Miss Polly had a Dolly (Emma Frost #2) (17 page)

Nina stared at
the sweaty
man as he looked at her thirsty with lust.

"So now you and me, alright? Come over
here."

Nina exhaled sharply. "She's…she's…she's
dead. You killed her." Her voice was quavering, her heart was beating fast
now and she felt sick to her stomach. She could hardly believe this was
happening. How could this be happening? Now? When she had finally found someone…someone
to love, when she was finally starting to believe that there was something nice
in this world again, that somewhere there was a place for her in all this evil,
all this malice that she was surrounded by.

And just like that it was gone? Just like that
she
was gone? How? Why? Why did this world
insist on putting her down in the dirt?

Nina felt how the anger arose inside of her,
causing her blood to boil. She could hardly hear what the man was saying
anymore. The blood rushing through her veins was drowning out anything else.

The man leaned over and felt Blanka's pulse.
Just the thought of him touching her fragile skin once again made Nina see red.
It was like her entire view was blurred by blood, the lust for seeing this man
bleed and suffer the same horror her beloved had.

He didn't find a pulse, then let Blanka's hand
fall flaccid back on the bed. Then he shrugged. He looked at Nina lustfully,
then licked his lips, letting the tongue caress the black hairs on his upper
lip.

"Too bad," he said. "She was
great fuck."

That was when Nina finally lost it. In one great
leap she jumped the man and sat on his shoulders. She screamed like a wild
animal before she bent down and bit into his ear. The man screamed and tried to
pull her down, but Nina burrowed her long nails that Nadja made sure all the
girls had and took care of, into his skin.. Blood was gushing out from the ear
and the pierced skin, running down his face and shoulders. The sweaty man was
groaning while turning and trying to throw Nina off, but she held on, while
scratching and biting him like a crazed wild animal. She bit so hard into the
ear that soon a big chunk of it came lose and she spat it out onto the floor.
The man screamed in anger and pain. He grabbed Nina by the leg and finally managed
to pull her off his back. He threw her through the air and she landed on her
back into a dresser. It hurt like hell, but Nina was so angry she didn't care.
No amount of physical pain could ever measure up to the emotional pain Nina was
going through right now. And that gave her the strength to do what she did
next.

The man was stunned but steaming with anger and
he walked toward her with his fists clenched. She tried to get up on her legs
but her hand slipped on the floor, reaching in under the dresser where it
touched a shoe. All the shoes they were provided in the brothel looked the same
so she didn't have to look at it to know it was high heel stiletto shoes. Just
as the man came close enough Nina pulled it out from under the dresser and hit
the heel into the man's right eye. As it struck his eye, she realized it had
gone so deep she couldn't move it. She let go and the man screamed and fell to
the ground, trying to pull the heel out of his heavily bleeding eye. Nina got
up on her legs and walked over to him and kicked him in the crouch. Then she
leaned over and grabbed the shoe again. Put her foot on his face and pulled the
heel out of the eye. The man hollered in pain and blood spurted out of the eye
that had been so badly damaged it no longer resembled an eye, just a blob of
bloody jelly.

Nina waited a few seconds until the man once
again looked at her with his remaining good eye. She waited because she wanted
to look into it when she did the next thing. She wanted to see his fear, to
watch the terror in his one eye when he realized what she was about to do. Then
she smashed the heel into the other eye and blinded him completely.

Sophia was
still in shock
when we entered my house later that
afternoon. And I guess so was I. Christoffer and Ida were quiet all the way
home and not once did I hear them discuss the auditions. Christoffer hadn't
gone through to the next round, but Ida had. Under normal circumstances it
would be something to celebrate.

I opened the door and let the kids and Sophia
in. My dad came out and hugged me. I had called him from the theater to let him
know what was going on and why we were going to be very late.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

That was when I finally broke down and cried.
After hours of keeping my cool I couldn't hold it in any longer. It had to come
out somehow. My dad held me tight and helped me into the kitchen so the kids
wouldn't see me cry. Sophia was soon surrounded by her children who all wanted
something from her. They dragged her into the living room while I was alone
with my dad.

"That bad, huh?" he asked. "I've
made coffee. Do you want some?"

I nodded while making sobbing sounds. "I
can't believe it, Dad. I mean she was just a little girl. No more than nine
years old. Who would do something so horrible like that?"

My dad shook his head heavily. "I don't
know, sweetie. I wish I had some answer to make you feel better, but I really
don't."

"For a moment I thought it was Ida. I was
so scared, Dad. I could hardly bear it." I sniffled and my dad handed me a
tissue.

"I think this calls for one of these,"
my dad said and placed a small chocolate turtle in front of me. They were my
favorites and always had been since I was a child.

I chuckled while sobbing still. "Thanks,
Dad. I think you're right."

I felt slightly better after eating it, not so
much because of the chocolate but because of my dad's concern for me. He'd
always had a way of comforting me when I was sad and he could still do it.
"I can't believe you remembered how much I loved these," I said while
chewing on the turtle. The cream inside of it melted on my tongue.

"How could I forget?" he said and
poured me a second cup of coffee.

It felt nice to sit in the kitchen with my dad
again and just sip coffee and not have to say anything.

After a few minutes Helle peeked in. "How
are you doing?" she said.

"Okay I guess. You heard what
happened?"

"Your dad told me and I heard some on the
radio, too."

"On the radio?" I asked. "I
thought you were here all afternoon?"

