Still of Night (Dead of Night 3)

But part of what made Dahlia not one of them—the overgrown single-cell organisms pretending to be the cute kids at school—was the fact that she wasn’t wired the same way. Not outside, God knows, but not inside either. Dahlia was Dahlia. Different species altogether.

She took a step. Away from the door.

“Marcy . . . ” she said, softening her voice. “Are you okay? What happened?”

The girl stopped trembling.

Just like that. She froze.

Yeah, thought Dahlia, you heard me that time.

She wanted to roll her eyes at the coming drama, but there was no one around who mattered to see it.

Dahlia tried to imagine what the agenda would be. First Marcy would be vulnerable because of whatever brought her in here. Break-up with Mason, her studly boyfriend du jour. Something like that. There would be some pseudo in-the-moment girl talk about how rotten boys are, blah-blah-blah. As if they both knew, as if they both had the same kinds of problems. Dahlia would help her up and there would be shared tissues, or handfuls of toilet paper. Anything to wipe Marcy’s nose and blot her eyes. That would transition onto her clothes, which were wet and stained. Somehow Dahlia—the rescuer—would have to make useful suggestions for how to clean the clothes, or maybe volunteer to go to Marcy’s car or locker for a clean sweater. Then, as soon as Marcy felt solid ground under her feet again, she would clamp her popular girl cool in place and, by doing that, distance herself from Dahlia. After it was all over, Marcy would either play the role of the queen who occasionally gave a secret nod of marginal acceptance to the peasant who helped her. Or the whole thing would spin around and Marcy would be ten times more vicious just to prove to Dahlia that she had never—ever—been vulnerable. It was some version of that kind of script.

Marcy still, at this point, had not turned. Dahlia could still get the heck out of there.

But . . . she had reacted. She’d stopped sobbing. She was listening.

Ah, crap, thought Dahlia, knowing she was trapped inside the drama now. Moving forward was inevitable. It was like being on a conveyor belt heading to the checkout scanner.

“Marcy?” she said again. “Are you hurt? Can I . . . like . . . help in some way?”

An awkward line, awkwardly delivered.

Marcy did not move. Her body remained absolutely still. At first that was normal. People freeze when they realize someone else is there, or when they need to decide how to react. But that lasts a second or two.

This was lasting too long. It wasn’t normal anymore. Getting less normal with each second that peeled itself off the clock and dropped onto that dirty bathroom floor.

Dahlia took another step closer. And another. That was when she began to notice that there were other things that weren’t normal.

The dirt on Marcy’s red blouse was wrong somehow.

The blouse wasn’t just stained. It was torn. Ripped. Ragged in places.

And the red color was wrong. It was darker in some places. One shade of dark red where it had soaked up water from the floor. A different and much darker shade of red around the right shoulder and sleeve.

Much, much darker.

A thick, glistening dark red that looked like . . .

“Marcy—?”

Marcy Van Der Meer’s body suddenly began to tremble again. To shudder. To convulse.

That’s when Dahlia knew that something was a lot more wrong than boyfriend problems.

Marcy’s arms and legs abruptly began thrashing and whipping around, striking the row of sinks, hammering on the floor, banging off the pipes. Marcy’s head snapped from side to side and she uttered a long, low, juddery, inarticulate moan of mingled pain and—

And what?

Dahlia almost ran away.

Almost.

Instead she grabbed Marcy’s shoulders and pulled her away from the sinks, dragged her to the middle of the floor. Marcy was a tiny thing, a hundred pounds. Dahlia was strong. Size gives you some advantages. Dahlia turned Marcy over onto her back, terrified that this was an epileptic seizure. She had nothing to put between the girl’s teeth to keep her from biting her tongue. Instead she dug into the purse she wore slung over her shoulder. Found Dad’s knife, removed the blade and shoved it back into the bag, took the heavy leather sheath and pried Marcy’s clenched teeth apart. Marcy snapped and seemed to be trying to bite her, but it was the seizure. Dahlia forced the sheath between her teeth and those perfect pearly whites bit deep into the hand-tooled leather.

The seizure went on and on. It locked Marcy’s muscles and at the same time made her thrash. It had to be pulling muscles, maybe tearing some. Marcy’s skirt rode high on her thighs, exposing pink underwear. Embarrassed for them both, Dahlia tugged the skirt down, smoothed it. Then she gathered Marcy to her, wrapped her arms around Marcy’s, pulled the soaked and convulsing enemy to her, and held her there. Protected. As safe as the moment allowed, waiting for the storm to pass.