Velveteen (41 page)

It was like the whole philosophy of the revolution in one great big art project. But how did he become so embittered? Was it simply Jerry’s death, or was it something else? It still didn’t make any sense, and Velvet refused to buy the insanity plea that everyone else would certainly jump on.

Tables lay on their sides, and with every step farther inside,
origami birds were crushed into the ashy ground. Velvet stomped through a swinging door into the back. Clay’s workroom. Stacks of newspaper and reams of stolen printer paper lined the edges of the room, with a single desk and chair in the center. Laid across it, and totally still, was the figure of a man. As Velvet approached, her eyes grew wide with horror and she froze. What she saw struck her like a bat straight to the gut.

“Is he dead?” Nick asked, and crossed the gap to the desk.

“Is who dead?” Kipper leaned in with wide-eyed curiosity.

Bonesaw.

Velvet’s killer lay as silent as the grave on Clay’s desk—brought to purgatory completely whole, pasty pink, through some sick means only the origamist was privy to. Regardless of the means, her secret—their secret—wasn’t going to be a secret anymore.

“What’s this, then?” Manny strode into the room. She crossed to the body quickly and scanned Nick’s and Velvet’s stunned faces for an answer. Then she reached out to touch the body.

“No, don’t!” Velvet shrieked.

Manny pulled her hand away as though she’d very nearly patted a blazing fire. “What, then? What’s happening here, Velvet? This”—she pointed at the body—“is certainly not Aloysius Clay.”

In the corner of the room, Velvet noticed a thin mattress piled with more paper. The bed was empty. Clay was gone.

Velvet stood up and approached the prone figure and the station agent. “Bonesaw. He’s my kuh-killer,” she stuttered.

“Your killer? I don’t understand. How could that be? Killers don’t come to purgatory. Their path is a certainty.”

“I don’t know,” Velvet said, pale arcs of tears clearing the ash from her face.

Velvet closed in on the body. She noticed a clean line across Bonesaw’s left thigh. No blood on his clothing. No knife wounds. On instinct, Velvet balled her fist and brought it down on the figure’s abdomen.

It caved in with a plume of dust, crinkling around her wrist.

Manny leaned over it, too, squeezing the “flesh” of its face and watching as the tightly folded paper ruffled and creased.

“It’s another one of those damn effigy things!” Kipper yelled.

“It’s a message,” Velvet muttered. It had all come together in those short, tense moments. Mr. Fassbinder—Clay—had followed her through the crack to the farmhouse, to the shed. He knew her secret, and that’s how the banshee knew. Clay had made it his secret, too. But what was this creature for? She turned away from the hulking paper mannequin. A joke?

“You have something to tell me?” Manny asked. “You thought you knew this thing. You called it Bonesaw?”

“I’d hoped you hadn’t heard that,” Velvet said, knowing the question could lead only one place: to a connection between Fassbinder and her killer, and to the crack outside in the alley.

Nick slipped his hand into hers and whispered, “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere.”

Manny’s eyes narrowed. “Velvet?”

“He killed me.” She slapped her hand against the paper carcass. “Not him, obviously. This is some kind of trick, Mr. Fassbinder’s paper fraud,” she spat.

“What do you mean, he killed you?”

“He looks just like the guy who murdered me, Manny. His name is Ron Simanski, and he was a serial killer in my hometown. Aloysius Clay found out.” She hesitated. “Somehow.”

“How exactly? And don’t hold back. As you can see”—she threw her arms up to note that the building was still shaking, the floor sending ripples up their legs as they stood there—“things aren’t getting any better.”

Manny was right. Secrets weren’t going to help anything.

Velvet took a deep breath, squeezed Nick’s hand, and vomited her entire secret into the room—the extent of her haunting of Bonesaw, how she’d saved girls in that tiny shed, but not all of them. Those visions she kept to herself, kept them locked away in the deepest recesses of her mind like nightmares.

