The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,30

protruded like a bad overbite, cheap windows that didn’t keep out the cold. LouElla had painted the house—more accurately, she had probably made a troop of foster kids paint it—and the bluish-gray paint looked like a pathetic attempt to update the house’s appearance. The basketball hoop—no net—was the same, though. The dinged-up garage door was the same. The steps where Jem had skinned his knees when an older girl had shoved him, those were the same. The Super Mario tee clung to his back when he climbed off the bike. The weed was messing him up; his head felt like an enormous wind chime, something rushing through him, a shrieking note coming back in answer.

He knocked. On the other side of the door, the house was silent. He tried to count to five, rocking from heel to heel, and then he jammed the doorbell and kept jamming it. The hammer of pulse in his ears was so loud that he didn’t hear footsteps, and when the door swung open, he was still pressing the doorbell.

LouElla had always been thin, always prided herself on her looks. She was still thin, wearing a soft, clinging sweater, leggings, calfskin ankle boots. She had more jewelry than Jem remembered, a web of necklaces, rings glittering on every finger, but Jem thought that made sense: she’d had a lot of time, and a lot of kids churning through here, to build up her collection. She’d changed her hair—it was an artificial blond, short and feathery, probably expensive as hell and ugly as sin.

It took her only a moment to recognize him. Then she struck: a flurry of blows—open-handed slaps landing on Jem’s face and the side of his head, driving him back, forcing him to crouch, arms up to ward off the blows. He didn’t even think of the paracord or the antenna or the barrette. He was thirteen again, brain and body resetting the last fifteen years. When she had forced him to the edge of the porch, she kicked him once, hard, with a calfskin boot, and he fell off the porch and landed on his back.

She was breathing hard, but she composed herself, her hands floating around her feathery hair as though making sure nothing was out of place. Jem tasted blood. His cheek, his ear, his eye—they all felt hot and puffy.

“Well, well, well,” she said. “Princess Jemma. I still owe you a broken tooth.”

11

LouElla watched him for a moment and then headed back inside, leaving Jem on the ground. After a minute, he picked himself up and beat the dust out of his Super Mario tee as best he could. He spat blood from a cut on the inside of his cheek, and then he climbed back up onto the porch and went inside.

The home’s interior hadn’t changed much in its overall décor, although many of the details were different. LouElla had always liked expensive things that, to Jem anyway, still looked tacky: crystal figurines of angels, wooden carvings of children, enormous paintings of Jesus in thick gilt frames. Today, Jesus was walking on water, waving at people on shore with a kind of Look, Ma! expression. The wooden children were playing ring-around-the-rosy on the sideboard. This year’s crystal angels were looking sad, wings drooping, squatting like they had the shits. Automatically, Jem toed off his sneakers in the entry hall. The shoe rack he remembered was gone, and the only shoes he saw were a pair of black flats that had to belong to LouElla.

He found her in the kitchen. She was pouring Diet Pepsi into a tumbler with ice, her attention fixed on making sure the fizz didn’t escape the glass. The kitchen had been updated, definitely a gut job—Jem remembered drop-ceiling lights and acres of melamine countertop, and now he was looking at marble and stainless steel.

“This is breaking and entering,” LouElla said, still eyeballing the Diet Pepsi. “Or at least trespassing. Jemma, sweetheart, I really thought you’d learned your lesson. I really thought you were on the strait and narrow.” She looked up now. She had bitten her lip, an old gesture of excitement, and a bead of blood stood there. Neatly, she creased a paper napkin and blotted her lips. “I suppose I’ll have to call the police. Sit down, darling. You might as well be comfortable your last few minutes as a free man.”

“I want my money.”

She threw her head back and laughed. When she finally settled down, she sipped the Diet Pepsi and