Mira Grant - Deadline

“Good.”

Maggie had prepared the guest rooms while we were still on the road, swallowing her grief long enough to break out fresh bedding and clean towels. I’m pretty sure the process was a sort of good luck charm for her; if she got the rooms ready, we’d show up alive. As it was, when bedtime came, she apologized for having only three guest rooms, since the other two spare rooms had been converted, respectively, into a home theater and a study. Like there’s anything “only” about a house with six bedrooms. George and I grew up in a house with three, and ours were connected enough to practically count as a single room. Three guest rooms meant one each for Alaric, Becks, and the Doc. I’ve slept on couches before. It doesn’t bother me.

Besides, I wanted to stare at those numbers until they started making sense. After almost two hours, I wasn’t getting any closer. I sighed. “I’m missing something. I know I’m missing something.”

Don’t be so hard on yourself, said George. You’re tired.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I snapped, before I could stop myself. Then I froze, casting a careful glance toward Maggie. I was expecting… I don’t know what I was expecting. I get a lot of reactions to the fact that I still talk to my sister. Most of them aren’t good ones.

Maggie’s fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. She was looking at me thoughtfully, head tilted slightly to one side. “She really talks to you, doesn’t she?” she asked. “It’s not just you talking to her. She talks back .”

“Hell, half the time she starts it,” I said, half-defensively. “I know it’s weird.”

“Well, yes, it’s weird. Technically, I think it’s insane. But who am I to judge?” Maggie shrugged. “I live in a house most people view as the setting of a horror movie waiting to happen, with an army of security ninjas and a couple dozen epileptic dogs for company. I don’t think I’m qualified to pass judgment on ‘weird.’ ”

That’s a new one, said George, bemused.

“Tell me about it,” I muttered, adding, louder, “That’s, uh, different.”

“At least you know that you’re crazy. That means you have the potential to recover.”

I hesitated. There are a lot of people who’d say that my steadfast refusal to give up on George means I’ll never get over my grief. I sort of hope they’re right. I don’t want to get over it. “Well, um, thanks,” I said. The words sounded even lamer outside my head than they did inside.

Maggie didn’t seem to notice. She was gazing off into one of the darkened corners of the m, expression gone even more wistful. “I knew Dave loved me, you know,” she said, with a studied casualness to her tone. Whatever she was going to say, she was going to say it whether she got the right conversational prompts from me or not. I was an audience, not a participant. “But I was still getting over losing Buffy, and Dave and I, we were doing this… this weird circling thing, like we needed to figure out every single line of the script before we could even start the movie. I knew, and he knew, and we didn’t do a damn thing about it.” She sniffled. A very small sound that seemed loud in the sudden silence of the room. “It’s like we thought everything had to be perfect, or it wouldn’t work. Like it was a story.”

I wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. I sat frozen, my fingers twitching slightly on the folder I still held. I wanted to reach for her. I wanted to take her hand. Only I knew it wasn’t her hand I wanted—the hand I wanted had been reduced to ash and chips of bone before being scattered down the length of California Highway 1—and so I didn’t move.

“Have you ever been in love?” Maggie looked back toward me, the faint light glittering off the tears running down her cheeks.

There’s never been a good answer to that question. I didn’t even try. I just shrugged.

“Love sucks,” said Maggie, and stood. “Everyone I fall in love with dies. Try to get some sleep tonight, okay, Shaun? And… thanks for listening. I can’t post that.” She chuckled, the sound barely managing to escape turning into a sob. “You know, it seems like every time I wind up with a real tragic love story to tell, I can’t post it. It wouldn’t have been fair to Buffy, and now it wouldn’t be fair to Dave. It’s… there’s so little that’s personal anymore.”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing past the dryness in my throat. “I’m pretty sure he knew you loved him, too. He had this theater thing set up on the roof—”

“I know.” Her smile was brief, but it was real. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s not going to be any better.”

Can’t be any worse, muttered George.

I swallowed the urge to answer George, and said, instead, “I’ll try.”

“Good enough for me,” said Maggie, and turned to go, leaving me alone with my pile of folders, my tiny pool of light, and the voice of my sister echoing inside my head.

You used to make me sleep, said George.

“Yeah, well, you had a body then.” I looked at the folder in my hands, willing it to open of its own accord. That way I wouldn’t actually have to decide whether or not I was going to stop. Once it was open, I could just read.

Shaun—

“Leave it.”

She sighed. I knew that sigh. I knew all her sighs. This was the “Shaun, stop being stupid” sigh, usually reserved for when I needed to be pushed into doing something she considered sensible. I won’t let you dream.

I froze.

George didn’t say anything after that. I could feel her waiting at the edges of my mind, eternally patient, at least where my well-being was concerned. I swallowed again before I leaned back in the chair, closing my eyes. “You can still surprise me,” I said.

Good. Now get up, and get on the couch.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Maggie’s couch proved to be surprisingly comfortable once I’d cleared everything off it and piled it all on the floor. I turned off the light before taking off my shirt and shoes, leaving my jeans on, just in case we needed to make an early-morning getaway. I was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow.

George was true to her word. If I dreamed that night, I don’t remember it.

I woke to the sound of voices in the next room, pitched at that harsh semi-stage-whisper level that everyone seems to think is unobtrusive, despite being impossible to ignore. Something about the sound of people whispering touches off a primordial red alert in the back of the brain. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if they’d just spoken quietly in normal voices. At least no one was screaming; that meant we’d all probably managed to live through the night. Survival is always a nice thing to wake up to.

Sitting up was hard. My back was stiff from spending several hours on the bike, followed by several more hours sitting on the floor and trying to study. I may not spend as much time in the field as I used to, but that hasn’t made me a bookworm or anything. Who knew being a geek would hurt ? Groaning, I braced my elbows on my knees and dropped my head into my hands. The voices from the kitchen stopped. Zombies don’t groan, they moan, but the two can sound almost identical to the untrained ear. Of the four people in the house with me, only Becks had the field experience necessary to know that whatever had made that sound was alive. Just cranky.

Becks and Alaric both had enough general experience working with me to know better than to come poking before I was at least standing under my own power. The voices from the kitchen resumed, a little louder now that they knew they didn’t have to worry about waking me anymore. Leaving my head cradled in my hands, I considered my options. Going back to sleep was at the top of the list and had the extra added bonus of not requiring me to think about anything. Unfortunately, whoever was killing the people with reservoir conditions wasn’t going to wait around for me to get my shit together, and if anyone realized Kelly was still alive, we probably didn’t have all that much time.