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“There’s no profit in arguing,” he said, trying to pat her shoulder.
Zoë wrenched her shoulder away. “You’re right.” She pushed herself from her chair and headed for the doors. She hadn’t gotten anywhere. She still couldn’t visit her mother when she wanted and, dammit, she hadn’t even told them about the boy.
I made it worse, she told herself all the way home on the bus. I only wanted to ask what to do, and I made it worse. Poor Dad. He didn’t even know that I was angry, until it burst out. They’ll never let me back there now.
The house loomed cold and uncomforting, no longer safe. The rose by the front gate was withered and brown.
She thought about magic again as she lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. If only there were some magic she could perform to stop her mother dying. If only she could put things right and make things how they used to be. “If only,” she muttered to herself derisively, and sat up. “Who do you think you are? God?”
But the idea of magic had unlocked something. She pulled her notebook from her desk drawer and scribbled down lines furiously with a black felt-tip pen. She would worry about organizing later. Just let the words come. Then she went back and changed, deleted, and added. She forged the thoughts into form: the spells, the rites, the magic of life. Finally, she was satisfied. She had a poem—“Spells against Death.”
Then she fell asleep on top the covers, her notebook clutched to her chest.
When she woke, she was surprised at how much time had gone by. It was after three already. Thinking she should eat something, she went downstairs.
After a nervous glance out the back-door window, she looked in the refrigerator. There was no milk, which meant she couldn’t have cereal, so she settled on yogurt. She took it into the den and ate on the couch with her feet tucked under her, while she watched cartoons on television with the sound turned down.
Lorraine called just after three-thirty. “Why weren’t you at school?”
Zoë didn’t feel like explaining, it was too complicated. “I was sick.”
Lorraine didn’t even question it. “I can’t come over this evening,” she said. “I’m stuck packing and labeling. The movers are coming tomorrow. A couple of days on the floor in a sleeping bag, and we’re off.”
Zoë didn’t like the way Lorraine was starting to sound excited. “Is that all you can talk about?” It came out before she could help it.
There was silence on the other end of the line. Her cheeks stung with embarrassment. The embarrassment made her angrier. “I mean, all you talk about is yourself.”
“Zoë, I phoned to find out how you were,” came Lorraine’s stricken words.
“Oh, I thought you phoned to tell me all about your great move.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have called if I knew you were going to be a bitch,” Lorraine said. “I’ll talk to you later, maybe.” She hung up.
Zoë replaced the receiver with a trembling hand, the crash of Lorraine’s phone still ringing in her ears. Why did I do that? What the hell was I doing? Hot tears scalded her face.
The house felt even emptier, looming and hollow. I’ll go get milk, she decided. I need fresh air.
Walking didn’t relieve the misery in her, however. I would like to do something drastic, she decided, and kicked a stone down the sidewalk in front of her. Something to make them notice me.
She picked up more cereal at the store, as well as milk, and some vacuum-cleaner bags. She was surprised, when she stepped outside, at how dark it had become above the streetlights.
She was standing right by the alley where they had found that woman. She shuddered. Suddenly she remembered the boy standing at the same alley mouth, asking Lorraine to help him. Was that woman his mother? The thought appalled her. But, had they gone down the alley with him, could they have prevented it? Would the killer have heard them and run? Or was it already too late?
She turned into the alley, thinking “Spells against Death.” It was too late for that woman, the boy’s mother, but what about her mother? Was it too late for her?
The alley joined another that ran behind the stores, out to the street on either end of the row. A shortcut, she told herself. But it was darker than she thought inside. Lightning never strikes twice, she reassured herself as her jaw tensed, and she tightened her grip on the grocery bag.
Death had been here, but she would walk on through and show him what she thought of him, the cowardly thief. She held her head high, but her pace quickened.
The alley smelled of damp and garbage. A pile of boxes threw bizarre shadows in the light of a caged bulb by a back door. Was that where they’d found her? She tried not to look for dark stains on the ground.
What if there were someone back here? What if she were jumped? Would that be enough? Would death let her mother go? Only one Sutcliff needed, regardless of age or gender?
She was trying to make herself laugh at the thought, afraid to explore it, but a skittering behind a garbage can put an end to that. She turned the corner, her soft soles hitting cracked concrete silently. The alley beyond was dark, but there was light at the end, the warm glow of Elm Road. But something bigger than her moved in the shadows—in front, to the right, by basement stairs.
She edged to her left. What was it? Could she turn and run? Was it only a flickering of the dim light just past the steps? Yes, that’s all. It made the shadows move unnaturally. She crept along, as close to the left-hand wall as possible.
A trash can got in her way. It went flying—empty, unanchored, smashing the silence, stopping her heart. The shadows leapt, too, from the steps into the light.
