Reaper (33 page)

“Shhh,” Lily hushed sharply, glancing around furtively. They were very near where the gulls had attacked the first time, Eddie realized; the grass at their feet was still torn and spattered and foul. Lily had noticed as well. “We don't know who is listening.”

“Hush yourself, Pocahontas,” Elle snapped back. “The whole block is empty! We're fine! The point of the matter is, Mary had to train up an early-bloomin’ daughter and take care of a city now pretty much overrun with ghosts she'd hidden from her family, all by herself. And she couldn't let Wendy use her power too much, too fast either, she had to keep her in the dark about a lot of important stuff. Am I getting all this right, Pete?”

“You have the gist of it,” Piotr agreed wearily.

“So she assigns Wendy nothing but Shades, and if I'm remembering right, then she tries to take on the rest of the city by her little ol’ lonesome. If it'd been my kid, I'd have been worried half to death that Wendy was getting bottled up, too, because yeah, it'd hurt, but Wendy ain't exactly the type to mouth off when she's under the weather. I don't like her much, but I'll admit, she plays it close to the vest when she's not tip-top. And all the time, Mary's having to keep an eye out over her shoulder for any family spies that nasty Aunt Elise probably sent in to peek at them from time to time.”

“Wendy was quite strong the first time we laid eyes upon her,” Lily said slowly. “Most likely she was growing quite competent on Shades alone, upsetting the fine balance her mother was devising. She was growing and adapting far too fast for her mother's comfort.”

“Yeah, Mary was always kind of…weird about Wendy,” Eddie agreed.

They'd reached Wendy's street; unconsciously they all slowed their pace and eyed the sky for gulls, lowering their voices so that they had to strain to hear one another.

“Especially near the end,” Eddie added, feeling a little like he was admitting great dark secrets instead of info they could learn from Wendy just as easily as from Eddie. “Calling her out at psycho hours, dragging her out of class for nonexistent doctor appointments and bringing her back an hour or two later. I thought it was just her being a hypochondriac EMT at the time, cuz I didn't know what was up with Wendy right then, but looking back…like, she was always asking all these strange questions and stuff.”

“Indeed?” Piotr asked, speeding up slightly.

Eddie sped up as well. He couldn't help himself either; kiss from Lily or not, he and Piotr were both anxious to see Wendy once more. “Oh yeah,” he agreed. “She'd poke her head in while we were studying all the time, you know? I thought maybe she and Wendy's dad were worried that we were, uh,” he glanced at Piotr and then, flushing, shrugged, “you know, making out or something. But we weren't, and she seemed sort of
pissed
about that.”

“Cue Ada,” Piotr said. “Mary's concern had grown so great that she sought out help.”

“Certainly Ada, ever the scientist, would not refuse a Reaper in need,” Lily said. “They devised an alteration to the original poison recipe, as Ada suggested, possibly to slow Wendy's growth, but were not able to implement it in time. Instead Mary became the White Lady and Wendy was left to her own devices.”

“Not to break the dramatic tension, but we're here,” Eddie said.
He waved a hand at the lopsided car in the driveway. “And if I'm not mistaken, Wendy's home.”

Elle hadn't been kidding, Piotr realized as they entered Wendy's home; the kitchen was destroyed. The fridge was tipped over on its side, its innards spilled everywhere, and the floor was tacky with dried milk and exploded sour cream. A whole chicken lay half under the stool by the counter, pink blood seeping out of a crushed corner.

Jon, sitting at the other stool, was hunched over his phone, chewing on a burnt cookie with one hand and texting rapidly with the other, as Lily and Elle slid through the wall behind him.

“What the hell happened here?” Eddie asked, leading the way. Piotr found himself unconsciously picking his way across the kitchen, even though the bulk of the mess could hardly be seen in the Never. Eddie, also, moved through the debris as if it affected him, while Lily and Elle simply strode through, their feet leaving no traces in the Never of the destruction in the living world.

“Do you think Wendy's seen this?” Eddie asked Piotr. “We could go upstairs and check, I guess.”

“She's gone,” Jon replied, finishing his text. “Been gone for over an hour.”

“Seriously?” Eddie asked. “What happ—wait.” He froze, staring at Jon in utter bewilderment. “You can hear us?”

Jon looked up and, slowly, looked from Eddie to Piotr to Lily, and finished on Elle. “Yeah. Uh, miss? Your slip's showing,” he said, blushing.

Elle glanced down and smirked. “It happens.”

“How long have you been able to perceive us?” Lily asked, nudging Elle sharply in the rib with her elbow until Elle, rolling her eyes, adjusted her skirt so it hung a shade lower. “Were you able to before? On the stairs?”

