Silk (27 page)

Hands on her knees and bent double like she was puking, Niki waited on Daria and the rest.

Two blocks west, they caught up with Spyder, finally, but only because she’d paused to knock snow off the soles of her Docs, slamming one foot and then the other against a telephone pole.

“You’re gonna have a heart attack,” Niki wheezed, “or a stroke or something if you don’t slow down,” coming up behind Spyder, startling her again although she’d made noise on purpose so she wouldn’t. There were little snotcicles dangling from each of Spyder’s nostrils, her face like a boiled crab from the wind and exertion, and the cut on her forehead had opened again, fresh blood trickling into her eye.

“This is
not
a fucking forced march,” Daria said; Mort was actually holding Theo up now.

Spyder only looked at them uncomprehendingly, blank disregard, went back to kicking the telephone pole, black rubber against creosote pine.

“Man,”
Keith gasped, leaned against convenient chain link, steel division between sidewalk and a smothered church parking lot. “Man,
why
are we chasin’ this crazy bitch, anyway?” Another pause, another gasp, and “That’s what I’d like someone to tell me.”

“I can make it fine from here,” Spyder said, examining the bottom of one boot. The hardpacked snow she’d kicked off lay all around her feet, molded like weird albino waffles.

Niki ignored her. “Because she could have a concussion for all we know. We at least need to see she gets home all right.”

“Christ,” Mort panted. “She’s in better shape than I am. Look, she’s not even outta breath! Christ.”

“How do you know if you’re freezing to death?” Theo whimpered from his side.

“We can at least get some coffee,” Daria said, “Just one fucking cup of coffee,” and Niki asked, “Where?” then noticed a diner across the street, a Steak and Egg Kitchen squeezed in between an apartment building and a Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut was dark, but inside the Steak and Egg, the lights were on.

“Yeah,” Theo wheezed. “
Please?
I can’t feel my tongue.”

Niki looked at Spyder, unfathomable urgency burning as cold as frostbite in her eyes, unearthly eyes, and Spyder turned away from her, gazed past and through trees and street signs and houses, at the frosted mountain, half-hidden now in the heavy clouds.

“This ain’t up for debate,” Daria said. “If you want
me
along, you’ll wait until after I get some coffee and catch my fucking breath.”

“Spyder?” And Niki risked one hand on the back of Spyder’s jacket, leather wet with melted snow, leathery skin as impenetrable as the girl wrapped inside.

“Yeah,” she said and looked back at Niki, and her eyes had changed, the strange silver fire only smoldering ash like dread or regret and nothing much there but exhaustion. “Some coffee would be good.”

“Thank fuck,” Theo muttered, and they followed Daria across the empty, icy street.

The diner was too warm, stifling after the cold, and the grease-haunted air smelled and tasted like all the deep fat ever fried, ghosts of a million sausages, a hundred million eggs. The place looked smaller from the inside, and there was only one other customer, an old and grizzled man at the counter, slurping his coffee noisily from a saucer. They all piled into the booth farthest from the door, scrunched in together: Keith, Daria, and Mort on one side, Niki, Spyder and Theo on the other. A sleepy-looking woman wearing too much makeup took their order, six cups of coffee, a bowl of grits and a side of toast for Mort and Theo.

“We’ll eat it fast, okay?” Mort had said when Niki had started to protest.

The coffee came immediately, black and bitter but fresh, very hot, almost not as bad as Niki had expected. She waited her turn as the sugar was passed around the table, the sweating cream decanter. She folded her hands around the cup to catch the heat, soak it all through her palms and into her bones. Burned her mouth on the first sip, was still blowing at her coffee, when a thin black boy brought the food, grease-stained apron and bones too big, but his face was smooth and pretty, eyebrows plucked and arched and his long hair oiled and tied back in an elaborate bun. A single tear tattooed at one corner of his left eye.

