Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (16 page)

“At first,” Jenny said.

Seth wolfed down a Salisbury slice. Jenny
barely had any appetite.

“What’s it like having your parents in town
again?” Jenny asked.

“Back to the old family sitcom. Mom’s
medicated and talking on the phone with her old sorority friends.
Dad’s drunk and talking to my great-grandfather’s ghost. Or
fighting with Mr. Burris about the stupid bank. They try to parent
me around like they didn’t just leave me by myself since
Christmas.”

“Do they know we’re still together?” Jenny
said.

“That’s kind of hard to do,” Seth said. “Last
time my mom saw you, she was busting you with cocaine at our
Christmas party.”

“It wasn’t mine!” Jenny said. “It was
Ashleigh’s. And not even hers, but some of your stupid preppy
rich-kid friends.”

“Not my friends,” Seth said. “My parents and
their parents are friends. And not even real friends, most of them,
it’s just business.”

“Whatever,” Jenny said.

“I told them what really happened,” Seth
said. “But they don’t believe me.”

“Because Ashleigh was such a perfect
angel.”

“And you’re a wicked devil, trying to suck
out my soul.” Seth grabbed Jenny, bit at her head and made sounds
like a starving zombie.

“Stop it!” Jenny slapped him, but not very
hard, and she let her fingers linger on his face for a second. She
was wearing gloves for school, as always. “I’m eating.”

“Actually, you’re not.”

“I was thinking about it.”

“I also heard prom might be canceled,” Seth
said.

“Could be,” Jenny said. “I killed the whole
prom planning committee.”

“Jenny!” Seth looked around. “You can’t just
say that out in public.”

“There’s nobody close by. Nobody would sit
near us if we asked them to.” Jenny looked around at the scattered
little groups of people. There was no big central crowd at the
picnic tables now, orbiting Ashleigh like she was the sun.
Everybody had broken off into tiny clumps here and there. The
entire social order of the school had been destroyed.

A lot of people, like Darcy Metcalf, sat all
alone—Darcy’s main purpose in life had been to suck up to Ashleigh
Goodling. Isolated people like Darcy seemed to have no friends left
in the world, which was just the way Jenny had been most of her
life. She felt sick.

“Everyone’s talking about how many people are
missing,” Seth said. “The news made it sound like it was only a few
deaths, and with the phones out, people didn’t realize just how
many people—”

“Okay, Seth!” Jenny said. “I get it. It was a
lot of people. I think I’m going to puke now.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed a hand along her back. “I
think a lot of people are skipping, too, though. I mean, who really
wanted to come back?”

“It’s so weird now,” Jenny said. “I just feel
sick all the time, thinking about what I did. It’s going to be like
this forever, too. What can I even do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wish somebody knew,” Jenny said. “I wish
somebody could tell me.”

And then the bell rang.

In her dream, Jenny rode in the back of a
cart towards the center of Athens, awed by the city. Sparta had
been little more than a rough and sprawling village, despite its
military might and its position as chief power of the Peloponnesian
League of cities.

Athens, in contrast, had fed well on its
Delian League cities as its empire grew, and put up massive
monuments and temples to the entire pantheon. Everywhere she
looked, she gaped at marble steps, marble columns, imposing statues
of heroes and gods, all of them masterfully cut and brightly
painted.

No wonder Sparta feared this city, she
thought. It looked like an imperial capital. According to King
Archidamus, that was exactly what Athens had become, a provoker of
wars so that it might conquer, a threat to civilization itself.

It was her job to destroy this city, and
thereby save all of Greece from tyranny.

She rode in a two-wheeled cart drawn by a
horse, and two other girls rode with her. The three of them had
arrived by galley in Piraeus, the port of Athens. She and the other
girls were heavily made up, lots of black around their eyes and
dark red on their lips. They were allegedly slave girls from a
distant island near Persia. The man driving the cart would sell
them to a certain wealthy Athenian citizen who stocked his
household with exotic women.

Jenny reflected on how she had come to be
here.

