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"Come on," Stephanie told her. "I'll help you pack and take you to the airport." They started down into the subway. "You think it's safe to go back to your loft?"
"Emily and Pretty Boy don't know about it. Manelli and that U.S. marshal do, but we can sneak in through the construction site. Nobody'll see us. We can-"
A chill like ice down her back. She gasped.
Ten feet away Pretty Boy stepped out from behind a pillar, holding a black pistol. "Don't fucking move," he muttered to Rune.
Anger on his face, he moved forward toward Rune, not paying any attention to Stephanie. Apparently he didn't even think they were together.
Rune froze. But Stephanie didn't.
She stepped past him fast, which caught him completely off guard. Screaming "Rape, rape!" she shoved her palm, fingers stiff and splayed, into his face. His head snapped back and he staggered against the wall, blood pouring from his nose.
"Fuck," he cried.
Her self-defense class…
Stephanie stepped toward him again. It looked like she was going to kick him this time.
But Pretty Boy was good too; he knew what he was doing. He didn't try to fight back. He leapt to the side about three steps, out of range, wiped the blood from his mouth and started to raise the pistol toward her.
Then the arm closed around his neck.
A passenger-a huge black man-had heard Stephanie's cry and had come up behind their attacker and locked his muscular arm around Pretty Boy's throat. Choking, he dropped the gun and grabbed the man's forearm, trying futilely to break the grip.
The big man behind him seemed to be enjoying the whole thing. He said cheerfully to Pretty Boy, "H'okay, asshole, leave th'ladies 'lone. You hear me?"
They ran.
Stephanie in the lead.
She must have belonged to a health club-she was moving like a greyhound. If Pretty Boy was there, Rune figured, Emily must be nearby too. Besides, the token seller would've called the cops by then; Rune wanted to get as far away from the station as possible.
Gasping, ru
They were two blocks from the subway when it happened.
At Thirteenth and Broadway a taxi jumped a red light just before it changed.
Which was the exact moment Stephanie ran into the intersection between two double-parked trucks.
She didn't have a chance…
All she could do was roll onto the hood to keep from getting crushed under the wheels. The driver hit the brakes, which gave a low, wild scream, but still the cab hit her hard. Some part of her body-her face, Rune thought in despair-slammed into the windshield, which turned white with fractures. Stephanie cartwheeled onto the concrete, a swirl of floral cloth and red hair and white flesh.
"No!" Rune screamed.
Two women ran up and started tending to her. Rune dropped to her knees beside them. She hardly heard the litany of the cabdriver: "She ran through light, it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault."
Rune cradled Stephanie's bloody head in her arms.
"You'll be okay," she whispered. "You'll be okay. You'll be okay."
But Stephanie couldn't hear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rune stood by the window of the hospital, looking out onto the park.
It was an old city park on First Avenue. More rocks and dirt than grass, most of the boulders painted with graffiti, tinted red and purple. They seemed to be oozing from the underbelly of the city itself like exposed organs.
She turned away.
A doctor walked by, not looking at her. None of them had looked at her-the doctors, the orderlies, the nurses, the candy stripers. She'd given up waiting for a kindly old man in a white jacket to come into the hallway, put his arm around her, and say, "About your friend, don't you worry, she'll be fine."
The way they do in movies.
But movies're fake.
Richard's words echoed: They. Aren't. Real
No one had stopped to talk to her. If she wanted any information she had to ask the nurses. Again.
And she'd get the same look she'd gotten two dozen times before.
No news. We'll let you know.
She looked out the window once more. Watching for Pretty Boy. Thinking maybe he'd gotten away from the man in the subway and escaped from the cops. Followed the ambulance here.
Paranoia again.
But it's not paranoia if they're really after you.
Hoping that Stephanie had hurt Pretty Boy really bad when she'd hit him. A character in one of her fairy stories, a friendly witch, had told someone never to hope for harm to someone else. Hope for all the good you want but never wish harm on anyone. Because, the witch said, harm's like a wasp in a jar. Once you release it you never know who it's going to sting.
But now Rune hoped Stephanie had hurt the bastard real bad.
She wandered up to the nurses' station.
An older woman with a snake of a stethoscope around her neck finally looked up. "Oh. We just heard about your friend."
"What? Tell me!"
"They just took her to Radiology for more scans. She's still unconscious."
"That's what you were going to tell me? That you don't know anything?"
"I thought you'd want to know. She'll be back in ICU in forty minutes, an hour. Depending."
Useless, Rune thought.
"I'll be back. If she wakes up, tell her I'll be back."
Oh, please, Pan and Isis and Persephone, let her live.
Rune stood by the East River, watching the tugs sail upstream. The Circle Line tour boat too. A barge, three or four cabin cruisers. The water was ugly and ripe-smelling. The traffic from the FDR Drive rushed past with a moist, tearing sound, which set her on edge. It sounded like bandages being removed.
Just an adventure. That's all I wanted. An adventure.
Lancelot searching for the Grail. Psyche for her lost lover Eros. Like in the books, in the movies. And Rune would be the hero. She'd find Mr. Kelly's killer, she'd find the million dollars. She'd save Amanda and would live happily ever after with Richard.
0 God of heavenly powers, who by the might of thy command, drivest away from men's bodies all sickness and infirmity, be present in thy goodness …
These were the words she'd said so often during the last week of her father's life that she'd memorized them without trying to.
Her father, a young man. A handsome man. Who played with Rune and her sister all the time, taught them to ride bicycles, who read them stories, who took them to plays as readily as to ball games. A man who always had time to talk to them, listen to their problems.
No, fairy stories didn't always have happy endings. But they always had endings that were just. People died and lost their fortunes in them because they were dishonest or careless or greedy. There was no justice in her father's death though. He'd lived a good life and he'd still died badly, slow and messy, in the Shaker Heights Garden Hospice.
No justice in Mr. Kelly's death.
No justice in Stephanie's getting hurt. None if she died.
Please…
Speaking out loud now. "With this thy servant Stephanie that her weakness may be banished and her strength recalled."
Her voice fell to a whisper and then she stopped praying.
Staring at the ugly river in front of her, Rune took off her silver bracelets one by one and tossed them into the water. They disappeared without any sound that she could hear and she took that as a good sign that the gods who oversaw this wonderful and terrible city were happy with her sacrifice.
Though when she got to last bracelet, the one that she'd bought for Richard, she paused, looking at the silver hands clasped together. She heard his voice again.