“Hey there, Spyder,” he said, setting down the steaming bowl of grits, a garish yellow margarine pat dissolving on top, and the toast cut into four neat and crusty wedges. Niki had known too many drag queens not to clock him, not to catch the significant flourishes of body and voice, the dozen subtle and flamboyant giveaways. Not to be reminded of Danny.

Spyder glanced up from her own coffee, the cup she hadn’t even touched, surprise and recognition, some new unease wrinkling her face.

“Oh,” Spyder said and made a nervous half attempt at a smile. “Billy. I didn’t know you were working here.”

“Just ’til Christmas,” he said. “Gotta make me some Santa Claus money, you know. ’Cause the cheap faggots that been comin’ out to see Talulah these days ain’t been tipping for shit, honey.”

“Yeah,” Spyder said.

Billy lingered, serving tray balanced one-handed, head cocked coyly and both dark eyes on Spyder.

“Ain’t you even gonna introduce me to your friends, Spyder? Oh, except you, girl,” and he jabbed a thumb at Theo. “I
already
know you.”

“Yeah,” Spyder said, pointing at each of them as she spoke. “That’s Daria Parker, and that’s Keith, and that’s Mort. Their band plays at Dr. Jekyll’s….”

“Spyder, you
know
I stay away from them punk-rock places,” Billy said, and to Stiff Kitten, “Nothin’ personal, but you got to be careful. And there ain’t too much careful these days.”

“And this is Niki,” Spyder finished. “This is Billy. He does shows at 21 and some other places.”

“Some other places too scary to mention in polite company, she means,” Billy said and smiled, warm and honest smile. “By the way, Spyder, when Miss Thing come dragging her ass in last night, well, this morning, actually, she was a
mess
.”

Spyder’s hand bumped her cup, and a little coffee sloshed over the brim and onto the table. “What do you mean, Billy?” she asked.

“I mean, she was absolutely freaked, child. Like she just spent the whole last week on pink hearts and nose-candy. Went and locked herself in her room, and I ain’t seen or heard a peep outta Miss Byron since.”

“I’m sorry,” Spyder said, almost shoved Theo into the floor as she climbed out of the booth. “I have to go home.”

“Spyder,” Niki started. “If you’ll wait just a second,” but Spyder spun around, cut her off with those eyes, bright new flames in there.

“No, Niki, I’m sorry but I
have
to go home, and I have to go home
now
.”

And she pushed roughly past Billy, then, and was gone, down the narrow aisle between booths and matching burgundy stools, and the door jingled shut behind her.

Halfway across the Steak and Egg’s parking lot she slipped, one boot skating on the ice hiding slick beneath the snow, and Spyder almost fell. But there was no time left to be cautious, no time for Niki Ky shouting somewhere behind her, had been no time left all morning, all night, but she’d been too dazed to understand, not listening, even in her nightmares; that they would go to her house,
into
her house, that Byron might be so afraid that he’d try to steal the dream catcher. Destroy it or squirrel it away someplace where she’d never find it, and so Spyder kept moving, left the pavement as soon as she could and stalked across lawns and vacant lots where the footing was a little surer, where the frozen grass and weeds crunched like glass underfoot.

And it wasn’t the fairy-tale lies she’d told them that scared her, that made her almost too afraid of what she’d find waiting at the end of Cullom Street to keep moving, not her father or the angels that had never stopped coming anyway, hunting her through sleep and the grinding days. None of them had ever suspected, not even Walter who hadn’t believed any of it for a second, that the talisman could be one thing to them, protection, and something entirely different to her. Insurance, binding them together, like a wedding band, stronger than gold or silver because it had been made of them. Robin had almost torn it all apart, and she had patched it back together with wood and blood and strands of their hair.

The rat-toothed cold gnawed at her body, inside and out, playing sidekick to the crushing weight in her head. Together, they would pull her down and leave her broken and alone, lost in impossible white, suffocating. If she was weak, if she let them. So she made a picture of Robin in her mind, beloved symbol for all she stood to lose, and stepped around the pain.

