“There’s no need to be unreasonably nasty,” Jenn said nervously. She knew Susan wanted her to be embarrassed and guilty. But she fought against it.
Dammit, she’d had a fistfight with her mother over this exact thing. Time to step up, Jennifer. Stop being a baby, Jennifer. Why aren’t you there for me, Jennifer. Get back to work, Jennifer. Save the world, Jennifer. Raise the dead, Jennifer. Help Susan mourn Gautierre, Jennifer. Don’t think about your EXTREMELY DEAD DAD, Jennifer.
She felt dull heat in her palms and looked; she had clenched her fists so hard, her fingernails had cut the skin.
I am doing the best I can, Winoka, thank you very much, and if that doesn’t leave time to stroke people, that is too damned bad.
“Are you okay?” Susan asked. “You look weird.”
“I’m fine.” She practically strangled on the lie and abruptly was tired of the whole thing. “Yeah, I’m busted. I am not fine. I am the polar opposite of fine. And we need your help.”
“With what?”
Jennifer stared. “Seriously?”
“What’s wrong now?” Susan was unrolling the toilet paper, which was two-ply. She was separating it, making two piles of one- ply. Waste not, want not. “You know, specifically.”
“Well, specifically, my dad’s dead, my mom’s dead on her feet, Skip’s trying to kill us all, so then we’d all be dead, and we need to get the word out to the world, which is pretending we’re dead.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why? You think they don’t know? Everybody knows. My father probably knows, for all the good that’s done me, or anybody.” She shrugged. “We’re screwed. We haven’t got the sense to lie down and stop kicking. It always takes longer for the dumb ones to clue in.”
“Anyway,” Jennifer continued, determined not to strangle Susan . . . not yet. “Anyway, we need you to do another broadcast. Several, in fact. If they see—if they hear—”
“What? We’ll be saved? The National Guard will show up on horseback and save the day? Even you’re not that arrogant.” She paused, then asked, seeming honestly curious, “Are you?”
“Susan, I love you, but will you please knock it off? You think you’re the only one hurting? Have you seen my dead dad around anywhere lately? Hmm? You think I don’t want to curl up on a smelly sleeping bag and turn two-ply T.P. into one-ply?”
Susan shrugged. That maddened Jennifer more than anything else. She wouldn’t even get mad . . . didn’t care enough to so much as raise her voice. It was like yelling at a store mannequin.
“So that’s it?” she yelled.
“Yup.”
“You’re out. You won’t help.”
“Nope.”
“Because you’re sad.”
“Because the cost is too high, and it pretty much always has been. Find another tool, Jenn. I’m done.”
“You’re not a—”
“Don’t even bother. I’m the screwdriver in the Ancient Furnace’s Toolbox of Life . . . or I was, anyway.”
“That’s the worst metaphor I’ve ever heard.”
“Don’t care. Run along, why don’t you. Make a couple of boys fall in love with you or fix a parallel universe or find out about a weird half-sibling or roast a couple of neighborhood cats with your weird sparky smelly breath.” Her eyes turned hard. “Make your way through life, dodging every bullet and arrow while those around you get killed. Come through unscathed, while everyone around you feels pain.”
“That’s not fair, Susan—”
“And do it outside, please, because I’ve got zero interest in continuing this conversation.”
Jennifer wasn’t sure if she was numb or shocked. “What about you?”
“People like me? What you and your mother call ‘the innocents,’ in your clueless, patronizing way? Why, that’s easy. We’ll die.” Susan looked forty years old, which scared Jennifer more than anything else that had happened since she’d knocked on the door. “Gautierre and your dad. They’re the lucky ones, y’know.”
Jennifer turned, began to leave, paused, booted Susan’s backpack into the dining room, and kicked the door open on her way out.
“We’ve got all kinds of toilet paper at the hospital!” she yelled, before slamming the door behind her.
CHAPTER 29
Jennifer
Too much talk. We should go kill them now.
