All That Lives Must Die

“And their wretched uniforms!” Dallas shouted back to the old woman. “They will need three new ones that actually fit.”

“Oui, mademoiselle,” Madame Cobweb called back.

Dallas turned her attention back to Fiona. “There are always occasions to dress up, darling. Dances and parties. I’ll see to that.”

“Maybe we should just try on a few things,” Amanda whispered. “It could be fun.” She brushed her hair to one side.

Dallas stepped closer. “Let me, please.” She grabbed a clip off a nearby rack of rhinestone encrusted hairpins and tucked Amanda’s hair back and fussed over it. She did the other side of her head then and turned her back to face Fiona. Amanda’s hair was finally out of her face, artfully swept up, and highlighted with tiny sparks.

“Why, Miss Lane,” Dallas said. “You are lovely. The world can be such a dreary place; you should help light it.”

Amanda blushed so hard, Fiona felt the heat on her skin three paces away.

Before Fiona could figure out how that was possible, there was a great crash outside.

She went to the window and glanced between the boards.

That gang of boys threw rocks at a tiny car that sputtered by on the street. They shouted after it, and then all laughed and took swigs from bottles wrapped in paper bags. What a bunch of creeps!

Amanda, however, was too busy admiring her new hair to even notice.

Madame Cobweb returned then, wheeling a rack loaded with dresses and slacks, gossamer blouses, and carrying a separate tray of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.

“Pour les belles jeunes dames. Miss Post”-she gestured to the right side of the rack-“and Miss Lane”-she waved to the left side. “Please, help yourselves. The dressing rooms are this way.”

Fiona and Amanda exchanged a look and then shrugged, grabbed an armload of clothes each, and stepped into the dressing rooms.

If Fiona tried on a few things to appease Dallas, then maybe they could find a moment to have a serious talk with her aunt about the League and what it meant to be a goddess. . surely more than fancy clothes.

She got out of her uniform and wriggled into a gown of gray silk that flared about her ankles.

A perfect fit.

Fiona had never had clothes like this-no puckering, not too long or too short, no binding in all the wrong places. It felt better than her own skin.

She added a string of jade beads and turned to the full-length mirror. Her breath hiccupped in her throat. She looked great. Like a model.

Sure, she was still stuck with her unmanageable hair and her face. . but that almost didn’t matter with this dress. The silver made her skin look luminous.

She wanted it. And she wanted to wear clothes like this all the time.

She twirled, and smiled, and then stopped.

So why did it also feel so weird? So wasteful?

“This is great,” Amanda whispered from the adjacent changing room.

“Let me see.”

They both stepped out. Fiona was dumbstruck.

Amanda wore spike red heels and a red skirt that fell to her knees and clung about her slender waist, a white silk blouse, raw rubies that flashed against her skin, and a smart little jacket to match. She had auburn highlights in her hair that Fiona had never noticed before. When she smiled, she looked like a princess or a model on the cover of a magazine. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she had something that had eluded Fiona.

“Wonderful!” Dallas clapped her hands. She hugged them both. “Try something else.”

There was a scratch at Fiona’s wrist: the price tag.

She looked and gasped. Dollar or euros, it wouldn’t matter, this one dress cost more than she made working all last summer at Ringo’s Pizza Palace.

She had the credit card Audrey had given her. That was supposed to be for school supplies and emergencies. Did this qualify as school supplies? Hadn’t Aunt Dallas said there might be school dances? Maybe her clothes were a justifiable fashion emergency?

No. It’d be breaking a rule.

“I’ll just change back,” she murmured, so softly that she thought only she heard.

“Oh no no no,” Dallas said. “Don’t worry about price.” She waved her hand toward Madame Cobweb. “Put it on my account.”

“Oui, mademoiselle. Very generous.”

Amanda trembled with joy and took Dallas’s hands. She looked like she was going to cry.

“Thanks, Aunt Dallas,” Fiona replied. “I don’t know what to say. . ”

She really didn’t know what to say. She was grateful, more than she could express, and she did want the clothes-all of them-but wanting them felt a little like those truffles that she had gotten this summer-delicious and sweet. . and poisoned. It was too much, too perfect.

Audrey’s often-repeated mantra came to her: Too-generous presents come with strings.

Outside the store came muted shouts.

Fiona moved to the window as Dallas and Amanda fell on the rack of clothes, riffling for a new selection.

Those boys again-only this time, their attentions were focused on an old woman carrying two bags of groceries.

They pushed her down. One boy grabbed her bag and scattered vegetables across the sidewalk, stomping on tomatoes, laughing.

Fiona was horrified.

Dallas came to Fiona’s side.

“We have to do something,” Fiona told her.

“Why?” Dallas said. “I told you those boys wouldn’t bother us.”

“But that old woman. .”

“She will be fine,” Dallas reassured her, and gently tugged on her arm. “It’s just a few tomatoes.”

Fiona pulled away.

Her anger kindled. It had been banked and ready to be blown into a full raging inferno. . and this time Fiona welcomed it.

She was mad.

She’d been mad for a while, and it was time she admitted it. She was mad that Team Scarab had lost their first match. Mad at her brother for always getting into trouble. Mad at Amanda for being sad, pathetic, and looking better than her in her dress. And most of all mad at Aunt Dallas for wasting her time and not doing anything to help that old woman.

“Is this what the League does?” Fiona whispered. “Let people get hurt. . while they shop?”

Dallas gave her a look as if to say she should grow up. “My sweet, the ‘people’ always get hurt, and they never appreciate help. There is nothing that can be done for them.”

“Yes, there is.”

Fiona stalked out of the shop.

Only distantly did she realize she must look ridiculous in this wispy little dress and in her bare feet. The cool night air whipped about her. She crunched over broken glass, and it didn’t hurt.

The boys hadn’t seen her-they still taunted the old woman while she wept on the ground.

“Hey!” Fiona yelled.

Fiona shoved the limo out of her way. It had to weigh two tons, but it felt like cardboard.

The boys turned, shocked to see her push aside a car, more shocked to see the look of pure hatred in her