“Robin.”
She opened her eyes for him then, lost, glazed eyes, and she began to shiver violently.
“See what I see?” she said, words around clacking teeth, a voice like Robin’s broken and put back together the wrong way, full of pain and wonder. She was looking past him, back toward the house. “In the trees,” she said, “like grinning foxes.”
And the goose bumps on the back of his neck, prickling his arms, skin that felt watched, kept him from turning around to look for himself.
“I have to go get help, Robin,” he said, then pulled off his coat and covered her with it. “I have to go get help right now.”
“Yeah,” she said, detached and blurred. “Yeah, Byron. Don’t leave me, okay.”
I have to leave you, he started to say. I can’t find help unless I leave you, but there were branches snapping behind him, and so he stood instead and walked away from her as quickly as he could.
8.
Halfway across town, the city crippled, already shutting down before the storm, Walter stood alone in the empty parking lot opposite Dr. Jekyll’s. The snow swirled down through the arc lights and stuck to his hair, melted against his face.
He’d walked part of the way from the diner, freezing and his clothes soaked through from the glass of water Byron had thrown at him, had finally hitched a ride with a woman inching cautiously along in her Jeep. She’d been wearing freedom rings and had talked too much, nervous chatter about the weather, what they were saying on the radio: blizzard conditions expected, the worst winter storm to hit the southeast in more than a century. She’d let him out in the short tunnel just before Morris, where Eighteenth Street ducked beneath the railroad, had asked him twice if he was sure he had a place to go. The warmth from the Jeep had clung to him for only a second or two before the wind rushing through the tunnel had ripped it away.
And the parking lot was as deserted as the streets.
Nothing he could do, no way to even know what had happened.
He shivered and stared across the tracks, the uneven lights, black pockets here and there where the lines were down. Looked for the exact place where Spyder’s house would be, but the mountain was just a black smudge against the sky. No way to tell, exactly, so he turned, fingers crossed that the Fidgety Bean would still be open, that he wouldn’t have to try to walk all the way home through the storm and the night. And then movement or the fleeting impression of form, quickest glimpse from the corner of one eye, something stretched too long across the snow and too tall across brick. He tried to turn fast enough to catch it there, finally, more sick of the dread than afraid, better to be damned and sure than to spend another night jumping at shadows.
But there was nothing to see but the storm, the wind making a silvery dust devil with the snow, and he pulled his damp clothes tighter around bony shoulders and walked away fast toward the coffee shop.
CHAPTER NINE
1.
T hey went to Keith’s, because Daria was afraid the cops would spot the van if they stayed anywhere on Morris. A single room a few blocks away, three flights up the carcass of an old office building. His uncle owned the place and was letting Keith live there rent-free, dodging zoning ordinances by pretending he only worked there nights as security. When Keith switched the lights on, they buzzed like drunken wasps, halfhearted fluorescence that made them all look like hung-over zombies.
“Oh Keith,” Theo crooned, sarcasm thick as old honey. “I do love what you’ve done with the place!”
They all followed him inside, Niki and Spyder last, stepped into the room, stark and ugly and soulless, almost as cold as the night outside. Nappy gray-green carpet, water-stained ceiling and walls, big holes punched through the Sheetrock in a dozen places, exposing pink insulation and two-by-fours. Unfurnished, except for a scary-looking mattress in one corner and two metal folding chairs, three bulgy cardboard boxes stuffed with dirty clothes.
“What do you call this, anyway?” Theo asked. “Late Bosnian refugee?”
“Theo, why don’t you just shut the hell up?” and Daria turned around and punched her once, hard, in the shoulder.
Theo flinched and dropped her purse, the flamingo-pink plastic Barbie lunch box, bump to the floor; it popped open and everything inside spilled out onto the sallow carpet.
“Christ, Dar! Fuck you!” and she looked to Mort for defense.
“Just lay off for a little while,” he said, frown deepening, exhaustion and weary annoyance in his eyes and voice. “You know it’s not gonna kill you.”
“Christ,” Theo hissed, “You’re all a bunch of crazy fucking assholes,” rubbing her arm, as she kneeled and began scooping everything back into her purse.
Daria and Niki helped Spyder to one of the chairs. She was limping, still bleeding some from a deep gash above her left eye; dried and congealed blood caked her dreads, crusted and sticky red-brown masking the left side of her face.
“It looks a lot worse than it is, probably,” Keith said again, seventh or eighth time since the parking lot. And for the seventh or eighth time, Spyder nodded, sluggish agreement.
“Can we at least turn the heat up a little?” Niki asked. Spyder had started to shiver, and Niki wondered if she could be going into shock, wondered if she could have lost that much blood, if maybe she was also bleeding somewhere inside.
“Would gladly,” Keith said, dull and jovial grin, “if there was any.” But he pulled a lemon-yellow sleeping bag off the scary mattress and handed it to Niki; there was a dark smear down one side that she hoped was only motor oil.
“Thanks, man,” Spyder mumbled around her swelling lips.
“Don’t mention it,” and he shrugged once, walked back to the mattress and sat down.
Niki unzipped the sleeping bag, wrapped it around Spyder’s black leather shoulders.
“Thanks,” Spyder mumbled.
“We should have taken her to a hospital,” Niki said, and Keith shrugged again.
“Hey, man, it was her call,” and he pulled a pint of Thunderbird from beneath one corner of the mattress, unscrewed the cap and drank deeply from the green bottle.
And there was nothing else left for Niki to say. In the van, Mort had asked Spyder if she wanted a doctor, if they should just drive straight to the UAB emergency room, and Spyder had flatly refused, had insisted she was fine. So Theo had driven them here, instead, had parked the van in the narrow alley around back, had hidden it poorly behind a big blue Dumpster.
Keith offered the bottle to Mort, and he accepted.
“Man, you’re as happy about that whole stupid mess as a pig in piss-warm mud,” Mort said, tilted the bottle of wine at the ceiling and traded a little air for its sweet buzz.
“Did you see the look on that dumb fucker’s face?” and Keith stopped unlacing his boots, twisted his own face into a grotesque and exaggerated mask of anger and surprise, chuckled. “You really laid some heavy juju on that asshole, Spydie. Put the bite on him,” and he took the bottle back from Mort, half-empty now, half-full. Spyder smiled weakly, wan and guarded pride beneath the clotting scars of battle.
“And you got your ass-kicking fix for a few days, didn’t you?” Daria said, vacant reproach, from the room’s only window where she stood alone, watching the snow falling outside.
“Just doin’ my part to keep the blindfolded lady with the scales honest, babe.”
Niki sighed loudly, loud to derail the conversation, loud enough to get everyone’s attention.
“Is there at least someplace I can get some water to clean the blood off her face?” And she could hear the tightness wound around her words, hoped that she sounded as fed up as she felt.