The Death Catchers (7 page)

 

Fragments

If I had to guess your number-one grammar pet peeve, Mrs. Tweedy, I would say it's sentence fragments. You really dislike it when a sentence lacks a subject, verb, or both. Maybe there's a bright side, though. At least in an English paper, you can go back and edit a fragment to express a complete thought. In life, when a thought is interrupted, there's often not much that can be done to correct it.

I was almost finished explaining what I'd seen in the cemetery, about to launch into a flurry of questions for Bizzy, when the door to the hospital room swung wide open. Mom came in, holding a bouquet of lilies—Bizzy's favorite flower. Dad trailed behind, fiddling with his newsboy hat in his hands.

“We came to check on how you girls were doing,” Mom said, sweeping into the room, placing the flowers in a vase by the window.

“Rita, you shouldn't have,” Bizzy said. Darn right, Mom shouldn't have. I was right at a crucial point in my conversation with Bizzy. I wanted them to leave immediately.

“It was no trouble at all,” Mom said, adjusting Bizzy's movable tray and cleaning it with a sanitary wipe.

“They hire people to do that for me,” Bizzy said, frowning at Mom's efforts. “How long am I in for, Phillip?” Bizzy asked.

“They want to keep you overnight.”

“For cryin' out loud!”

“Have you read
How Green Was My Valley
?” Mom asked, taking a thick paperback out of her bag and putting it on Bizzy's tray. “You're going to need some entertainment while you're here, I know, and it's such an easy book to get lost in … I thought it also might appeal to your Welsh roots.”

Bizzy shoved the book off the tray. It hit the floor with a thud. She folded her arms defiantly over her chest. “Rita, I don't want to read,
you hear me
? I want to talk to my granddaughter. Alone.”

Every eye in the room shifted to me. Mom bent over and picked
How Green Was My Valley
off the floor. She gently placed it back on Bizzy's tray, her face shadowed with defeat.

There was a knock at the door. A nurse entered the room.

“I'm afraid that Dr. Stuhl has instructed me to clear the room of visitors. The patient needs her rest.”

“I'm no chi-ull!” Bizzy exclaimed.

“It's okay, Mother,” Dad said, grabbing her wrist tenderly. “We should be going, anyway. We'll be back later to check on you.” He leaned in and kissed Bizzy on the forehead. “Lizzy, too,” he added, smiling nervously. “After school.”

“A few shackles and bars and this place'd be forced to call itself a prison!” With that, Bizzy closed her eyes. Dad, Mom, and the nurse filed out of the room.

Soon, I was the only one left with Bizzy.

“No need to fret, Sweet Pea,” Bizzy whispered across the room. “Remember what I wrote in my note.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure of what I was supposed to remember.

Dad poked his head in. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” I said, garnering a wink from Bizzy as I left the room.

Though Mom wanted me to go to school, I'd had no trouble convincing Dad I was sick. When he dropped me off at home, he said Mom would swing by to check on me during her free period. Despite Bizzy's assurances that there was nothing to worry about, I wasn't convinced. I was convinced, however, that the key to it all was Vivienne le Mort. In my judgment, there was only one person who could tell me exactly who she was: Agatha Cantare. I did the math. I had an hour until Mom would arrive at the house—plenty of time to get to the cemetery and back.

When Drake's black Ford truck pulled up next to me as I made my way to Cemetery Hill, I viewed it as an unwelcome interruption of my quest for information. Of course, back then, I had no way of knowing Drake Westfall was essential to every answer I was seeking.

Drake got his license when he turned sixteen a few weeks before. Since then, I'd seen his shiny black pickup all over town. I stopped jogging as Drake rolled down his window.

“Hey,” he said, looking concerned. “Everything okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said.

“What about your grandmother? Did everything go all right?”

I felt my cheeks redden.
Of course he meant my grandmother
. “Bizzy's out of surgery and doing well,” I explained.

“Good to hear,” Drake said. His concern was off-putting. Even in the cloudy morning, his eyes gleamed. I tried not to look at them.

“Do you volunteer every morning at the hospital?” I asked, looking down at the door of his truck. I wasn't any good at chitchat.