Jennifer rubbed her forehead. An Evangelina-sized migraine was forming behind her eyes. “Color me astonished. Psycho-Beast, here, wants to strew death like I salt french fries.” Mmmm. French fries. When was the last time . . . ?
At what point does the chatter end, with you?
“We’re getting nowhere,” Elizabeth said.
“Then it must be Tuesday.”
They were where people seemed to always end up: the hospital roof. Jennifer wasn’t sure why—it wasn’t exactly supersafe. The view, perhaps.
“I do think,” Dianna said, resplendent in a jade T-shirt and black leggings liberated from the Wal-Mart, “we’ve given your approach enough time, Elizabeth. It’s time to change tactics.”
“What—kill them?”
“At least one of them. Andi, Skip—perhaps it doesn’t matter which.”
“You are so cavalier with other people’s lives. Have you ever read a history book? People kill people, and more people kill more people to prove that killing people was a bad idea. It’s called escalation, Dianna, and nobody wins.”
“Except those who wrote the history book.”
Her mother sighed and looked at the sky.
“Hey, Ms. Wilson,” Jennifer called out. “It’s not that I wouldn’t love to see Skip choking to death on his entrails. Frankly, the thought makes me tingle all over. I’m just not sure what I get out of the deal. It won’t bring down Big Blue. It won’t make a new herd of cattle appear. It won’t make a bunch of—of—I dunno, antibiotic-type thingies like—like—”
“Doxycycline,” her mother said helpfully. “Latamoxef. Cefoperazone.”
“Right, those. It’s not like they’ll suddenly appear in orange bottles stuffed with cotton balls. So what’s the point?”
“The point, silly child, is that he is the enemy, and he is trying to kill you. The most certain way to make sure that does not happen is to kill him first.”
“Do unto others, before they do unto you. That’s your motto, isn’t it, Dianna?” Elizabeth’s tone dripped with contempt.
“It has worked for me so far.”
“Sure it has. You abandoned Jonathan, after all—you hurt him, before he could hurt you. You stuffed your child”— she motioned to Evangelina—“into a dark hole rather than face the consequences of your actions with him. Years later you ditched Otto before he could consume you—though I can’t say I blame you entirely for that. Then you left Skip, before he could grow old enough to leave you. You led the Quadrivium’s sorcery to change the world into something that suited you better, before the world could change you into something that might fit better—and then you called a halt to the whole thing and undid your whole creation rather than risk what Jennifer might do to it. Then you disappeared into some really thin piece of paper, or wherever the hell you’ve been with Evangelina, teaching her the same lessons you’ve taught Andi: avoid what you can, disdain and kill what you can’t.”
Dianna’s lips pressed harder and harder throughout this speech, until Jennifer was certain they would split apart into mandibles. “I was wondering when you would stop being diplomatic with me, Doctor, and start being honest.”
“You want this honest doctor’s opinion? I’m grateful you left Jonathan. I can’t imagine what he would have turned into had you kept your claws in him through early adulthood. At least he died an honorable man.”
“And you’ll die an honorable woman, is that right? And your daughter—she’ll die an honorable girl? And you’ll all be dead, and everyone will honor you and feel sorry that they didn’t listen harder and care more?”
“It??
?s so touching that you’d rather we all lived, and acted more despicable. Like you.”
“I’d rather Jonathan lived. You and your daughter can go to hell.”
“Whoa, hey.” Jennifer raised her hands. “Why all the sudden hate? Don’t tell me you’re still bitter that I fucked up your stupid Arachno-Land.”
“Jennifer, let me explain. Dianna doesn’t hate you because you disturbed the Quadrivium’s plot. She hates you because you represent the child she and Jonathan could have had, if she hadn’t run. If she hadn’t been so weak. If she had maintained a shred of responsibility, and dignity, and respect for her own offspring. Instead, she ended up with the wreck of an excuse of a thing you see festering over there.”
I feel like I should take that personally.
