Lucy is just sitting up there where Bethany used to hang out.<\/p>\n
She kind of misses her, though she wouldn\u2019t ever admit to it.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s casting the runes, mostly just to hear them clicking, and she frowns at the way they keep coming up blank.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a whisper of sound behind her.<\/p>\n
She stands up ready for fighting, her eyes at roughly goat-level \u2014<\/p>\n
It\u2019s bad to be attacked by a goat when you\u2019re sitting at the edge of the roof of a building! \u2014<\/p>\n
But as it happens, it\u2019s not a goat.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Linus Evans, instead.<\/p>\n
He has his palms up and he\u2019s wearing a white hat. His eyes are white and adrenaline has him trembling but he isn\u2019t there to fight his Housemate Lucy Souvante.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard you\u2019re good,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean,\u201d he clarifies, \u201cGood at<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n She nods.<\/p>\n \u201cMy people are coming,\u201d she says. \u201cTo avenge my sister, whom you Earthlings killed.\u201d<\/p>\n Linus puts it together.<\/p>\n \u201cMaria?\u201d<\/p>\n Lucy is on her feet. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMaria Souvante?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c. . . yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, man,\u201d says Linus. \u201cThat\u2019s a blast from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucy\u2019s hackles settle again.<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose that it must be,\u201d she says. She looks at her hands. \u201cThey are coming. They will raze this world. And I keep wondering if they would taste better than the humans. But I tell myself repeatedly: that is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Her face twists suddenly. She is on her feet. She has Linus by the collar.<\/p>\n \u201cI should kill you,\u201d she says. \u201cYou knew her. Maybe you <\/em>were the Earthling that killed her, \u2018antichrist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She is shaking her fist. She is counting off one, two, three<\/span> <\/em>\u2014<\/p>\n A pair of scissors shears down from the sky. It lands quivering on the rooftop.<\/p>\n Lucy blinks.<\/p>\n Lucy decides to take a short break from playing rock-paper-scissors. She yawns and stretches elaborately. She pushes Linus back onto the roof and she sits down.<\/p>\n After a while, she says, \u201cCan you tell me about her?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a heck of a nanny,\u201d says Linus. \u201cThere weren\u2019t many people, you know, who didn\u2019t mind my being the antichrist. Mom, and Tom, and Jane, and Edmund, and that Mouser \u2014 that was pretty much it, really. And then Maria.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe was your nanny?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes,\u201d Linus says, \u201cwhen you\u2019re trying to kill people, I mean, for money, you need to infiltrate their house and teach them marvelous songs about \u2014 hope, and living. I guess. Teach them to love their life and not just stare down the endless eons into the eyes of bleak damnation. First.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucy is silent.<\/p>\n He wrings his hands.<\/p>\n \u201cI liked her a lot,\u201d he says, \u201cuntil she tried to kill us. And took my mittens. Then I didn\u2019t like her so much. But I think that in the end she was happy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWas she?\u201d<\/p>\n Linus makes a face. He looks away.<\/p>\n His white dog appears. He pats its head. She blinks. The white dog isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n \u201cShe did it to herself,\u201d Linus says. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t have killed her. She just \u2014 I think she didn\u2019t want to live as an assassin that didn\u2019t kill anybody any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI tried to tell her,\u201d says Lucy.<\/p>\n He puts his hand on her shoulder. She knocks it away.<\/p>\n \u201cBlockhead,\u201d she mutters.<\/p>\n So he doesn\u2019t say anything for a while.<\/p>\n Then: \u201cI need a favor,\u201d Linus says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou killed her,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unfair but he elects not to deny it. He lets her believe it; except she doesn\u2019t actually believe it, in the end. \u201cI used to believe in things,\u201d he says. \u201cI used to think there was hope for the world. And then the cleaning man took that away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want to find him,\u201d Linus says. \u201cI want to kill him. He hurt Tom. I think he hurt my mother. He\u2019s a monster. I\u2019ve just been reminded, I want to kill <\/em>him. But I don\u2019t even know where he lives.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy would I help you?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just asking.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a goat, ain\u2019t ya?\u201d she says. \u201cAntichrist? Goat? Right? You\u2019re my big enemy, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Linus says softly. \u201cI\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI could eat you,\u201d she says, \u201cand \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n She shakes her head.<\/p>\n \u201cFine,\u201d she says, \u201cwhatever.\u201d<\/p>\n She tosses the rune stones. They\u2019re blank. She drinks tea. It is leafless. She stares with her white eyes out at the cosmos, she reads the signs, and there aren\u2019t any. They\u2019ve been scrubbed. They\u2019ve been cleaned<\/em>.<\/p>\n But she\u2019s not just anybody. She\u2019s not just some random prophet-beast.<\/p>\n She\u2019s Lucy Souvante.<\/p>\n She\u2019s the evil prophet of space.<\/p>\n She casts her gaze over time and space and possibility; she bats aside the falling scissors and she flattens out her hand and she feels the shape of worlds.<\/p>\n Her white eyes find the one name in the phone book that is invisible to her; the one place in all the world that she cannot see.<\/p>\n Gotterdammerung approaches. The world shudders and writhes.<\/p>\n She spells it out in unwriting. She speaks it in unwords. She writes it down backwards and she looks in the mirror and says, \u201cI have an address for one \u2018Jeremiah Clean.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lucy is just sitting up there where Bethany used to hang out. She kind of misses her, though she wouldn\u2019t ever admit to it. She\u2019s casting the runes, mostly just to hear them clicking, and she frowns at the way they keep coming up blank. There\u2019s a whisper of sound behind her. She stands up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-10","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Icon_PBJ.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5792"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6002,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5792\/revisions\/6002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5792"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}