Blood Read online

  Yes. It was.

  “That’s not true,” Ed said evenly, looking into Gaia’s eyes. “You’re looking for Skizz, and it isn’t to ask him some questions.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” Gaia said. She looked around with studied casualness. She shifted her feet. Obviously she wanted him gone.

  Ed suddenly felt afraid. Afraid for Gaia, afraid of Gaia.

  “Look, let’s go get a cup of coffee,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Gaia looked at the ground, scuffing her boots against the cobblestones.

  “Gaia, come on,” Ed said. “You don’t want to be here.”

  “You don’t know anything about what I want.”

  When he looked into her face, he didn’t recognize her. “Please, Gaia. Come on. Don’t do this.” Whatever “this” was.

  “Just leave me alone!” she snapped, and she whirled and disappeared into the darkness without a sound.

  A cold feeling of dread settled over Ed’s heart as he stared blankly at the spot where she had stood moments before.

  GAIA

  Last night I did the strangest thing. It was after Ed found me in Washington Square Park. I was freaking and didn’t know what to do. So I headed up St. Mark’s Place and ducked into a thrift shop for a few minutes, trying to get my act together. Then I looked out the plate glass window, and right across the street was this old, crumbly, odd-looking church.

  I crossed the street and read its sign. It was a Russian Orthodox church. Is that bizarre or what? Only in New York.

  Anyway, I went up the steps and tried one of the heavy wooden doors. There was graffiti sprayed onto the front of the building. Gang signs. But the door opened. Inside, it was cool and dim and smelled heavily of incense. I haven’t been inside many churches in my life, but here I was, just a few minutes after I had been in the park planning to murder someone. I felt like I was in an episode of The X-Files.

  There were people up by the altar, polishing brass candlesticks, and someone running a vacuum on the worn red carpet. There were no pews, so I leaned against a cool stone column for a while. It was strange, being inside that church, so late at night. So quiet, so peaceful. So different from the things going on inside my head.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not much of a believer. But right then and there, for some reason, I said a prayer for forgiveness.

  kind of an asshole

  he was still shocked when the first thin threads of pain registered in his brain …

  Ed’s Going Down

  NOTE TO MYSELF: SCRATCH BEING AN undercover agent as a possible career. Not only is a guy in a wheelchair kind of hard to disguise, but he’s also so freaking slow!

  Ed paused at the corner of Broadway and Waverly Place, his hot go-cup of latte perched in the screw-on armrest cup holder his aunt had given him for Christmas. Where had she gotten it? he wondered. Wheelchairs R Us? He had to admit it came in handy.

  When the light turned green, Ed spun his wheels, moving aggressively through the crowd. He knew people usually didn’t mind being bumped by a cripple in a chair. They would turn around, ready to glare, ready to curse him out, then catch sight of him. Seeing a young man in a wheelchair usually calmed them right down.

  Gaia had managed to completely give him the slip again after school. They had eaten lunch together like two chewing statues. She hadn’t even bothered making an excuse as to why she’d split on him last night or why they couldn’t get together tonight, a Friday night.

  Now, as Ed bumped up the handicapped-accessible sidewalk ramp, he remembered how tired Gaia had looked. Her nose had been running, and she’d wiped it on her sleeve. He knew without a doubt that she had been out late, in the cold, hunting Skizz, but somehow the crowded cafeteria of the Village School hadn’t seemed like the best place to confront her.

  Ed was pretty much at the end of his rope with Gaia. It had been five long days since Mary’s death, and Gaia had hardly said more than three sentences to him. Then last night had been so weird. What was she thinking? What was she planning? He had to know. Which was why he had already checked the Starbucks on Astor Place and made a complete circuit of Washington Square Park. No Gaia. His arms and shoulders were going to look like Hulk Hogan’s if he kept getting these kinds of workouts.

  Now he was going to hit Tompkins Square Park. The whole idea of Gaia lying in wait for Skizz made his blood run cold. She’d already beaten the crap out of Skizz once. What else could she do?

  Ed was tired. He was three blocks from the park. He took a sip of his coffee, enjoying the way the warmth seeped down through his esophagus and pooled in his stomach.

