else would I forget everything if not because I’d done something very bad?”
When we got to Mable’s car, he turned me to him. “You’re wrong.”
I was about to argue again, but he dipped his head and kissed me. It was soft and demanded nothing, and I fell another notch.
I heard yelling in the distance. High pitched. Angry. The tone telescoped until it was right in my face. I was back in my apartment and had jumped Denzel the minute I got home. So was I dreaming? Having another nightmare? I pried my lids apart to see an elderly woman in my face, a decomposing elderly woman, her eyes solid white, her mouth open as she screamed at me.
“Where’s my baby?” she asked over and over.
Bolting upright, I scrambled to get away from her and fell out of bed. The wooden crate that served as my nightstand slammed into my shoulder. Before I could get up, a coffee cup whizzed past my head and shattered against the wall on my right.
I crawled on my hands and knees to stay clear of the flying debris. My apartment had exploded, and at the epicenter was a very angry, and very powerful, lady.
The bathroom seemed like the safest place. I army-crawled to it and tried to kick the door closed. Instead, I cut my foot on shards of broken glass. I lifted my gaze to see hundreds of pieces of broken glass hanging in the air around me.
She’d shattered the mirror, and what little moonlight there was glinted off each hovering piece. The second she dropped them, I dived out of the bathroom. They showered the floor with tiny, musical clinks.
Since she was using Denzel as a battering ram and aimed him straight for my head, I scrambled to the living room. My bed crashed into the wall, shaking the whole house. I stood and started for the door and was busy praying Mr. Kubrick wasn’t taking pictures when a glass rocketed past me. It swam through Irma’s head and struck the wall on the opposite side. Pieces of it hit Satana, who’d been hiding under Irma’s feet. She hissed and darted off.
Anger exploded inside me. I bit down and glared at the woman destroying my most prized possessions, like the glass. It was my only real glass.
I glanced at Irma. “Stay put. I have this.” Then I was in front of her. I grabbed the woman’s throat mid-scream. I could barely understand her anyway. All I knew was that she wanted her baby.
“First of all,” I said, pointing in the direction Satana had run, “that is my cat.” She tried to blind me with her nails, so I grabbed her hand with my free one and pulled her closer. “Second of all, I’m not as easy to kill as an infant, but keep trying. We’ll see how many babies you kill after tonight.”
She calmed instantly and blinked. “What?”
I blinked back.
“Why would I kill you?” she asked, her voice suddenly soft. Confused. “Why would I kill a baby?”
I blinked again. “Because that’s what you do?”
“I have never!” she said, appalled. She slapped my hands away.
I dropped them and stepped back.
“I would never do something like that. I’ve tried to stop him every time.”
A dread the weight of the planet crept over me. “Who, Novalee?”
She pressed her lips together. “The man who killed my daughter. The one who had me locked away in an asylum for the rest of my life when I tried to tell people he’d done it. My husband, Delbert Smeets.”
An eerie silence settled about the room. Novalee’s blank eyes watered as she thought back.
“He killed my precious Rose and told everyone I’d done it.”
“And they just believed him?”
“He was The Mayor,” she said, matter-of-fact. “No one questioned The Mayor. He had half the town in his pocket.”
I crunched over to a rickety dining chair, cursing when I stepped on a Lego. No idea. “Novalee, I don’t know what to say. We thought it was you.”
“No.” She sat in the other dining room chair.
If only I had a dining room. Or a dining table, for that matter. As it was, we just sat in the chairs, facing each other.
“I would never harm a child.”
“But a grown woman?” I asked, indicating my poor apartment with a nod. What was I going to tell my landlord?
“No. Never. I was just trying to scare you.”
“Well, it worked. Holy rusted metal, Batman.”
The smile she flashed seemed so rational. So… sane. If not for her solid white