“Yeah, I was.” Jon rubbed the back of his neck. “I wasn't sure what was going on, though, you know? So I decided to keep quiet.
Honestly, the first time I saw one of you guys I thought I was going nuts. It took me most of Christmas break to realize Wendy could see you all too.” He looked at Eddie and Piotr, and jiggled his leg uncomfortably.

“I sort of figured on talking to her about it pretty soon, once I figured out how to broach the subject the right way, but she started getting really squirrelly a few days ago—squirrelly even for Wendy, I mean—and then I saw you on the stairs and it all sort of clicked.” Eddie held up his phone. “But I can't talk to her about it now because, surprise of all surprises, Wendy's at the hospital. Again”

Eddie stiffened. “Why?”

“Chel found her passed out on her floor. She got a message from this old friend of Wendy's—this doctor chick who used to take care of our mom—and this lady said Wendy's in danger, she needs Chel's help. So Chel, being Chel, was going to blow it off, but then she decided, what the hell, and went to check up on Wendy.”

“And your sister found Wendy collapsed,” Piotr said shortly. “Quite ill.”

“Yep. Naked and steaming hot to the touch,” Jon said. “She called 911 and apparently the EMTs flipped out at how high Wendy's temperature was. They rushed her to the ER. Chel's there right now.”

“And what about you?” Eddie asked.

“I was just about to head out there,” Jon jerked his thumb at a backpack on the kitchen table, “but I wanted to make sure Wendy had some stuff for her stay first. Clean undies and a toothbrush and stuff.” He looked around the kitchen. “I don't suppose you guys know what happened here?”

“No, I am sorry,” Piotr said. “We do not.” He hesitated a moment. “How were you planning on reaching the hospital?”

“Well,” Jon said slowly, “if it was just me, I was gonna take the bus, but…well, I've got my permit and I'm pretty safe. I drive like a turtle but…you all want a ride?”

I
n her dreams, Wendy floated across chill grey water toward dense, high rocks. Her side ached fiercely, a slow stabbing that radiated from her hip all the way to her lungs, but the pain didn't stop her from marveling at the sight of the setting sun turning deep red as it dipped beneath the waves. When it was half gone, Wendy reached Alcatraz.

Biting back a yell of agony, Wendy forced herself to stretch on tiptoes on the edge of the boat as the side scraped the cliff face. Scraping her palms and digging her toes into the rock face, Wendy willed the cliff to provide her with handholds as she drew herself up and out, climbing as fast as she dared. Perhaps it was her power over the dreamspace, perhaps it was simply the strata of the dream, but her fingers found good climbing nooks and crannies until she was able to haul herself over the edge and to safety.

Her mother was there.

“Hey Mom,” Wendy said, glad and sad all at once. Mary reached down and offered her hand and Wendy took it, relishing the cool fingers wrapped around her own as she tottered to her feet. Steadying herself, Wendy thought she heard a dim thunder boom underlined with a hiss-pop of distant lightning, but as she concentrated on the sound she realized the long echoing noise wasn't thunder but cannon-fire and gunshots.

A particularly loud crack sent scavenging birds up in droves and the sky was suddenly filled with birds—ravens and crows and buzzards—all screaming and cawing and filling the world with their raucous disapproval.

Wendy shivered. Birds…there was something about birds she was supposed to remember…

Fog rolled in from the sea, pouring over the lower cliffs like foam, rising with the eddying currents of air until the edges licked the tips of her shoes. Squinting, Wendy could just make out faint white light through holes in the fog, twinkling in the distance like starlight. For a moment she thought her mind had sent her into some sort of twisted dreamspace battle but then she realized that what she saw wasn't light, but Light. Beneath her a long line of prisoners, chained together with ribbons of Light, were trudging from the front doors of Alcatraz down into the morass of fog and sea.

“Mom? What's going on?” Wendy asked, turning to Mary, but Mary was gone. Hollow-eyed and shocked, Chel stood where her mother had been, biting her lips and roughly rubbing the gooseflesh from her arms. Typical Chel, even in Wendy's dreams she wasn't dressed for the weather, wearing only a football jersey, yoga pants, and a black pair of threadbare Hello Kitty socks. Wendy thought she recognized the socks; they used to be hers.

“Just a dream,” Wendy said and sighed. Despite the peculiar surroundings, part of her had been hoping that this was not a dream but a dreamspace, and that her mother had somehow made her way back from the space beyond the Light to help her one last time. If Chel was here, this was definitely not a dreamspace. Just a dream.

