Sarey heard Rose telling the man to leave while he still had the chance, and that was when the shed door began swinging shut again, all on its own.
“Don’t make me punish you!” Rose called. That was her cue to burst out and put the sickle in the troublesome, meddling little girl’s neck, but since the girl was gone, the man would have to do. But before she could move, a cold hand slid over the wrist holding the sickle. Slid over it and clamped tight.
She turned—no reason not to now, with the door closed—and what she saw by the dim light filtering through the cracks in the old boards caused a scream to come bolting out of her usually silent throat. At some point while she had been concentrating, a corpse had joined her in the toolshed. His smiling, predatory face was the damp whitish-green of a spoiled avocado. His eyes seemed almost to dangle from their sockets. His suit was splotched with ancient mold . . . but the multicolored confetti sprinkled on his shoulders was fresh.
“Great party, isn’t it?” he said, and as he grinned, his lips split open.
She screamed again and drove the sickle into his left temple. The curved blade went deep and hung there, but there was no blood.
“Give us a kiss, dear,” Horace Derwent said. From between his lips came the wiggling white remnant of a tongue. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman.”
As his tattered lips, shining with decay, settled on Sarey’s, his hands closed around her throat.
8
Rose saw the shed door swing closed, heard the scream, and understood that she was now truly alone. Soon, probably in seconds, the girl would be back and it would be two against one. She couldn’t allow that.
She looked down at the man and summoned all of her steam-amplified force.
(choke yourself do it NOW)
His hands rose toward his throat, but too slowly. He was fighting her, and with a degree of success that was infuriating. She would have expected a battle from the bitchgirl, but that rube down there was an adult. She should have been able to brush aside any steam remaining to him like mist.
Still, she was winning.
His hands went up to his chest . . . his shoulders . . . finally to his throat. There they wavered—she could hear him panting with effort. She bore down, and the hands gripped, shutting off his windpipe.
(that’s right you interfering bastard squeeze squeeze and SQUEE)
Something hit her. Not a fist; it felt more like a gust of tightly compressed air. She looked around and saw nothing but a shimmer, there for a moment and then gone. Less than three seconds, but enough to break her concentration, and when she turned back to the railing, the girl had returned.
It wasn’t a gust of air this time; it was hands that felt simultaneously large and small. They were in the small of her back. They were pushing. The bitchgirl and her friend, working together—just what Rose had wanted to avoid. A worm of terror began to unwind in her stomach. She tried to step back from the rail and could not. It was taking all her strength just to stand pat, and with no supporting force from the True to help her, she didn’t think she’d be able to do that for long. Not long at all.
If not for that gust of air . . . that wasn’t him and she wasn’t here . . .
One of the hands left the small of her back and slapped the hat from her head. Rose howled at the indignity of it—nobody touched her hat, nobody!—and for a moment summoned enough power to stagger back from the railing and toward the center of the platform. Then those hands returned to the small of her back and began pushing her forward again.
She looked down at them. The man had his eyes closed, concentrating so hard that the cords stood out on his neck and sweat rolled down his cheeks like tears. The girl’s eyes, however, were wide and merciless. She was staring up at Rose. And she was smiling.
Rose pushed backward with all her strength, but she might have been pushing against a stone wall. One that was moving her relentlessly forward, until her stomach was pressing against the rail. She heard it creak.
She thought, for just a moment, of trying to bargain. Of telling the girl that they could work together, start