“No.”
“You were standing behind Phil, just like this, whispering in his ear, saying…Let’s see, what were your exact words again? Oh yeah: ‘That’s the guy, Phil, the one who kidnaps little kids for the gypsies. I told him all about you: where you live, where you play, where you sleep…’”
I shut my eyes.
“‘…and when he comes for you, Phil, you’d better not scream or try to run away. That’ll just make him mad, and then he’ll hurt you. And don’t go crying to Mom about this, either. She can’t protect you. He’ll hurt her too, maybe even kill her, and he’ll still take you away afterwards.’”
“I was just messing with his head!” I said. “I was teasing him! I didn’t know—”
“Teasing him?” She touched the side of my face and I flinched. “I think you’re teasing me, Jane. I mean, I saw the tape. Phil was practically pissing himself from fear, and you: you were into it. Teasing! You were being evil. You liked it. You were good at it. Good enough to make a casual observer think that maybe you’d had some practice…”
“Fuck you! I wasn’t—it was just that one day.”
“Yeah, right. That’s a hell of a coincidence, Jane. The one time you give in to a sadistic impulse, put on a performance that couldn’t have been better if you’d been trying out for the Troop, and we just happened to be there to record it…You know what I think? You had ten years with Phil before we took him, and I bet if we picked any day out of those ten years and put J.D.’s poster in a room with the two of you, we’d have caught something just as telling. Jane being evil? Hah. How about Jane being Jane?” She touched my face again, and whispered: “Bad monkey.”
This time instead of pulling away I turned on her, but my fists punched empty air. I heard the sound of her laugh off to my left and lunged for it, still swinging.
“Open your eyes, Jane,” she said. “I know you don’t want to see, but you’re never going to catch me blind.”
I opened my eyes. She was right in front of me, and this time I actually managed to get my hands around her throat before she melted away.
“Stop doing that!” I complained, as she rematerialized, just out of reach.
“All right,” she said. “You want a fair shot, I’ll give you one. Here, I’ll even give you a handicap…” She brought out the knife she’d used to kill John Doyle, and tossed it to me. “Now come on,” she said, showing me her empty hands. “No tricks this time, I promise.”
“OK,” I said. “Just one other thing…” And I lunged at her, leading with the point of the knife blade. She sidestepped, caught my wrist, and threw me face-first into the nearest wall.
“So where did it all go wrong?” she asked, pinning me effortlessly. “After such a promising start…Were you actually sorry when Doyle took Phil away? Or was it that business with Whitmer? I mean, no offense, that was pretty impressive for a fourteen-year-old, but still. You think taking out a serial killer makes you some kind of saint?”
She released me and stepped back, and I whirled around, slashing with the knife.
“Or was it the organization?” she said, dancing clear of the blade. “Talking to Catering on the phone, I can see how that might have an effect on a young girl, even a bad seed. Weird though, how they waited so long before actually recruiting you…Why do you suppose that is?”
I cut at her again, and this time she ducked beneath my arm, hooked a boot behind one of my ankles, and jerked my feet out from under me.
“Was that just a bureaucratic oversight, you think? Or did they maybe have a reason for not rushing to take you on?”
“I had a life,” I gasped. “They hoped…They wanted me to do something with it.”
“Oh, that line.” She laughed. “So why didn’t you do anything with it?”