Anthology - Many Bloody Returns by Multiple Authors

Author:Multiple Authors [Authors, Multiple]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-01-16T17:20:34.203000+00:00

Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten quite so trashed, given the circumstances.

“Well, I’m not signing with Brandon,” I said slowly. “Maybe I’ll shop around for another patron.”

“You really think anybody else is going to stand up and volunteer if Brandon’s got you marked?” Guy asked. “Girl, you got yourself a death wish.”

“Yeah, likethat’s news,” Jane said. “Look how she dresses!”

Nothing wrong with how I was dressed. A skull T-shirt, a spiked belt low on my hips, bike shorts, fishnets, black and red Mary Janes. Oh, maybe she was talking about my makeup. I’d done the Full-On Goth today—white face powder, big black rings around my eyes, blue lips. It was sort of a joke.

And also, sort of not.

“It doesn’t matter,” said a small, quiet voice that somehow cut right through the music.

I’d almost forgotten about Miranda—the kid was sitting in the corner of the van, her knees drawn up, staring off into the distance.

“It speaks,” Trent said, and laughed maniacally. “I was starting to think you’d just brought the kid along to protect your virtue, Jane.” He gave her a comical flutter of his long, lush eyelashes.

Miranda was still talking, or at least her lips were moving, but her words were lost in a particularly loud guitar crunch. “What?” I yelled, and leaned closer. “What do you mean?”

Miranda’s pale blue gaze moved and fixed on me, and I wished it hadn’t. There was something really Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

strange about the girl, all right, even if her rep as the town Cassandra was exaggerated. She’d supposedly known about the fire last year that burned the Collins family out; people even said she predicted that Alyssa Collins would die in the fire. Jane said Miranda made it all up after the fact, but who knew? The girl had a double helping of weird, with creepy little sprinkles on top.

“It doesn’t matter what you decide to do,” she said louder. “Really. It doesn’t.”

“Yeah?” Trent asked, and leaned over to snag another beer from the Coleman cooler in the center of the van floor. He twisted off the cap and turned it over in his black-polished fingers. “Why’s that, o Madame Doom? Is one of us going to die tonight?” They all made hilariously drunkenooooooooo sounds, and Trent upended the bottle and chugged.

“Yes,” Miranda whispered. Nobody else heard her but me.

And then her eyes rolled up in her skull, and she collapsed flat out on the filthy shag carpet on the floor of the van.

“Jesus,” Guy blurted, and crawled over to her. He checked her pulse and breathed a sigh of relief. “I think she’s alive.”

Jane hadn’t moved at all. She looked more annoyed than concerned. “It’s okay,” she said. “She had some kind of vision. It happens. She’ll come out of it.”

Trent said, “Damn, I was starting to get worried it was the beer.”

“She didn’t have any, moron.”

“See? Serious beer deficiency. No wonder she’s out.”

“Shouldn’t we do something?” Guy asked anxiously. He was cradling Miranda in his arms, and she was as limp as a rag doll, her head lolling against his head.

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