It Begins Read Online Free Page A

sigh. “My father married her when I was ten. And then he died two years later, and I was
stuck
with her. We’ve
never
gotten along, Irene and me—we’ve
always
hated each other. And I’m
leaving
here just as soon as—”
    Abruptly Angela broke off. She reached for afresh cigarette, and Lucy could see how she trembled with anger.
    “As soon as I turn eighteen,” Angela finished defiantly. She held a lighter to the tip of her cigarette, the tiny spark glowing orange in the dark. “As soon as I’m eighteen, I’m taking off for New Orleans,” she murmured again. “That’s when I inherit my money, and I can do what I want. Till then I’m a goddamn hostage.”
    Lucy gave a distracted nod.
No …no … it’s not a siren. It’s going away now, in another direction …
    Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus once more on the girl beside her.
    “I didn’t know anything about you,” Lucy admitted, unsure what else to say. “Not about you
or
Irene. My mom barely mentioned Irene the whole time I was growing up. I’m really sorry.”
    Angela’s eyes widened, almost mockingly. “Sorry? Don’t be sorry for me. Don’t
ever
be sorry for me—I can take care of myself just fine.”
    “Angela, I didn’t mean—”
    “Just forget it. Who the hell do you think you are?”
    I don’t know anymore
, Lucy thought miserably.
I used to know, but everything’s different now …
I’m
different now …
    She was beginning to feel sick again. She wanted to leave, wanted Angela to stop talking and start driving. She could feel the girl’s eyes upon her, and she could still see the eyes of that dead girl, and there was too
much
death, death in her past, and death tonight, she was drowning in it, drowning in all this death, and
if we don’t leave right this minute I’m going to totally lose it and start screaming—
    “God, what’d you touch?” Angela asked suddenly.
    “Touch?” A chill crawled up Lucy’s spine, though she managed to keep her voice steady. “What do you mean?”
    And Angela was leaning closer now, staring harder, her eyes like big black hollows in the shadows of the car.
    “There,” Angela told her. “There on your hand.”
    Startled, Lucy looked down.
    She stared at the narrow black welts on the back of her right hand and between her fingers,at the misshapen black stain on the skin of her palm. In one more quicksilver flash, she saw the girl in the open grave, remembered the girl’s hand closing around her own …
    “I … I don’t know,” she heard herself whisper. “When I fell, maybe. That’s what happened … I tripped … and I must have bruised myself when I fell.”
    For an endless moment there was silence.
    “That’s no bruise,” Angela said at last.
    She pulled the Corvette back onto the street and peeled away, but Lucy scarcely noticed.
    Because the thing on her hand really
didn’t
look like a bruise.
    It looked like a burn.
    Like something had burned itself right into her skin.

4
    He’d come back one last time.
    Just to make sure she was dead.
    Some killers didn’t like to come back, he realized, for fear of being seen, being connected in some way, being caught—these dangers, of course, were of no concern to him.
    But after he’d done what he had to do, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He’d stood at his window watching the rain, replaying her voice over and over again in his head—her pleas for mercy, her screams of pain. And suddenly he’d begun to grow restless. Restless in a way he couldn’t understand, a strange uneasiness in his veins that made him pace in the dark and jump at small sounds and warily watch the shadows.
    And so he’d come back.
    One last time.
    She was just as he’d left her, naturally, and this soothed him a little. He’d stood over the crumbling grave and he’d stared down at her, and he’d stood for such a long, long time, waiting to see if she’d speak, if she’d move, if her eyes would open, if she’d look at him in the old