Chapter VIII
VIII
New York, New York
And then, she meets Penny.
Charlotte doesn’t want to fall for her—for anyone again—but she won’t deny how nice it is to be the object of affection, how lonely she has been. And perhaps, if she is being honest, some part of her thinks that she deserves it, after all those years of vigilance.
Deserves to be seen, and wanted, and held.
Besides, there is something special about Penny.
Penny, who works nights at a bodega, and devours books as fast as she can buy them from the secondhand shop around the corner, books that fill every shelf of her tiny apartment in Queens because she can’t bear to sell them back.
Penny, who takes her breath away, with her black hair, her green eyes (like Joss, and not like Joss at all), and her infectious laugh, and her insatiable mind.
Penny, who calls her Char, and starfishes in her sleep, and tastes like curiosity, and hope, and the energy drinks she mainlines to stay awake.
Penny, who doesn’t disappear.
Not after a month, or two, or three.
Charlotte marks the passing weeks with such relief, and then, on their four-month anniversary, Penny asks her to move in.
She gives her a key with a pendant shaped like a cartoon drop of blood, from when she donated that spring, and it’s so silly, but the sight makes Charlotte smile every time she pulls it from her pocket.
Every time she slips the key into the lock.
Until one night she comes home and finds Penny propped upright in their bed, head drooping as if she was waiting up for Charlotte and simply drifted off. Except the front of the tattered Eagles shirt she wears to sleep is stained with rivulets of rusted red.
Charlotte stands pinned in the bedroom doorway, as if unable to cross the threshold. She stares at the scene, denial racing to catch up with what she sees, because this can’t be happening.
Not again.
Not again.
Not again.
Except, it is.
It is, and Charlotte forces herself forward, step-by-step, until she’s almost to the bed, and that’s when Penny shudders and wakes up.
Charlotte’s legs go weak beneath her with relief, and she sinks onto the bed. Because Penny’s all right, isn’t she, it must be paint, not blood, and she’s okay, and everything is still okay.
Until the moment Penny looks right at her, those green eyes now lit strangely from behind, and smiles, revealing pointed teeth.
“Hey, Char,” she says, and she doesn’t seem frightened, or confused, not even when she sees the shock on Charlotte’s face.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” says Penny, reaching for her hand.
“I’m okay.” But she’s not, she’s not, her fingers are already cold, and Charlotte cannot hear her heart.
“It’s all right,” murmurs Penny, the way she does after one of Charlotte’s nightmares.
“It’s all right. Sabine told me what would happen. ”
The sound of that name, in Penny’s mouth, turns the still air to ice inside her lungs.
“What?” she wheezes. “I don’t—”
Penny grips her hand, so tight, too tight, she doesn’t know her strength. “She told me you were scared to do it, so she had to. Because she didn’t want you to be lonely. And now you won’t be. So you see, it was a gift. From both of us. To you.”
The room tips.
The cracks in Charlotte deepen, and she fights the urge to scream.
Because Sabine knows—she has to know—why Charlotte hasn’t turned a single lover all these years.
Because she cannot bear the thought of being their Sabine.
Of them staying with her as the parts they love begin to rot away, until all that’s left is a stranger, or a monster, or both.
Sabine knows, and that is exactly why she’s done it.
And Charlotte is fighting to hide the horror, must not be doing a good job, because Penny’s face drops.
“You don’t seem happy,” she says, green eyes flickering with worry.
Charlotte shakes her head, even as she forces out a smile, and says of course, of course she is happy. She’s so happy Penny is all right. She folds her arms around the girl, tries not to hear the silence where her pulse should be, Sabine’s scent still clinging to her.
Penny laughs against her in relief, pulls back and says they should go out.
“To celebrate!” she announces, lunging up from the bed with sudden, manic glee. “And I’m hungry. Like, really hungry.” She goes to the rack against her bedroom wall, begins turning through the outfits there.
“Don’t worry about that,” says Charlotte, rising from the bed. “I’ll show you how.” She passes the dresser, fingers curling around a silver long-handled brush. “I’ll teach you everything.”
Penny takes a sequined sweater from the rack. “Oh!” she says, the small gems winking as she lifts it. “Think of all the bo—”
But the word dies on her lips.
The sweater falls.
There is no cry, no sob, no drawn-out death.
Penny simply stiffens as the silver handle drives through her back, her ribs, her heart.
And then the life goes out of her. She sags backward against Charlotte, so light, and yet so heavy that Charlotte feels her knees give way beneath the weight, sliding with her to the floor, where she strokes Penny’s hair and wonders if she is beginning to wither, too.
If something is dying in her after all, the part that knows better. The part that should have learned.
How else could she have let this happen?
Something kindles inside Charlotte, then, burning through the guilt and grief.
Rage. She rises, makes her way back through the apartment, snatches the blood drop keychain from the kitchen table, and goes up onto the roof.
Three in the morning, and no one up there, nothing save for a string of burned-out Christmas lights and half a dozen empty bottles and Manhattan winking in the distance.
“Enough,” she hisses to the empty roof, the Queens night. The word goes nowhere—the darkness seems to snuff it out—and so she says it louder, and louder, and louder, until it is a chant, a shout, a shriek.
“DO YOU HEAR ME, SABINE?” she screams into the dark. “I SAID ENOUGH.”
A light goes on nearby. A window opens. A neighbor yells at her to Knock it off.
Charlotte doubles over, lets out a final, guttural scream.
It echoes. And dies.
And no one comes.