One-Eyed Jack (19 page)

For the first time he
hesitated.

“
She asked if I knew any
other kids who could feed her,” he admitted. “When I wouldn’t let
her eat any more of me.”

“
So you brought her your
own kid sister.” I didn’t try to sound contemptuous, but I didn’t
need to.

“
Nobody cares about
Katie!” Jack retorted furiously. “Even Katie says that. She said
she didn’t care what happens to her, but then when she saw Jenny
she changed her mind.”

I glanced at Skees, who had eased back
onto the lawn, out from between the two of us. I couldn’t read
anything on his face, but I knew he’d heard what Jack said. He
could guess what a great family life these kids had, that they’d
say things like that.

“
Of
course she did,” I said. “She’s not crazy. She never meant what she
said about not caring what happens to her; that’s just something
people say when they’re upset. No matter how miserable she is, I’m
sure she wants to grow up and make a life for herself; why should
she give up her whole
life
just so you can make your cannibal friend
happy?”

“
She’s not...” he began.
Then he stopped, because if Jenny really was human, then she really
was a cannibal. He couldn’t very well deny that after she ate his
finger.

“
Jack, Jenny’s a monster,”
I said, trying to be gentle. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be. Maybe
she doesn’t know she is. But just stop and think about it – she
eats human flesh. She wants to kill a child. That makes her a
monster. You shouldn’t be helping her. If it’s a choice between
killing someone who’s got her entire life ahead of her, or letting
a monster go hungry, I’m sure you know which is the right thing to
do. Just stop, okay? Stay away from her. Don’t help
her.”

“
But
I
love
her!”

I shook my head. “She’s fooled you,
Jack. Really, truly, she’s tricked you. It’s not real. It’s not
love.”

He glared at me. “What
do
you
know about
it?”

“
I’m the only adult who
can see her, remember? I know about these things. I’ve been
watching them for the past eight years. She’s not what she says she
is; they never are. They’re monsters. They’re not people, they just
pretend to be.”

“
You’re wrong! She’s
different!”

I didn’t bother to answer that; I just
looked at him.

“
I’ll find a way,” he
said. “I know there’s a way for her to be well again.”

“
She never was,
Jack.”

“
Then
I’ll find a way to
make
her well!”

Before I could answer he turned and
threw the door open, then stamped inside and slammed it behind
him.

For a moment Skees and I just stood
there, looking at the closed door. Then Skees said, “I don’t think
you convinced him.”

“
You noticed that,
Detective?”

“
But on the other hand,
Katie’s alive and well. That thing didn’t eat her.”

“
Yeah.
I
noticed
that
.”

“
Why is that?”

I shrugged. “Jack and Jenny both say
she can’t eat pieces of anyone without their permission. Katie
won’t give permission. End of story.”

“
So she’s really pretty
harmless?”

“
Unless she finds someone
suicidal, yeah, I guess she is.”

“
You think she’ll ever
convince Jack to pick suicide?”

I sighed as I stared at the door. “I
don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

Chapter Thirteen

There wasn’t much to say after that.
Skees hung around while I walked down the block to the big tulip
poplar looking for Jenny, but I didn’t find her, and after about
fifteen minutes I gave up.

As I was walking back to my car he
asked me, “What was that you said about a real Jenny?”

“
Oh,” I said. “The ghoul
says her name is Jenny Derdiarian, and that she murdered her three
kids, Ashley, Sarah, and Jason. Except I found a Jenny Derdiarian
who used to live in this neighborhood, with three kids named
Ashley, Sarah, and Jason, and the four of them are all alive and
well. I talked to her, and she said she had a bad stretch when the
kids were little when she used to fantasize about killing them and
starting a new life, but she never did it. I figure this ghost, or
whatever it is, somehow stole her fantasy and pretended it was
real.”

Skees cocked his head.
“How could it do that?” he asked. “
Why
would it do that?”

“
I have
no idea,” I said. “I can
see
these things, but I don’t
understand
them. I don’t know how
they work, what they can and can’t do.”

“
That’s not what you told
Jack.”

I shrugged. “So? I wasn’t under oath;
I was trying to talk a kid out of being stupid. It’s all in how you
look at it.”

“
Uh huh. So what are you
going to do now?”

“
Find a room,” I said.
“It’s too late to get a flight home tonight, and I don’t want to
sleep in the car.” The Chevy was even more cramped than the Cruiser
had been. “Got any recommendations?”

He didn’t, but it wasn’t hard to find
a motel – a decent one, one that called itself a hotel and had a
lobby and a coffee shop, but it was still a motel, out the north
end of town.

I felt like a fool tucking myself into
that fifty-dollar bed. Why had I come here again? What had I
thought I could do? If I had the timing right, the kids had been
found before I even got to the airport; why hadn’t I thought to
call and check before boarding?

What could
I
do to help? Sure, I
could see the phantom Jenny and talk to her; so what? It hadn’t
done anyone any good yet, so far as I could see. Neither she nor
Jack would listen to reason.

At least Katie had resisted. She was
apparently a bit smarter than her big brother, or maybe she just
had more of a sense of self-preservation. Or maybe she was less
sensitive to Jenny’s emotional radiation; I could certainly feel
the ghost’s hunger and misery, but maybe that went with being
psychic. There hadn’t been any sign that anyone else felt it, any
more than they could see or hear her.

That might be why Jack was more
susceptible than Katie, especially if Jenny could transmit love as
well as she did hunger – Jack could feel it, and Katie
couldn’t.

