Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [77]
And Niki shivered as something warm and sharp passed through her, there and gone again almost before she even had time to recognize it, something she hadn’t felt since the last time she’d seen Danny Boudreaux in the French Quarter, five months and a thousand years before. And they stood there, her and the white-haired girl, in the space between the beams of the van’s headlights, watching the snow fall, until Theo finally honked the horn.
CHAPTER EIGHT
String Theory
1.
Byron was driving like an idiot, ignoring red lights and stop signs. From the backseat, Walter was cursing him, cursing himself for not having forced Byron to let him out of the car, for not having done something to help Spyder.
“She’s dead,” he said, finality and icing despair. “Yeah, god, you know she’s dead. You killed her, Byron. You fucking killed Spyder.”
The porcelain boy he’d been making out with sat very quiet, wide scared eyes, waiting to see exactly what he’d gotten himself into and how he was going to get himself back out again. Robin kept her eyes off the road, watched the beautiful, frightened boy reflected in her outside mirror, his black Betty Page wig and magenta lips. And the snow, falling down on them like manna.
“Just shut up,” Byron said. “Just shut the hell up.”
He raced through another red light, and Robin heard tires squeal, desperate hot scream, horns blaring like pissed-off harpies, and then they were speeding south along a street she felt sure she’d seen a thousand times but couldn’t begin to recognize.
“She’s not dead,” Byron said.
“How the hell do you know that, Byron? Fuck. How the hell do you know?” and he punched the driver’s-seat headrest.
“You didn’t see it?”
“Man, I didn’t see shit, except for you running over Spyder with her own goddamn car.”
“Well, you just ask Robin, then. Robin saw. She knows.”
But she said nothing, watched the snow and the buildings slipping past as downtown turned into Southside, and everything outside was powdered soft and sugar-white. What she had seen, what she thought she had seen, and all the things she had or had not seen since that night in the basement, crept behind her eyes, interceding, keeping themselves between the world and her mind. The things that left shadows but never showed themselves, that passed between her and lights, lamps and headlights and candles. The watchers, the skitterers, that had come up, been sent up, after them.
“Tell him,” Byron said, begging her now, pleading for her soothing concurrence, her damning corroboration. “For god’s sake, Robin, tell him you saw it, too.”
“Why?” she whispered, a softer sound even than the snow. “He knows what you’re talking about.”
“No!” and Walter punched the back of Byron’s seat again. “I do not know what the fuck either of you are talking about!”
“You were down there the longest,” she said. “Spyder had to go down after you.”
“Fuck you, fuck you both,” he said, and this time Walter struck the little backseat window, hard enough that Robin was surprised it hadn’t broken. “You killed her, man. You’re both crazy, and you killed her, Byron.” But all the fury was draining away, something in his soul lanced, and his voice was suddenly as brittle as brown October leaves.
“I want out,” the porcelain boy said. “Just stop the car here, and I’ll get out.”
Byron glanced uncertainly at the rearview mirror, as if he’d forgotten all about the boy, as if he’d never known he was back there.
“I’m not gonna tell anyone anything, I promise. Just let me out, and I swear I won’t say a thing to anyone.”
“You didn’t see it, either?” Byron asked him.
“Please,” the boy said, “Please let me out,” and Robin could almost feel his fear and confusion like needles or a wire brush against her skin, knew that he’d be crying soon.
“Stop the goddamn car and let him the hell out, Byron,” she said.
Byron pulled over at the next light, green for go, but there was no one behind them; Robin opened her door and stepped out