Pretty Little Dead Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

under, her arm and started off after the tortured and unamicable Eddie.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Broken Glass and Jonquils
    “I hate you, Bryony,” Eddie said.
    It absolutely wasn’t true, and Bryony wasn’t there to hear it, but it was good practice.
    Eddie stormed up the street away from Pike Place. He was looking for a bar, or a club, or somewhere he could duck out of sight and brood on exactly how much he desired to dislike Bryony. She with her wide eyes and sorrowful ambiance. He would find her one day in pieces, or not find her at all, and which would be worse? It was like the time—
    “Eddie Warshouski, I brought you some flowers. Now why don’t you like me?”
    Bryony offered the flowers to him as if they were a sword. He had never felt so threatened by jonquils before. He took a step back, nearly falling off the curb, and this made him angry.
    “Why are you following me?” he demanded.
    “I told you, I brought you some beautiful flowers.” Bryony shoved the flowers into his face. They smelled divine, or at least they would have if Eddie sniffed at them, but he didn’t. He was too angry. He merely inhaled to breathe , and the scent of the blossoms invaded his nose, uninvited. It was a Trojan Horse scenario, where oxygen was necessary and good, and riding upon it was the conniving perfume of greenery and flowers, and who was he to keep it out? He needed to breathe, after all. Breathing sustained life. Eddie chose life. And if life comes with the divine decadence of jonquils, then so be it.
    Bryony smiled. “You like them! They do smell wonderful, don’t they?”
    “I hate jonquils,” said Eddie.
    Bryony’s smile grew wider, more radiant. Eddie shielded his eyes from it. “Ah, but you know what they are called, and that says a lot about you. Few people take the time to learn the names of flowers, and jonquils especially aren’t well known. Everybody thinks that they are daffodils. You don’t hate them at all, or else you wouldn’t be so aware.”
    “So I picked up a few things from playing next to a flower shop. So what?” Eddie grabbed the flowers out of her hand, daring her. Daring her to what? He didn’t quite know, but he was going to dare her all the same.
    “I’m named after a flower,” she told him. “A plant used for healing.” Her spirit practically shimmered in front of his eyes and went out.
    Just like Rita had, way back when. Only Rita hadn’t been marked for death, she was just an innocent passerby, like those caught in fate’s range of fire.
    “Bryony can also kill you,” he pointed out bitterly. She opened her mouth to say something when suddenly there was a popping sound and a store window shattered behind her.
    Glass flew through the air like vapid ballerinas. For a second, everything paused, and Eddie allowed himself to gaze at Bryony’s pale face as she was stopped in motion, her hair swirling through the air like mist. Her eyes were large and they hid nothing, broadcasting her emotions like a satellite dish. He could plainly see her wonder at the world, and a kind of shocked amazement that something was exploding behind her so unexpectedly, and a little bit of . . . Could that be true? Is there some anger there? Why, yes! There is anger! A type of smoldering fury that made Eddie’s lips twitch a bit, until he realized she was probably angry at him for making such a spectacle of himself, for being so harsh toward her all the time. And he had been cruel; he admitted it, distancing himself from this woman who dragged the mantle of certain destruction behind her like a ragged blanket. She wore it so well, with such grace, that he half supposed that she wrapped herself rather primly in it at night, that it was her choice. Never did it occur to him that perhaps this wasn’t something that she chose to bear, that she ran long and hard from it day after day, only giving in graciously after her brief break for freedom. Nobody really wants to be murdered.
    After Rita’s bloody