Free Pretty Little Dead Girls by Mercedes M. Yardley Page B

light out of somebody’s eyes for your own enjoyment is wrong wrong wrong. He does not try to be judgmental by this; he is simply declaring his own beliefs. And what he believes is this:
    If you so much as lay a finger on my Bryony, I will come after you. I will come after you and I will make you pay and you will be sorry until the end of your days because you do not want to experience what will happen to you. You can’t do that to her. I won’t let you. I won’t let you.
    So Eddie thought, strumming and fretting.
    He practiced his song for Bryony until it was, oh, so perfect, and he feared what he had always feared since he had met her. He feared her death. He feared being lost without her. He feared waking up one morning and realizing that there might not be anything left.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
    A Terrible Smile
    “Daddy?”
    “Sweetheart. How are you?”
    “I miss you, Daddy.”
    “I miss you, too, sweetie. Is everything all right?”
    “I . . . yes, yes, it is. I just want you here more than usual, I suppose. But everything is fine.”
    “You would tell me if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you?”
    “Of course, Daddy. I just . . . wanted to tell you I’m okay. I love you, and I . . . what’s that sound?”
    “It’s nothing to worry about, honey.”
    “It’s the desert, isn’t it? I can hear it even here, over the sound of the water. It sounds so angry.”
    “It wants you, child, but it can’t have you. It’s frustrated, but isn’t that a beautiful thing? Sometimes I listen to it at night, growling its plans, and it makes me smile. I can feel it on my face, and it’s a terrible smile. A smile that I never thought would belong to me, but there it is. It is aching for you, and the frustration that it is exhibiting . . . Well, it’s beautiful. It might be one of the best things I have ever heard. The sound of its exasperated yearning? Ah. It makes my heart glad, dear one. It is the sound of you living your life. It is the sound of your survival. It means it hasn’t caught you yet, and sometimes I almost believe it never will. I think that it is the most exquisite sound I have ever heard.”

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
    If Something Were To Happen
    Bryony and Rikki-Tikki hardly missed a practice. The sound of her fists rhythmically hitting against his open palms was both soothing and empowering. Sometimes Syrina would come in and watch, and scream: “Go for his eyes, Bryony! This murderer wants to take you down! Go straight for his eyes!”, but usually it was just Bryony and her very precious Rikki-Tikki.
    “Rikki-Tikki, you have become a brother to me,” she told him.
    He grinned. “Nothin’ like fighting to make you feel like family.”
    It was the evening before Eddie had to play at the station, and they were having an especially lovely practice with fists and feet, and Bryony’s ponytail flying through the air.
    In the midst of the delightful mayhem Rikki-Tikki said: “Everybody seems to have been touched by fate so far, except maybe for Eddie. I wonder when his turn will come.”
    He watched carefully as Bryony’s eyes lost their starlight glimmer and the bones of her face seemed to press against her skin.
    “Ah, you almost forgot us,” the bones whispered to Rikki-Tikki, “but indeed, here we are. We are death and fragility and decay and we lurk ever so close to the surface. How cunning we are! We ride around inside of Bryony’s skin and we are as intertwined with her as murder. There is no escape.”
    But Bryony didn’t stop or flee. She thought of the many people she had lost—of her young friend Samantha Collins’ horribly proper funeral, and the way Teddy Baker had broken her heart, and how her darling Jeremy had broken her life, and then she thought of her sweet, sweet, brave and strong Eddie. If something were to happen . . .
    “You shall not touch him,” she silently warned fate, and the stars on her wrist glittered as she continued to punch and kick with a newly ferocious