Dead Set (18 page)

“I'm sorry, honey. You all right?”

Zoe nodded. She knew it was silly since he was already dead, but it bothered her to see her father smoking. Still, there was something comforting and normal about it all. Having a cigarette at the end of a long, hard day. It's what regular people did back in the world. The real world. It seemed so far away now. Like Iphigene was the new normal and the other was a dream. Would she ever see the other world again? She felt a sudden, unexpected twinge of homesickness. “I'm okay,” she said. “You know, I thought you were dead back there at the café. Like dead dead. You know what I mean.”

He smiled up at her, a weak, exhausted smile. “It's not as bad as it looks. I just need to rest for a couple of days and I'll be fine.”

“Then she can do it to you all over again.” Zoe hugged her coat tightly around herself.

Her father didn't say anything for a few minutes. “If you know a way out of here, you need to go. The whole city is looking for you. How the hell did you get here?”

“I ran. I really wasn't thinking about it. It was raining hard. I don't think anyone noticed me,” she said, looking back toward the boardwalk again. “I guess someone must have seen me before and told the cops, right? But I was so happy to have found a way out. I should have been more careful.”

“You know, if Hecate arrested your friend, he isn't coming back,” her father said.

Her injured leg made it too hard to stand anymore. She slid down the pole and sat facing her father. “So, I just run off back to Sweet Valley High? I leave him in a dungeon and you to get sucked dry.”

Her father leaned forward and touched the dirty toe of her sneaker. “If Hecate finds you, she'll kill you.”

Zoe felt herself laugh, but nothing felt funny. “She'll do worse than that, from what I hear.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Her father finished the cigarette and tossed it away. The glowing tip arced high, making burning red loop-the-loops through the rain out into the sand. “You can't just sit here, honey. You have to go.”

“Don't worry. I am,” she said. “But the beach is the way out. I have to wait for low tide.”

“Oh.” Something in his voice surprised her. After he'd told her to go home God only knew how many times, there was a hint of regret in his voice. It made Zoe happy, in a quiet, sad way. She said, “Is it okay if I sit here with you while I wait?”

“That would be nice.”

As she went over to him, he put one arm out and she laid her back against it, leaning against him as he wrapped the arm around her. She held on to his jacket as she had to Valentine's.

As she sat there quietly in the dark with her father for what would be the last time, the ice inside Zoe began to crack. She'd felt nothing for so long. The numbness was comforting, even though it brought the guilt of not really feeling how she knew she should, how she would feel normally. About her mother, about her brother's arrest, and this last meeting with her father, doomed to be food for Hecate's children. And then what? He would just wander away with the dying dead forever?

If leaving was what everyone wanted, why did it feel so bad? The truth was that a part of Zoe wanted to leave Iphigene right then. To run away and forget about it, about everything she'd seen and heard. Even father and Valentine. How could she live with herself knowing she couldn't save them and that she was partly responsible for the horror that was their lives?

The cracking ice inside her was being replaced with a spongy fear, as if a monster were trying to swim up out of her guts and swallow her whole. She bit her lower lip and breathed hard, trying to drive the monster back into the void. If she allowed the monster to touch her, she knew that she would begin to cry and that she'd never stop. What good was crying now? It was a child's trick that kept her from having to deal with the hard things. She wouldn't hide from the hard things anymore. Never again.
I owe it to Dad to be here with him now
.
And to Valentine. My shit, I can deal with later
. She hugged her father harder while feeling furious with herself for being so weak and confused.

No crying. Nothing. Just be here.

They sat on the broken carousel without talking, just looking out at the moonlit sand.

