Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [2]
“It’s not so bad, being dead,” the hitchhiker says to me, clawing at my arm, trying to get me off the wheel.
“What about the smell?” I hiss. Through all of this I haven’t lost my grip on my knife handle. Don’t ask me how; my wrist feels like the bones are going to separate in about ten seconds, and I’ve been pulled off my seat so that I’m hovering over the stick shift. I throw the car into neutral with my hip (should have done that earlier) and pull my blade out fast.
What happens next is kind of a surprise: the skin comes back onto the hitchhiker’s face, and the green comes back into his eyes. He’s just a kid, staring at my knife. I get the car back under control and hit the brakes.
The jolt from the stop makes him blink. He looks at me.
“I worked all summer for this money,” he says softly. “My girl will kill me if I lose it.”
My heart is pounding from the effort of controlling the lurching car. I don’t want to say anything. I just want to get it over with. But instead I hear my voice.
“Your girl will forgive you. I promise.” The knife, my father’s athame, is light in my hand.
“I don’t want to do this again,” the hitchhiker whispers.
“This is the last time,” I say, and then I strike, drawing the blade across his throat, opening a yawning black line. The hitchhiker’s fingers come up to his neck. They try to press the skin back together, but something as dark and thick as oil floods out of the wound and covers him, bleeding not only down over his vintage-era jacket but also up over his face and eyes, into his hair. The hitchhiker doesn’t scream as he shrivels, but maybe he can’t: his throat was cut and the black fluid has worked its way into his mouth. In less than a minute he’s gone, leaving not a trace behind.
I pass my hand over the seat. It’s dry. Then I get out of the car and do a walk-around as best I can in the dark, looking for scratches. The tire tread is still smoking and melted. I can hear Mr. Dean’s teeth grinding. I’m leaving town in three days, and now I’ll be spending at least one of them putting on a new set of Goodyears. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t take the car back until the new tires are on.
CHAPTER TWO
It’s after midnight when I park the Rally Sport in our driveway. Mr. Dean’s probably still up, wiry and full of black coffee as he is, watching me cruise carefully down the street. But he doesn’t expect the car back until morning. If I get up early enough, I can take it down to the shop and replace the tires before he knows any different.
As the headlights cut through the yard and splash onto the face of the house, I see two green dots: the eyes of my mom’s cat. When I get to the front door, it’s gone from the window. It’ll tell her that I’m home. Tybalt is the cat’s name. It’s an unruly thing, and it doesn’t much care for me. I don’t care much for it either. It has a weird habit of pulling all the hair off its tail, leaving little tufts of black all over the house. But my mom likes to have a cat around. Like most children, they can see and hear things that are already dead. A handy trick, when you live with us.
I go inside, take my shoes off, and climb the stairs by two. I’m dying for a shower—want to get that mossy, rotten feeling off my wrist and shoulder. And I want to check my dad’s athame and rinse off whatever black stuff might be on the edge.
At the top of the stairs, I stumble against a box and say, “Shit!” a little too loudly. I should know better. My life is lived in a maze of packed boxes. My mom and I are professional packers; we don’t mess around with castoff cardboard from the grocery or liquor stores. We have high-grade, industrial-strength, reinforced boxes with permanent labels. Even in the dark I can see that I just tripped over the Kitchen Utensils (2).
I tiptoe into the bathroom and pull