Jack hadn’t mentioned
that, but it would help explain why Jack was so certain Jenny loved
him; if I was right, he could actually
feel
it.

But normal kids couldn’t, and most
kids weren’t psychic. And even Jack, who looked like the most
powerful psychic I’d seen since Mrs. Reinholt died, hadn’t let
Jenny kill him.

Skees had a point when he
said Jenny was pretty harmless. Apparently she really
couldn’t
hurt anyone who
didn’t volunteer. She hadn’t touched Katie, not so much as a
finger, so either she really did need willing victims, or there was
some reason Katie didn’t suit her. Maybe she preferred boys? Maybe
her prey had to be hitting puberty? But the real Jenny Derdiarian
had said her fantasy was about eating babies, so I’d think the
younger, the better, and it had started with her daughter, so girls
should do just fine.

So something else was holding the
ghoul back, and presumably would keep most kids safe.

On the other hand,
ghost-Jenny wasn’t
entirely
harmless – she’d bitten off a kid’s finger and
eaten one of his eyes. What if, once Jack got back within range of
those emotion transmissions, he decided it
was
worth his own life to help her?
Or what if he found some other kid stupid enough to fall for her
line and volunteer? Just because Katie didn’t buy it didn’t mean no
one would.

But there wasn’t anything I could do
about it.

For eight years I’d been
able to see the night-things and apparitions, and I could spot my
fellow psychics, and I had my prophetic dreams, and what good had
it
ever
done me?
I knew who killed my mother, and what happened to Mrs. Reinholt,
but I hadn’t done anything to save either of them. I hadn’t been
able to do anything for Mel other than be a shoulder for her to cry
on. I’d warned a few people about supernatural dangers, and about
half of them had listened to me, but I didn’t know whether any harm
would have come to them if I’d kept my mouth shut.

What was I doing here?

I was still trying to figure it out
when I fell asleep.

There wasn’t any rush the next
morning; there were plenty of flights, through various cities, and
I wasn’t in a big hurry to spend hours either wedged into what the
airlines considered a seat, or running through some unfamiliar
airport to make my connection. I took my time about getting
breakfast. I was sitting in the motel coffee shop eating pancakes
when Ben Skees came in and stood by my table.

“
This seat taken?” he
asked, pointing to the bench opposite mine.

“
Suit yourself,” I
said.

He slid into the booth. “I wanted to
chat a bit. Unofficially.”

“
Chat away,” I said,
pouring syrup.

“
I’m trying to get a
picture of just what’s happening with this Jenny that Jack Wilson’s
been talking to.”

I shrugged. “I told you what she looks
like.”

“
You said there’s a real
Jenny still alive? Then this one isn’t really a ghost?”

“
That’s right.” I put a
fork-full of pancake in my mouth.

“
So
are
any
of
the things you see really ghosts?”

I chewed and swallowed,
then said, “I don’t know. I don’t know
what
they are. Some of them look
more or less like people, and some don’t. Some are just blurs. Most
of them act like automatons, doing the same pointless things over
and over. ”

“
Have you ever met the
ghost of someone you knew? A dead relative, maybe, like one of your
grandparents?”

“
No,” I said. “For one
thing, half my grandparents are still alive.”

“
But the other two are
dead?”

“
So is my mother. I’ve
never seen their ghosts. Is this going anywhere, or are you just
curious?”

“
Mostly just curious.
Trying to get a handle on just how much danger our boy Jack is
actually in.”

I shrugged. “I don’t really
know.”

“
And you don’t know
whether there are any real ghosts?”

“
No. I
don’t know whether the things I see at night are all the same, or a
thousand different species. They don’t all look alike, but that
doesn’t mean much. I know they aren’t
all
ghosts, but some of them might
be.”

“
This particular one,
though, isn’t a ghost.”

“
Not in the sense of being
the spirit of a dead person, no. It may be some kind of ghost image
of the real Jenny.”

“
Does it look like
her?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see the
real one, I just spoke to her on the phone, but she says no, she’s
not that thin and her hair’s not like my description, though maybe
it used to be. But she says she used to imagine herself looking
like that.”

“
So did she somehow
imagine her doppelganger into existence?”

I stopped with another fork-full of
pancake halfway to my mouth, and lowered it back to the
plate.

“
Maybe she did,” I said.
“Not intentionally, but maybe she did.”

Skees’ question had
reminded me of something Mrs. Reinholt had said, back in school.
She had been warning us to behave in class, and she said, “Any
punishment I can imagine, I can make it happen.” I remember it
exactly because at the time I thought it was odd that she said
“
I
can imagine,”
instead of “
you
can imagine.”

I’d thought it was an
exaggeration, an empty threat, but maybe not. Mrs. Reinholt was a
witch, or something like one – the only real one I ever found. I
never had any idea how she did the things she did – how she cursed
Mel, how she gave me my dreams and the ability to see the
night-things and other psychics. After she died, Mel and I broke
into her office – yeah, I know, but we were looking for a way to
break the curse. Anyway, we broke into her office, and into her
house, looking for a book of spells or a magic scroll or a cauldron
or a broomstick or a voodoo doll or
something
, some sort of tool or
recipe for her magic, anything that would give us a hint of how she
did it.

We came up empty. There
wasn’t a thing. We thought maybe she’d had a hidden stash we didn’t
find, or maybe everything vanished when she died, or maybe she did
it all through some sort of demon familiar, like the one that
killed her. If there
had
been a book of spells, we thought maybe the demon
took it with him.