Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan Page A

pressure on the wound and reach the fucking telephone. So this fifteen-year-old girl bleeds to death right there in my arms. And the whole time, I could see how scared she was. I knew, I fucking knew she thought the wolves were coming, that she could see them coming, and this time it didn’t matter if I was there or not.”
    He stops, breathless, his Adam’s apple and a spot beneath his left eye twitching, and Niki realizes that he’s holding her hands now; Marvin holding both her hands in his like he’s about to kiss her or get down on one knee and propose marriage. Like he’s afraid of losing her, too, the same way he lost the girl who saw wolves, the same way she lost Spyder and Danny, and maybe if he can just hold on to her long enough it doesn’t have to happen.
    “I’ve never seen wolves,” Niki says uncertainly, all she can think of, and the silence between them so absolute it’s starting to hurt, starting to embarrass, and now there are tears leaking from Marvin’s eyes and winding slowly down his stubbled cheeks.
    “I know that, and maybe that other girl, maybe she never saw any wolves either, but that’s not the point. She believed she saw wolves, Niki, and in the end that’s all that mattered.”
    “Yeah, I know,” Niki says, thinking of the things Spyder thought she saw, not wanting to see him cry, and he squeezes her hands tighter. It hurts, but she doesn’t say so; she squeezes back instead, gazes past Marvin at Danny Boudreaux staring at them from his corner. Some wild expression stretched like a latex Halloween mask across his cold and irrefutable ghost’s face, jealousy or hope or a wicked, secretive smile, no way for her to be sure, and then he’s gone and there’s nothing but a smudgy bit of shadow left behind.
    “I can’t believe what you told me, Niki, so I’m just gonna have to take your word for it. If I can’t see what you see, then I can at least trust you. I’m not going to let you do this alone.”
    And when he finally lets go of her hands, releasing them slowly like he’s afraid she’s going to run, all the dark blood that’s leaked through Niki’s torn stitches and raveling bandages spills out between their fingers and trickles onto the bed. Marvin’s face goes slack, then taut and sick, realizing what he’s done to her, horror vying with apology for control, and he opens his mouth to say something, but “No,” she says, places her good hand over his lips and smiles a smile she doesn’t have to fake. “I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt all that bad. I think I’m going to be okay now.”

     

    While Marvin packs and calls the airline, Niki goes back to the upstairs bathroom to look at her hand. Down the hall, past the room where Daria keeps her record collection and her guitars, and the bathroom is big and white and smells faintly of Dow Scrubbing Bubbles and strongly of the bowl of lavender potpourri on the back of the commode. Clean smells, and Niki wonders how the bathroom would smell if Daria hadn’t hired Marvin. The lion-footed, cast-iron tub and all those little hexagonal tiles on the floor, a narrow, stained-glass window above the tub so she can see the last of the day, and she sits down on the toilet seat and begins unwrapping the gauze. Marvin wanted to do it, but she refused, so he fussed with the bloody bedclothes instead, carting them off to the laundry hamper and apologizing over and over even though she asked him not to; the stitches torn before he squeezed her hand, anyway, and it’s something she wants to do herself.
    The entire palm side of the dressing is stained, some of the blood already gone dry and stiff, and she unwinds it slowly, winces when she gets near the end and some of the gauze has stuck to her skin, stuck to the crusty edges of the hole in her hand. Niki lets the bandage fall to the floor, a sloppy pile of crimson and maroon and white at her feet. The stitches have come loose, all eight of them, and she knows that Marvin’s