"Okay," I murmured. "Guess the answer to my most desperate question is behind door number one."
I reached out and turned the knob. It didn't budge. I rattled it. Knocked on it. Slammed my palms against it.
"Hey!" I shouted, and tried to walk away again. I nearly twisted my feet off my ankles, but I didn't get anywhere. Then I saw the peephole.
Obviously, Jimmy didn't want me to know what was behind this door, but dream walking was a powerful thing. That he was able to keep the door locked against me was impressive. However, a desperate question, the blood I'd spilled to have it answered, took precedence. Hence the hole in the door.
I leaned forward. Instead of the reverse, blurry image commonly projected through peepholes if you peered into them from the outside, I was able to see quite clearly.
Jimmy and Ruthie, at the house in Milwaukee. Years agofrom the looks of them.
Though Ruthie had never appeared to age, this view of her showed me that she had. Her hair was less gray, her hands less bony, her eyes somehow more tired rather than less. How odd.
Jimmy was maybe seventeen. Tall and still just a little gangly, but with the promise of the man he'd become, his hair shining blue-black in the sun, his eyes sparking fury. What else was new? Jimmy had always been angry back then. It was his thing.
"Are you crazy?" he asked, the anger and something else making his voice crack.
Ruthie's face tightened. I waited for the eruption. Disrespect wasn't tolerated in any form. When she didn't speak, or smack him upside the head, I shifted uneasily, realized my feet could now move; however, I no longer wanted to be anywhere but here. What my most desperate question was, I didn't know, but I was certain it would be answered very soon.
"I can't," he continued. "She'll—"
"That's the idea," Ruthie said, and her voice was the coldest I'd ever heard. So cold, I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering alone in the halls of Jimmy's mind.
"But—" He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, a gesture I knew came from uncertainty, indecision, fear.
"Did you think I wouldn't find out?"
Jimmy dropped his hand. "I didn't know—"
"That I could see?" She smiled but the expression wasn't the one I was used to. The one that made every child smile back, that made lost boys and girls know they'd come home.
No, this smile was something else entirely. This smile was calculating. It was almost, but not quite, the smile of the woman of smoke. The smile of a being that would do anything, pay any price, sacrifice anyone, to get what she wanted.
"Would you have kept it in your pants if you'd known?" Ruthie murmured.
Jimmy glanced away and didn't answer.
"Well, you won't have to keep it in your pants now. Do what I told you. It's the only way."
"It'll kill her."
"She's stronger than that," Ruthie said. "What will kill her is loving you. She can't have a weakness. She has to be able to think of the world."
I rubbed my hands over my stingingly cold arms, shivering so badly my back ached from it.
"You can't have a weakness, either. They'll know," she continued. "And you have to be able to do what you do best."
"Kill." His voice had lost the fury. He sounded almost broken. I wanted to go to him, but he wasn't really there.
"It's what you were born to do," Ruthie said.
Born to kill? Ruthie was telling Jimmy he'd been born to kill? I wasn't a psychiatrist, but even I knew that wasn't a good thing to tell a kid. Sure, we all understood Jimmy wasn't killing people, but still—
He had.
I wanted to smack somebody, and I knew exactly who. Too bad Ruthie wasn't any more there than Jimmy was.
"There's no other way?" Jimmy asked.
"You think she'll believe you just left her behind? You think she'll stop loving you now that you've gone and been her first? I told you not to touch her." Ruthie's voice rose. "Didn't I tell you never to touch her?"
"I couldn't—" He stopped, and I leaned forward, smacking my nose against the door. He couldn't what?
But Ruthie didn't let him finish. "If you just leave, she'll search for you forever. She'll never get over you, and she has to. It's time for you to take your place. But she ain't ready. If she follows—"
"She could die." Ruthie nodded, and after several seconds Jimmy sighed. "Okay. I'll do it." He gave a short, sharp, unamused laugh. "I mean I'll do her. What was her name?"
"Summer," Ruthie said. "Summer Bartholomew."
I gasped, and both Ruthie and Jimmy glanced toward the door, but I was gone, being dragged out of Jimmy's head so fast my stomach roiled. Or maybe it was just the disgust over what I'd heard bubbling in my gut like acid.
Ruthie had ordered Jimmy to sleep with Summer, knowing full well that I'd see, that it would break my heart, that I'd wind up hating him. Ruthie, who knew everything about me, including how much I desperately needed to be loved, how much the betrayal would hurt, had coolly calculated the best way to turn me against someone who'd needed me as badly as I'd needed him. And he'd agreed.
But, hey, anything for the world, right?
CHAPTER 28