Mercy

  Less than a hundred yards away, four men were carrying a coffin. They were dressed in dark suits, hats on their heads. A line of people came behind them. The women all wore long, old-fashioned dresses, like Mercy’s. Some had shawls around their shoulders and heads.

  No, Haley thought. No, Mercy, I can’t be here. I have to find Jake—

  But Mercy wasn’t there.

  Haley looked around in panic. There was no figure at her side, flickering at the edge of her vision. And Mercy wasn’t among the women walking behind the coffin, either.

  Had Mercy brought her here and abandoned her? Left her a hundred years in the past, away from Patience—and Alan, and Jake?

  “Mercy!” she shouted. Or meant to. Her voice made no sound. She grabbed at a nearby headstone and felt nothing. Her fingertips moved through the solid stone as easily as through mist.

  A ghost. She was a ghost.

  With nothing else to do, Haley ran toward the funeral. She had seen Mercy, when Mercy was a ghost in Haley’s time. Maybe somebody now—then—would see her, help her.

  The men were carrying the coffin toward a place Haley remembered. They hadn’t reached it yet, but Haley could see where they were headed. A willow tree—not as tall as the last time Haley had seen it—leaned near a cluster of gravestones. A man stood near it with a shovel in his hand, waiting patiently for the mourners to reach him. At his feet was a trim, straight-sided hole in the ground. A small hole, to fit a small coffin. Edwin’s coffin.

  Haley had reached the pallbearers by now as they continued their slow march across the cemetery. One of the men carrying the coffin was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched. He looked furious. Tears were running almost invisibly down his face and creeping into a thick black beard.

  “Hey!” Haley shouted uselessly. “I’m here!” She waved her arms. “Can you hear me? Can you see me?”

  The weeping man didn’t turn his head. But one of the women walking behind the coffin glanced up. Smooth, dark hair was pulled into a braided knot on the back of her head. Her dress and shawl were black, her face pale, her cheeks brushed with red from a chilly wind. There were no tears in her eyes.

  Haley had last seen her barefoot, in a long white shift, bending over her sleeping sister.

  Patience.

  Haley flinched as Patience seemed to look straight at her. Suddenly she no longer wanted to draw attention to herself. She backed away quickly, stumbling, walking through headstones because she didn’t dare turn, didn’t dare take her eyes off Patience, who was still looking around, frowning a little, as if she’d heard something she couldn’t quite catch.

  Then a flicker at the corner of her eye caught Haley’s attention. Something had moved. Had it been the man, leaning on his shovel near the newly dug grave? But as her head turned toward him, he disappeared.

  The funeral, the coffin, the mourners vanished as well.

  But Patience was still there.

  Jake was sprawled on his back near Mercy’s grave. His head was turned toward Haley, his eyes closed. There was blood on his throat, running down his neck, soaking into the collar of his white shirt.

  He didn’t move or stir as Patience, crouched over him, lifted her head. There was a smear of blood on her lower lip. Slowly she licked it away.

  Haley shuddered, but she didn’t back up. Her mind shouted, Run! It shouted, Help him! Save him! He saved you! The commands clashed and tangled along her nerves; her feet stayed rooted.

  Gracefully, Patience rose to her feet, smoothing out her skirt. She still looked like the Aunt Brown Haley had known all her life, but something was different. She seemed younger. Her cheeks were flushed red. Even her hair, slipping loose from its knot, looked a little darker. She didn’t look thin and frail anymore. She looked . . . strong.

  Run. Get away.

  But Jake didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes. Was he breathing? She couldn’t tell.

  Patience smiled, just a little. Was it a smile? Her upper lip lifted, showing her teeth. No fangs. They were just ordinary teeth, sharp and white and—

  This was a predator with hunger in her eyes. Haley wasn’t family to her now. Wasn’t even a person. She was simply prey.

  Like any hunted animal, Haley turned and ran.

  She felt something snag the collar of her jacket, something sharp graze the back of her neck. But Patience had tried too soon; she wasn’t quite close enough to get the grip she needed. Haley dodged, dove aside between a row of headstones, heard a snarl of frustrated rage behind her.

