Poison Ink
Authors: Christopher Golden
CONTENTS
For my nephew, Jack Golden—
welcome to the world, little man.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Huge thanks are due to my editor, Stephanie Lane, who got it right away and kept me on track. My gratitude always to Connie and the kids for providing love and home. Thanks also to Tom Sniegoski, Tim Lebbon, and Liesa Abrams, for listening, and to the Vicious Circle for much-needed nights out.
PROLOGUE
P
ieces of her are broken.
Every bump or crack in the road jostles her, shooting needles of pain into her skull and back and searing her side where some of her ribs have given way. She breathes through her teeth, and her pain turns into a strange whistling.
A paramedic floats into view above her. With a warm, damp cloth, he wipes some of the blood from her face. Twenty-something, skin like mahogany wood, a ridiculously good-looking guy. She feels almost embarrassed to have him looking at her bloody, swollen face.
“You’re going to be just fine, honey,” he says.
His voice sounds tinny, buzzing. Somehow that goes well with the coppery taste of her own blood in her mouth.
The ambulance hits a pothole. Pain sings through her, and the shadows at the edges of her vision loom up and swallow her, dragging her down into unconsciousness.
When next she opens her eyes, the paramedic and the ambulance are gone. Her eyelids flutter open, and she sees a woman leaning over her, hair tied back, eyes grim behind wire-rimmed glasses. When the woman notices her patient is awake, she smiles.
“Hello, Samantha. I’m Dr. Morrissey. You’re pretty banged up, but we’re going to take care of you here. Nothing we can’t fix, okay?”
Her face hurts so much that she doesn’t even try to speak, only gives the slightest of nods.
“Great,” Dr. Morrissey says. She turns to someone else, a nurse maybe, and rattles off instructions in a curt voice. Activity buzzes around them. Then the doctor glances back at her. “Oh, cute tattoo by the way.”
“Tattoo?”
She recognizes this new voice, though the room has begun to blur around her again, the shadows gathering at the corners of her eyes.
“Oh my God,” her mother says from somewhere nearby. “Where did she get a tattoo? Sammi?”
Her mom appears above her, looking down, her face contorted with worry.
“Who did this to you, honey? Who hurt you?”
The question hurts more than her broken bones. Her mother keeps talking—to her and to the doctors and nurses—and this time when the darkness creeps up on her, she welcomes it.
1
O
n the last Friday night of summer, Sammi Holland and the girls went downtown in search of ice cream. They planned to meet at Krueger’s Flatbread for pizza beforehand, a necessary preamble to the main event: an utter debauchery of swirl-ins and sprinkles and fudge sauce at England’s MicroCreamery. Afterward, the five of them would wander Washington Street, peeking in the windows of the candle shop, the art galleries, and the bohemian café on the corner, ending up at Cruel and Unusual Books. No way were they getting out of there without hitting the bookshop. Sammi could be very persuasive.
Downtown Covington didn’t draw a lot of teenagers. Most of their classmates from Covington High School would be at the mall tonight. But Sammi and the girls just weren’t the sort who hung out at the mall.
Unless they were going to the movies, Sammi and her friends steered clear of the Merrimack River Walk. The long, outdoor strip mall had been built less than ten years before, complete with movie megaplex, massive bookstore, and tons of chain clothing stores. On Friday and Saturday nights, hordes of high school kids from Haverhill, Methuen, Jameson, and other nearby towns roved the sidewalks along the River Walk in gaggles, half of them talking on their cell phones or texting their friends who hadn’t come along. Like the “main drag” in old movies and TV shows, the River Walk was all about seeing and being seen—half mating ritual and half dance of supremacy.
Sammi had no interest in that kind of poseur crap, and neither did the girls she hung around with. The five of them had been oddballs and loners all their lives, until they had found each other. Now they were like sisters, and all was right with the world. Or mostly right. So tonight Sammi walked along a stretch of cobblestoned sidewalk on Washington Street with Caryn Adams.
“Come on,” she said, hooking her arm through Caryn’s and dragging her away from the window of a closed gallery. “We’re late.”
Caryn fell into step beside her, grinning. “You’re just lucky that place isn’t open. Then we’d be really late.”