The old priest, whose name was Kyrillos, had
taken an interest in her soon after she was born. (In this life,
she now understood, she was called Euanthe.) Euanthe had been
discovered as an infant, wailing and kicking in the low, filthy
shed where her helot family lived. The rest of her family had died
of some horrific disease, but Euanthe had survived, though cranky
and hungry.

This apparent immunity to disease brought the
attention of the priest Kyrillos, who had taken her for healthy
slave-breeding stock. Soon he recognized her true nature. He
entrusted her care with the priestesses of Aphrodite Areia, who
served the warlike side of the love goddess, the sometimes consort
of the war god Ares, and the most beloved goddess in Sparta.

The priest himself provided much of her
education. His main interest was in testing her abilities, helping
her to control them and discover what they could do. They tried her
magical infection on animals, and later he procured criminals and
undesirables whom Sparta had sentenced to death. By experimenting,
they learned a great deal, though the experiments themselves were
nightmarish events.

He taught her that she had been cursed by the
goddess, that Euanthe or her family must have done something to
displease the goddess, and consequently she needed to spend her
life in service to the goddess (and, by extension, the priest
Kyrillos himself) until she regained the goddess’s favor and the
curse was lifted.

And, she now understood, he had also been
preparing her for this, intending to use her as a weapon on behalf
of Sparta.

According to the story that the slave
merchant had told the wealthy Athenian, the girls spoke no Greek at
all. This freed Euanthe and the other girls from any need to craft
and maintain careful lies.

The magnificent house was high upon a hill,
much of it built from marble, painted bright blues and greens. The
slave merchant led them on foot into the grand courtyard, and she
gaped up at the second-floor galleries, on their thick marble
columns.

Euanthe trembled. She did not know the other
two girls, though she understood they might have been prostitutes.
They seemed to know each other, and they wanted nothing to do with
Euanthe. They stayed close together, even holding hands, and spoke
only by whispering in each others’ ears.

The slave merchant presented them to the
withered old slave who administered the wealthy household. He
looked the three girls over and paid the merchant a few silver
coins.

Euanthe and the other girls were sent into a
side gallery, in which women were crammed together, weaving. The
three new girls were put to work.

Soon, the lady of the house entered. She was
a few years older than Euanthe, her golden hair coiled into fine
braids and set atop her head with jeweled pins and clips.

A pretty servant girl trailed behind her like
a dog.

“These are the new ones?” The lady of the
house looked over the three girls with her disturbing gray eyes,
and then she addressed the eldest of the slave women. “Do they work
hard?”

“They need training,” the woman said. “Lots
of training. And they only speak their barbarian tongue.”

The lady touched the shoulder of one of the
girls who had accompanied Euanthe. The girl’s face lit up with a
smile, as if she suddenly adored the gray-eyed Athenian lady.

“We shall break them in,” the lady said. “My
husband, at least, will have great enjoyment of them.” She looked
at Jenny/Euanthe, then leaned in for a closer look, her eyes
narrowing. “What is your name?”

Euanthe said nothing, pretending not to
understand.

“I don’t like the look of this one,” the lady
said.

“Shall we dispose of her?” the lady’s servant
asked.

“No, no, she’s already paid for.” The
gray-eyed lady turned to leave, with her servant again at her
heels. “At least they aren’t ugly. Ugly slaves are unacceptable in
a fine household.”

“Yes, my lady,” her servant agreed.

Euanthe set her fingers to the hard work of
weaving. The elder slave women slapped her each time she made an
error.

Tommy waited in the parking lot of
Esmeralda’s apartment complex and watched her door as the sun rose
behind him. He sat on his stolen bike, wearing gloves and a
long-sleeve shirt though the weather was very warm, almost hot. He
didn’t want to risk touching her and making her afraid of him.

Her apartment complex was ugly, built of
concrete and cinderblocks, with wrecked car husks occupying a few
of the parking spots. The outer walls, the dumpster, and the stop
signs were all sprayed with gang tags.

