Mostly Dead Girls

parts in motion

Before they reached Dyer Brook, Shantay directed Ellen down one road and another until they reached an empty stretch with nothing but trees, grass and a crumbling stone wall nearby.

"I need to check the book," Shantay said, getting out of the car. "Alec, grab a water gun. Ellen, do you have a lighter?"

Alec felt a shiver of excitement curl in his belly as Shantay opened the trunk and rummaged around in her bag. He'd seen the bundle she pulled out before, but not its contents. There'd been a reproduction in the movie made a few years ago, but the prop makers had altered key elements for fear Maxwell Moon would find residence in something that perfectly duplicated his art.

Shantay sat on the edge of a stone heap and set about freeing the book from its prison of old blankets, newspapers, and what seemed like several miles of rope. Ellen and Alec drew closer as she got down to the last few layers. Shantay hesitated over the last one—a small, faded blanket that looked as if it had belonged to a little girl—before pulling it away and exposing the cover.

The book was in bad condition, the cover fraying at the edges and shiny with wear. It was a big, flat picture book, but the cover only held the title: Mr. Moon's Marvelous Workshop. Shantay touched a scorch mark at the edge of the cover, her eyes dark and distant, before she shook herself and became more natural. She began to flip through it with a businesslike air.

"Normal, normal—" Alec tried to get a glimpse of the pages, but they went too fast to read. Shantay stopped on one that simply had, 'and creatures nobody else had ever seen' and ran her fingertip over the background. "Here. See these huge blank spaces? That's where our friend from the road came out of."

"Has Moon started to fill the blank up yet?" Ellen asked.

"No. He's not in the pages I've seen yet." Shantay skimmed through the rest. "He's not anywhere in the book. There's not even a light on in the workshop windows." She frowned. "Something is wrong."

Alec raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"I don't know much about Moon," Alec said, "but did the creature on the road look like his style to you? It didn't to me, but I can't be sure."

Shantay furrowed her brow. "It was huge, and I was handling the guns. I didn't really notice. Besides, nobody but him has been able to do this." She gestured to the book. "It's his thing."

"Wait," Ellen said. "What about Kansas? When he talked that little girl, Sandy, into drawing monsters for him?"

"He still had to bring them to life. And with the way he flipped out at Sandy when she criticized him, I didn't think he'd be letting anyone else into his workshop soon." Shantay tapped her fingers on the back cover of the book. "But you're right. It's a possibility."

"Did the style look like anything you knew?" Ellen asked Alec.

Alec shrugged. "If you can get a lineup of people and tell them to all draw a dog-deer..."

"Caine didn't draw, did he?" Shantay asked, beginning to wrap the book up again.

He felt the usual swoop in his stomach, but he was able to answer as if it were a normal question. "Not when I knew him, at least. The only artistic thing he did was sing." It was a small thing, but he felt proud of himself. Go you, Alec. Ninety days without a Caine-related panic attack.

"There must be a Maxwell Moon book in the area, if it got out of the Workshop," Shantay muttered. "Maybe I should stick around and track that down."

Alec felt an odd little stab of worry at that, an instinctive no. "I could keep an eye out for it," Alec offered. "You've got other things to do."

Shantay was giving him a narrow-eyed look that made him quickly rearrange his expression, hoping the outcome was normal. He still wasn't good at ordinary emotional reactions. "I do," she said. "But I don't like you being alone here with this level of activity." And I don't like the way you're acting hovered behind her words. "So after a few days I'll find someone to come down and join you. OK?"

"Really? I don't think that's necessary. I mean, aside from a few weird things, the only thing that's showed up is a Moon creation. Maxwell Moon wouldn't be interested in me."

Shantay held his gaze for a long moment. He dropped his eyes first, smiling to try and cover up his disappointment. "Sorry. It's your call."

Shantay and Ellen glanced at each other. "I'm going to strap this down in the trunk again." Shantay said, indicating the book.

"You do that." Ellen slid out of the car. "Alec, let's walk."

Fear rippled up from his stomach, sending needle-like stabs of cold into his chest, shoulders and jaw. Maybe it was the voice, he tried telling himself. Her tones of voice could sometimes be similar to Caine's—conjure up bad memories. But knowing the cause doesn't help the symptoms, and his hands twist into fists in his pockets as he joins her by the tree line. "What?" His voice comes out cold and sharp.

Ellen doesn't seem to care. She looks at him with an odd mixture of pity and calculating wariness, her fingers raising to hover by her mouth. She hadn't smoked since last year, but the gestures were still there.

"Old habits die hard," she said, as if reading his thoughts. "Listen, kid. I know why you want to be left alone. You think Caine might be here, and you want to take him out yourself. And believe me, I can sympathize; if I got a chance at Fisher again I'd probably want to rush off without waiting for backup."

Alec stripped loose threads off the inside seam of his pocket, trying to resist the urge to dig his nails into his palm. "What's your point?"

"I can sympathize, but that doesn't make it any smarter." She folded her arms. "Caine's a largely unknown quantity. If you go up against him alone, you will probably lose. Even if you didn't have your history getting in the way—"

"I've been doing fine for years." Alec said quickly—too quickly, but he can't take it back.

"Nobody should be expected to be fine after what happened to you." Ellen caught his gaze and held it. "So if you don't listen to anything else, listen to this: do not attack Caine alone. Be smart, wait for backup, it'll turn out better in the long run."

Alec broke the gaze and stared at the ground. "We don't even know if he's around here."

Ellen didn't get distracted. "Promise me, Alec."

Alec looked down the road; the long empty stretch of asphalt that led, somewhere down the line, to Dyer Brook. Not too far away, the house with something wrong with it sat quiet and too-innocent in the fading light. For a moment, he was tempted to dig his heels in—he knew that Ellen and Shantay would never let him go, then, and he could go back to Bayonne and SafeHouse headquarters and try to forget, again, that Caine ever existed. Something about that house, the place he was headed towards, made his stomach twist as if he were touching a raw wound.

"I'll be careful," he said. "As careful as I can." He took a deep breath. "And if you or one of the older members can come, I'd appreciate it. If Caine's actually here, I want to be able to take him down."

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