“Aren’t you hungry? I’m starving.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of the ‘starving artist’?” Caryn said. “Kind of comes with the territory.”
“Yeah, right. All those fashionistas who design dresses for the red carpet crowd, they’re starving artists. If they’re only eating carrot sticks, it isn’t because they can’t afford a decent meal.”
“No argument. But first they had to suffer. They had to get down in the trenches and fight it out with all the other ambitious artists.”
Sammi laughed. “You make it sound like war.”
Caryn glanced at her, the fading summer sunshine gleaming on her caramel skin. “There are all kinds of wars.”
Sammi blinked. She knew Caryn wanted a career in fashion desperately. Of all of her friends—of anyone she knew—Caryn had the most purpose and drive. But sometimes it verged on obsession.
“You must chill. Seriously. One of these days we’ll watch the Oscars together and they’ll ask, ‘Who are you wearing?’ and the answer will be ‘Caryn Adams.’ I know this. We all know it. But between now and then, you really have to chill. School starts on Tuesday, and tonight’s supposed to be about just being together.”
Caryn softened. “You’re right.
That
me, the one who was getting all tense? Just sent her home. Girl is not allowed to come out tonight.”
Sammi smiled. “Good.”
Grinning, they turned off of Washington Street into Railroad Square. Sammi and Caryn were roughly the same height—five feet three inches—and close enough in size that they could share clothes. The spaghetti-strap top Caryn had on had come from Sammi’s closet, while Sammi had pulled on a couple of tank tops, going for the layered look. Caryn wore sneakers, but Sammi stuck with the strappy sandals she’d worn most of the summer.
They walked alongside the concrete wall of the elevated train platform toward the old brick factory building that housed Krueger’s Flatbread. Most of Covington had been mills and factories once upon a time, like so many cities built north of Boston on the Merrimack River. In the past few years, the downtown had undergone serious renovation, the old buildings gutted and reclaimed for apartments, offices, and storefront shops. Much cooler than any mall.
“My stomach’s growling,” Caryn said.
“So much for the starving artist.”
As they entered the parking lot, Sammi saw a trio of people standing at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Krueger’s front door. Behind them, an old, beat-up BMW sat idling. The headlights were on. Summer nights had started arriving a little sooner this late in August, and while the sky was still blue, the sun had begun to sink low on the horizon. Between the train platform and the old factory buildings, the shadows were deep.
“There’s T.Q.,” Caryn said.
Sammi had already seen her. At five foot nine and with long, red hair, T.Q.—Simone Deveaux—was hard to miss.
“Who’s with her?” she asked.
“Looks like Jill Barbieri and that Regan bitch, what’s her name?”
“Crap. Isn’t this why we didn’t go to the mall?” Sammi said.
Jill and Regan were seniors at Covington High, both of them on the girls’ basketball team and obsessed with their own wonderfulness. Some girls started out fine and were transformed by high school into divas, so that by the time they became seniors they perceived themselves as the elite. Others arrived fully formed. Born bitchy.
Without a word to one another, Sammi and Caryn sped up. T.Q. saw them coming, and the relief that swept over her face made Sammi want to throw her arms around her. T.Q. had an ethereal beauty that drew plenty of attention, but she hated every minute of it. A shy, quiet girl, she had shared her thoughts only with her journal until she had made friends with Sammi and the others last year. As a sophomore, she’d practically run the school paper, and this year she’d be editor. At Covington, the people who even knew her name called her Simone, but her friends called her T.Q.—for “tall, quiet one”—and she loved it. No one had ever been interested enough in her to give her a nickname before.
Jill and Regan could screw with anyone else, but T.Q. was off limits.
“—want to kiss me, don’t you?” Regan said as Caryn and Sammi hurried over.
T.Q. ignored the question.
“What’s going on, Jill?” Caryn said, striding up to the senior girl. “I didn’t think they let the five-dollar hookers work this corner anymore.”
With the car running and the two girls just standing there, Sammi finally put it together. Their boyfriends must be inside, picking up pizzas to go, and they’d stayed out here to harass T.Q.
“Oh, look,” Jill said, “your girlfriends are here. It’s a lesbian lovefest tonight.”