  “Hey!” he cried angrily as a hand sharply knocked his coffee away. Instinctively he grabbed his wheels, only to be stopped by a long, wavy knife blade shoved under his nose. He could feel the sharp edge, cold against his skin.

  “Don’t move.”

  Oh, shit.

  His attacker wasn’t that big, just a young street kid of indeterminate age and race, his hair wrapped up in a bandanna. There was a small, homemade-looking tattoo of a sun right in the middle of his forehead. His upper lip had dark, downy fuzz, and small, unevenly mowed tufts of stubble blotched his chin.

  “Gimme your money.” The command was quiet but had an underlying thread of desperation.

  Without warning, Ed was flooded with an adrenaline-soaked rage. He knew that before his accident, he would have been five inches taller than this jerk and outweighed him by forty pounds. This guy never would have picked him as a mark. But here he was, Mr. Victim in a Wheelchair. His stomach roiled, and a bitter taste rose in the back of his throat. This sucked.

  “Give it!” the mugger said, and quickly flicked his knifepoint across Ed’s cheek.

  Since knowing Gaia, Ed had been witness to more acts of violence than he had in his whole previous Gaia-less existence. And yet he was still shocked when the first thin threads of pain registered in his brain and still scared by the unnaturally hot flow of blood down his cheek.

  Hating himself, hating the way his hand was shaking, Ed reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out his wallet. He remembered with grim, futile satisfaction that he had just spent his last five dollars at Starbucks, and only that morning his mom had asked for her Visa card back because she was getting a new one.

  But the mugger wasn’t going to check it out here. He took the wallet, sheathed the knife, and spun. He was gone, out of sight, before Ed could count to seven.

  Well, shit. His heart was pounding loud in his ears; his hands were trembling. He reached up to touch his burning cheek and saw his leather glove shiny and dark with blood. A thought hit him like a hammer: Ed was desperate for Gaia’s presence. If she had been here, this never would have happened. She would have kicked that guy’s ass from here till Tuesday. Ed would have been avenged.

  The realization was like being punched in the chest, and for a moment Ed literally couldn’t breathe. A short time ago he’d been tall for his age, starting to get his adult weight, his grown-man muscle. He’d been the biggest, baddest daredevil on a board this side of America. Now what was he?

  When he reached First Avenue, he turned for home. Forget the park right now. Forget Gaia. People glanced at him in alarm, then quickly turned away. He probably looked like some whacked-out Desert Storm vet, rolling along with a murderous expression and a bloody cheek. He ignored them. He’d learned how to ignore a lot of stares in the last couple of years.

  At his apartment building Ed wheeled through the automatic doors. He crossed the lobby and rolled inside the elevator, pushing hard to get over the little gap in the floor. Automatically he punched his button. His cheek felt thick and sticky. There was a knot in his throat he couldn’t swallow.

  Once Ed had been tough, strong. When he and Heather were together, she had relied on him. And other guys had steered clear of his territory. He was cool. He was Shred. He had probably been kind of an asshole, if you wanted to know the truth. But at least he hadn’t been pathet
ic.

  Dinner with the Gannises

  “PLEASE PASS THE SALT STUFF,” Mr. Gannis said, motioning to the middle of the table.

  “The substitute?” Heather’s mother asked.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Gannis.

  Heather sat quietly, cutting her chicken breast into little squares, scooping up bits of scalloped potatoes. Since her father’s heart attack two years ago, he’d been on a low-salt diet. Her mother couldn’t eat shellfish. Now Phoebe was practically starving herself. Did everyone in her family have bizarro eating issues except her?

  Heather glanced across the table at her other sister, Lauren. Lauren was twenty and finishing her undergrad degree at Parsons. She was shoveling in her dinner with enthusiasm. A few days ago Heather would have been disgusted by her sister’s huge appetite. Now she was grateful that at least one family member appeared to have some sanity.

  Why didn’t anyone seem to notice that Phoebe had eaten only half a salad so far, with no dressing? That she was just pushing the chicken around on her plate? Now that Heather was hyperaware of Phoebe’s eating habits, it stunned her that she hadn’t noticed them before. It left her feeling helpless and angry.