“I see.” Manny stared off, deep in thought, ruminating on the information, or at least Velvet hoped that was what she was doing. For all she knew, the station agent could have been planning her eternal damnation. But then Manny spun around and stared at each of them intently, including the twins, who stood at the swinging door, mouths open with shock at the revelation of Velvet’s crime. “Well. There’s not much we can do about that right now. I’m going to keep it in my head until we’ve resolved all this madness. If we …” Her voice trailed off.

“It’s not so bad!” Nick added. “Velvet’s saved a lot of girls from this guy!”

Velvet’s heart sunk. It was one thing that she’d done it, but revealing that he knew, too? Not good. She let her hand slip from the boy’s grip.

“She’s actually a hero, don’t you think?” he implored.

Manny glowered. “So you knew?”

Velvet reached out and stroked Nick’s arm. He was shivering with fear, and even her touch didn’t seem to help. He’d meant well, but now he’d implicated himself.

“It was an accident that Nick followed me,” Velvet said, and sighed. “He wasn’t even aware—”

The woman held her hand up, ceasing the conversation. “I don’t need to hear any more about this. For now we must figure out what the purpose of this effigy is. You’ve said it’s a message. Do you believe it is simply to show you that he’s on to your scheming?”

Scheming.

Velvet winced at the word, at the idea that the station agent thought less of her, thought she was a criminal.

“I think …” She didn’t want to finish. She wasn’t even sure what it meant, but she knew where the answer would lead. “Mr. Fassbinder—Clay—passed through into the daylight. The crack we used to get up to the station tonight is in the alley on the other side of this wall. I think he wants me to follow.”

“Ah.” Manny nodded. “But what if it’s a trap of some sort?”

“It probably is,” Velvet agreed. “This whole thing has been leading up to this point. The banshee, the crystal balls,
the shadowquakes, the trapped souls. The revolution. But it feels right that I should follow him.”

Manny nodded.

Nick gulped.

“He’s at the farmhouse, and there’s no question whose body he’s walking around in.”

“Then, you’ll go,” Manny said, but her eyes were narrowing cruelly. “But don’t you forget your goal. Stop this shadowquake. Bring back Clay. Any score you feel needs to be settled between you and Aloysius is secondary to that. Understand?”

Not to mention Bonesaw
, Velvet thought. She was hoping that that part had been taken care of naturally. That he’d bled out on the shed floor.

Dead.

Velvet nodded and stormed from the room. “Come on!” she called back to Nick.

He followed behind her down the crumbled alley, over piles of rubble and to the crack, which was barely discernible on the now quake-fractured wall. The others were still at the mouth of the alley, but nearing.

“Holy crap.” Nick stared at the passageway, discouragement clouding his expression.

“Where are you guys going?” Logan shouted, clambering over the mounds of crushed brick.

Velvet shuddered. For the first time, she didn’t want her team with her on a mission. She couldn’t risk their safety. Not this time. “Stay here, Logan. And make sure your sister doesn’t follow.”

The boy scowled but stilled himself. “Fine.”

Then she turned to Nick and held out her hand. He slipped his into her palm and squeezed. “You stay, too. Stop the others from following,” she said. “This is my battle.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Don’t ask me to do that. I can’t.”

The sound of rocks scattering turned his attention toward Luisa, who’d joined her brother, the same look of confusion on her face. In that moment, Velvet slipped through the crack.

T
he moon hung high over the glen, shining through the web of leaves and branches in thin white bars. Dim light played across the carpet of glistening pine needles. The moment would have been serene and welcoming, if Velvet hadn’t just shared a secret that doomed her soul to an eternity in purgatory, and maybe Nick’s, too. Despite the station agent’s affection for her—and she didn’t doubt that for a second—Manny wouldn’t be able to keep this secret from her superiors.

Velvet was screwed.

“Dammit!” she cursed.

She rolled onto her knees and pushed herself up from the dirt, tossing her hair over her shoulder to get a better look at the burnt-out crack that ran up the tree like a wound, secretly hoping the rest of the team would be spit out.

