The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,20

What could I do if they did? I had no way to preserve this place or to keep watch night and day. Oh, I thought about it. Too often. But that’s not what she would have wanted.

The front of the mansion sagged like the face of an ancient grandmother, worn and weathered and abandoned. A clay pot on the porch held a long-dead shrub and as I lifted it up, the branches crumbled into sawdust. Beneath the pot was a key. I could have forced the lock on the rotten door with one hand if I’d wanted to, but I turned it gently, as if the brass itself might crack.

The air inside was rich with mulch and wet grass. Light came through the cracked roof, hitting pollen and dust that swirled through the pillars of the once grand entrance hall. Walls, once spotless white, were now carpeted with thick moss. The seemingly indestructible marble staircase had been pulled to pieces by wild roots and weeds.

Vines, thick and intertwining, traced the floor and climbed the fixtures. They burrowed between the floorboards or rolled in through doorways, joining together in the center of the room where they wrapped themselves around what appeared to be a carefully placed centerpiece.

I often wondered what it would be like to walk into that house without knowing what I knew. I would probably think I was looking at the most finely carved wooden sculpture ever created.

I would be sure that the face of the girl, shaped in pale timber, was an artist’s dream, if I hadn’t seen those cheeks full of color.

I would imagine that the hair, flaked in strips of curled bark, was an unreal creation if I’d never let it run through my fingers.

I would look at those perfect lips and marvel at the skilled hand that had shaped them out of cold, dead wood if I was spared the memory of the warmth that once poured out of them onto mine.

Her arms were wrapped around her stomach like she had a belly-ache. She did, when it all ended. Her soul was being torn from her body like a page from a book as her shattering hands struggled to hold herself together.

Those fingers, once so gentle, had grown into wild vines that wrapped around her frame, choking her fragile body. Last time the cracks had been thin. Barely noticeable. Now, they were spreading. Fractures split her stomach in a dozen places. One major fault-line had reached her left breast, cracking it in two. The white nurses’ uniform that once covered it was now a rotten mass of brown cotton.

I wanted to touch her. I felt my shaking fingers ache with the need to stroke that splintered face but fear held them to my sides. Even the smallest touch could accelerate the decay.

This body once contained the strongest spirit the world ever knew. Now, a tap could shatter it to pieces. On windy nights I would lie awake, seeing her face split and crack in my mind’s eye, fearing that the next time I saw her she’d be nothing but soot and splinters.

But there she was. Holding on by a hair. Even now, her skin peeling off in sheets, her body a broken stump, she was the toughest damn thing I ever saw.

I sat down on the shattered tiles, full of weeds, fearful that even my breath could break her. I looked into eyes that were cold knots of wood and tried to let memory fill them with life, but that kind of magic died when she did.

There was a thin vine across her forehead that pulled so tight it pressed a cleft into her skin. I pulled the knife from my belt. I couldn’t help it. With a careful slice, the vine snapped free.

There was a faint creaking sound but nothing broke away. The groove across her face was small. In time, it would have cut right through her crown.

I took the picture of Rye out of my pocket and placed it on the floor between us.

“This guy is missing. It sounds like he might be one of the good ones. I’ll find him if I can. His body, if that’s all there is. Maybe administer some justice if somebody did him wrong. I…”

I was being ridiculous. She’d tell me that, if she could. What I wouldn’t do for her to laugh at me one more time.

“Is this… is this what you wanted?”

She said the same amount of nothing she’d said every time I’d gone