Mortal Danger

Maybe.

My heart hurt just thinking about it. As if he sensed it, he reached over and covered my hand with his. On impulse, I raised his palm and kissed it. His fingers closed convulsively, and he cut me a sharp look.

“While I’m driving? Really?” God, that look curled my toes.

“Sorry. I’ll be good.” I cast around for a topic that wouldn’t distract him. “What’s your favorite color?”

“That was random. Why do you want to know?”

“Just tell me.”

“Blue.”

That answer made me smile. “Mine too.”

When he parked outside our brownstone, he leaned over for a kiss that broke all records for hotness and threatened to set my uniform on fire. Maybe he’s part djinn, I thought dizzily, as he tunneled his hands into my hair. He tasted sweet and fresh, everything I wanted wrapped up in one person, and I could’ve crawled on top of him then and there. Bad hormones, bad. Intellectually I understood that our pheromones were shaking hands and that our chemical compositions must be compatible—and that was all. On a pure girl level, I just wanted him. So I told my brain to shut up and we kissed for ten minutes, until he was breathing hard, and I was trembling.

“Can I come up?”

The question elated me. Maybe there was still hope for us, together.

“My mom’s probably home,” I warned.

Rueful smile. “That’s fine. Just … give me a minute.”

Oh. Wow. It was impossible for me to restrain a smirk. “No problem.”

Five minutes later, we got out of the car and headed into the foyer. Right away, I noticed the mezuzah was gone. Like before, only the nail remained. A shiver went through me as I trotted up the stairs, Kian close behind me. He set a hand in the small of my back while I dug for my keys, but—

The door stood open, half an inch.

My blood chilled.

“Let me go in first.” Kian tried to push past me but I shook my head.

“We’ll go in together or not at all. Maybe she just got home.”

“My mom used to leave the door ajar if she was carrying groceries.” By his tone he knew that was unlikely.

Yet I couldn’t help but cling to hope. Silently I counted to three before nudging the door wide. The way the apartment was laid out, I had a clear view through the living room to the kitchen, where I saw my mother’s feet, motionless on the tile floor. Kian tried to hold me back, but I yanked free and ran to her, my breath a tight and silent shriek in my chest. Recycled fabric bags were spilled all around her, broken eggs and bottles of juice mingling with the blood—oh my God, so much blood—I crumpled. Kian caught me. When he carried me out of the apartment, I didn’t fight. Inside my skull, the screams echoed in endless loop.

He took her. The bag man came. He took her head.

I was only half aware of Kian banging on Mr. Lewis’s door and asking him to call 911. The old man complied at once, and Kian carried me out of the building, cradling me on his lap on the front steps. He rocked me, and I held on, but I couldn’t cry. Everything was tight and dry; my mind simmered with the madness of it. The bag man will have your brains for his soup, your skull for his bowl, and he’ll drink you dry. Mr. Lewis brought a blanket out for me, and Kian wrapped me in it. The fleece did nothing to banish the cold.

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Across the street, I saw the old man with the bag, and it bulged with a new and hideous weight. Beside him stood the two black-eyed children. The girl-thing’s pinafore was smeared with blood. I fought free and jumped up, racing toward them. They vanished before my eyes as the screech of car brakes yanked my attention to the street. Kian hauled me back to the stoop, shaking, while the driver shouted out his window at me.

“That was…” Kian tightened his arms on me.

I wasn’t listening. “Kian … did you see them?”

He glanced around my shoulder. “Who?”

“Never mind.” My head was a mess; I couldn’t think.

“What’s your dad’s number, Edie?”

I shrugged, dazed and shivering.

Kian was gentle in plucking the backpack from my shoulder. Silently, he rummaged in the front zip pocket until he found my phone. A few clicks, and he was talking to my dad. His voice was a low rumble but I couldn’t make out the words. Buzz, buzz, buzz, go away. I don’t believe this is real. I won’t. This isn’t my life.

“I’m ready to give you up.” There was some sadness in the admission, but if keeping Kian meant living this, then the nightmare had to end. “The dream is over now. I need to wake up.”

No more coma dream. Back to reality. Back to being an ugly girl with no friends, no boyfriend. But I’ll still have my mom.

“God, Edie,” he whispered.

I’m sorry, the wind whispered. I felt a sad, familiar presence all around me, raising the hair on my arms. Through dry eyes, I stared hard at the street I had lived on all my life. “Cameron?”

But there was only a stained newspaper tumbling down the sidewalk. And Kian was still here, holding me, with a face like an angel and a dark shadow in his eyes. In the distance, sirens screamed toward us.

When I said I wanted this to stop, I anticipated sitting up in a hospital bed, IV in my arm, both of my parents at my bedside. You tried to kill yourself. You failed. You’re in a coma. Wake up, now. Wake up.

“She’s in shock,” Mr. Lewis said.

“Could you make her some hot tea? Plenty of sugar.”

“Of course.” The old man moved off.

A few minutes later, or maybe hours, Kian put a warm mug in my hand. I drank the tea because it was there. I couldn’t wake up; there was no exit from this that didn’t end in policemen putting tape on my front door. Two officers showed up and then an ambulance, but it was oh-my-God too late. They carted away her body, covered in a sheet.

“We have to ask you some questions,” the older cop said gently.

I stared up at him. There was no tinnitus. Allison hadn’t registered on my faulty ears, either. The irrational desire possessed me to demand to inspect all of their belly buttons. Another death, and I can’t tell the truth. Or maybe I can. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. I opened my mouth, but Kian squeezed my hand. He warned me with his eyes not to open that can of crazy and upend it all over the nice humans. I understood now why he said it like that; it was what you called people who walked around with blinders on. I might’ve started life that way, but I didn’t feel part of the collective anymore.