Under Attack

Grandma shrugged. “You can only play a harp for so many hours each day.”

“I guess.”

“Sophie, dear, don’t go looking for your father. It won’t help.”

“What do you know about my father?” I asked, feeling a familiar prick up the back of my neck. “If you know something, you should tell me.”

“I know enough about him to know that you should steer clear of him.”

“Grandma ...”

“Look,” Grandma said, “I’m not going to tell you what to do, honey, but listen to me: Don’t try to find him. It’s not worth it. Trust me on this.”

“So much for not telling me what to do.”

Grandmother’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t sass me, young lady. Mark my words: Your father is only going to let you down.” Grandma’s voice softened, and there was a moist wistfulness in her milky eyes. “Just like he let your mother down.”

“Grandma, don’t I deserve to know my father? At the very least, just to know a few things about him? Why would that be such a bad thing?”

Grandma sucked on her teeth and shook her head, her long dangly earrings jangling against her jawbone.

“I just need to know a few things about myself.”

“Like what?” my grandmother huffed. “I can tell you everything you need to know. You learned to ride a bike when you were seven. You’re a rubbish card player, you come from good Hungarian stock, and you have a weakness for anything with marshmallow in it.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Grandma relented, her shoulders noticeably sagging. “If you’re going to look for your father, you need to be prepared for what you find.”

I felt my shoulders stiffen. “Like what? What am I going to find out about him? You’re not telling me anything about him. No one is!”

“Even if I wanted to tell you about him—which I don’t—I couldn’t.” Grandma looked around, her eyes checking the corners of my rearview mirror. “It’s not something I can just talk about all willy-nilly out here.”

I was getting frustrated. “What can’t you talk about?”

My grandmother pursed her lips in an expression that tugged at my heart. I had seen it before whenever she was trying to protect me from something she didn’t think I could handle.

“I can handle whatever you tell me, Gram. And isn’t it better for me to find out things from you rather than on my own?”

“I’m sorry, Sophie,” Grandma said. “I’m sorry, honey, but I just can’t.”

“Gram? Gram!” I peered into the mirror, my own squinting eyes reflecting back at me.

I got out of the car feeling deflated, the frustrated, grumpy feeling still around me. I walked the entire way to my walk-up looking behind me and jumping at every little sound.

I pushed open my apartment door and stood in the foyer, looking around anxiously. “Hello?” I called out, reminding myself of every character ever killed in horror movies. “Anybody home?”

When no one answered me, I dumped my shoulder bag onto the couch and then flopped there myself, letting my heartbeat slow to a normal, non-frenetic pace.

I almost swallowed my tongue when I heard the knock on my door.

“Son of a—!” I cursed, rolling off the couch and heading for the door. I popped the chain and inched the door open.

“Sophie Lawson?”

Her eyes were impossibly pale and lined with huge, delicate lashes that cast spiderweb shadows across her ruddy pink cheeks.

“Ophelia,” I whispered, without opening the door any wider.

Ophelia’s pink lips split into a delighted sweet smile, and she bobbed her shoulders in that cute, sorority-girl way that I couldn’t get away with. The movement left the faint scent of her freesia perfume on the air. “You know me!”

I stood there, dumbfounded, trying to work out a plan in my head: let her in, try and talk? I chanced a quick second glance at her through the two-inch gap in the doorway: tall, blond, primly dressed in a melon-colored twin set and pencil skirt, a strand of glazed pearls demurely wrapped around her neck. She looked more like a PTA mom than a crazed supernatural killer.

Then I thought of Alex, his stern eyes and the hard set of his jawline as he warned about Ophelia. Maybe I should slam the door and take off running? I was seriously considering the latter when there was a splitting smack against my cheek. A piercing heat starburst through my nose, up against my forehead. I reeled backward, stumbling into my living room, my eyes watering from the sting. I blinked rapidly and the tears tumbled down my cheeks as I pressed my fingers against the mashed-in spot where my nose once was. Now it stung and started to tickle as the blood came.

Ophelia’s eyes still looked wide and innocent; there wasn’t a wrinkle or a shard of splintered wood on her twin set, and her pearls had barely moved.

I gaped at Ophelia as she stood in my foyer, arms crossed in front of her, a delicate purse hanging from her pinkie.

My front door hung limply from its hinges just over her left shoulder. I was so not going to get my security deposit back.

“I was going to let you in, you know,” I said, my hand massaging a new hot spot on my cheek.

Ophelia shrugged. “Patience is a virtue.” Her eyes narrowed and sparkled with something that sent a cold chill down my spine. “And I’m not very virtuous. Now come on.” She held out her hand, palm up, fingers beckoning. “I don’t have all day. And frankly”—she looked around my apartment distastefully—“your decorating is giving me hives.”

I crossed my own arms in front of my chest and widened my stance, determined to stare her down. I heard a high-pitched giggle reverberate through my head and then Ophelia’s rich voice. Cute, I heard her say—although her lips stayed pressed together in a pale pink line. You think you can stand up to me?

“Don’t do that,” I said, my teeth gritted.

“Do what?” she asked, batting her eyelashes innocently.

A second tinkle of laughter swept through my head. I wanted to clench my eyes shut, but I knew better than to take my gaze off Ophelia.

“Stop.”

“Then give me what I want.”

“I don’t—” Before I could finish my sentence, my thought, Ophelia was nose to nose with me and then her hands were on my chest, shoving me hard. I was off balance, reeling backward, groaning when I felt my back make contact with the floor, my head thumping against the carpet. “Oaf !”

“Don’t screw with me!” she snarled, advancing toward me.

I yelped when Ophelia’s foot made contact with my thigh and a wallop of pain ached through me.

She lunged for me again and I rolled out of her way, but not before her hand grazed the top of my head, her fingernails raking through my hair. I howled and turned instinctively, and was surprised when I felt the back of my hand make contact with Ophelia’s cheek. There was a satisfying crack and I retrieved my stinging hand.

We both stood looking at each other in stunned silence—her rubbing her reddening cheek, me rubbing my new bald spot. She lunged for me again, barely missing me as I crab-crawled to the bookshelf and used it to pull myself up, the ache in my leg tightening like a fist. I used the back of my arm to swipe at my nose, and my stomach lurched when I saw the bright red ribbon of blood on my arm. Other people’s blood never bothered me that much, but my own was a different story. I felt woozy and Ophelia seemed to know it, her face breaking into a satisfied half-smile.

“This could go so much more smoothly, you know,” she said, picking up a lamp and smashing it on the coffee table Van Damme style. She held the broken shards to me, her baby pink lips distorted into a gruesome snarl. “Give it!”