Z
oe drifted, halfway between sleep and daydreaming. She was on the mountain overlooking the almond grove and the tree fort behind the house in Danville. Black dogs prowled among the trees, sniffing the air. She wasn't surprised or even particularly scared to see them. They were a part of her world, both in life and now in her dreams. Every now and then one of them would look up to where she was sitting on the mountain.
They know I'm here. They're waiting for me to come down. They're not in any rush. They can wait forever.
Could she? Half buried in snow, a rusty telescope lay at her feet. Emmett's telescope. The one he used to watch Valentine and me. She picked it up and looked for their tree fort. It took her a while because she didn't recognize it at first. The fort was falling apart. Half of it lay on the ground in a heap. What was left looked like scrap lumber that a hurricane had blown into the tree a hundred years ago. The wood was black, pulpy, and rotten, the nails rusted and barely holding what was left of the fort together. Unlike the dogs, that sight scared her. It was all being taken away, the good things in her life and now her dreams, too. And when even her dreams were gone, would there be anything left of her? Finally, the dogs started up the mountainside. They aren't going to wait, after all, she thought. Zoe set down the telescope and clutched her knees to her chest. She watched the dogs come all the way up the hill.

T
here was a sound. Then something moved, brushing against her leg. Beside her on the carousel, her father sat up. He turned his head, looking as confused as she felt. “No, it can't be,” he said.

Zoe looked at him, waiting for her head to clear. She'd drifted farther away than she'd meant to and the world was fuzzy around the edges. Her father stood slowly, pulling himself up on a bright yellow sea horse. “Not now,” he said quietly.

She finally heard it. The rain had stopped and the sound was replaced by the soothing white noise of the ocean. Then slowly, as the world came into focus, there was something else, the animal-like wail of a siren that Zoe knew was calling her father to another feeding.

“But you just did it,” she said. “You said you're supposed to rest now. They can't call you right back. Can they?”

Her father looked down at her. “It's never happened before.” He leaned his head on his arms, propped on the sea horse's back. “I know what this is. It's Hecate. She wants to trap you and she thinks if she calls me back you'll follow. You have to leave now. Right now. To hell with the tide. I have to go to the café.” He let go of the sea horse and collapsed onto the carousel platform.

Zoe scrambled over to him and pulled him upright. “Look at you. You can't even stand up,” she said. “I'm supposed to watch you walk off and get bled to death?”

“Neither of us has a choice.”

She stood and pushed her father back against the carousel pole. She smiled at him. “Listen to me. Don't go.”

“I have to. I can't help myself.”

“Try. I know what to do. It's so simple,” she said. She stopped at the edge of the platform. “Stay here. Don't follow the siren. Fight it. Everything is going to be all right.”

She jumped down onto the sand. Her father said something as she went, but she couldn't hear him over the wailing of the siren. Zoe felt good, energized, better than she'd felt since the funeral. For the first time she saw things with total clarity and knew exactly what she had to do. It was so simple. She was a little scared as she fell into step with the souls marching to the café, but she was excited, too. It felt good to be doing something real after having lived so long in a stagnant gray gloom. She wondered if it hurt when you were covered with the snakes. A few had bitten her the last time. The bites stung a little, but it wasn't that bad. She remembered that Mr. Danvers had said there were bats and snakes with anesthetic in their saliva, so their prey wouldn't feel their bite. Maybe these snakes were like that. She took a deep breath and let it out, knowing that she'd have the answer soon enough.

This is was what I should have done the moment I got to Iphigene
. It's what the city wanted—blood and sacrifice—and it would have it. Not a pale ghost version, but the blood of a living person.
That should make Hecate happy enough to leave Dad alone.

She fell into step with the other dazed spirits, jostling and being jostled as she pushed her way to the middle of the throng. She was nervous, but she knew that was all right; normal, even. Zoe let go of everything she'd been clinging to and let herself be swept along by the tide of dead souls.

In front of her was an older man who was nearly bald. A few bristly sugar-white hairs on the back of his head were pressed flat by a plastic bag pulled tight onto his scalp. Reading upside down, Zoe made out the words
WHITE RABBIT
and saw a picture of an overly cute bunny. She remembered White Rabbit candies. They sometimes came with the check when her family would go out for dinner in Chinatown. The old man in front of her was using the bag as a makeshift rain hat. Next to him was a girl just a few years older than Zoe. Her head was shaved and she had large Chinese-style dragons tattooed on her scalp above each ear. The dragon on the left was red and the one on the right was blue. Zoe wondered what that meant. She wished she'd met the girl somewhere else so she could ask. She looked like someone who would have been in the club the night her mother and father met.