She shook her head. "No, I went to the shop
for a little while just to check in on Jack. He's been down there all day
painting. It's going really well."

"So you were downtown when this
happened?" I said thinking about the bowties. I wasn't sure where I was
going with this. It was absurd.

My dad looked at me like I was crazy. I felt
like I was, but couldn't escape the thought. She was the only one that I had
seen with access to bowties like the ones I had seen sewn into the victim's
chests. I shook my head and sipped my coffee. No, it was stupid. I was just
jealous because she was my dad's new girlfriend. That was all it was.

"Horrible thing about that girl who has
gone missing too, huh?" she said. "She was a Countess, I've
read."

"Was?" I asked. "As far as I know
she is not dead yet."

Helle shrugged. "No. It's just a long time
already since she went missing so I assumed that she might… Do you think it
might be the same killer? Do you think the bowtie killer took her as well, then
killed her but they just haven't found the body yet?"

I sighed and sipped more coffee while thinking
it through. It was the easiest explanation to all of this, but I didn't buy it.

I didn't sleep
much that
night. I kept tossing and turning, seeing
that poor girl in front of my eyes, crying for her and her poor family. Around
three in the morning I went downstairs to get a glass of milk. I peeked inside
first Maya's room to make sure she was alright, then inside Victor's. Maya was
sleeping heavily, whereas Victor seemed to be sleeping uneasy. He was tossing
and moaning in his bed and the sheets and blanket were all knotted up around
him. I walked closer and put my hand on top of his head carefully and started
patting him in the hope that it would make him calm down. His face was strained
and he was sweating. I wondered if he was coming down with a fever.

"Shh," I hushed as I stroked his hair
gently. It felt great to be able to touch him again. I missed so much holding
him in my arms. I quietly cried thinking about the young girl at the theater.
Her mother was never going to hold her again, never going to see her grow up,
never going to hear her sing again.

Victor was calmer now. His face still seemed
stressed like he was struggling in his sleep, but he had stopped tossing. I was
filled with an overwhelming gratefulness that he was still in my life.

"I love you so much, Victor," I
whispered.

I leaned over him and kissed his cheek with my
eyes closed. When I opened them again and leaned back Victor was suddenly
moving. He opened his eyes and looked directly at me. I pulled back with a
gasp.

"Sorry if I woke you, buddy," I said.

But Victor didn't react. His eyes were looking
at me, but he didn't seem to see me at all. "What's wrong? Did you have a
bad dream or something?"

Victor didn't answer. He sat up. It was starting
to get a little creepy. The way he moved, the way his eyes looked made him look
just like a doll. Like a human sized doll. It kind of reminded me of the dolls
I had seen in Helle's store. I stepped backwards. Victor turned his head like
an owl and stared directly at me. His eyes were glasslike and hardly looked
real. His upper body and arms were stiff as he moved them. He lifted his right
arm, which was  bent at a ninety degree angle, and put his pointer finger
to his lips, signaling for me to be quiet.

Moving almost like a robot—or a
doll—he took the arm down again, then leaned back into the bed. As soon
as his head hit the pillow his eyelids closed. He fell back to sleep with his
arms still pointing up in the air. My heart was racing heavily as I watched him
doze off and his body turn back to normal again. His arms soon relaxed and fell
to the bed, his head turned to the side on the pillow and as suddenly as it had
appeared, the stiffness in his body was completely gone.

I blinked several times and kept staring at him
for at least ten minutes more before I dared move. I couldn't believe what I
had seen. Could I have been dreaming? Hallucinating from lack of sleep? From
the stress and shock I had been through the last couple of days?

I listened to his steady breathing and as soon
as I was certain he was sleeping heavily again, I sneaked back out into the
hallway. I went down stairs taking deep breaths trying to calm myself down
again. I grabbed a glass and filled it with milk from the refrigerator. I drank
it but it didn't make me any calmer. I kept wondering about what I had seen.
What did it mean? Was he just dreaming? He had been right about the bowtie this
week and the spiders last year. What did the doll mean? Did it have something
to do with my dad's new girlfriend, Helle? If so, then what?

I rubbed my head and suddenly felt so confused
by everything. I kept thinking about that girl, Josephine Gyldenstjerne, who
had gone missing this week. Could Helle be right? Was she just another one of
the bowtie killer's victims? But what about the other children that had gone
missing earlier then?

I went to my laptop in the living room and
opened it. I found the old articles written about the first children to have
disappeared. The first one was a six-year-old girl named Nina Kristensen. She
had been playing on the playground when her mother had lost track of her. She'd
looked all over but couldn't find her daughter. All they found was the girl's
doll on the ground.

Doll?
I thought and looked up from the screen. It was still pitch dark outside. The
wind had picked up in the trees and I could hear the branches scrape against
the roof of my house.
Could that just be a
coincidence? Was that what Victor was trying to tell me? Was there a connection
between the dolls and the missing girls?

I searched the rest of the articles about the
other girls that had gone missing but there was nothing about dolls in them. So
that couldn't be it. There had to be something else. I found the first article
again and saw the picture of Nina Kristensen's doll. It was dirty and had one
eye broken.
Little Miss Jasmine
,
it said underneath. It didn't look like the dolls in Helle's store. They looked
more like real children which was what made them so creepy. They all had long
thick hair, this one didn't. Little Miss Jasmine was more like a baby doll. But
there was one thing about it that once again made me think about Helle.

There was a big bowtie on the bottom part of the
dress.