Never mind the blue sky and the palm trees
from the movies, Tommy thought, this city was crap. It was like
Panama City Beach or some low-rent tourist trap like that, only
stretched out for mile after mile and then slathered in smog.

When she stepped out of her apartment, Tommy
cranked the engine of his motorcycle. The sound drew her attention,
and she smiled immediately when she saw him. Then she seemed to
remember herself, and the smile disappeared.

She turned away from him and walked toward
the bus stop at the front of the complex.

Tommy swooped out until he was alongside her,
then slowed down and walked his bike along with her, the engine
grumbling beneath him.

“Hi, Esmeralda,” he said.

“You know my name.” She kept walking, kept
trying to hide her smile.

“I couldn't search the whole country for you
without learning your name,” he said. “Esmeralda Rios.”

“The whole country? Where did you start?”

“Forth Worth.”

“Wow.” She laughed. “That was years ago. Did
you stop in Albuquerque, too?”

“Yep.”

“Arizona?”

“Flagstaff.”

“I am impressed.” She gave him a sidelong
look. “And a little creeped out.”

“But you remember me,” he said.

“A little. I don't even remember your
name.”

“I never told you.”

When she reached the graffiti-coated
Plexiglas bus shelter, she finally turned to look him full on in
the face. Tommy felt something move in his heart—but he pushed the
feeling down quickly. He needed to handle his business, not stare
all droopy-eyed at this gorgeous girl.

“Want a ride?” he asked.

“I like the bus.”

“My bike's a lot nicer,” he said. “Cleaner,
too.”

She eyed his stolen Harley. “I doubt
that.”

“More fun.”

The bus approached down Sepulveda, pausing
only one intersection away to load and unload passengers.

“I don't ride with strangers,” Esmeralda
said.

“My name is Tommy.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he said.

Her eyes responded to the compliment by
rolling upward. “You are so original,” she said, but she was
smiling again.

The bus trundled towards them.

“Do you want the ride?” Tommy asked. He could
take off his glove, grab her arm and make her do anything he said.
But he didn't want to do that. He wanted her to choose to come.

“I still don't know your last name.”

“It's Krueger,” he said. It was a surname he
often used. His favorite, actually.

“That doesn't sound very Spanish to me.” The
bus arrived, and the door folded open. Esmeralda looked at the
steps inside. “My mother won't approve of it.”

“We can change it. I just made it up,
anyway.”

She laughed. “You chose to be named after a
movie monster?”

“I always kind of identified with him.”

“You are crazy.” The bus door folded, and the
bus lurched away. “Look, you made me miss my bus. Now you must take
me to work.”

“Hop on.”

Esmeralda slid into the seat behind him. She
wrapped her arms around his waist. He felt her fingers on his
abdominal muscles, pressing him tight through his shirt, and now it
was his turn to smile.

“You don't have an extra helmet,” she
said.

“I'll have to fix that.” He took off his
helmet and passed it back to her. “Just pull the chin strap
under—”

“I know. You're not the first boy on a bike
I've dated.”

“Are we dating now?”

“I didn't mean to say that. Okay, I'm
ready.”

Tommy gunned the bike and they shot out into
the road. He curved steeply, almost tipping over on one side, and
she squealed and clamped her arms tight around him.

He straightened up the bike and drove.

The funeral home was only about ten minutes
away, but when they reached it, Tommy didn't pull into the parking
lot. He kept going, not stopping until the next red light.

“You missed it,” Esmeralda said.

“Take the day off,” he said. “We’ll have fun
instead.”

“But I told Mr. Gonzales I would come in for
a few hours.”

“Let the dead bury the dead,” Tommy said.
“Isn't that what they say?”

“It’s a bad plan,” Esmeralda said. “The dead
don’t work very hard.”

The light turned green, and Tommy opened up
the throttle.

She never asked him to turn back.

Jenny dreamed she was Euanthe again, bringing
food to her new master’s dining hall, accompanied by a few other
slave girls. One girl carried a platter of roast lamb, another a
skin of wine, another a loaf of bread. Euanthe herself carried a
wooden platter with an assortment of olives.