“Dearest, most exalted, most honorable Elizabeth Georges, daughter of such hallowed lineage!” Dianna raised her arms to the sky in mock homage. “What astute words you speak! Tell us, can we come lick the morsels of wisdom from your palms, like dogs before a goddess? Can we, from such a humble ritual, learn to be a hint more like you—the self-righteous, insecure, overbearing perfectionist who can’t stand the thought that her dead husband ever loved another woman? I mean, what was his problem, right? Not waiting for you, instead going off at age sixteen and fucking some cheap spider-tart, when your virginal aura of perfection must have been so damn visible and obvious from hundreds of miles away, even at an early age? And then, only when I was done with him, did he bother to look around and settle for you. Settle for your quaint, homespun philosophy of peace and self-loathing. Settle for a daughter who didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger and kill a ruined, dangerous child like Skip when she had the chance. Several chances, in fact. How much blood is on her hands, because she didn’t stop him? How much blood is on yours? How much more will you let spill?”
“Sounds like you wish you’d done it yourself,” Jennifer shot back. “So why didn’t you? What, after you ditched Evangelina, you ran out of extradimensional holes to stuff your kids into?”
A black fog covered Evangelina. Jennifer drew her blades. Yes. This time, there were no parents interested in stopping them.
You will be excellent practice for when we kill brother and his whore.
Dianna reached out and slapped Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s head snapped to the left ninety degrees, but she was already grinning as she faced forward again.
Then she giggled.
What giggling giggling why?
Jennifer lowered her blades. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Dianna stared at her adversary, irises burning crimson. “How dare you laugh at me?”
“Well, because it’s all so ridiculous!” Elizabeth pulled out her sword and flung it off the roof; they heard it clatter on the asphalt below. “You don’t want this! You don’t want to hurt me at all!”
“Um, Mom. She seriously looks like she wants to hurt you.”
The doctor could not stop smiling. “Okay, sure, so we have Dianna Wilson here, Sorceress Extraordinaire, Traveler of All Dimensions, Warper of Worlds. She’s less than a foot away from me, and what does she do? She slaps me. She doesn’t immolate me with a blink of an eye, or point her wand at me and blast me with a bolt of lightning—”
“We don’t use wands,” Dianna interjected through clenched teeth.
“She doesn’t use any one of what must be three dozen lethal sorceries at her disposal. She reaches out with a flimsy hand and whacks me across the face. Slaps me. Slaps me—she might as well pull my hair and call me a poopyhead! She slaps me like a grade-schooler, Jennifer. Why would she do that? Why?”
It did look ineffective and pointless, Mother. No one can die from slapping. Or hair-pulling.
“Seriously, Jennifer. Why?”
Jennifer rubbed her eyes. “Well, Mom, it sounds like you have a pretty good idea already. Clearly, my rabid half-sister is curious. Why don’t you share?”
“Because she doesn’t want to fight me. Fighting me—I mean, seriously fighting me—would risk killing me. And she knows Jonathan wouldn’t want that. Doesn’t she?”
Dianna stared at her.
Elizabeth leaned in closer and yelled in the other woman’s face. “Doesn’t she?”
“I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want you spitting on her nose, either, Mom.”
“See, she can talk tough all she wants about taking action and going out there and killing people. And if your father were alive and tried to argue with her, she could ignore him and go off and do whatever she wanted, free of conscience. Heaven knows she’s done what she pleased until now. But she can’t, anymore. Because he’s dead. And you can’t argue with a dead person.”
Then soon, she won’t be arguing with you, either.
Before anyone else could react, Dianna had her hand out at the advancing form of her daughter. “Stay back, Evangelina.”
“Yeah, doggie. Stay. Good doggie.”
“You can’t argue with a dead person,” Elizabeth continued, “because the only voice they have left, is the one in your head. The one that won’t hold back, won’t lie, won’t sugarcoat the truth. Dianna here knows exactly what Jonathan would want her to do. And because she still loves him, in her twisted, warped way, she’s going to do it.”
