Anna Dressed in Blood

“When I first saw you, I didn’t know what it was. It was something in my ears, something in my stomach, just a humming below the music. It’s powerful. And even though I knew it was meant to kill me, it drew me somehow. Then when your friend cut me—”

“He’s not my friend,” I say through my teeth. “Not really.”

“I could feel myself draining into it. Starting to go wherever it is that it sends us. But it was wrong. It has a will of its own. It wanted to be in your hand.”

“So it wouldn’t have killed you,” I say, relieved. I don’t want Will to be able to use my knife. I don’t care how childish that sounds. It’s my knife.

A

I don’t know where the athame’s power comes from, and Gideon has never told me, if he knows. But if that power comes from something dark, then so be it. I use it for something good. As for the smell of Elias’s pipe …

“That was probably just something you were frightened of after watching yourself be murdered,” I say gently. “You know, like dreaming of zombies right after you watch Land of the Dead.”

“Land of the Dead? Is that what you dream about?” she asks. “Boy who kills ghosts for a living?”

“No. I dream about penguins doing bridge construction. Don’t ask why.”

She smiles and tucks her hair behind her ear. When she does I feel a pull somewhere deep in my chest. What am I doing? Why did I come here? I can barely remember.

Somewhere in the house, a door slams. A

“What was that?” I ask.

She shakes her head. I can’t tell whether she’s embarrassed or frightened. It looks like both.

“Do you remember what I showed you in the basement?” she asks.

“The tower of dead bodies? No, that slipped my mind. Are you kidding me?”

She laughs nervously, a fake little twinkle.

“They’re still here,” she whispers.

My stomach takes this opportunity to wring itself out, and my feet shift underneath me without permission. The image of all those corpses is fresh in my mind. I can actually smell the green water and rot. The idea that they are now roaming through the house with wills of their own—which is what she’s implying—doesn’t make me happy.

“I guess they’re haunting me now,” she says softly. “That’s why I went outside. They don’t frighten me,” she’s quick to add. “But I can’t stand to see them.” She pauses and crosses her arms over her stomach, sort of hugging herself. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Really? Because I don’t.

“I should lock myself in here with them. It’s my fault, after all.” Her voice isn’t sulky. She’s not asking me to disagree. Her eyes, focused on the floorboards, are earnest. “I wish I could tell them that I’d like to take it back.”

“Would it matter?” I ask quietly. “Would it matter to you if Malvina said she was sorry?”

A

My hand twitches. I gather all my guts and let my hand stray to her shoulder. “You’re not being stupid. We’ll figure something out, A

Telling her not to torture herself would make it worse. I can’t give her absolution. But I want to make her forget, even just for a while. She was i

“You have to find your way back into the world now,” I say gently.

A

“I only wanted to sleep,” he says. It sounds like he’s got a mouthful of gravel, but upon closer inspection I realize it’s because all of his teeth have come loose. It makes him look older, as does the sagging skin, but he couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Just another runaway who stumbled into the wrong house.

“A

The sound of ripping that I hear isn’t only his shirt. Intestines spill out in a grotesque rope and hit the floor. He starts to fall forward, toward her, and I grab and yank hard enough to pull her to my chest. When I put myself between her and him, another body crashes through the wall, sending dust and splinters everywhere. It flies across the floor in scattered pieces, ragged arms and legs. The head stares at us as it skids, baring its teeth.

I’m in no mood to see a blackened, rotting tongue, so I wrap my arm around A

Staring back through her front door, A

“You can’t stay here,” I say.

“There’s nowhere else for me to go,” she replies. “It isn’t so bad. They’re not that strong. A display like that, they can probably only manage once every few days. Maybe.”

“You can’t be serious. What if they get stronger?”

“I don’t know what we could have expected,” she says, and steps away, out of my reach. “That all this would come without a price.”

I want to argue, only nothing sounds convincing, even in my head. But it can’t be like this. It’ll drive her insane. I don’t care what she says.

“I’ll go to Thomas and Morfran,” I say. “They’ll know what to do. Look at me,” I say, lifting her chin. “I won’t let it stay like this. I promise.”

If she cared enough to make a gesture, it would be a shrug. To her, this is fitting punishment. But it did shake her up, and that keeps her from really arguing. When I move to my car, I hesitate.

“Will you be all right?”

A

“Cas?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you came back. I wasn’t sure if you would.”

I nod and put my hands in my pockets. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Inside the car, I blare the radio. It’s a good thing to do, when you’re sick to death of creepy silence. I do it a lot. I’m just settling into my groove with some Stones when a news report cuts through the melody of “Paint It, Black.”

“The body was found just inside the gates of Park View Cemetery, and may have been the victim of a satanic ritual. Police can’t comment yet on the identity of the victim, however Cha