Ink and Bone(85)

“He took us because we’re like you,” she said to Finley, as if she had been waiting. “He calls us Dreamers. We see the other things, the people who aren’t there.”

“Who took you?” Finley asked. “Who calls you that?”

“The old man,” she said. “You’ve seen him. He knows you.”

Finley took a step closer. For a moment Finley flashed on the girl’s face as it had been, bright with innocence, the glitter of mischief, a big toothy smile that could light the world. This girl was solemn and grim, her eyes just shining black holes containing all the knowledge of the world. Not a ghost, just a form of energy that Finley could recognize and understand. She couldn’t stop shivering.

“You can still save her,” the girl said.

“How?” asked Finley, moving a careful step closer. A rush of hope. “How can I save her?”

A shot rang out, shattering the quiet of the place. She felt the sound rattle her bones, spinning toward it. When Finley turned back, the girl was gone.





TWENTY-SEVEN


Wherever he was, it was so dark that he was essentially blind. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. And he had some vague awareness that he was hurt in a significant way; his leg felt odd, as if it didn’t quite fit on his body the way it was supposed to. There was pain, but it was oddly distant like a siren just out of earshot. Where was he? How had he gotten here?

He had a foggy recollection of Finley kneeling over a woman who was obviously dead, her face smashed. And Rainer had been trying to pull her away. Clearly, they were out of their depth, and the snow was getting heavier. They were both getting frostbite; Finley’s mouth was literally blue. It was time to take charge of the situation, he remembered, thinking, and if Finley thought he was being controlling and overbearing, well, that was too bad.

“Finley,” he said. “She’s dead.”

Finley hadn’t said a word, just kneeled there, rocking in a weird way. She’d gotten blood all over herself, and it was seriously freaking Rainer out. He was about to lift her to her feet and carry her out of there, when he saw something in the bushes, a dark form that slipped in and out of the trees and then was gone.

“Who’s out there?” he called. He didn’t like that his voice sounded high pitched and scared.

Man, he really hated the f*cking woods. There was a primordial wildness that unsettled him. It was like you could die out here and your body would just become one with all the other organic debris. Animals and insects would come and feed on your flesh; your body would decompose in its own acids, and the earth would rise up to swallow it. No grave, no headstone. There was nothing clean or sanitized or palatable about it. There was not some part of you that stayed forever, body preserved in a coffin, ashes in an urn on someone’s mantel. You’d be gone as if you never were, just absorbed like a rotten log. Only your bones would bear witness to the form you’d held.

“But that’s what it is,” Finley had said, though Rainer hadn’t said a word. She’d done that before when she was like this. “That’s as it should be. We are one with the earth.”

“Sure,” he said. “But not today. We are out of here, Finley.”

He saw the shadow again, and then there was the laughter he’d heard before. Or was it just the strange way the wind sounded, caught in the hollows of the trees, whistling?

“I have to help her,” said Finley.

He leaned in as close as he could stand to the bloody mess on the ground. Dead. Definitely dead, skull smashed in, face just a mass of ruined flesh.

“She’s dead,” he said. “The only way we can help is to get the police.”

Finley was light, and he hoisted her easily.

“Put me down,” she protested weakly. Rainer headed back the way they came, with Finley pounding on his back. That’s when he saw her.

“What the f*ck?”

He put Finley down, and she immediately ran back to the dead woman’s body.

That girl in the shadows; he’d know her anywhere. It wasn’t just the moonlight of her skin or the ice of her eyes. It wasn’t just the twisted spools of her fire-kissed hair, or the delicate lines of her neck. It was her scent—something grassy and clean; it was her essence. He’d come to know her as he etched her picture into the delicate flesh of Finley’s body. Abigail, the oldest of The Three Sisters.

There was a deep intimacy to ink work, especially when he worked with Fin. He saw what she wanted him to see. And when he put the needle to her skin and inked those images onto her flesh, he was closer to her than he was at any other time. She trusted him, opened herself to him. She let him mark her body with total faith in their connection. Even when their other connections—as lovers and friends—were strained, that remained. In that bond, Abigail dwelled.

“You’re not real,” he said. “I’m losing it.”

It was the cold, right? Hallucinations as hypothermia set in?

Abigail just smiled.

“Finley,” Rainer said, his own voice sounding wobbly and scared.

But Finley was in her own world, lost to him.

“Fin,” he said again, louder still. “Will you wake up?”

Then he was following Abigail, because there was just no way not to follow. She danced like a sprite through the trees, and he found himself running to keep up. He’d see a flash of red, a starburst of white, hear the bells of her laughter. Even though he knew that she was leading him away from Finley, he followed anyway. Even though he knew that Abigail was a bad girl and not to be trusted, he found that he couldn’t help but play her little game.