“That shouldn’t happen,” she muttered to herself. She deserved to face Aloysius Clay alone.

Deserved whatever happened to her.

It wasn’t right to bring Nick along or get him into any more trouble, especially if that meant his damnation. She couldn’t have that on her head. Not with him. It wasn’t his fault.

But just as she rose to leave, she heard the crack open to another ghost, a quiet spurting sound. She turned to see the boy’s body roll across the ground, his tank tight across his chest. Nick got up and rolled his head on his broad shoulders. He fixed on her gaze immediately and smiled at her with such warmth that she questioned how she could have ever done anything without him.

Dammit!
she thought.
I sound like a movie of the week
.

Those sorts of eye-batting lovey-ass thoughts were meant for much weaker girls. How had it even happened? She’d been just going along, minding her own business. She’d had a stellar career in her afterlife, good friends, and, sure, a little secret that could blow everything apart.

But who didn’t have a few skeletons in her closet?

“Are you okay?” Nick’s deep voice vibrated across her skin like a personal massager. Tingles coursed through her.

She smiled and held her hand out to him, and Nick closed the gap, pulling her into a tight embrace.

“That was rough, right?” he said, brushing back some hair from her face. “It wasn’t just me?”

“No, Nick.” She chuckled at his understatement. “It was definitely prickly.”

He hugged her tighter, lifting her until their noses nearly touched. “Maybe we just run away together and never have to worry about all the crap that happens in purgatory.”

She pushed him away, clenching her jaw with anger, grinding her teeth. “Don’t even joke about that!”

“Who’s joking?” He shrugged. “We could find a couple of high-school-aged bodies and hang out for a while … or sixty years.” He paused, grimacing at the disgusted look Velvet was cultivating. “Or not. It’s just a suggestion.”

A horrible one.

The idea was just gross. Brief possession was one thing. But what Nick was implying just wasn’t right.

“Well, Nick. That’s not going to happen, you understand? What we
are
going to do is march up to that farmhouse and take care of what I should have taken care of a long time ago.”

“I hope you mean kill the bastard.”

“Well, something like that. Besides …” She planted her hand on his chest. “It is my job.” Velvet stomped away toward the road. When she shot an angry look back at Nick, he was grinning proudly.

Shit
, she thought. He’d tricked her.

“You were just getting me riled up for what’s ahead, weren’t you?” How had she fallen for such a sneaky bastard, she wondered.

Nick cocked his head as if he didn’t understand, but then bowed dramatically, like a court jester or something.

“Dude,” she chastised. “Come on.”

As the road crested the hill, the pulsing red and blue lights of a police cruiser became more and more distinct. It was parked sideways, blocking the road ahead. Velvet glanced at Nick, who shrugged like he wasn’t surprised to see the police. It had been only a few hours, regardless of how much had happened in the space of time since they’d been there. Bonesaw’s victim must have managed to identify the farmhouse.

Velvet expected to see a uniformed officer nearby, hand on his holster, ready to hold back traffic from entering the crime scene, but there was no one. Just a little past the cruiser, the yellow tape began, furled around the chunky wooden pasture fence and stretching across the driveway. Three other police cars, a couple of black sedans reeking of FBI, an ambulance with its back doors wide open, and a white crime scene van littered the dirt road. But beyond all those hints that some major shit had gone down on this lonely stretch of countryside, the property was eerily quiet.

There was no bustle of officers. No paramedics rushing a gurney across the potholed drive up to the house. No shouting about keeping away the media, or messing up someone’s crime scene.

Nothing.

Not a peep.

She glanced at Nick. His mouth was wide open.

“Doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Where is everyone?”

Velvet tried to shake off the feeling that something was
horribly wrong, and offered up an excuse. “Maybe they’re all inside, or around back?” It sounded more stupid spoken aloud than inside her head, where it should have stayed.