“Someone needed to switch with me today. I'm normally there at night, three times a week.”

“Oh.” I wondered how he managed to squeeze volunteering shifts into his schedule. Between captaining the water polo team and working his way into the heart of every girl at Crabapple High School, Drake Westfall was a very busy guy.

“Do you want a ride to school?” Drake leaned over and used his long, muscular arm to unlock the passenger door.

“It's illegal for you to give anyone under twenty a ride during your first twelve months with a license.” I sounded like such a goody-goody referencing the California Vehicle Code, I had the urge to cover my own mouth so I couldn't say anything else. I was glad Jodi wasn't around to give me a hard time.

“I won't tell if you won't,” Drake teased, smiling.

“I'm not going to school.” I instantly realized how odd it must've sounded to Drake considering I was headed in the direction of school.

“Well, I can drop you off wherever you're going,” Drake offered.

“Thanks, but it's really okay. You're going to be late,” I urged.

“Ditching school while following the letter of the law … you're not an easy person to figure out, Lizzy.”

I had to get out of there before I said another boneheaded thing.

“Yeah, I guess. Later.” Without waiting for his response, I cut through the path next to the Ramblings' yard, trying to banish any memory of how idiotic I'd sounded.

When I spotted the row of white fir trees along the border of the cemetery's iron fence, I quickened my pace. I wasn't sure what to expect, only that I had to figure out exactly
who
Agatha and her sister were and what they had to do with Bizzy and me.

Crabapple Cemetery was not a popular place on Halloween. There was no one there. I trudged up the grassy hill, trying to take the straightest path I could between the large tombstones clustered near the top of the hill.

For a moment outside the doorway of Agatha's cottage, I hesitated, gathering the courage to knock.

I heard something. The voice behind the wood door was an eerily familiar one: the harsh tone of Vivienne le Mort. My first instinct was to run, but the thought of missing an information-gathering opportunity kept me on the porch. If Vivienne wanted to hurt me, she could've done so on my last visit to the cemetery.

Trembling, I snuck around to the side window and glanced in. Agatha stood in the middle of the room facing the window, dressed in her white linen shirt and trousers. Vivienne le Mort, in her floor-length black robe, had her back to me. The two women were close enough to touch one another. Vivienne towered over her sister.

I bent down, staying low to the ground. This time, I wasn't taking a chance on being discovered. I could no longer see inside, but I overheard every word.

“The Sanchez girl's thread was cut. She was supposed to die. And yet, she lives.”

“Perhaps you made a mistake, Vivienne.” Agatha's voice floated out through the open window. I wiggled my toes, making sure I wasn't frozen.

“Mistake!” Vivienne said, angry. I imagined the glow of her flaming eyes. “I have not made one single mistake in
thousands
of years.”

“I do not have the answers you seek,” Agatha said calmly.

“This is Morgan's doing, I am sure of it!” Vivienne said. “
How
is she doing it? Has she been here in search of the Last Descendant or his Keeper?”

“Our sister has not set foot here, which is more than I can say for you. In fact, if you do not leave right this instant—”

“Fine. You may think me foolish, Agatha. But I will be watching
very carefully
. If I so much as sense Morgan meddling with my work, mark my words, I shall cut every single thread in this pitiful town first, and ask questions later,” Vivienne hissed.

“Do that and you may alter the very fate you have been so desperately waiting for,” Agatha said calmly.

“I doubt you will be so smug when Doomsday finally does arrive,” Vivienne responded.

When she finished speaking, a small black whirlwind rushed out the window directly above me and up toward the cloudy sky. I blinked my eyes once and the murkiness was gone. Other than the faint rustle of the white firs, my own shallow breathing was the only sound in the cemetery. When I heard Agatha's voice again, I held my breath.

My body still shudders when I recall her saying my name out loud.

“You may come in now if it suits you, Elizabeth Mortimer,” she said. “Vivienne has gone.”

She must've known I was outside her window the entire time. At that moment, I intended to find out how. I made my way back around the cottage. Turning the knob, I pushed open the door.

The living room was empty. I tiptoed in as if I hadn't been invited.

