Public Enemies by Ann Aguirre Page B

Kramer?”
    I’m normally the smartest person in the room, I tried to say, but my lips burned as if they’d been stitched together. I touched them with trembling fingers but I didn’t feel the rough black thread I could picture so readily in my mind’s eye. One of his illusions, I guessed, but so effective that I literally couldn’t speak.
    â€œRhetorical question,” he added, in case I really was an idiot.
    I nodded slightly, remaining on my knees.
    â€œYou’re forcing me to be helpful. Dutiful,” he went on, radiating ire. “Faithful. All the most revolting ‘fuls.’ And you’ve no idea how much I loathe it.” He paced around me in a tight circle while I wondered why there were no pedestrians on this oddly archaic street. “So I’ll speak one final warning. I cannot be everywhere at once, and if you are so determined to die, why not save your beloved and get on with it?”
    The invisible thread unraveled from my mouth, so I could respond. “I wasn’t thinking. Just … my mother … and that monster—”
    â€œYour people created it, dearling.” But his gloved hands were surprisingly gentle when he pulled me to my feet. The blood was sticky on my knee, all the way down my shin. The Harbinger cupped both hands around one of mine, somber as a shadow. “Don’t act like such an imbecile again. If you get yourself killed, it’ll wreck my reputation—to say nothing of wasting your darling boy’s sacrifice.”
    I swallowed hard. “I don’t want that.”
    â€œLeave the stupidity for actual morons,” he finished. “Otherwise it’s far too confusing. But … I most definitely must punish you. So you don’t waste my time again.”

 
    FUNERAL OF THE HEART
    The scene skipped, and I stood alone on the street near my apartment.
    There was no sign of the Harbinger, but the bag man and his terrifying children were nowhere to be found either. The Harbinger might have saved me, but whatever punishment he had in store was probably worse than simple death. Pain was his purview, after all.
    Instead of going home, I headed for the subway. My dad wouldn’t be around until late, and I was in no mood to talk to Vi on Skype, pretending to be fine. I’m tired of lying. But truth would only freak her out.
    Forty minutes later, I walked toward the cemetery where we’d buried my mom. It was a cold afternoon, heavy cloud cover threatening snow. The trees were dark and bare, and the grass was brown. I wove through the gravestones, stepping over tree roots grown up through the ground and tangled like petrified tentacles of some ancient, desiccated beast. A lone statue of a woman stood down the hill, her stone hair pretending to blow in the icy wind. Likewise her gown was swept back from her legs, showing bare feet, bare arms, and a bare face. She was probably supposed to be a Greek maiden or possibly a goddess keeping vigil over a nearby grave, but I had the uncanny sense that her flat eyes were following me as I passed by. Shivering and huddling deeper into my thin school jacket, I glanced back once.
    Was her head at that angle before?
    I told myself it was and that I needed never to watch the Doctor Who angel episodes ever again. But there was something inherently spooky about a graveyard anyway, knowing you were surrounded by acres of the dead. Even in the summer, this wasn’t a cheerful place, though it must be prettier. I tried not to step on any plots on my way to my mom’s grave, and as I knelt in front of her marker, now engraved with the Einstein quote my dad had chosen, I wished I had thought to bring some flowers. Not that my mother would care, but still. It felt weird showing up empty-handed, impulsive and thoughtless, just like chasing after the bag man. Ignoring how the damp ground soaked through my shredded tights, I bowed my head for a few seconds. In the