And the storm came. "He's one of Them, Deirdre."
I shook my head.
"I know he is. I saw him twenty years ago, and he looked just the same as he did the other day."
She had mistaken him for someone else.
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"Right before the rest of Them show up, he does. He was there for Delia."
I managed to get a few words out. "He saved me, Granna. Did you forget that part?"
She shrugged, irritatingly nonchalant. I wanted to smack her for casually trampling over my heart. "It's all games, Deirdre. They love games. Cruel sports. Don't you remember the old bedtime stories? Riddles and names and trickery. And why would They want you dead, anyway?
They want to steal you away." She mistook the look on my face, and unusual sympathy crept into her voice. "Oh, don't worry! I'll find you another piece of iron jewelry."
I grasped the key at my neck and thrust it toward her. "He can touch iron, Granna. You said They couldn't touch it. Well, he can. He could touch the ring, and he gave me this. He warned me about Them." I pushed my chair back angrily. "I don't think he's one of Them."
Granna pulled the lid off her box of emotions just long enough to let a frown escape. "Are you sure he can touch iron?
In my head, his fingers touched the skin next to the key, held my fingers, glanced against the ring.
"I'm sure."
She actually let another frown, a deeper one, out of the box. "He must--he must be some sort of half-breed. Something--did he have eyedrops?"
My heart, which had begun to beat faster at the word 'half-breed,' stopped when she mentioned the drops. I didn't
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have to answer; my face told her everything she wanted to know.
"He has to use the drops to see Them." She stood up and pushed her chair in. "I'm going to have to see if I can make something that will work on him."
I couldn't help myself. "Do you have to?"
She looked at me again, hard. "Deirdre, everything he's told you is a lie. They don't have souls.
They don't have friends. They don't love. They play. They're big, cruel children and They want shiny new toys. You're shiny and new. He's playing you."
I thought I ought to feel like crying, then, but my eyes weren't even a little wet. Or I should be angry, or something, but I was just nothing. I was so full of nothing that it was something.
"Go and relax on the sofa. I'll be in the workshop, and I'll take you home when I'm done."
I didn't answer, because nothing had no voice. I just did what she said and retreated to the living room, reaching for the image of Luke holding me, and finding nothing.
***
I watched
Cops
reruns until the shadows shifted and lengthened over the edge of the white wicker couch. The eight-hundredth cop was slamming the eight-hundredth criminal over the back of their car when my phone rang. I looked at the number and picked it up. "Hi."
"Capital D!" James' voice exclaimed, distantly.
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I couldn't work up the same enthusiasm. "Sorry I didn't call you today. I'm at--"
"Granna's. Your mom told me. She sounds pissier than an incontinent water buffalo. Can I come over and hang out?"
I considered. I didn't know what I wanted, but being alone wasn't it. "That would be great."
"I was hoping you'd say that," James said, and I heard a car door shut outside the window.
"Because I'm already here and it would suck to drive back home now."
The phone went dead in my hand, and then I heard the screen door slam. James found me in the living room, and I stood up to move a stack of holistic healing books from the other end of the sofa.
He set a large, fast-food cup on the end table. "I know Granna doesn't make it sweet enough, so I brought you some of the real stuff from Sticky Pig." He eyed my arm, which was clean but obviously chewed on. "Are you okay?"
He looked so normal and safe, standing there with his summer-brown arms and his Sarcasm: Just Another Service I Offer T-shirt. He looked like every summer I'd ever known and reminded me of everything I couldn't seem to have right now. I fought valiantly with a strange rush of emotions for about one-third of a second, and then I burst into tears.
"Hey, hey!" James sat down with me on the couch and let me cry onto his sarcasm T-shirt. He didn't ask any questions or try to get me to talk, because that's how awesome a friend he is.
Realizing that just made me cry more. And
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then I thought of how pathetic this whole crying jag was, which made me cry even more.
James bundled me closer as I started to shiver, his arms wrapped tightly around me like a living sweater. My teeth chattered. I finally stuttered, "I think I'm in shock."
He reached up and wiped tears from my cheeks with the side of his writing-scrawled hand.
"Does this have anything to do with the chomp marks on your arm? If you had them before, I don't remember them. And I've got, like, a crazy eye for detail."
I laughed pitifully. "If I'd had a video camera when I got them, I'd be rich. It was this giant cat-thing." I swallowed a new batch of stupid tears and shuddered again, involuntarily. "When will the shivering stop?"
"When you calm your ass down." He stood up and tugged on my good arm. "C'mon. You need fries, obviously."
I let him haul me up, feeling better already. "What I need is a supernatural stun gun."
"Maybe they'll have one of those, too. I didn't look closely at the daily specials."
A thought occurred to me. "I have to tell Granna I'm going. She's doing some sort of voodoo in her workshop."
We