The steady sound of the siren soon melted into the background and everything seemed to go very quiet. Zoe's gaze flickered back and forth between the twin dragons and the cartoon rabbit as she splashed through the silent streets.

Time was moving in funny ways. A block could shoot by in a second, but passing a single building could take hours. It was the fear, she knew, playing with her head. Zoe closed her eyes and let the crowd guide her with the motion of their bodies. She felt like an overwound guitar string, vibrating at some unnaturally bright and delirious frequency, knowing she could snap at any moment. She hoped they reached the café soon.

A moment later, the siren stopped, for real this time, leaving the street in unsettling quiet. Zoe opened her eyes. There in front of her was the café. Scared though she was, she smiled to herself, suddenly remembering something her mother had once told her: “Be careful what you wish for.” Without a word, the crowd began filing through the open door. Zoe followed them in.

Inside, she went to an empty table near the front window. It felt important that she be able to see outside and not be suffocated by the Half Moon Café's drab walls. The gray street through the window might be dead, but at least it looked a little bit like the world and home.

Zoe took off her coat slowly. She had to. Her hands felt thick and clumsy, like she was wearing mittens. She took a deep breath, her face filling with heat. She ignored the sensation, refusing to think about it. She didn't allow any thoughts to form in her mind at all. What she needed to do was to keep her body moving and not think about anything.

She stood and folded her overcoat, but as she dropped it over the back of her chair, the straight razor clattered to the floor. She grabbed it up and stuffed it into the pocket of her hoodie, hoping that no one had seen it, but it gave her an idea. She checked her pants pockets, and when what she was looking for wasn't there, she checked the pockets of her coat. Nothing. Valentine's compass was gone. Somewhere, through all the running and hiding, she'd lost it. It was too bad. It was something of his and something from home. And so she wrapped her fingers around the razor. She needed something to hold on to when it, and
it
was the only word her mind would permit her at that point, was happening. She unzipped her hoodie and pushed it back, exposing her shoulders and neck. She pushed up her sleeves and rested her hands on the table, waiting.

Nothing moved outside the window. Everyone was inside. The café was about half full. Zoe turned around in her seat. No one was talking to anyone. Most people were staring off into space, either still under the hypnotic effects of the siren or just wanting not to make eye contact with anyone. Zoe looked around for the man with the White Rabbit bag on his head, but she couldn't find him. She spotted the girl with the tattoos near the back of the place, under a dusty cuckoo clock. Zoe smiled at her, but the girl turned away.

Without her wanting it, an image of her mother popped into her head. She wondered where her mother was right now. In a funny way, as far as Zoe was from home, she felt close to her. She'd made her own sacrifice, given up so much, and now here was Zoe about to do the same and she wanted to talk to her mother about it, maybe thank her and maybe get some reassurance that she was doing the right thing.
I don't even know what's going to happen next. Wish I'd had the chance to say something to her in case I'm not going home.

“Look at the brave little princess all alone. Where's Daddy? Did he abandon you again? First in the world above and now here. He's not a very good daddy, is he?” Zoe knew who was speaking without turning around, though his voice was different now. It was more of a whisper, and he had a slight lisp that turned each
s
into a hiss.

Zoe looked up into Emmett's cold snake eyes. He was a horrible sight—a glistening cobra's head perched atop a man's body. His tongue shot out every few seconds to taste the air. Ugly as he was, seeing him now, she wasn't frightened as she had been the first time she saw him. The awful thing she'd been dreading was happening and was no longer a crippling imaginary terror. As scared as she was, she could hide it. Don't give him the satisfaction, she thought.