The Almost Sisters(40)

That’s when I knew that I was drawing Violet. Violet had always been the object of every gaze.

Fine. The story truly began with her, and anyway, I was in no mood for Violence.

I wanted more natural light, so I pulled the drapes back open. It was still too early, but across the square the sky was turning all the colors of state-fair cotton candy. Shades that Violet liked, pale and baby sweet.

So Violet did have a part in Violence’s origin; she was my way in. Maybe Violence couldn’t begin without her, though I hadn’t thought that Violet would appear in the prequel when I’d signed the contract.

But maybe she had to, I thought as I etched her willowy lines, imagining the butter and sunshine shades that made her hair and sundress. She knelt on a patch of scraggly grass, snuggling a postapocalyptic mutant kitten. Violet had begun as a version of me, and her innocence had called Violence. I couldn’t imagine Violence without her. Had Violence protected innocence—or innocents—before Violet came along? I didn’t think so. It felt . . . The word that came into my head was “unfaithful,” though there was no indication anywhere that Violence and Violet were lovers. It felt unfaithful anyway, on a deeper level than a thwarted romance.

I was liking Violet’s expression, joyful and oblivious as she clutched the nightmare animal cheek to cheek. She looked like she was saying, Squee! The cattish monster hung in her arms, its clawed limbs dangling, looking long-suffering and resigned. I liked it, too, but the more detail I added to the “kitten,” the more he looked familiar.

He had long, sharp ears shaped like katana blades, and I’d frilled his neck and belly with barbs of black fur. He looked less postapocalyptic and more gothic. I set my pencil down, plagiarism bells going off in the back of my mind. He was derivative, but who was I stealing from?

Then I had it. He looked a lot like a vampiric Batman, the way Kelley Jones had drawn him in “Knightfall.”

If I was looking for permission to put my Batman back in the closed-story file, instablocking him, my hands weren’t giving it to me. They’d drawn him right into the picture. They had put him with Violet, too, and she seemed pretty pleased to have him. No one had ever accused me of being an optimist, but my hands were saying that Lav’s coup could be a good thing. Were they right?

I stared down at the town square as if the answer might drive itself around the corner, but all that appeared was a white SUV. A Nissan Pathfinder. It was very new and high-end for a Birchville car, and so spanking clean in the sunrise light that it reminded me of Rachel’s.

I stood up almost involuntarily, the chair scraping back.

Holy crap, it was Rachel’s. As it came closer, I could see her blond head behind the wheel. It was like waking to find that the Statue of Liberty had yanked itself out of the Hudson while no one was looking, Weeping Angel style, and come speeding across the country toward me. I blinked and scrubbed my eyes, and when I opened them, the SUV had pulled into our driveway.

I reached for my robe and yanked it on, both to better hide my Digby bulge and because the town had seen quite enough of me standing in the yard in my yummy sushi pj’s. I jammed my feet into my purple Chucks and hurried down the stairs with the laces untied and trailing. By the time I got out the door, Rachel was standing beside the open hatchback, dragging out a massive piece of luggage.

“Rachel, what on earth!” I said.

She let her very expensive suitcase tumble to the ground, bruising the leather.

“Thank God it’s the right house,” she said. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her hair was scraped into an untidy pony. She was wearing sweatpants, or whatever exalted name sweatpants that cost two hundred dollars went by. They had crumbs stuck to them, and she was breathing heavily, a fraught, pre-cry kind of breathing. Her chest heaved as if this were a bring-your-own-emergency party and she’d come fully equipped. “Where’s Lavender?”

“Sleeping. That’s what normal, human people do at this hour of the morning,” I said, but very gently, because I’d never seen Rachel in such a state. I was already coming down the porch stairs toward her, worried but also the smallest bit fascinated. “Rachel, did you drive all night?”

“Of course I did,” Rachel said. Now she was hauling an even larger piece of luggage out of the back. I stepped over to help her. “I told you I was coming.”

No, she had told me she would handle it. I’d assumed she meant she’d make reservations and then send me instructions, detailed and precise, in her usual levelheaded way. But I wasn’t going to argue with her, not when she was in such a ruined, un-Rachel-ed state.

“This is sure a lot of luggage,” I said, overly hearty. I ought to hug her, or pet her frazzled hair, something. In my darkest hours, Rachel enveloped me in strong, medicinal hugs, firm and sure, like I was a tube of sad toothpaste and she was trying to squeeze every bit of sorrow out of me. Now I couldn’t even put a friendly hand down on her shoulder; the very air around her seemed to vibrate with a touch-me-not unhappiness. “Are you sure we need to bring all of this inside?”

“I don’t want it to get stolen,” Rachel said, slamming the hatchback shut.

“It won’t get stolen,” I assured her. Rachel had never lived in a small town.

She grabbed the larger piece and began dragging it toward the house, saying, “You never know.”

“I pretty much do know,” I told her, but I pulled the handle out and started dragging the smaller bag. It was something I could do that felt like helping her. I followed her up the porch stairs. “We could leave it all in the car—unlocked, even—and it wouldn’t get stolen. Or if it did, three witnesses would be calling the police and telling them exactly who was stealing it, by name, before the thief got halfway up the block.”