Agatha's living room didn't have much character. There was the empty rocking chair, a fireplace, and a worn loveseat by the window with a stack of books piled next to it. Most of the books were paperbacks, but at the top of the stack there was a book that was quite different from all the others. It was a thin leather-bound volume that looked very old. Its title and author,
The Last Descendant
by Merlin Ambrosius, were engraved in silver letters across the front. I couldn't stop looking at it. Finally, I willed my gaze away from its cover.

A large gold-framed painting hung on the wall opposite the fireplace. I walked toward it to get a closer look. In the middle of a white-capped ocean, there was an island, covered with huge apple trees.

“It's the Isle of Avalon. Stunning, isn't it?”

I whipped around. Agatha, still barefoot in her white linen, sat in her rocking chair. I had no idea whether she'd come in quietly or just appeared.

She must have recognized the concern on my face.

“There's no need to be alarmed. I mean you no harm,” she said. Her gray eyes matched her two neat braids. She motioned to the couch facing the rocking chair with her hand. I sat down on its edge. I didn't plan on staying long enough to get comfortable.

“I don't believe we've officially met,” Agatha continued, clearing her throat. “I am Agatha the Enchantress, of the Isle of Avalon.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, with more reflex than feeling. Mom would've been pleased to know that, though terrified, I hadn't abandoned my good manners.

“You had your first death-specter, didn't you?” Agatha said. “That's how you saved the girl.”

“You mean Jodi?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you a Hand of Fate, too?”

“Absolutely not. I am one of the Seven Sisters of Avalon and a Lady of the Lake.” Agatha's eyes had a youthful sheen to them. Though she had gray hair, her skin was as smooth and flawless as a freshly painted wall. She seemed as if she'd just awakened from a long, restful nap.

“How do you know about my death-specter?” I asked.

“That is unimportant. What is important, however, is that I am now fairly certain my sister Morgan le Faye is responsible for sending these specters to you.” Agatha rocked slightly in her chair.

“Who?”

Agatha looked startled. “Has your grandmother told you
nothing
of the Seven Sisters of Avalon?”

“I only found out I was a Hand of Fate a few hours ago.”

Agatha, displeased, shook her head. “You are a direct descendant of Morgan le Faye. Her half-mortal daughter was the first of your kind hundreds upon hundreds of years ago. Whatever gifts you have, you inherited from her.”

“What happened to Morgan? Where is she?” I asked. My mind couldn't connect any of the dots Agatha was providing.

Agatha's eyes drifted past my own. I traced her gaze and realized she was staring at the painting on the wall above me. “I imagine Morgan is where she was when I left a very, very long time ago,” Agatha said, almost as if talking to herself. “The Isle of Avalon.”

“How do I get there?”

“You do not. Even someone like you, a mortal who has the blood of Avalon running through her veins, can only set foot there by invitation, as it is the gateway between this world and the next.”

“Well, if this Morgan woman, er, your sister, is the one who's sending the death-specters, I have to find a way to reach her.”

“I will repeat what I said to your grandmother when she came here asking for my sister: I cannot summon Morgan, I do not communicate with Morgan, and I have
never
been able to control Morgan.” Agatha folded her arms in her lap.

Morgan le Faye was clearly a dead end. I attempted to shift the conversation elsewhere.

“Vivienne le Mort is another of your sisters, then?”

“Yes,” Agatha said.

“How old are you all?”

“The Seven Sisters are older than you can possibly fathom.” I felt Agatha was being purposefully vague.

“What did Vivienne mean, just now, when she said that she was going to cut every single thread in Crabapple?” Once I asked that question, others followed easily. “And who is this last Pendragon person she seems so obsessed with? Is she fighting with Morgan?”

Agatha's face grew pale. She brought both hands to her face and held her head in them. When she removed them, there were tears in her clear gray eyes. “The dreadful rift between Morgan and Vivienne began the moment I told my sisters of the vision instructing us to find a suitable Keeper to watch over Arthur. My visions have brought me and those I love nothing but agony. Now that Morgan and Vivienne have clashed over the prophecy regarding the Last Descendant, I will not place myself in the middle again.” She said it like a declaration and then paused, before adding, “If Doomsday arrives, so be it.”