  Haley’s mind shut off. She wasn’t thinking, just running. The urge filled up her head, not even a word, just a command—faster faster faster.

  Fear flicked at her like the lash of a whip. She’s behind you—she’ll catch you—you’ll die. You’ll be dead. Like Jake.

  She didn’t dare to look over her shoulder, couldn’t hear anything but the rasp of her own breath. But Patience must surely be right behind her. She’d outrun a car. Haley’s mind flinched from that thought. But it was true. Patience had caught up with the car, had dragged Jake from it. How was Haley going to escape from something like that?

  Haley saw a crypt up ahead, a small square building of white marble blotched with lichen, and she ducked around its corner. She hesitated a moment, her back against the wall. Patience would be after her any second. But then Haley would know where the vampire was. Haley would get the crypt in between them, she thought. Then she’d run for the road and pray for a car to stop. It wasn’t much of a plan, but between terror and exhaustion, it was all she had.

  Except that Patience didn’t appear.

  Silence. The sunlight shone on quiet rows of gravestones. No wind stirred the grass or the twigs of the leafless trees. No birds, no squirrels. Haley’s breath had settled down to deep, slow gasps. But even without that dreadful rasping in her ears, she couldn’t hear a thing.

  She turned her head slowly, scanning the graveyard. Nothing moved.

  Then she understood.

  She wasn’t just being hunted. She was being stalked.

  Patience was hiding somewhere, watching. Waiting for Haley to make the first move. Waiting to have her out in the open, with nowhere to hide.

  It was hopeless. The minute Haley moved away from the shelter of the crypt, Patience would spring out from wherever she was concealed. And Haley would be dead. Dead like Jake.

  Or worse. You want what I wanted, Patience had told Haley. You must simply make a choice.

  A choice. Haley clung to the memory of those words. So if Haley didn’t choose, she didn’t have to be—what Patience was?

  But would she do it? At the moment of death, with her blood draining away, would she choose to let go? Or would she hold onto life with all her strength? Would she demand to go on living, even if she lived as nothing but hunger?

  Haley didn’t want to be forced to make that choice.

  She looked over the graveyard again, hoping for something—some sign, some movement, some hint. But Patience was too smart to give herself away. She was good at waiting, and at hiding. She’d had more than a century of practice.

  When Haley turned her head back to the left, someone was standing beside her.

  Haley flinched, thumping into the cool stone wall at her back. Mercy looked at her sorrowfully. But this time Haley wasn’t fooled.

  It was Mercy who’d lured her into the graveyard, far from help. It was Mercy who had distracted her at the top of the stairs, letting Patience approach and push Alan down.

  Haley shook her head angrily as Mercy reached out a hand. Ghosts and vampires. She’d been crazy to trust one and not the other.

  “You got what you wanted,” Haley said between her teeth, whispering angrily. “What, you were lonely? You wanted more victims to keep you company?”

  Mercy only looked sadder. Her hand stayed out, beseechingly. The silver locket around her neck caught the light in a flash of brightness.

  Haley moved a few inches away, but Mercy stayed next to her, although Haley co
uldn’t see how, exactly, she moved. Her hand touched the front of Haley’s red jacket.

  Mercy frowned, as if she were concentrating hard. And Haley’s jacket actually moved, as if ruffled by a cold little breeze.

  Haley rubbed the jacket’s collar between two fingers, confused. “This? What?”

  Mercy gestured, her fingers fluttering. Give it to me.

  Another trap? Another trick?

  But how? What kind of a trap could involve Haley’s jacket?

  Please. The urgency on Mercy’s face didn’t need words.

  Why would she want this so badly? She didn’t need to trick Haley now, to lead her anywhere. Haley was in the graveyard already, easy prey for the vampire. Nothing Mercy could do would make things worse.

  And she was pleading.

  Slowly Haley slipped the jacket off her shoulders and held it out. Mercy reached to take it. Or tried to. The thick fleece trembled as her hands passed through it.

