Page 18 of Protecting the Flame

THE GOLDEN DAY

Chapter 1

Plik…plik…

“Hello?”

Plik…

“Emma, are you there?”

Ben, that damn faucet…

“Emma?”

Plik…

“Emma?”

Ben, that damn faucet’s leaking again—

“Emma, wake up!”

Her eyes creaked open as if on balky hinges. She winced against a bright, milky light that was wrong somehow, strange, and so she squeezed her lids shut again. I’m tired. Her head throbbed, and her mouth was cottony and tasted like swamp water. She was also freezing, couldn’t get warm. Where the hell was the blanket? Hangover. Too much to…

Plik.

Her face was wet. Her cheeks and forehead and chin, her neck—plik, plik—were damp.

The air was thick with an oddly fruity but astringent stink that reminded her both of road trips with her parents and long nights in bad bars. Beyond the drip of that damn faucet…my God, where was she? Which man had she let herself go to a hotel with this time?

Plik.

She heard a strange fwap, fwap, fwap, the noise a sheet might make on a clothesline. This was juxtaposed against a fast, almost snaky hiss like rice on tin, sand over stone.Or rats’ feet over broken glass. She felt the salt ball of a sob swell in her throat. Oh, Ben…

“Emma, are you awake?”

No. She was dreaming. She was in bed. Someone had stolen all the blankets, and she was shivering, her head hurt, and her neck killed. Her face ached as if she’d run into a wall. She’d done that once, too, as a kid. Talking to someone else after lunch, she hadn’t watched where she was going and turned around in time to smack cinderblock. There was a shock of pain and then blood, a lot of it, spewing from her broken nose to splatter onto her shoes and the floor and go plik-plik onto her Mary Poppins lunchbox. The lunchbox was new, a gift for her birthday because she was a big girl now, going into the fifth grade at a big-girl school. As the rest of the kids in the lunchroom gawked, a teacher had cupped a hand to her nose and guided her to the nurse who, when she heard what Emma had done, only rolled her eyes: Oh, for goodness’ sake.

“Don’t pass out again.”

Again? That meant she’d awakened once before? Her thoughts tumbled over one another, all arms and legs and in a confused jumble like cheerleaders who couldn’t hold that pyramid. Well, why the hell shouldn’t she go back to sleep? She was tired. She must be lying wrong, though, because her neck hurt, and who had turned down the heat? Her fingers and toes were icy. She inhaled, tasting cold, wet air, and thought to call out…to whom? About what? Someone. Anyone. But instead she groaned against a dagger of pain above her heart. A duller burn grabbed her belly and right hip. To her right and somewhere in front came…

Plik…

that strange fwapping sound again. Who’d left the window open? The guy she’d let take her to a hotel, probably. That’s why she was so cold. No, wait, what guy? She hasn’t had a drink in weeks. She remembered it distinctly, that moment when she’d tried a whiskey and amaretto concoction…the bartender called the drink The Godfather and said a lot of women liked it, but, after two sips, she pushed it away. The drink hadn’t tasted right. She hadn’t felt right, either. Something was wrong, off, she knew it—

“Emma, come on, wake up.”

She finally placed the voice to a name. Mattie. Suddenly, everything clicked, as if she’d been a jigsaw puzzle scattered by an inquisitive cat.

She opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was blood smeared on the back of Rachel’s headrest. Rachel herself was slumped to the right, a thick red runner of blood slicking Rachel’s parka and her limp right hand from which a ruby pearl swelled and bloomed and grew heavy as a ripe grape at the tip of Rachel’s middle finger before breaking away to plop into a red pool.

Plik.

“I think my mom’s hurt pretty bad.” A pause, and then Mattie’s voice came again. “Will isn’t answering either.”

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