Rosemary and Rue

She finished her scream and jerked back, trying to curl into a ball. It was too late. The next two bullets were close behind the first, and by the time I’d recovered enough to lunge for Devin, her screams had stopped. Manuel was doing the screaming for her. My shoulder caught Devin in the ribs, bowling him over and sending the gun sliding across the floor. I had an instant to wonder where it landed before his foot caught me in the stomach, flinging me back.

I curled around myself, retching, as he climbed back to his feet; his second kick caught me in the chest, sending stabbing pains through my ribs and sternum. “Look what you did! You killed her.” There was no sanity left in his voice: he believed what he was saying. He pulled the trigger, and he still blamed me. Not that it mattered. I’d blame myself enough for both of us.

“Devin . . .” I gasped.

“Shut up!” The scope of the world had narrowed, becoming nothing but Devin, pain, and the growing taste of roses. I think his world had become just as small. He’d abandoned his sanity in the twisting maze of changeling time, and the balance of his blood had thrown him to the point from which there was no coming back. Sitting on the fence isn’t easy. Sometimes the fence breaks, and you fall.

Neither of us expected the gunshot. Devin raised a hand to his chest, touching the stain blooming there before looking back to me, eyes gone terribly wide. Mouth moving with words he never managed to finish, he folded and fell.

Behind him, still crying, Manuel lowered the gun.

The taste of roses rose and burst in the back of my throat, choking me as it dissipated. I hadn’t realized how constant it had become until it was gone. I stood with agonizing slowness; every breath hurt, but at least I was alive. Manuel didn’t move as I walked over and pried the gun from his fingers, dropping it to the floor.

He lifted his head when it hit the ground, expression bleak. “He . . . he . . .”

“Shhh. I know.”

And I put my arms around him, and held him.





TWENTY-SEVEN



WE STOOD THERE FOR almost fifteen minutes before I pulled back, looking at Manuel. “Is there anyone else here?” He gazed at me, eyes gone wide and glassy with shock. I shook his shoulders, as gently as I could manage. “Manuel, is there anyone else here? Anyone at all?”

“He . . . sent them all away,” he said. “He knew you were coming. He didn’t want anyone else to be here when you came.”

He sent away everyone but the two kids I cared about. I closed my eyes. Until today, I’d never known that he could be evil. “Come on, Manuel. Let’s go get your things.”

“I don’t want to leave her.”

I looked back to his face, forcing myself to smile. “You have to, Manny. It’s time for the night-haunts to come, and they won’t do it while we’re here.”

“But . . .”

“Come on.”

The room Dare and Manuel shared with half a dozen more of Devin’s kids was dark and cluttered, hammocks hanging from the middle of the ceiling to keep the mattresses from using up all the available floor space. It was familiar enough to hurt like hell. I used to share a room just like it with Mitch and Julie and a rotating group of others, all of us fighting for our little corners and the pretense of dignity that having “a little privacy” could create.

I leaned against the wall, watching as Manuel packed up their meager store of possessions. The hollow echo of the night-haunts’ wings whispered down the hall from the front of the building, warning the living to stay away; their only business was with the dead. The night-haunts work fast. By the time Manuel came back to the doorway, clutching a duffel bag in one hand and a tattered red suitcase in the other, the sound of wings was gone.

Eyes still glassy, he looked at me, and asked, “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know.”