Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [39]
“Cas,” I hear Carmel say, and from the tone of her voice she’s been talking for a while. I put on my very best charming smile.
“Hm?”
“I said, do you want to do the octopus, or the hermit crab?”
“Octopus,” I say. “They’re good with a little olive oil and lemon. Lightly fried.”
Carmel makes a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“No, it isn’t. I used to eat it with my dad all the time in Greece.”
“You’ve been to Greece?”
“Yeah,” I say, talking absently while I flip through pages of invertebrates. “We lived there for a few months when I was about four. I don’t remember very much.”
“Does your dad travel a lot? For work or something?”
“Yeah. Or at least he did.”
“He doesn’t anymore?”
“My dad’s dead,” I say. I hate telling people this. I never know exactly how my voice is going to sound saying it, and I hate the stricken looks they get on their faces when they don’t know what to say back. I don’t look at Carmel. I just keep reading about different genuses. She says she’s sorry, and asks how it happened. I tell her he was murdered, and she gasps.
These are the right responses. I should be touched by her attempt to be sympathetic. It isn’t her fault that I’m not. It’s just that I’ve seen these faces and heard these gasps for too long. There’s nothing about my father’s murder that doesn’t make me angry anymore.
It strikes me suddenly that Anna is my last training job. She’s incredibly strong. She’s the most difficult thing I can imagine facing. If I beat her, I’ll be ready. I’ll be ready to avenge my father.
The idea makes me pause. The idea of going back to Baton Rouge, back to that house, has always been mostly abstract. Just an idea, a long-range plan. I suppose that for all of my voodoo research, part of me has been procrastinating. I haven’t been particularly effective, after all. I still don’t know who it was that killed my dad. I don’t know if I would be able to raise them, and I’d be all on my own. Bringing Mom is out of the question. Not after years of hiding books and discreetly clicking out of websites when she walked into the room. She’d ground me for life if she even knew I was thinking of it.
A tap on my shoulder brings me out of my daze. Thomas sets a newspaper down in front of me—a brittle, yellowed old thing that I’m surprised they let out of the glass.
“This is what I could find,” he says, and there she is, on the front page, beneath the headline that reads “Girl Found Slain.”
Carmel stands up to get a better view. “Is that—?”
“It’s her,” Thomas blurts excitedly. “There aren’t that many other articles. The police were dumbfounded. They hardly even questioned anybody.” He’s got a different newspaper in his hands; he’s riffling through it. “The last one is just her obituary: Anna Korlov, beloved daughter of Malvina, was laid to rest Thursday in Kivikoski Cemetery.”
“I thought you were researching a paper, Thomas,” Carmel comments, and Thomas starts to sputter and explain. I don’t care a lick about what they’re saying. I’m staring at her picture, a picture of a living girl, with pale skin and long, dark hair. She’s not quite daring to smile, but her eyes are bright, and curious, and excited.
“It’s a shame,” Carmel sighs. “She was so pretty.” She reaches down to touch Anna’s face, and I brush her fingers away. Something’s happening to me, and I don’t know what it is. This girl I’m looking at is a monster, a murderer. This girl for some reason spared my life. I carefully trace along her hair, which is held up with a ribbon. There’s a warm feeling in my chest but my head is ice-cold. I think I might pass out.
“Hey, man,” Thomas says, and shakes my shoulder a little. “What’s wrong?”
“Uh,” I sort of gurgle, not knowing what to say to him, or myself. I look away to buy time, and see something