Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

“I was perfectly fine the way I was, right, Hou?” I said aloud. “What’s not to love about cynical and sarcastic?”

The dog knew his cue when he heard it and gave a strangled rumble of agreement around his mouthful of cheese. That’s when a knock at the door came, and as he had almost two months ago when Hector had shown up on my doorstep, Houdini looked as shocked as if the roof had suddenly fallen in without notice. Once maybe, but twice? Insanity. He’d get used to it, and so would I. Fingers crossed.

I opened the door without bothering to put on my gloves. Hector, Meleah, Abby-they all knew by now why I wasn’t a handshaker. They were careful. I didn’t have to be on guard with them. But it wasn’t Hector, Meleah, or Abby who waited for me.

“Finally,” Glory said impatiently. “I am so sick of this thing, you have no idea. I was almost busted by the cops when I tried to sell it. It’s a complete leech on my social life. It’s nothing but trouble. And now, big brother, it’s your trouble.”

She pushed the blanket-wrapped bundle into my hands so quickly I almost dropped it. As the skin of her hand touched mine, I pulled the warm weight against my chest automatically before I nearly dropped it again.

Since the moment of our childhood separation, Glory had never let me touch her, and she had never touched me. No brother-sister hugs, even when she’d shown up on my doorstep after I’d given up on ever seeing her again. I learned later that she’d checked me out first, to see who I was, if I had enough money to make it worth her while to come calling to take me for everything that wasn’t nailed down. I didn’t know if she believed that I was psychic or was just Glory being Glory and taking no chances when it came to her uniting with a potential pile of money. With each visit, few that they were, she’d been as careful every time.

Now I knew why.

When her hand touched mine, I saw it.

She saw it, too, in my eyes.

“God, yes, it was me. I wouldn’t think you’d need to be psychic to figure that out.” Her smile was the cruel smile of a five-year-old brat not getting her way. “She wouldn’t give me those stupid pink shoes, and I wanted them. They would’ve looked cute on me.” Her red-blond hair was pulled in deceptively cute if Lolita-esque pigtails and she twirled one, as casual as a high school cheerleader. “If she hadn’t been so stubborn. Mine, mine, mine-that’s all she could say.” She gave a shrug delicate and far too pretty to belong to a born monster. “So I took them. Or I tried to. I did get the one, but she fought and screamed, and it just wasn’t fun anymore, having a twin. The well was convenient and into the well she had to go.” Blue eyes identical to her sister’s but as empty as Tess’s had been full of every emotion under the sun. “My biggest regret was that I didn’t get the other shoe before I pushed her in. But there’s always something bright and shiny and new around the corner. You know that, Jackie.”

I’d known Glory, the last of my family, was a sociopath the same as Thackery. I’d known she’d done bad things as a teenager, bad things as an adult, and would keep doing them. Bad to worse. But I hadn’t thought that at the age of five… I’d never thought that a monster was already a monster that young.

“Don’t look all grim and holier than thou.” She snorted. “You killed Boyd for something he didn’t do. Or did you kill him for something he did do? Like stab our bleating sheep of a mother in the throat. She was worthless. I could see how he was tempted. I guess in the end, it’s really no one’s fault. Can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and can’t get a pair of pink shoes to save a life.”

She was right. I had killed Boyd for something he didn’t do… and something he did. But my mother wouldn’t have attacked him if I hadn’t assumed he’d murdered Tess. That one assumption had triggered an avalanche of bloodshed that might not have happened otherwise. Boyd had been an abusive son of a bitch with the potential for murder, but I was the one who’d brought that ugly potential out in the open. Glory had killed Tess-killed our sister-but I’d killed the rest of the family. I had done that. I had brought us all down.

No. Hell, no.

I’d read Hector and told him he judged himself too harshly. Was I going to lay a far worse blame on a fourteen-year-old boy? A kid who’d just seen the body of his sister? Boyd had raised a fist to me more than often enough to know what curled in him, dark and gloating, without needing any psychic assistance. He could’ve taken the knife from my mom. She didn’t weigh a third of what he had. Even in her fury, she wasn’t a match for him. He didn’t have to kill her. And I didn’t have to blame myself for shooting him as he tried to do the same to me as he’d done to her.

I didn’t have to carry that responsibility at all. Anyone who lived with Boyd, knew Boyd, they would’ve thought the same. It went wrong and it went bad, but life can. There isn’t anything anyone can do to change that. I was right. It was like an avalanche-a horrifying act you couldn’t stop or prevent. You could only ride it out and hope to be around when it was done.

Glory… that knowledge didn’t involve notions of blame or responsibility. Boyd or no Boyd, no one could’ve guessed or known about Glory. It was nearly impossible to know it now with the confession still hanging before happily curved lips. The last of my family, as dysfunctional as I’d discovered her to be over the years, and now she was gone. Worse, the sister I’d taken care of until she was five, she hadn’t existed. That sister had been a lie.

Tess was dead and Glory had never been.

This woman was a stranger and her smile was the smile of a beauty queen as she said, “Have fun with that. ” With a fingernail painted pearlescent white, she gave a disparaging flick to the blanket. White. The color of purity. Or in some cultures, the color of death. “But don’t think it’s free, big brother. The only reason I didn’t toss it in a Dumpster is knowing what you’d be willing to pay me for it.”

It. She only called the bundle it. I suppose that’s all she could see.

She named a price and I was certain she’d ask for more in the future, over and over, unless she finally met someone worse than she was. If there was such a thing. It didn’t matter. I’d pay the money and I wouldn’t miss a penny.

“Call and leave an address. The money will be there in two days. Don’t come back here again. Call. If I see your face again, I’ll think the river that runs through my front yard is as convenient as any abandoned well.” Would I? I didn’t know. Could I? Yeah, I thought I could. Self-defense I’d done. Defense of the innocent trumped that.

Her smile changed. It was the first uncertain flicker I’d seen on Glory’s face in my life. “Like you have the balls.”

“Ask Boyd about that.”

A liar at the genetic level, she knew the truth when she heard it. I closed the door in the face of a Reaper walking the earth. Seconds later, I heard a car drive away and felt the shadow of death that had hovered overhead pass away to let the light of a sunset shine through again.

A small gurgle drew my attention to better things.

I looked down at the baby in my arms, sweating lightly over how many times I’d almost dropped it already. Blue eyes, skin the deep golden blush of a ripe peach, and a thick head of curly black hair that was destined to test any brush or comb under the sun. I doubted that Glory had known who the father was, but, like with Hector and Charlie, you get something unique when you mix the best of worlds. Not that Glory was the best of anything, but you couldn’t judge a baby by what her mother had done.