"Poppy should be the one to decide-"
But Phillip had reached his limit, and now he was simply shaking his head. "Just keep away from my sister," he said.
"That's all I want. If you do, I'll leave you alone. And if you don't-"
"What?"
"I'm going to tell everybody in El Camino what you are. I'm going to call the police and the mayor and I'm going to stand in the middle of the street and yell it."
James felt his hands go icy cold. What Phil didn't realize was that he'd just made it James's duty to kill him. It wasn't just that any human who stumbled on Night World secrets had to die, but that one actively threatening to tell about the Night World had to die immediately, no questions asked, no mercy given.
Suddenly James was so tired he couldn't see straight.
"Get out of here, Phil," he said in a voice drained of emotion and vitality both. "Now. And if you really want to protect Poppy, you won't tell anybody anything. Because they'll trace it back and find out that Poppy knows the secrets, too. And then they'll kill her-after bringing her in for questioning. It won't be fun."
"Who're 'they'? Your parents?"
"The Night People. We're all around you, Phil. Anybody you know could be one-including the mayor. So keep your mouth shut."
Phillip looked at him through narrowed eyes. Then he turned and walked to the front of the store.
James couldn't remember when he'd felt so empty. Everything he'd done had turned out wrong. Poppy was now in more kinds of danger than he could count.
And Phillip North thought he was unnatural and evil. What Phil didn't know was that most of the time James thought the same thing.
Phillip got halfway home before he remembered that he'd dropped the bag with Poppy's cranberry juice and wild cherry Popsicles. Poppy had hardly
eaten in the last two days, and when she did get hungry, it was for something weird.
No-something red, he realized as he paid for a second time at the 7-Eleven. He felt a sick lurch in his stomach. Everything she wanted lately was red and at least semiliquid.
Did Poppy realize that herself?
He studied her when he went into her bedroom to give her a Popsicle. Poppy spent most of the time in bed now.
And she was so pale and still.. Her green eyes were the only alive thing about her. They dominated her face, glittering with an almost savage awareness.
Cliff and Phil's mother were talking about getting round-the-clock nurses to be with her.
"Don't like the Popsicle?" Phil asked, dragging a chair to sit beside her bed.
Poppy was eyeing the thing with distaste. She took a tiny lick and grimaced.
Phillip watched her.
Another lick. Then she put the Popsicle into an empty plastic cup on her nightstand. "I don't know ... I just don't feel hungry," she said, leaning back against the pillows. "Sorry you had to go out for nothing."
"No problem." God, she looks sick, Phil thought. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"
Eyes shut, Poppy shook her head. A very small motion.
"You're a good brother," she said distantly.
She used to be so alive, Phil thought. Dad called her Kilowatt or Eveready. She used to radiate energy.
Without in the least meaning to, he found himself saying, "I saw James Rasmussen today."
Poppy stiffened. Her hands on the bedspread formed not fists, but claws. "He'd better keep away from here!"
There was something subtly wrong about her reaction.
Something not-Poppy. Poppy could get fierce, sure, but Phil had never heard that animal tone in her voice before.
A picture flashed through Phil's mind. A creature from Night of the Living Dead, walking even though its intestines were spilling out. A living corpse like James's Miss Emma.
Was that really what would happen if Poppy died right now?
Was she that much changed already?
"I'll scratch his eyes out if he comes around here," Poppy said, her fingers working on the spread like a cat kneading.
"Poppy-he told me the truth about what he really is."
Strangely, Poppy had no reaction. "He's scum," she said. "He's a reptile."
Something about her voice made Phillip's flesh creep. "And I told him you would never want to become something like that."
"I wouldn't," Poppy said shortly. "Not if it meant hanging around with him for eternity. I don't want to see him ever again."
Phil stared at her for a long moment. Then he leaned back and shut his eyes, one thumb jammed against his temple where the ache was worst.
Not just subtly wrong. He didn't want to believe it, but Poppy was strange. Irrational. And now that he thought about it, she'd been getting stranger every hour since James had been thrown out.
So maybe she was in some eerie in-between state. Not a human and not a vampire. And not able to think dearly. Just as James had said.
Poppy should be the one to decide.
There was something he had to ask her.
"Poppy?" He waited until she looked at him, her green eyes large and unblinking. "When we talked, James said that you'd agreed to let him-change you. Before you got mad at him. Is that right?"
Poppy's eyebrows lifted. "I'm mad at him," she confirmed, as if this was the only part of the question she'd processed. "And you know why I like you? Because you've always hated him.
Now we both hate him."
Phil thought for a moment, then spoke carefully. "Okay. But when you weren't mad at him, back then, did you want to turn into-what he is?"
Suddenly a gleam of rationality showed in Poppy's eyes. "I just didn't want to die, " she said. "I was so scared-and I wanted to live. If the doctors could do anything for me, I'd try that. But they can't." She was sitting up now, staring into space as if she saw something terrible there. "You don't know what it feels like to know you're going to die," she whispered.