Mel was still confused, but her confusion lay in her reactions. Why hadn’t she called someone? The box on the floor of her apartment this morning had been a reproach and a reminder. She remembered a little more of the day before, but so much was still hazy.
“I’m not sure, Baby. I’m not sure about anything except that something is very wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, then touched Mel’s hand. “Is that better?”
The fog cleared almost instantly. The story.
“I think I need to hear the rest. I need to know the ending.”
Baby nodded and they walked to the car. “You do.”
Mel didn’t have the patience for auto-drive, so she whipped around traffic and confused all the other cars into letting her pass. She was tempted to use the police emitter, which would force every car in her path to move aside, but she didn’t. Emitter usage was tracked, and she was only driving to the park. The computer that tallied these things might see that as an abuse of power.
Baby watched her as she drove, her expression concerned but calm. She said not a word as they moved through the crowded and dirty city with its combination of astonishing wealth and destitution. At the park, Mel led Baby to the playground and the benches where parents watched their children swing.
“You did something to someone here, didn’t you?” Mel asked after they sat silently for a few minutes.
“A bad woman.”
“Is she dead?”
Baby shrugged. “Maybe.”
“And that’s why my hand feels better, isn’t it?”
This time the girl smiled. “You’ve put a lot together since yesterday.”
Mel shook her head. “I don’t think it’s been put together really. I think I’m just seeing what I didn’t want to see.”
“That does happen.”
Mel’s mind was clearer than it had been since she lost track of things at the glade the day before. Blocks fell into place easily now, like they wanted to come together and tell a story. It was like it all wanted to come together and create a picture she couldn’t deny or explain away.
Shifting on the bench so she could see Baby straight on, she said, “Someone delivered a box to me yesterday. How did you do that?”
With a quick lift of her brows and a momentary widening of the eyes, Baby managed to convey a great deal, but she added the words, “That was a close one, I admit that. I’ve had that evidence on my mind a great deal lately.”
“Tell me. Tell me how and why and…”
“Everything?” Baby suggested.
“Yes. Tell me what it means.”
“When I killed Leonard, I didn’t yet know what I could do. It was the music. The first time you hear it, it can take you away unless someone is there to tell you how it’s done. You see, we all have a song. Some melody or tune that’s specific to us. It changes with time. Old songs stop working the same or a new song comes that overrides the old one. Some last for years. I’ve heard of songs that can last for centuries. It’s like a war chant or something, only now, it’s regular music that does it. I think it goes back a very long way.”
Mel’s brow creased at that. Others? Centuries? War chant?
Baby waved that away and said, “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the song is what does it. The second time, I was ready. I found a new…patron…and when I put on the record, I was prepared. I knew what I was doing and that time, I kept on taking and at the end, the man simply disappeared into greasy particles, like sticky ash.” Baby held up a cupped hand. “I could have fit him in here.”
Mel nodded, thinking of the bodies that would have been left behind that weren’t. “And that’s why only Deering was found?”
“Yes. You can always tell a first-timer who didn’t have a teacher by the body left behind.”
Mel was saddened by this. Not by the murder, because that was simple self-defense as far as she was concerned. Maybe defense of others, if not self-defense, but that was still a good thing in every legal book. No, what saddened her was the life Baby had to lead.
“So, you just stay young and have to go through this over and over?”
Baby nodded, no joy left in her eyes. “It’s the price.”
“Forever?”
“What’s forever?”
“What happens if you stop?”
Now, Baby shifted on the bench to face Mel, her eyes narrowed. “Would you be able to live with knowing what would happen to others if you could do this and you simply stopped?”
“Oh.”
“Exactly. It’s the price.”
Mel wondered at the sheer volume so many years would bring. “How many men?”
Baby shook her head. “No clue.”
“And yet, there are still so many left. You’d think the bad ones would be extinct by now.”
Mel couldn’t really describe the look that crossed Baby’s face at those words. A mixture of shared disbelief, exasperation, sadness, and perhaps a little anger too.
“That’s the thing, Mel, the real thing. Something has gone wrong with the world. There’s an imbalance that I can’t put my finger on. Is it that there are so many people that there’s no restraint? So much crowding that the fear of being caught is less than the desire to do wrong? Is it that those who have the bad inside them see so many children to which they owe no duty that their natural hesitation is lifted? And it’s not just men. Women too, though mostly they possess a different kind of evil that isn’t mine to stop. It’s everywhere in a thousand different kinds of evil.” She paused and shook her head. “I don’t know where it stems from, but the imbalance is there and it’s growing. That’s why there are more like me too. More being born all the time.”
Once again, Baby’s gray eyes turned green when she said, “More like me being found.”
Mel felt a shiver down her back and goose prickles break out all over her body.
“Why did you