“I'm cold,” Chel said, and Wendy, using the skills the White Lady had inadvertently taught her, imagined a heavy cloak for her sister to wear. Chel took it gladly, shrugging into the long white fabric and pulling it close around her neck. “Thanks.” She leaned past Wendy, squinting into the swirling fog at the men vanishing into the murk. “What's going on?”

“Don't know,” Wendy said. “Mom was here but now she's gone. I was going to get a little, I don't know, clarification, but when I turned around, you were here.”

“Sorry I can't help,” Chel said, irritated.

“No, it's not you, it's me,” Wendy said. “I'm missing something, forgetting something. I'm just so
tired
.” She was, she realized, tired
and aching and shaking from the hole in her gut. Her mouth felt dust-dry and her eyes burned.

“I miss Mom too,” Chel said, taking Wendy by the arm and pulling her away from the edge of the cliff. “She could be a real bitch sometimes but she always seemed to have her stuff together, you know?” Chel guided Wendy to a nearby bench and they both sat. “I wish she'd taught us how to do that.”

“She planned to,” Wendy said, feeling a sudden urge to defend her. “She was just busy.”

“Always busy. Too busy for us,” Chel snorted and Wendy was irrationally angry with her sister, despite the fact that Chel had a point.

“Shut up,” she grumbled. “Mom tried. She had stuff to do. Important stuff.”

“Like you? Following dead people around? What kind of life is that, Wendy? You're giving up everything that makes you cool to go traipsing after people who already had their chance. What are you
doing
, anyway? Is this all some sort of sick game to you?”

“I have a purpose,” Wendy protested. “And it's not a game. They need me just like they needed Mom.”

Disgusted, Chel shook her head. “So that's what Mom was doing all those years when she was gone? Hanging out with dead people? Gross.”

“You're looking at it all wrong,” Wendy cried, grabbing Chel's arm and wincing as intense pain jolted across her gut. She pressed a hand to her side, trying to dull the agony with pressure, but it did little to alleviate the pain. “They need me,” she said again, this time through clenched teeth. “It was her duty and now it's mine. I have to do it.”

“Or else?”

“Or else they suffer.”

Chel jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Looks like they're suffering with or without you. Kind of like it was planned that way.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

Chel sighed. “Maybe I do, maybe I don't. All I know is that I'm tired of seeing the people I love end up all skinny and white in hospital beds. The sheets are always green. We're redheads. It washes us out.”

“Chel—”

“Shut up.” Chel rubbed the heel of her palms into her eyes. “I'm so tired. I never sleep anymore, you know that? I tried to nap this afternoon but the fridge fell over. Between waiting up most nights to see what godawful hour you decide to sneak in and worrying about Dad cracking up and Jon being all secretive—” she broke off.

“Chel?” Wendy asked quietly.

“I'm worried about you.” Chel sighed and wiped a hand against her cheek. “You're the closest thing I've got left of Mom. And you're sick. Really sick.”

“Is this real?” Wendy asked. “Is this a dream or a dreamscape? I can't tell.”

“You're really sick,” Chel repeated, burying her face in her hands and sobbing softly. “Don't die, Wendy. Please? Please don't die.”

There was a howl, long and dark, and fierce ringing bells as alarms burst into song all around Alcatraz Island. The dream was ending as abruptly as it had begun; the night dropped across the sky in a billowing swath of black velvet, sprinkled with crystal clear stars.

Wendy blinked and Chel was gone. Eyes watering, she blinked again…

Again…

Again…

Wendy opened her eyes and found Emma kneeling beside her in the middle of a great room filled with books. It was too crowded and disorganized to be called a library; the piles teetered alarmingly with the faintest breeze. The air was clammy, cold, and smelled of must and decay. There were footprints in the dust at their feet.

“Wendy,” Emma was saying, and Wendy got the impression that she'd been talking for a very long time and Wendy had only just now tuned in, “Wendy, listen to me.”

“Emma?”

Emma looked up, and where her eyes were, only banked coals remained. “Wendy, you have to run. Get out of here.” When she spoke, smoke curled out of her mouth, like a dragon, and Wendy realized that the skin of Emma's neck was layered in thin, etched sheets, snake-coils and dragon scales that glittered in the light.

“What's happening?” Wendy asked and flinched as a dark shadow swooped down from the ceiling, red eyes glaring, and swung back up into the rafters. A thin, heady chuckle filled the air where it had been.

“This is the space between,” Emma said, coughing as more smoke poured from between her lips. She smelled like cedar chips and midnight bonfires and sulfur matches. Her hair was not just red now, but liquid fire, the braid coming undone on its own, snaking down her back and curling at her elbows. “This is the place they find you.”

