Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer Page A

for so long. But I still wasn't sure she'd want me in this house, and even if she did, I knew she'd want Faye here by my side.
    I couldn't tell her Faye had left me. Faye was the only part of Pryor that Mom still had. Mom would never forgive her for leaving me here alone.
    We were a family of secrets. I'd kept my share. One more wouldn't hurt.
    There was no reason to stay in the kitchen. Crystal might have been the type to keep a few dollars hidden in the sugar bowl, but I wasn't about to dig around and find out.
    The problem was where I would go if I left the kitchen. As best I could tell, the only rooms left were the girls' room, the master bedroom, and the bath.
    I knew I couldn't leave without going to Budge and Crystal's bedroom. Faye would be certain to ask me, and she'd catch me if I lied. I could skip the bathroom, I told myself. But I had to go to the bedroom, and if I wanted Faye to shut up about it, I'd better find Crystal's jewelry box and take something from it.
    I went to the girls' room first, where no one had died. It was painted pink and had white cotton curtains. Most of the girls' toys seemed to be in the living room, but there were a couple of dolls strewn around here, and a well-chewed teddy bear in the corner.
    There were two beds with identical pink flowered sheets and quilts. Kelli Marie must have had her own, and the twins shared another. Neither bed was made.
    I looked across the tiny room and saw the remains of bloody fingerprints on the chest of drawers and closet. Budge needed clothes for Krissi. The people who'd seen her in Ohio had described her outfit, blue jeans and a yellow cotton shirt. If she'd been in bed when Budge went on his rampage, he must have dressed her before they left.
    It didn't help that I was in the room where no one had died. This bedroom was as filled with ghosts as anywhere else in the house.
    I went to the master bedroom.
    I knew there'd be blood there, but I hadn't expected quite so much. There was no headboard and the walls were splattered. The mattress had been torn to shreds from Budge's ceaseless stabbing.
    I knew I couldn't stay in the room very long.
Just find something, anything,
I told myself,
and then you can go back to Faye's spare room with its patchwork quilt and sleeping cat.
    Bloody footprints covered the carpet. There were pale but discernible bloodstains on the furniture and closet, showing what Budge had touched after he'd washed himself off in the kitchen.
    Crystal's jewelry box was on top of the chest of drawers. I stood as far away as I could, reached out, and grabbed it. As I opened it, the sound of a tinkling music box song shocked me. I screamed and dropped the box, Crystal's earrings and pendants scattering on the carpet.
    "Who's there? Whoever you are, you've got no business being here!"
    I screamed again.

Eighteen
    "G ET OUT OF THAT room right now! Do you hear me? Get out!"
    I couldn't move. The music box kept tinkling "Edelweiss." The footsteps got louder and closer to the door.
    "Out! You got no right being here."
    I stared, paralyzed with fear, at a young man, not much more than a boy, really, in tight jeans and a white T-shirt, a tattoo of a dragon reaching from his neck all the way down his left arm. In confusion, I thought, Budge didn't have a tattoo, not when he was that age, when my mother loved him enough to make his baby.
    Then I understood. "Trace?" I choked out. "You're Trace?"
    He looked at me, Budge's daughter, his sister. As much a Coffey as he was.
    "Willa?" he asked.
    I managed to nod.
    "I heard you was in town," he said. "Granny heard talk."
    "I didn't know you were," I said. I took a deep breath, trying to stop my body from shaking. "I ... I'm sorry. I don't want to be here. I haven't taken anything."
    "Not much to take, most likely," Trace said. "Except for his guitar. I came to get his guitar."
    Everything was swirling. Out of nowhere, I remembered Daddy playing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" on his guitar, teaching me its words,