The remaining members of the True Knot were crowded together at the two windows looking down at the parking lot, watching as Billy Freeman turned a cartwheel for the first time in over forty years (and the last time he’d done this trick, he’d been drunk). Petty the Chink actually laughed. “What in God’s name—”
With their backs turned, they didn’t see Dan step into the room from the kitchen, or the girl flickering in and out of view at his side. Dan had time to register two bundles of clothes on the floor, and to understand that Bradley Trevor’s measles were still hard at work. Then he went back inside himself, went deep, and found the third lockbox—the leaky one. He flung it open.
(Dan what are you doing)
He leaned forward with his hands on his upper thighs, his stomach burning like hot metal, and exhaled the old poet’s last gasp, which she had given him freely, in a dying kiss. From his mouth there came a long plume of pink mist that deepened to red as it hit the air. At first he could focus on nothing but the blessed relief in the middle of his body as the poison remains of Concetta Reynolds left him.
“Momo!” Abra shrieked.
14
On the platform, Rose’s eyes widened. The bitchgirl was in the Lodge.
And someone was with her.
She leaped into this new mind without thinking about it. Searching. Ignoring the markers that meant big steam, only trying to stop him before he could do whatever it was he intended to do. Ignoring the terrible possibility that it was already too late.
15
The members of the True turned toward Abra’s cry. Someone—it was Long Paul—said: “What in the hell is that?”
The red mist coalesced into a shape of a woman. For a moment—surely no more than that—Dan looked into Concetta’s swirling eyes and saw they were young. Still weak and focused on this phantom, he had no sense of the intruder in his mind.
“Momo!” Abra cried again. She was holding out her arms.
The woman in the cloud might have looked at her. Might even have smiled. Then the shape of Concetta Reynolds was gone and the mist rolled at the clustered True Knot, many of them now clinging to one another in fright and bewilderment. To Dan, the red stuff looked like blood spreading in water.
“It’s steam,” Dan told them. “You bastards lived on it; now suck it in and die on it.”
He had known ever since the plan’s conception that if it didn’t happen fast, he would never live to see how well it succeeded, but he had never imagined it would occur as rapidly as it did. The measles that had already weakened them might have had something to do with it, because some lasted a little longer than others. Even so, it was over in a matter of seconds.
They howled in his head like dying wolves. The sound appalled Dan, but this was not true of his companion.
“Good!” Abra shouted. She shook her fists at them. “How does it taste? How does my momo taste? Is she good? Have as much as you want! HAVE ALL OF IT!”
They began to cycle. Through the red mist, Dan saw two of them embracing with their foreheads pressed together, and in spite of all they had done—all they were—the sight moved him. He saw the words I love you on Short Eddie’s lips; saw Big Mo begin to reply; then they were gone, their clothes floating to the floor. It was that quick.
He turned to Abra, meaning to tell her they had to finish it at once, but then Rose the Hat began to shriek, and for a few moments—until Abra could block her—those cries of rage and maddened grief blotted out everything else, even the blessed relief of being pain-free. And, he devoutly hoped, cancer-free. About that he wouldn’t know for sure until he could see his face in a mirror.
16
Rose was at the head of the steps leading down from the platform when the killing mist rolled over the True Knot, the remains of Abra’s momo doing its quick and lethal work.
A white sheet of agony filled her. Screams shot through her head like shrapnel. The cries of the dying True made those of the Cloud Gap raiding party in New Hampshire and Crow in New York seem puny by comparison. Rose staggered back as if she had been hit with a club. She struck the railing, rebounded, and fell down on the boards. Somewhere in the distance, a woman—an old one, by the wavering sound of her voice—was chanting no, no, no, no, no.
That’s me. It has to be, because I’m the only one left.
It wasn’t the girl who had fallen into the trap of overconfidence, but Rose herself. She thought of something
(hoisted on your own petard)
the bitchgirl had said. It scalded her with rage and dismay. Her old friends and longtime traveling companions were dead. Poisoned. Except for the cowards who had run, Rose the Hat was the last of the True Knot.
But no, that wasn’t true. There was Sarey.
Sprawled on the platform and shivering under the late-afternoon sky, Rose reached out to her.
(are you)
The thought that came back was full of confusion and horror.
(yes but Rose are they can they be)
(never mind them just remember Sarey do you remember)
(“don’t make me punish you”)
(good Sarey good)