Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [25]
I’m sitting on a dusty old couch near the back, with a pillow that is mostly saturated with my dried blood. At least I hope it’s my dried blood. I hope I wasn’t sleeping on some hepatitis-riddled rag.
I look at Thomas. He seems mad. He hates the Trojan Army; no doubt they’ve been picking on him since kindergarten. A skinny awkward kid like him, someone who claims to be psychic and hangs out in dusty curio shops, was probably their favorite target for swirlies and atomic wedgies. But they’re harmless pranksters. I don’t think they were really trying to kill me. They just didn’t take her seriously. They didn’t believe the stories. And now one of them is dead.
“Shit,” I say out loud. There’s no telling what’s going to happen to Anna now. Mike Andover wasn’t one of her usual transients or runaways. He was one of the school jocks, one of the party boys, and Chase saw everything. I can only hope that he was too scared to go to the cops.
Not that cops can stop Anna anyway. If they went into that house, there would only be more dead. Maybe she wouldn’t show herself to them at all. And besides, Anna is mine. The image of her conjures itself in my mind for a second, looming and pale and dripping red. But my injured brain can’t hold her.
I look over at Thomas, still nervously smoking.
“Thanks for pulling me out,” I say, and he nods.
“I didn’t want to,” he says. “I mean, I did want to, but seeing Mike laying in a sloppy pile didn’t exactly make me excited about it.” He sucks on his cigarette. “Jesus. I can’t believe he’s dead. I can’t believe she killed him.”
“Why not? You believed in her.”
“I know, but I’d never actually seen her. Nobody sees Anna. Because if you see Anna—”
“You don’t live to tell anyone about it,” I finish dismally.
I look up at the sound of footsteps on the brittle floorboards. Some old guy has come in, the kind of old guy with a twisting gray beard that ends in a braid. He’s wearing a very well-worn Grateful Dead t-shirt and a leather vest. There are strange tattoos up and down his forearms—nothing that I recognize.
“You’re a damn lucky kid. I have to say that I expected more from a professional ghost killer.”
I catch the bag of ice he tosses to me for my head. He’s smiling through a face like leather and peering through wire specs.
“You’re the one who tipped off Daisy.” I know it instantly. “I thought it was little old Thomas, here.”
A smile is my only reply. But it’s enough.
Thomas clears his throat. “This is my grandfather, Morfran Starling Sabin.”
I have to laugh. “Why do you goth types always give yourselves weird names?”
“Strong words coming from somebody walking around calling himself Theseus Cassio.”
He’s a salty old dude, and immediately likable, with a voice that belongs in a black-and-white spaghetti western. I’m not put off by the fact that he knows who I am. In fact, I’m almost relieved by it. I’m happy to come across another member of this peculiar underground, where people know my job, know my reputation, know my father’s reputation. I don’t live my life like a superhero. I need people to point me in the right direction. I need people who know who I really am. Just not too many. I don’t know why Thomas didn’t say as much when he found me by the cemetery. He had to be so damned cryptic.
“How’s your head?” Thomas asks.
“Can’t you tell, psychic boy?”
He shrugs. “I told you; I’m not that psychic. My grandpa told me you were coming and that I should look out for you. I can read minds sometimes. Not yours today. Maybe it’s the concussion. Maybe I just don’t need to anymore. It comes and goes.”
“Good. That mind-reader shit gives me the willies.” I look over at Morfran. “So, why did you send for me? And why didn’t you have Daisy set up a meeting for when I got here, rather than sending Mentok the Mind Taker?” I jerk my head toward Thomas and immediately curse myself for