  Who could she talk to about this? Sam? Maybe—except the next time she saw him, she wanted him to focus on her, not Phoebe. Her mother? No, her mom believed that you could never be too rich or too thin. Her father would simply refer Heather to her mother. Lauren would be no help at all. What about Heather’s friends? Instinctively Heather shrank from the thought of confiding in any of them. She still hadn’t let on to anyone about her family’s finances, or lack thereof, and she knew that Phoebe’s eating disorder would simply become a hot gossip topic. It wasn’t any of their business.

  What Heather needed was a real friend. Just one good friend.

  GAIA

  You know, Mary, when you were alive, I was starting to feel like I was sort of almost normal. I mean, I had friends (you and Ed), I was going to school, I was in love with someone (Sam), I was doing normal teenagery things. Now you’re gone, and I’m like the poster girl for dysfunction. I can’t deal with school. I can’t deal with Ed. I saw Sam yesterday, and it was awful. Everything out of my mouth was the opposite of what I wanted to say.

  Why is my life such an unending horror show? What do I have to do to make it bearable?

  I am tottering on the brink. I’m almost afraid of myself.

  TOM MOORE

  I’ve seen the look in her eyes. I know that look because I’ve seen it too many times to name. I’ve seen it in the heartless gazes of trained assassins. Sometimes I’ve seen it when I’ve looked in the mirror. I know all too well what it means.

  Gaia is after her friend’s murderer. She wants to kill him. She wants to make him pay for what he did. Understandable under the circumstances. Who wouldn’t fantasize about doing the same if someone they loved were brutally murdered?

  Believe me, Gaia, I understand.

  But Gaia can’t afford to do as others do. She can’t afford to have fantasies of revenge. Because unlike most people, Gaia is capable of following those fantasies through.

  And once she does, once she has a taste for blood, I don’t know if she can ever go back. Not someone like her—born to fight, physically and mentally built to destroy anything that gets in her way. Built to kill.

  I’m watching you, Gaia. I’m waiting for you to make your move. But I can’t protect you from yourself. You’ve got to do that.

  I believe in you.

  Do you believe in me?

  daddy’s little girl

  Then without a conscious thought she was moving, sprinting down the cobbled walk with her hair flying in back of her …

  Red and Green M&M’s

  IT’S A UNIVERSAL LAW THAT IF you drop anything on the floor within a ten-foot radius of a bed, that object will slowly and surely be sucked underneath the bed by some unseen magnetic force.

  Or at least that’s the theory Gaia came up with on Saturday morning when she was searching desperately for her only working pen. It had mysteriously disappeared when she took a bathroom break. Now she was on her hands and knees, swatting aside dust bunnies and pushing aside her ancient, faded quilt.

  Eureka. There it was. With a large sweeping gesture Gaia fished the pen out from under her bed, her arm coming out covered with large clumps of dust and quite a few long blond hairs.

  A thin, stiff piece of paper was stuck to her sleeve, and Gaia pulled it off, then froze. It was a note. Little red and green stains had smudged some of the words, but Gaia knew instantly what the note said.

  Sinking back on her haunches, Gaia read the apology letter she held in her hand, a fresh wave of pain washing over her. It was from Mary. From when Mary had kicked coke and asked Gaia to be her friend again. Gaia rubbed her finger along the page, stained with the colors of the M&M’s Mary had included with the note. How could these words still be here when Mary was gone? She continued to feel the texture where the pen had scratched the paper. Maybe by touching the grooves, the indents, she could touch the person who had left them there. If only …

  “Gaia! Telephone!” Ella’s strident voice ripped through Gaia’s thoughts like a knife. Gaia winced and stood up, almost tripping on a moldering pile of laundry. She scooped it up in one arm and went downstairs, trying to make her mind blank. She needed to have her guard up to deal with Ella.

  Still holding the laundry, Gaia entered the first-floor kitchen and wordlessly took the phone from Ella. Her foster mother’s fingernails were long and bloodred, as though she had just plucked out the heart of a victim and hadn’t rinsed off yet.

