The Devil's Only Friend Read Online Free PDF Page B

pull a quarter out of someone’s ear; I love that one.”
    “This does not have to be a confrontational relationship, John.”
    “Then why do I have to ask you four times if my friend is awake yet?”
    He blew out a rough sigh, throwing one hand in the air and then pointing it at Brooke’s door. “Yes, she’s awake.” He turned and walked back toward the side room, talking over his shoulder. “You’re not likely to get much out of her today, but you’re welcome to try. And we will talk about this later.”
    “Bless you, my son.”
    He grunted and disappeared into the second room. I walked to Brooke’s door and peeked in the window. She was sitting up on the bed, cross-legged, her long blond hair hanging like a tangled curtain around her shoulders. Her face was turned up, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, and her left hand was tracing intricate patterns in the bedspread. I opened the door—it was only locked from the inside—and she turned toward me.
    “ Bun â ziua .” Her left hand, unattended, was still drawing on the blanket.
    “What language is that?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, “what language is this?”
    “English,” I told her.
    She didn’t say anything, but simply stared.
    Brooke had always been thin, but a year of mental incapacitation had left her gaunt, her blue eyes sunken deep in her pale, white face. Trujillo said some of that was the drugs they had her on—they made food taste bad, so she never ate unless they forced her. Protein shakes when she was in a good mood, restraints and IV drips when she wasn’t. Her entire room had been cleared of anything dangerous, partly for our safety but mostly for hers: there were no cords, no glass, no sharp edges. Even the power outlets were nailed into the wall, because screws were too easy to extract and misuse.
    “Do you remember me?” I asked.
    “Of course I remember you,” said Brooke, and her eyes focused on me suddenly. “I love you.”
    I sighed. “No you don’t,” I said. “You’re Brooke Watson, remember? You’re not Nobody.”
    “My name is Hulla.”
    We’d known the Withered as Nobody back when I was hunting it, but in her more lucid moments Brooke could remember the thing’s real name. Hulla was, according to Nathan, an old Sumerian name, but that didn’t tell us much; we already knew the Withered were ancient. Did Hulla come from Sumer, or just borrow a name when she got there?
    “Do you love me back, Ghita?”
    “I’m John,” I said. “You’re Brooke and I’m John.”
    Her hand was still drawing, all by itself, like it wasn’t even a part of her at all.
    “I saw Meshara last night.”
    “These are not real people,” I said. “Not anymore. You live in Whiteflower Assisted Living Center in a town called Fort Bruce. My name is John Wayne Cleaver. Do you remember any of this?” I couldn’t tell how much of her was Brooke and how much was Hulla; how much was crazy and how much was drugs designed to control the crazy. I could only imagine how much worse it was for her.
    “Of course I remember you,” she said again. “You lived on my street. We were friends. I married you and I died the next day.”
    “I’m not Ghita,” I said, “I don’t even know who that is. My name is John, and this is—”
    “This is the Whiteflower Assisted Living Center,” said Brooke. “My name is Nobody and I was born ten thousand years ago in a shepherd’s hut on the slopes of the great mountain. And Meshara was there and now he’s here.”
    I sat up straighter; this was different than her usual ranting. She called me by old names occasionally, thinking I was someone from her past, but she’d never referred to anyone else that way except for the actual Withered: the two we’d known in Clayton were named Mkhai and Kanta, just like Nobody was named Hulla. These were their old names, the names they used for each other; to hear her use such a name for someone she’d seen last night, and to connect it with