Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(44)

It’s dark again inside the warehouse, but she can tell from the shapes of their bowed heads they’re studying the shadows at their feet, considering her words.

“Also, there’s another reason we need the film,” she says.

“What’s that?” Marty asks.

“It might be all you guys have if something happens to me.”

“All right now,” Marty says, closing the distance between them. He seems to have forgotten what she’s capable of until he’s curled an arm around her back. By then it’s too late to pull away without being insultingly obvious about it. But he does stiffen briefly before he begins walking her toward the ruined entrance. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you, Charley. Come on. Let’s go do your little movie shoot. We’ve only got two hours left.”



They’d agreed to do the shoot back at the safe house. When they’d first rolled up, and Kayla and Marty asked her to hang back while they cased the place, she’d had to remind them she was the one capable of breaking someone’s spine with a light shove, so why not have her go in first? With bowed heads, they’d complied. The house had turned out to be as empty as they’d left it.

Now, the shoot complete, she’s in the shower, washing off the grime of that awful bar, scrubbing her ear of the sticky film left by her assailant’s hot whiskey breath.

The strength left her a few minutes ago. Three hours after being triggered, just as she’d expected. And even though she feels newly vulnerable, there’s a comfort to knowing the pill keeps a regular schedule. That parts of it are knowable, quantifiable. It makes it seem a little less frightening than it was the night before.

Under the spray, she studies the mottled skin on her hand. She’d spent several minutes passing it back and forth through the stove’s open flame while Marty filmed. The skin should be badly discolored, but instead it looks like it’s been drawn on with a red marker and the ink has already started to fade. The effect was similar to when she pressed the spike against her palm: a riot of sudden bruising accompanied by dull pain that was mostly pressure. There’s probably some threshold, some intensity level at which the heat and the flames become unbearable. But if the first test is any indicator, it’s more than can be produced by a single stove.

Recounting her story for the unbiased lens on Marty’s phone felt therapeutic, more cathartic than repeating it to Kayla and Marty, maybe because she didn’t feel like she had to make anyone believe her. The proof was right there in her hands, in the way the flames kissed her skin. For good measure, she also bent several pieces of rebar they’d brought from the warehouse, and cracked some chunks of concrete, the latter of which Kayla and Marty convinced her to carry in from the car with the two of them flanking her like Secret Service agents so nosy neighbors couldn’t observe her impossible strength.

There’d been one other endurance test she’d wanted to try, but when she asked them to head out to the backyard with her, they just glared at her.

Good call, she thinks now. Maybe I’m not ready to try taking a bullet, either.

But there was another test they had agreed to help with.

Once they’d finished making the video, Kayla drove to a gas station and came back with a box of wine and two bottles of vodka. Charlotte has always been a lightweight—one glass of wine usually makes her powerfully dizzy. And the hard stuff makes her sick to her stomach after a few swallows. Given her past, and her grandmother’s genes, she’s always figured this for a blessing. Her weak stomach and delicate sense of balance are probably what kept her from self-medicating over the years. But they also ruled out evening libations as potential sleep aids, which made her more vulnerable to Dylan’s plot, so maybe she shouldn’t be so grateful for these metabolic quirks. Not yet anyway.

But with Zypraxon thundering through her system, she was able to drink two glasses of straight vodka without so much as a wince. Same story with the wine. As Marty and Kayla looked on in astonishment, she metabolized both bottles like they were iced water with lemon. The pill doesn’t give her just strength but a kind of temporary imperviousness to any physical limitation.

Except flying, she thinks, laughing under her breath. But maybe if I ran fast enough to get started . . .

There’s a knock on the door. It’s Marty, checking to make sure she’s OK.

A few minutes later, she’s toweling off, realizing she’s got no idea where she’s headed next and wondering if she should have been giving more thought to that than to Dylan’s deceptions and magic pills.

Is she spending the night here? The choice makes her feel suddenly exhausted, in the way everything she did while on the drug should have made her feel but didn’t.

What would the AA folks say?

One step at a time.

Which in this particular instance means it’s a better idea to change into a real outfit and not pajamas.



Kayla and Marty are waiting for her in the living room. They’ve got steaming cups of coffee, which they’re taking absent sips from as they watch Jason’s disposable phone do absolutely nothing on the coffee table between them. They’d bought a charger for the thing when they bought Charlotte’s change of clothes.

Neither of them looks the slightest bit tired, even though it’s after two in the morning.

“I don’t mean to be blunt,” Marty says, “but should you really be carrying around the cell phone of a guy who tried to rape you?”