  Gaia cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear, trying not to drop her laundry.

  “Hello?” she said, already knowing it was Ed. No one else ever called her. Not Sam. Certainly not her father, wherever the hell he was.

  “Gaia?” said a woman’s husky, unfamiliar voice.

  Gaia’s neck prickled. Alarm bells went off. “Yes?” she said tightly.

  “This is Patricia Moss. Mary’s mother.”

  Oh, crap. Double crap.

  “How are you, dear?”

  “Um …”

  “I know. We all feel that way,” said Mrs. Moss. “I’ve been worried about you. Did Mr. Niven tell you I phoned?”

  Yep. She had found his note, taped to her bedroom door.

  “Yes, he did,” Gaia said.

  “Well, do come see us, dear, if you feel up to it,” Mrs. Moss went on quietly. “Now, I wanted to tell you—Mary’s … funeral is next Wednesday, at eleven o’clock, at the Riverside Chapel. We were thinking … it would mean a lot to us—to all of us—if you would agree to speak.”

  “What?” Gaia’s voice sounded like it had been planed down to a thin rasp.

  “If you would say a few words at Mary’s funeral,” continued Mrs. Moss. “I know you weren’t friends for very long, but we feel that in some ways, you were her only true friend.”

  Why? Because I got her killed? Because I went too far with her drug dealer, and he paid someone to shoot your daughter in retaliation? Gaia felt something like hysteria rising in her throat.

  “Because you were the one who made her face—made all of us face—her problems,” said Mrs. Moss. “Please—it would mean a lot to us.”

  This was too horrible, too awful to contemplate. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” Gaia said curtly. She hung up the phone before Mrs. Moss could say any more, then whirled to see Ella, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Was that the hint of a smile? Gaia suddenly had the sensation that Ella was a cat and that she, Gaia, was a slab of tuna.

  “Dear, dear,” Ella crooned in honeyed tones. “Was that poor Mrs. Moss? That poor woman. To lose your daughter that way …”

  Gaia frowned. To have Ella even mention Mary’s name was more repulsive than she could stomach. She remembered when Ella had finally goaded Gaia into punching her, about a month ago. If Ella didn’t watch it, they were going there again.

  “What do you k
now about it?” Gaia said coldly. She knew she hadn’t mentioned Mary’s death to the Nivens.

  Ella produced a newspaper from behind her back. “Only what I read,” she answered smoothly. “What a shame. That innocent girl—they say it looked like a drug hit. No doubt some awful dealer got her hooked. Maybe she owed him money or something.”

  Gaia felt her blood starting to pound in her ears.

  “And they didn’t even catch him,” Ella went on. “That monster is still out there, preying on other innocent girls.”

  Her words spiked into Gaia’s chest as if they were barbecue skewers. A dull pain roared in Gaia’s head. Today. Gaia had to find Skizz today. Blindly she stumbled over to the laundry room and threw her clothes into the washing machine. She measured out a cup of detergent and closed the lid. If only she could rid the world of Ella and Skizz in one fell swoop. The machine started to chug, and Gaia leaned against it, her knuckles white as they gripped the sides.

  Okay, calm down. You have a plan. Ironically, her father’s words came back to her. Don’t let emotion—not anger, not pain, not love—cloud your actions. That will get you killed.

  Gaia paused. Scratch that last bit. She wasn’t daddy’s little girl anymore. She didn’t need his advice.

  Screw him.

  Get Some Fresh Air

  “UM, GAIA?” GEORGE SAID, TAPPING on her open door.

  “Yeah?” Gaia looked up from her bed, where she was putting on socks still warm from the dryer. Ecstasy.

  “Ella and I thought it would be nice to take a drive out into the country. You know, get out of the city, get some fresh air. Maybe stop at a little restaurant and have dinner. We’d like for you to come with us.”

  It was actually tempting. Gaia longed to be somewhere out of the city, somewhere where snow was really snow. But two things held her back: Gaia was about to head out to hunt for Skizz, and there was no way she would be cooped up in a car with Ella for more than, say, ten seconds.