Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [76]
“I can’t believe that you can’t believe it,” I retort. I don’t know why I can’t stop being so combative. “Come on. People don’t get butchered in this city every day. And the very night after I free the most powerful murderous ghost in the western hemisphere, somebody shows up missing their arms and legs? It’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“But it is a coincidence,” she insists. Her delicate hands have formed balled-up fists.
“Don’t you remember what just happened?” I gesture wildly toward the house. “Tearing off body parts is, like, your MO.”
“What’s an ‘MO’?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Don’t you get what this means? Don’t you understand what I have to do if you keep on killing?”
When she doesn’t reply, my crazed tongue plows ahead.
“It means I get to have a serious Old Yeller moment,” I snap. The minute I say it, I know that I shouldn’t have. It was stupid and it was mean, and she caught the reference. Of course she would have. Old Yeller was made in like 1955. She probably saw it when it came out in theaters. The look she’s giving me is shocked and hurt; I don’t know if any look has made me feel worse. Still, I can’t quite muster an apology. The idea that she’s probably a murderer holds it in.
“I didn’t do it. How can you think so? I can’t stand what I’ve already done!”
Neither of us says anything else. We don’t even move. Anna is pissed off and trying very hard not to cry. As we look at each other, something inside me is trying to click, trying to fall into place. I feel it in my mind and in my chest, like a puzzle piece you know has to go somewhere so you keep trying to push it in from all different angles. And then, just like that, it fits. So perfect and complete that you can’t imagine how it was without it there, even seconds ago.
“I’m sorry,” I hear myself whisper. “It’s just that— I don’t know what’s happening.”
Anna’s eyes soften, and the stubborn tears begin to recede. The way she stands, the way she breathes, I know she wants to come closer. New knowledge fills up the air between us and neither of us wants to breathe it in. I can’t believe this. I’ve never been the type.
“You saved me, you know,” Anna says finally. “You set me free. But just because I’m free, doesn’t mean—that I can have the things that—” She stops. She wants to say more. I know she does. But just like I know that she does, I know that she won’t.
I can see her talk herself out of coming closer. Calmness settles over her like a blanket. It covers up the melancholy and silences any wishes for something different. A thousand arguments pile up in my throat, but I clench my teeth on them. We’re not children, neither of us. We don’t believe in fairy tales. And if we did, who would we be? Not Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty. I slice murder victims’ heads off and Anna stretches skin until it rips, she snaps bones like green branches into smaller and smaller pieces. We’d be the fricking dragon and the wicked fairy. I know that. But I still have to tell her.
“It isn’t fair.”
Anna’s mouth twists into a smile. It should be bitter—it should be a sneer—but it isn’t.
“You know what you are, don’t you?” she asks. “You’re my salvation. My way to atone. To pay for everything I’ve done.”
When I realize what she wants, it feels like someone kicked me in the chest. I’m not surprised that she’s reluctant to go out on dates and tiptoe through the tulips, but I never imagined, after all this, that she would want to be sent away.
“Anna,” I say. “Don’t ask me to do this.”
She doesn’t reply.
“What was all this for? Why did I fight? Why did we do the spell? If you were just going to—”
“Go get your knife back,” she replies, and then she fades away into the air right in front of me, back to the other world where I can’t follow.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Since Anna has been free, I haven’t been able to sleep. There are endless nightmares and shadowy figures looming over my bed. The smell of sweet, lingering smoke. The mewling of the damned cat at my bedroom door. Something has to be done. I’m not afraid of the dark; I’ve always slept