They left Mort and Theo in the diner, resolutely eating their breakfast and talking to Billy. Would have left Keith, too tired of chasing after Spyder’s crazy ass to care, he’d said, but Daria had pulled him out of the booth anyway, two dollar bills tossed on the table, and she’d pushed him grumbling out the door. By the time they reached the parking lot, Spyder was already past the Pizza Hut, a coal smudge on linen. Niki stopped and shouted for her to wait until her throat hurt.

“She doesn’t even give a shit, Dar,” Keith said. “Spyder Baxter doesn’t need any help finding her way back home,” and Daria looked at Niki, waiting for an answer, a reason why this still had anything to do with them.

“She didn’t ask for your help last night, either,” Niki said, and Keith shook his head. “Yeah, well, but right now she ain’t about to get her butt kicked.”

“He’s right,” Daria said, as if maybe it was a little painful to admit. “She acts like this sometimes, Niki. She has problems, you know?”

“She’s scared fucking shitless,” Niki said, watching Spyder getting smaller in the distance, listening to the wind, the lonely wail like mourners in the bare tree limbs. “That’s all I know, Daria. And I just want to make sure she gets home okay.”

Daria hesitated, glanced back at the warmth and shelter of the diner, up at the sky hanging purple and almost low enough to touch.

“Come on, then,” sighed resignation, was already two or three steps past Niki, hauling Keith by the arm again. “I don’t even know where the bitch lives, and if we keep standing around talking about it, we’re gonna lose her.”

“Thanks,” Niki said, taking long strides to catch up.

4.

A long way off, still, but Niki could see the yellow crime tape fluttering in the wind. Familiar enough thing to know the words by heart,
Crime Scene—Do Not Cross,
a hundred different murders or burglaries in the Quarter, suspicious fires and that happy-bright plastic stretched across a doorway or burned-out window. But waiting for them, there at the top of Cullom Street, tied tight between two old trees, it had never looked more like a warning.

Halfway up the mountain, the snow had begun again, nothing like the night before, but hard enough that it intensified the impression that she was tramping through some fairyland or Ice Age waste, and Niki was starting to feel sick, ill from the cold and exhaustion, had been plagued for the last five minutes with the idea that there was someone else walking with them, someone visible just at the corner of her vision. She’d turn to see, expecting Mort, or maybe Theo, and there was never anyone but Keith, face red and pissed off, cursing her and Spyder and the storm, Daria the same. And now, there was the police tape.

Part of her wanted to sit down in the snow and cry, cry until this was over. That part she thought she’d left behind, thought she’d shed forever like a bad skin, but instead Niki kept walking, ignoring the new cold leading her stomach, dread and everything that tape might mean. Ignoring how tired she was and the urgent little voice inside that begged her to see this had nothing to do with her, begged her to walk away from it all, while there was still time.

Spyder paused at the barrier of tape, and Niki thought then that she would wait, that they would catch up at last, but then she vanished into the shadows beneath the trees; when they finally reached the yellow tape, there was nothing waiting for them but Spyder’s footprints. She hadn’t crossed the line, had gone through a hedge and around.

“Okay,” air gasped and Keith’s words slipped in between. “What…the hell’s…going on…now?”

“Cops,” Daria said, and Niki could only nod, point at the dark house set back away from the road and more of the yellow tape strung like garland around the porch, ripped loose and dangling at the front door.

The Radley house,
she thought.
It’s the goddamned Radley house.
Spyder’s tracks and nothing else, lonesome scar across the snow, all traces of whatever might have happened in the night erased, buried, by the storm.

Hey, Boo? Wanna come out and play?
and then the sound, the hurting, furious wail from the open door, broken sound, and Niki ran, fell once and hit her knee against something sharp hiding beneath the snow, got up and kept running. Until she’d ducked beneath the tape and was through the door, the house wrapping its musty shell around her, and in here, the sound was almost more than she could stand.

Howl from her dreams, civil defense siren wail and the sound that came from her when she opened her sleeping mouth to answer them. The sound, remembered, that had kept her mother awake on muggy suburban nights. The sound of the sky falling at the end of the world.