  Haley shook her head. “You can’t—”

  And yet, Mercy had written that message in the dust of the TV screen, Haley remembered. She could touch things, move things, if she wanted to.

  But dust weighed close to nothing. The jacket had to be a pound, maybe two.

  Mercy tried again. This time Haley actually felt the weight of the jacket lift for a few seconds. Mercy was trembling with the effort. Then the coat sagged back into Haley’s hands.

  Whatever Mercy’s plan was, it wasn’t going to work.

  Mercy turned her back on Haley. For a moment Haley expected her to vanish, but she simply stood there, waiting.

  Then Haley understood. She put the jacket gently over Mercy’s shoulders. Holding her breath, she took her hands away very slowly.

  Mercy slumped as though Haley had laid a lead blanket over her back. Her image wavered for a moment, like candle flame flickering in a gust of wind. But then her figure steadied, became stronger, and she straightened. Against her dull gray skirt and dark hair, Haley’s jacket seemed to glow, bright as holly berries against deep green leaves. Bright as fresh blood.

  Without turning, Mercy gestured again. Follow me.

  Mercy ran across the grass, dodging between gravestones, quicker than Haley could ever have been. And something was after her. Something leapt off the roof of the crypt—She was hiding up there there the whole time? Haley thought, appalled—and was instantly on Mercy’s trail. Nothing human could run that quickly, could turn that lightly. Feral, Patience hunted her sister, hungry for blood.

  But Haley noticed something. Mercy ran lightly across the graves, blades of grass never bending under her feet. But Patience stayed on the paths of trodden earth between the headstones. She wouldn’t set foot on a grave. That let Mercy, even weighed down by the burden of Haley’s jacket, keep just ahead of her, as she led Patience back toward the Brown family plot.

  The path between Haley and the cemetery gate was clear now. But Mercy had told her to follow.

  And Jake. Mercy was leading Patience back toward Jake. Or his body.

  All this took only a few seconds of panicked thought, before Haley spat out the worse curse she knew, thrust her hand in her pocket, feeling for the stake she’d put there, and ran after Mercy and Patience.

  Mercy, leading her sister, twisted and dodged. Haley, running in a straight line, gained on them. Running toward a vampire, I’m crazy, oh God please—

  She barely noticed the scene change around her. The cemetery shrank, the wrought-iron fence vanished. The road outside lost its paving. The distant murmur of traffic vanished. Even the light altered as clouds suddenly blotted out the sun. But Haley didn’t care. Not even the mourners now drawing close to the grave surprised her enough to slow her down. None of them stared or looked up at this madness, this frantic race interrupting their funeral. Not even the gravedigger under the willow turned his head to look.

  Mercy, in Haley’s red jacket, led her sister past their brother’s open grave. Haley followed. And then the scene flickered and changed again. A thin rain was falling, although Haley could not feel it, and she was running past a teenage boy, his face shocked and miserable, a tie knotted close around his neck, a suit jacket engulfing his skinny shoulders.

  He didn’t see her, didn’t know her. But she knew him. Jake.

  And she knew the people behind him, too. She saw her father, his arm around her mom—not Elaine, her mom. She saw herself, like an old picture come to life, solemn and scared, clinging to her mom’s hand, staring at Jake, waiting for him to notice her.

  Haley remembered. Aunt Nell’s funeral. She hadn’t really understood that it was her aunt in the coffin, hadn’t really understood that Aunt Nell would never come back. All she’d really understood was that, for the first time ever, Jake wouldn’t look at her.

  But she couldn’t stop for the memory, couldn’t reach out to Jake, couldn’t comfort her little-girl self. She was still running, Mercy was still leading her, and Patience too, deeper into the cemetery, in and out of the past.

  Mercy stopped, her back to Haley and Patience. The rain stopped too. An airplane roared overhead. They were back in the present once more.

  Something crunched under Haley’s feet as she came to a halt. She glanced down and saw birdseed scattered over the grass.

  Haley choked out a warning as Patience closed in on her sister, reaching out, and Mercy just stood there, motionless.

  Then Mercy disappeared.

