chapter nine #2
that? You want to belong to Claire? No, I’m not offended. Yes, I think that’s a good idea.” I put the rabbit in Claire’s arms.
“He’s sorry about your other bear and wants to be yours now.”
Claire tucks the rabbit under one arm and then throws her other arm around my neck. I feel the hilt of her knife digging into
my ribs as she squeezes me tight. “What if they take him tomorrow?” she asks. Her grip around my neck is tighter than a turtleneck.
Peter pats her shoulder, but I notice he’s watching me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “They won’t. I know the type. This is a one-strike kind of hit. Just grazing through. He or she won’t be back. And I’ll make sure of it.”
She sniffs. “You will? You said you were leaving. I heard you tell her.”
“I’ll be back,” he promises, “with your bear.” And then he runs out the door and off the porch so fast that he looks as if he’s flying. Claire and I watch him
disappear into the darkness.
I break the silence. “Come on. We’ll find Mr. Rabbit a hiding place,” I say as I ease her grip off of me. “Lift up a floorboard
or tape him to the underside of the mattress. Or we just take him with us.”
She nods and at last releases me.
I smile at her. “That’s better. Let’s see if we have any dinner in those backpacks. I’m pretty sure I found a can of delectably
slimy string beans.”
She sticks out her tongue.
“I can mush them up more and we can eat through a straw.”
She laughs. “Bleck! Lucky for me, we have no can opener.”
I shut the front door and double-check the locks. I know I should feel even more scared now that someone has found our house,
but I don’t. Peter will come back.
I don’t sleep at all.
Or maybe in brief stretches. My night is full of imagined sounds in the darkness, creaks and thuds and cracks and . . . I
dream that I am in the living room of the little yellow house. Moonlight pours in through the windows and bathes the couches
and chairs covered with white sheets in soft light so that they look like ghosts. The dead man sits in one of the chairs.
“You can’t leave,” he says. “Even if you die, you can’t leave. Not without the Missing Man.”
He starts to bleed.
I wake in a sweat.
The sheets are tangled around my legs. I sit up and untangle them, and I look around the room, trying to make sense of the shadows—that’s the shadow from the footboard, that stretch is from the wardrobe, that is my backpack in the corner, those are my shoes and pants. I stare at the closet door for a while.
Obviously, there’s no one in there. I checked the closet thoroughly when I hunted for Claire’s bear. Also, I locked the front
door and dragged an end table to block it, in case the intruder came back. Peter is not in the closet.
Unless he is.
“Peter?” I call softly.
Just paranoia. It’s the darkness and the unknown and the weirdness and everything. I force my muscles to relax. Close my eyes.
Breathe evenly. Crap, I think. Still can’t sleep.
I call a little more loudly. “Peter, are you there?”
I’ll laugh at myself in the morning. It’s not as if I’m a kid that needs a night-light. Even as a little kid, I never needed
one, though I liked the bedroom door cracked and the bathroom light on, but that was more for practical reasons. If I had
to get up, I didn’t want to trip on the cat and break either myself or the cat. I didn’t need the reassurance that—
“You talk too damn much.” Peter’s voice from somewhere in the darkness. “Go to sleep, Little Red.”
Clutching the sheets, I freeze. “Are you in my closet?”
“Maybe.”
I consider screaming, but who would come? I take a deep breath. Let it out. If Peter wanted to hurt me, he could have done
so a hundred times already. I keep my voice nice and calm. “Why are you in my closet?”
“To sleep, perchance to Dream.”
“You have an apartment. I assume it has a bed. You could be sleeping in your own nice bed with your own pillows and blanket.”
But as I say this, I’m thinking, He came back.
“Closets are comfortable.” I hear a laugh in his voice. He has a low, musical voice that rolls through the room. He’s almost whispering but not quite. I wonder if Claire is listening.
“Did you find the intruder?”
“Not yet.”
“Prince Fluffernutter?”
“No.”
I want to ask him why he came back if he didn’t find them, but I don’t want him to leave again. The nightmares are too fresh.
Still, though, why is he in my closet? I hit on an explanation that doesn’t freak me out . . . or at least doesn’t for the
same reasons. “Are you staying in here to guard me?”
“Sure. Let’s go with that.”
I’m not reassured. “Really?”
“I thought no one would find this place. I was wrong. So here I am, guarding you, in case I’m wrong again.”
That, oddly, does reassure me. “Why me and not Claire?”
He’s silent for a moment. “The Missing Man refused you,” he says at last, and for once, I don’t hear the mocking tone to his
voice. “I’d rather no one kills you until I figure out why. If this is what it takes to keep you safe, then this is what I’ll
do.”
“Oh. Good. That’s good.”
“So far, you don’t seem any different from any other lost person.” His voice is louder, less muffled. I turn my head. He’s
left the closet and is standing next to my bed, silhouetted against the window. “You aren’t overwhelmingly clever or witty
or funny or strong or fast or . . .”
“I get it. You don’t like me. Thanks for keeping me alive anyway.”
He shrugs. I see the movement of his shoulders, though I can’t see the expression on his face. “Claire likes you.”
“That’s because I gave her a rabbit.”
“You did do that.” He falls silent, and I don’t know what to say. I wonder how long he plans to stand there, looking down
at me.
A few minutes pass.
A few more.
Strangely, I don’t feel afraid. In fact, I feel tired for the first time since I lay in bed. My limbs feel heavy, and my eyes
feel thick. As weird and freaky as it is that a strange, overly handsome man is sleeping in my closet, I feel . . . oddly
better that he’s here. I’m not alone, even if he doesn’t think much of me. I’m a tool, or at least a potential tool, in his
personal vendetta. It helps that I now understand why he’s helping me. My muscles are finally unknotting. My eyelids feel
like cement sealing shut. “Maybe that makes me like you more, too.” His voice is soft, and I’m not certain that I hear him
correctly.
After a minute, the closet door opens and shuts.
I don’t dream this time.