish grin filled his face, his eyes never leaving the front of her robe. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m sure it’s a good one.”

He shrugged. “I drove my car into a ditch. We started walking, got caught in the storm.”

Nikki glanced warily back toward the window. “We?”

“This girl I was with,” he said, adding quickly, “Nobody special.”

Nikki wondered if the girl in question would be surprised to hear this. “So where’s this nobody special now?”

“In the woods. About half a mile from here. She twisted her ankle, so she couldn’t walk.”

“So you just left her there? In the woods? Alone?” A man after my own heart, she thought. This night just keeps getting better and better. She looked over Tyler’s shoulder toward the bathroom, knowing Kenny was listening to every word. Was he excited by what he was watching? Maybe even a little jealous?

“It was her idea for me to go get help,” Tyler explained. “If I could use your phone …”

“I’m so sorry. It’s not working. The last storm we had knocked out the power, and nobody’s been around yet to repair it.”

“Oh,” he said. But he didn’t look too disappointed.

“Maybe I could help you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could help you carry her back here.”

“Nah. You’re too small.”

“I’m stronger than you think.”

“I bet you are.”

They stared at each other for several seconds, neither one saying a word.

“So? What’ll it be?” she asked finally. “You want to go back, rescue the damsel in distress?”

“To be honest, I don’t think I could do it. I’m just too damn tired.” His eyes scanned the room, stopping on the rumpled bed. “That looks really inviting.”

“You’re more than welcome to lie down.”

“I am?”

“I’m sure your girlfriend will keep until morning.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. I told you, she’s …”

“… nobody special. Yeah, I remember.” Nikki stretched her arms above her head, giving him another tantalizing flash of her breasts before lowering her arms and gathering the sides of her robe around her. “You’re probably freezing in those wet clothes. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable taking them off?”

The look on his face—somewhere between “Is she saying what I think she’s saying?” and “Holy shit!”—told her he couldn’t quite believe his good fortune. Here he’d spent the better part of the night lost in the woods in the pouring rain only to stumble across the mountain version of the farmer’s daughter. Talk about getting lucky!

Silly boy, Nikki thought, reading his thoughts as clearly as if he’d spoken them out loud. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is? Still, she could at least show him a good time before he died. And it would prove to Kenny how much she loved him, show him that she’d do anything, even give herself to another man, if it would make him happy. Maybe he’d even join in. Not exactly the three-way he’d been talking about, but hey, what’s good for the goose …

At least that’s what her grandmother always used to say. Of
course she doubted her grandmother had been talking about three-ways.

Besides, Kenny wouldn’t have to wait too long. Tyler’s girlfriend was less than a mile away. She and Kenny could tend to her after they were finished with Sir Galahad here. She’d do whatever he asked, whatever it took to hold on to him, she decided, moving closer to Tyler and tugging at the bottom of his T-shirt.

“I
am
kind of cold,” he was saying.

“Of course you are. You’re soaked right through. We wouldn’t want you to die of pneumonia, now would we?”

Tyler’s response was to pull his wet T-shirt up over his head and toss it to the floor.

He was more muscular than she’d suspected, with sculpted abs and impressively cut biceps. And he had surprisingly big hands. He could put up quite a fight. Maybe even give Kenny a bit of a challenge. Although muscles were no match for being caught naked and off guard.