Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(86)

"It doesn't matter," I said.

"It did to Mr. Nix."

The name caused my mind to roll back over ten years. I'd stayed after school to sign up for the gymnastics club. I was so excited to be part of something, anything. I was humming as I shut my locker and turned to go home.

My heart leaped, nearly choking me, when a shadow loomed up and blocked my way. Though the neighborhood was fairly safe, the schools downright decent, we were still close to a large city with a high crime rate, and face it—

Shit happened. I'd just hoped it had finally stopped happening to me.

My gaze had slid right, left, searching for a way to escape; then the light splashed across the man's face, and I nearly fainted with relief.

"Mr. Nix. You scared me."

"Elizabeth," he murmured, his German accent giving my plain English name a lilt. "Why here so late"— he smiled—"and so alone?"

The skin at the back of my neck prickled as my well-developed self-preservation instinct whispered, Why is a male math teacher in the girls' locker room?

I didn't want to turn, to take my eyes off the man. When he grabbed me, and he would grab me, I didn't need to be psychic to understand that, I wanted to be facing him. The idea of having those thick, hard hands clutch at me from behind made me sick.

I shouldn't have been so scared. I'd been hassled before, many times. I'd been groped by new "brothers," "fathers," and even on one occasion a "big sister." All it ever took was my reciting a secret I'd plucked from their head, and they'd not only let me go in a big hurry, they'd made certain I didn't live with them any longer.

But Mr. Nix was a teacher, and even though he'd made me nervous on occasion, staring at me too often and too long, I'd just figured he was curious about my background. A lot of people were. I'd never figured on something like this.

For a large man—at least six-four, two-sixty—he moved fast, and when he grabbed me I didn't have time to think about running, let alone do it.

As soon as his skin met mine, I heard music. Loud, strange, foreign. Not a polka—I'd lived in Milwaukee more than a minute—a polka I knew, but similar. Same instruments, different beat.

Following close on the heels of the sound came the images—ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers. Girls upon girls, floating dead in those waters, and the flashes of what he'd done to them before he'd tossed them away.

He tore my shirt in half with one big, meaty hand. I was a well-developed thirteen, and my breasts nearly burst from the bra that had fit just fine only a month ago.

"I can play a while," he murmured, his milky blue gaze crawling over my dusky skin. "Play, play, play."

He drew two pale index fingers over the swells, down to the nipples, which he gave a vicious tweak. I thrust my knee up so hard his cock got very friendly with his larynx.

Instead of going down, he flared his nose like a bull's, then he swept his arms toward me in a bear hug. I ducked, and his face kissed locker.

Considering how fast he'd grabbed me in the first place, I didn't expect to get away. But it wasn't in my nature to just stand there and take it. The instant he fell, I ran.

"Who you think you are?" he shouted, voice guttural, accent even more pronounced with pain. "Nothing yet. No one ever. I will kill you first, f*ck you after. It is better that way."

I burst out of the locker room and ran straight into Jimmy.

I screamed, and he slapped his hand over my mouth. From the expression on his face, he'd at least heard the last part. He was furious, and for an instant I thought he might charge into the locker room and—

I'm not sure what. At thirteen Jimmy hadn't grown into his hands or his feet. He'd never grow into a body as large as that of Mr. Nix.

If he confronted the bigger man, Sanducci would get hurt, maybe die, because of me, and while I'd told him on several occasions, just that morning in fact, to "drop dead"—or had it been the more colorful "eat shit and die?"—I didn't want him to actually do it.

"Come on," he said, and took my hand. The anger in his eyes smoldering, he dragged me out the nearest door and into the night.

I shivered, and not just because my shirt hung in shreds, or even because my math teacher had just molested me. But also because it was spring in Milwaukee and snow was still piled at the edges of the driveways, the yards, the corners of the roads. Here and there daffodils pushed through the half-frozen mud, their bright yellow petals brighter because of the remaining splotches of white.

The slick slide of the switchblade registered seconds after the pure silver weapon appeared in Sanducci's hand. I lifted my gaze from the knife, sparkling merrily in the glow from a distant streetlight, to Jimmy's face. What I saw there made me shiver even more.

We kept to the alleys and backyards, to the shadows. I didn't hear sounds of pursuit—the guy couldn't be that stupid, could he? Of course he didn't know about Jimmy and his pet knife.

A few dogs barked, a few lights went on as we skittered through yards, but half an hour later we entered Ruthie's empty kitchen. I'd hoped to creep upstairs, take a scalding hot shower or ten, burn my clothes, and pretend nothing had happened. But as soon as the door shut, Jimmy shouted, "Ruthie!"

"Are you nuts?"

He let his eyes drop to where I clutched my shredded shirt over my breasts. "Are you?"