“They? Who's they?”

“The Dark Ones.” Emma reached forward and took Wendy's hands in her own. “Go, Wendy! Get out of here. GO!”

And she shoved Wendy hard in the chest, right where her Light was brightest and yet the most tangled, the most trapped.

Wendy fell back…

back…

back…

And woke.

The daylight was almost gone, leaving the hospital room bathed in a grainy, sepia-tinted haze, like an old photograph. What had woken her? It was silent in her room except for the low beeping of monitors, the steady swish-swish of the air conditioning pumping a
breeze across her pillow. Wendy licked her lips; her tongue felt heavy, thick, and furry, the skin around her mouth sensitive and scaly to the touch. Instinctively, Wendy sensed that her temperature was still high.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Wendy squinted at the ceiling, surprised to see that there was another shell-door embedded in the ceiling tiles. Water pooled and dripped through the narrow crack between the door and the surrounding ceiling, pattering on the foot of her bed in cold, icy drops, soaking her feet with rust-colored water. Shivering from the shock of the wetness against her hot toes, Wendy drew her feet closer to her body. The damp should have felt good, but it didn't. The water was
thick
somehow, viscous, and smelled like sulfur and moss and rotten things left to decay at the bottom of a bog.

It was another dreamscape, but despite the familiar medical surroundings, Wendy could tell that this particular place didn't come from
her
mind at all. Wendy pressed against the dreamspace the way she'd been taught by the White Lady—concentrate hard enough, she'd always thought, and any dream could be hers to control. This time, however, the attempt fell flat and Wendy sagged from the mental effort. She might be strong in the Never or in her own dreams, but in this twisted place she was weaker than a kitten. It was the tidal wave and the earthquake all over again. She had very little control now, only over her immediate area.

“You're awake.”

Tempted as she was to face her tormentor, there was no point. Saving her energy, Wendy kept her face pointed firmly at the ceiling, watching the water bead along the edges of the door before pattering down. “Didn't I just stab you?”

“I don't know, did you?” Jane slid her shirt aside, exposing perfectly tattooed flesh, not a mar or mark to be seen. “I feel pretty whole right now. How about
you
?”

When Jane leaned down, Wendy could smell the coconut and
strawberry of her shampoo, the sandalwood and wood smoke of her perfume, all underlined by the wet leather of her jacket and topped off by the ever-present grape bubble gum. This close, the cloying mixture of scents was nauseating.

Wendy turned her head and felt more than heard Jane chuckle above her. Wendy's fingers itched to reach up and snatch the blue-haired girl bald, but she knew that in this not-her-mind-dreamspace, she was feverish and sick, no match for Jane at all.

“Should've given up by now,” Jane said. “Stubborn.”

“What are you doing here?” Wendy asked, irritated. “Don't you have someone else's dreams to stalk?”

“Nope. I'm here just to visit your scowling little face. This time without Grandma cramping my style.” Insolently, Jane pinched Wendy's cheek. Wendy tried to pull away but Jane's long, slim fingers were deceptively strong, and pinched extra hard as punishment for attempting to evade.

Wendy shoved weakly at Jane's hands, but her fingers went through the flesh easily. Frowning, Wendy struggled to sit up, but her palms couldn't grip the edges of the bed. They faded and slid through the thin green sheets as if she were insubstantial.

“Even in your dreams you side with the ghosts,” Jane said, shaking her head so that her long earrings tinkled and stepping back from the bed. “You're all faded, Wendy. Fading, fading away.”

“This is a dream. I know it is. What's really happening?” Wendy asked. “What are you doing to me?”

“Nothin’ much,” Jane replied, fingers resting on the intricate swirls beneath her collarbone, “you're just dying. I didn't have to do anything at all. You did it all to yourself.”

Wendy shoved at the dream again, trying to rip the sheet, trying to turn it red, or blue, or make it vanish. Any little bit of control, anything at all.

Nothing.

“I can feel you pushing at me,” Jane said evenly. “I wouldn't
bother if I were you.” She held out one hand, examining her nails. “You should rest. You don't have a lot of time left.”

“I'm never going to stop fighting you,” Wendy warned softly. “And when I wake up, I'm coming after you.”

“When you wake up? Well, hell, Wendy, I don't know that you're
going
to wake up, to be honest. You're in the hospital now, cuz, and the prognosis ain't pretty.” Jane tilted her head up and looked at the pooling water on the ceiling. “They've got you tied down and damn near drowning in ice packs.”

Wendy turned her face away. “You can't know that.”