  The red jacket fluttered down. Patience snatched at it and snarled. Her back was to Haley, but any second she would turn, and this time there was no point in even trying to run. Haley knew she would not be fast enough. She knew she had no chance.

  Then something flickered into being behind Patience, between Haley and the vampire. First a shimmer in the air, as if the light were folding in on itself. Then a ripple of darkness. Mercy appeared. But she wasn’t alone.

  There was something, someone, at her side. A boy, dressed in heavy boots, a dark gray suit, a cap on his short, fair hair. And on Mercy’s other side, a slender figure in a leaf-green dress. Hair so blond it was almost white blew and rippled in a wind that didn’t touch Haley.

  Patience turned.

  She flinched and took a step backward. Then she was falling.

  For the first time, Haley saw an emotion that wasn’t hunger on her aunt’s face.

  It was terror. Patience fought not to fall, but the grave had her. She was gone.

  Panting, shivering, Haley clutched the stake tightly and waited, staring at the black hole into which Patience had disappeared. The grave was so fresh that she could smell the damp soil. The orange nylon rope that she had seen before was gone. Soon there would be a funeral, and someone would rest in that grave. There would be a headstone, and a coffin. But for now there was nothing but a neat, square pit in the ground.

  Patience would crawl back out of it in a minute. It was just a short fall. It wouldn’t really hurt her. Nothing could hurt her. She was already dead.

  Edwin turned to look at Haley, a little boy with solemn eyes. And the fair-haired woman in the green dress turned too. Haley let the stake fall out of her hand.

  “Aunt Nell?” she whispered.

  That’s why Mercy had led her into the past, back to the funerals for two of Patience’s victims. She’d brought them back, somehow, Haley thought. She’d brought them with her.

  Aunt Nell tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, smiled, flickered, and vanished. But Mercy and Edwin remained.

  Mercy put one arm around Edwin’s shoulder and gestured at the grave. Come look.

  Haley picked up the stake again. Cautiously, she edged closer.

  Patience didn’t leap out of the hole to drag her down. Haley peered into the grave.

  Dust. Bones, half eaten away by time. Haley saw the curve of a skull, the long lines of femurs and tibia. Not ivory white. Brown with age.

  The grave Patience had tried so hard to avoid for a century had taken what it was owed.

  Did something stir in the bones
and ashes? Haley reluctantly looked again.

  There, in what remained of the cage made by the ribs, something twitched. Horrified, Haley knelt to look closer. Something that wasn’t brown with age, that wasn’t dust or earth or bone, something dark red throbbed slightly, steadily.

  Patience’s heart still beat.

  Mercy knelt beside her. She nodded at Haley. At the stake in Haley’s hand.

  “No,” Haley whispered. “I can’t. No!”

  Mercy simply looked at her. This time she didn’t need to gesture to make Haley understand. Your turn now.

  Gritting her teeth, trying not to breathe, Haley climbed down into the grave. The earth walls closed her in. The rectangle of cloudy sky overhead seemed miles away. When she couldn’t avoid inhaling any longer, the scent of clay clogged her nostrils and clotted in her throat.

  Half the skull had crumbled away. One black, empty eye socket watched Haley, almost beseechingly. She rolled the stake in her palm, the wood dry and splintery. She tested the point with a finger.

  Patience had wanted life so badly. She was harmless now, surely. Would it be so bad to let her go on, not to snuff out this last faint claim to life?

  (You understand. You want what I wanted. I know it.)

  Haley thought of the grave being filled in. Clods of dirt falling, heavy and thick. And beneath them, the heart still beating, still alive.

  As long as there’s blood in the heart, Haley remembered. That’s what they had believed, Mercy’s friends and family. As long as there was fresh blood in the heart, the dead body wasn’t dead. It was living off someone else.

  They’d had the wrong sister, but they hadn’t been wrong. They’d known.

  Haley thought of Jake. Of Eddie. She couldn’t risk it.

  She lifted the stake and brought it down.

  When Haley had dragged herself out of the grave, digging her toes into the soft earth and clutching at the grass with her fingers, Mercy and Edwin were gone. Her red jacket lay in the grass at her feet.