Vicki Pettersson - The Given

Grif lost all control of his body then, his limbs shorting out like faulty electrical wires. His eyes were open, he was sure, yet they were also rolled far back into his battered skull. A thrumming reverberated around him, which he registered as his heartbeat, but even that knowledge couldn’t touch him. Plasma soaked into his pores, sizzled in his brain, and burrowed between the folds of his mind to separate past from present like playing cards divided into two different piles.

Then it began to burn. Flames roared to life in his skull with a searing crackle, a crescendo that whipped down to fill his chest. It was as if he were centered in a fire, burning like a dry log, and just when he thought he would die of the anguish, his body temperature plummeted, and his veins hardened in an arctic freeze. The abruptness stole his breath . . . and whisked him away where plasma could no longer reach him.

And then he was there . Feet planted firmly on the Surface, he glanced around and saw that he was no longer in the bar but on a garden path, standing in a night that was quiet but for the soft chirping of crickets and a woman’s tipsy laughter. He turned without willing it, as if a giant hand were swiveling him around on a platform.

When he stopped, Evie was beckoning to him and smiling as she reached for his hand. “Come on, Griffin.”

She pulled him forward. Into the past.

The horseshoe-shaped courtyard of the Marquis Hotel and Casino was exactly the same, and so were they; young and comfortably entwined as they headed to their bungalow. The room had been comped by Sal DiMartino, he remembered. A thank-you for saving his niece. This time, however, Grif was also burdened with the knowledge that he was about to die.

Though Grif had recovered this particular memory before, he’d never experienced it with such remarkable clarity. The surrounding foliage shimmered with the green of a storm-laden rain forest, while the path before him was bone-white, sparking beneath the full moon, but both fell flat compared to the blinding white-blond hair of the woman in front of him—the one he’d loved and lost and sought for the whole of the last fifty years.

“Evie,” he said breathlessly.

She turned to face him fully this time. She had rose-petal lips and a dress that matched, and the lacquer on her fingers glinted in the cold light. With the hindsight of a Centurion, Grif tried to stop himself from continuing his death march, but for all his angelic powers, he couldn’t change the past. Evie laughed and pulled him toward her, bumping his hip with hers and murmuring into his ear. He laughed just as he had the first time, though inside he was sobered with the dark knowledge that he would be dead within minutes.

Evie’s heels click-clacked over the bright path, each step a rocket going off in his mind. “I have plans for you, Griffin, my dear.” Her eyes glinted with promise, and their wedding bands tapped gently together. He remembered this, too, because it’d been the last time he’d felt this band on his finger. It would disappear before he took his final breath.

“This is our night, Griffin,” she said, just as she had the first time. “All your attention of late has been on the DiMartino case, but now it’s over. We won.”

“I think the real winners are the DiMartinos,” Grif said, yet he still glowed with her praise. He was pleased to have solved the case, and proud to have delivered Mary Margaret DiMartino into her mother’s waiting arms.

“Oh, sure,” Evie said, as the intricate brick face of their bungalow came into view. “The Salernos won’t be bothering them for some time . . . but I don’t want to talk about the Salernos or the DiMartinos anymore. Tonight belongs to us.”

“You smell like lilacs,” Grif murmured, when she tucked her head beneath his chin, cuddling in tight as he shoved the key into the lock.

“And soon I’m going to smell like you.” She tilted her head up to kiss him as the door swung open, and they pushed into the room blindly. All over again—despite the passing of fifty years—he was hungry for her mouth, her tapered neck, those limbs, which twined and tangled with his own. They wrapped around his body, and he drove her up against the wall. He was thinking of taking her here, like this, hard like she sometimes liked it, and he didn’t think she’d mind. Not given the way her hands were pulling him tightly against her sweet, smooth curves.

He was just wondering if he’d had too much to drink, and worrying that he might somehow be a disappointment to her, when a footstep fell behind him. He turned in time to catch a shadowed movement, a sliding darkness in the shape of a man; fast, certain . . . not a shadow at all.

Evie was yanked from him, and suddenly it was his back against the wall. He pushed off, instinctively trying to create space between him and their attacker, but made a sound he didn’t recognize when white heat pierced the center of his body. Glancing down, he spotted the handle of a butcher’s knife protruding from his belly. He wondered briefly how it got there, and then looked up into dark eyes that were too wide, and a face that was too young, with cheeks still carrying the whisper of baby fat.

“Tommy?” Grif said, and then glanced back down at the knife, trying to put two and two together.

“You hurt my baby sister, you son of a bitch,” Tommy DiMartino said, and for the first time Grif saw what he was holding, waving, in his other hand. A child’s doll with strangely sparkling eyes.

I want Cissy. Please, Mr. Shaw. I need my Cissy. My doll.

We’ll get your doll, baby. But for now, you have to be quiet.

“You can’t do what you did and expect to get away with it,” Tommy said, and Grif found himself thinking, You’re right. I should have found Mary Margaret’s doll for her.

Too late now. He looked over to find Evie standing just out of arm’s reach, arms up in surrender, mouth open as she stared not at Grif’s face but at his belly. Wincing, Grif looked down again as his stomach began to burn. The blade wobbled as he stumbled back, which he found disturbing. It looked all wrong just protruding there.

“This isn’t mine,” he slurred dumbly, feeling something rising inside of him, like a tidal wave shoving upward through his body, and catching in his throat. He had the fleeting thought that he might just drown in his own body, and, panicking, pulled the blade from his belly so that all that choking warmth immediately fell, pooling over his wrists.

It’s not blood, he thought, head going light. It couldn’t be blood. It was just more of those moving shadows.

Grif looked up again to find that Tommy’s face had gone white. He stuttered this time, but still waved the doll at Grif, like it was some sort of talisman, fending him off. Its odd eyes sparkled, winking at Grif, even in the dark. “You fucking deserve it, you kiddie-molester. You—”

I need to get that doll for Mary Margaret, Grif thought, lunging for it. After all, he’d promised. But Tommy jerked back, holding on to it tight, and suddenly Grif’s wrists were covered in blood. Evie screamed, and Tommy roared, and it reminded Grif of his army days—stepping into the ring in the summer heat, the men chanting his name as he faced some other pugilist, hand-to-hand, as men should. One-two, one-two-three-four.

The flurry of jabs and hooks automatically came back to him, and with a final mean uppercut Grif snapped back to find a Tommy-shaped outline lying stark against the white marble floor. His black driving gloves were still wrapped around Mary Margaret’s Cissy doll.

A doll, Grif realized, blinking, with diamonds for eyes.

Then Evie screamed again, and Grif felt his skull pop open like a can. He dropped and suddenly found himself face-to-face with Tommy’s unblinking gaze. Evie fell between them with a grunt and a thud, her cheek landing in a puddle of blood. Grif realized it was where he had been standing when he’d pulled the blade from his gut. And now she was lying in it, eyes fastened on his, shock forcing those chocolate irises wide with horror and tears. “Damn it. Griffin, no . . .”