“No,” said Dahlia, fearing a fresh wave of convulsions.
The twitches kept up. Left hand. Left arm. Hip buck. Both feet. Random, though. Not intense. Not with the kind of raw power that had wracked Marcy a few minutes ago.
It was then that Dahlia realized that this whole time she could have been calling for help. Should have been calling. She shifted to lay Marcy on the floor, then dug into her purse to find her cell. It was there, right under the knife. Directly under it. The knife Dahlia forgot she’d put unsheathed into the bag.
“Ow!” she cried, and whipped her hand out, trailing drops of blood. Dahlia gaped at the two-inch slice along the side of her hand. Not deep, but bloody. And it hurt like hell. Blood welled from it and ran down her wrist, dropped to the floor, spattered on Marcy’s already bloodstained blouse.
She opened the bag, removed the knife, set it on the floor next to her, found some tissues, found the phone, punched 911 and tucked the phone between cheek and shoulder, pressing the tissues to the cut.
The phone rang.
And rang. And, strangely, kept ringing. Dahlia frowned. Shouldn’t the police answer 911 calls pretty quickly? Six rings? Seven? Eight?
“Come on!” she growled.
The phone kept ringing.
No one ever answered.
Dahlia finally lowered her phone, punched the button to end the call. Chewed her lip for a moment, trying to decide who to call next.
She called her mom.
The phone rang.
And rang. And went to voicemail.
She tried her aunt Ivy. Same thing. She tried her dad. His line rang twice and the call was answered.
Or—the call went through. But no one actually said anything. Not Dad, not anyone. After two rings Dahlia heard an open line and some noise. Sounds that she couldn’t quite make sense of.
“Dad?” she asked, then repeated it with more urgency. “Dad? Dad?”
The sounds on the other end of the call were weird. Messy sounding. Like a dog burying its muzzle in a big bowl of Alpo.
But Dad never answered that call.
That’s when Dahlia started to really get scared.
That was the point—after all those failed calls, after that bizarre, noisy, not-a-real-answer call—that she realized that something w
as wrong. A lot more wrong than Marcy Van Der Poop having a bad day.
She turned to look at Marcy.
Marcy, as it happened, had just turned to look at her.
Marcy’s eyes were no longer rolled up in their sockets. She looked right at Dahlia. And then Marcy smiled.
Though, even in the moment, even shocked and scared, Dahlia knew that this wasn’t a smile. The lips pulled back, there was a lot of teeth, but there was no happiness in that smile. There wasn’t even the usual mean spite. There was nothing.
Just like in the eyes.
There . . .
. . . was . . .
. . . nothing.