“Again, Mom—are you sure? Because back when she was calling you a self-loathing, overbearing perfectionist, it sounded like she was on a different course.”
“She needed to say her piece. I needed to say mine.”
Dianna exhaled. “You’re done, then.”
“Almost.” Elizabeth wheeled around and slugged Dianna across the jaw. The sorceress dropped like a rock.
“That’s how we learned to slap someone in grade school, here in Winoka.”
The sorceress groaned and rolled halfway over. Elizabeth crouched down and pulled a clump of her beautiful, jet-black hair.
“See, it’s foreplay like that right there, Dianna, which helped Jonathan to get over you. My bed was like a boxing ring, in the best possible way. The love of your life couldn’t wait to go fifteen rounds with me—more, when he could get it. Why, there were weeks we nearly starved to death because we couldn’t bear to stop touching each other. If he hadn’t changed during the crescent moons, we would have ended up with nutritional deficiencies.”
“Okay, Mom. Now you’re hurting me.”
The doctor whispered harshly. “No one asked you to come to this town, Dianna. You don’t like the leadership, don’t let the dome hit you on the ass on the way out.”
She let the head drop, stood up, stepped over the prone form of Dianna Wilson, passed the stunned shadow of Evangelina, and headed for the stairwell. Jennifer followed her, glancing back long enough to point to her eyes, then the two of them, then the sky.
“Um. I guess our watch shift is over. You guys got next.”
CHAPTER 30
Jennifer
The next morning, Evangelina and Dianna were gone.
No one had seen them leave, and Jennifer feared the worst. Or was it the best?
“Do you think they’ve gone to kill Andi and Skip?”
“I don’t know,” her mother answered over a breakfast of highly artificially flavored toaster pastries. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, if they’re gone, what are we going to do the next time Skip sends another swarm?”
“Evacuate, like we did last time.”
“And then?”
It took a few seconds for Elizabeth to stop chewing. “Jennifer, I don’t have all the answers.”
“You sounded pretty sure of yourself yesterday when you were pissing all over your KO.”
“Cute. If you’re done haranguing your mother, I’d like you to take Catherine and Susan and do a townwide patrol. Spend some time in town. Get Susan to do a blog. See if we can rally a few more to help us.”
“Susan doesn’t want to do a blog.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked. She’s still down on Gautierre.” r />
“She needs to pick herself up.”
“Try telling her that.”
“You try telling her that. She’s your friend.”
“What’s the point?” she snapped. “No one listens to me. Or you. Not Susan, not Ember, not what’s left of Hank’s army, not Evangelina or Dianna, not Andi, and certainly not Skip!”
Elizabeth’s calm did not give way. “You’re suggesting we give up.”
“I’m suggesting the two of us can’t do it all!”
“We have others.”
“What others? A few dozen nursing assistants? What are we going to do—sling bedpans at these people? Mom, it’s time to give up. We’re not doing anything useful—”
“Don’t you dare.” Elizabeth actually reached across the cafeteria table and clenched her daughter’s hair, ignoring the startled yelp. “Don’t you dare dishonor him like this. I do not care how hard this gets for you. He sacrificed his afterlife for you. People are depending—on you. You have a responsibility. You will see it through.”
“Ow, Mom, my hair—”
“Preferably without whining.”
Without looking away, Jennifer reached up carefully and disentangled her mother’s fingers from her locks. Elizabeth relented, but her face retained its hardness.
“You’re a bitch.”
Her mother blinked slowly, like an owl. “You’re soft.”
“Well, I’d rather be soft than—”
“You mean, you’d rather be selfish than take responsibility.”
Jennifer kicked back her chair and stood. “Oh, here we go. I’ve been taking responsibility for the last two years! I became the fucking Ancient Furnace when I didn’t want to. My reward for that dumb-ass stunt was I got to watch Grandpa die, and then found and fought his murderer when no one else could. Remember? Or were you too busy working at the hospital and giving patients more attention than you ever gave me?”