PAPER WIFE

CHAPTER 23

CELIA

I falter, stumble backward.

The shadow nears me. I scream, but the wind rips it from my mouth, whirls it away like a dead leaf.

For an instant Harriet rocks back in surprise.

Then she laughs.

"No one can hear you," she calls above the howl. "We're in a..." Even as she says it, the rain pounds harder. I can't back up any further. I step sideways, just an inch, and my foot grazes wet metal.

I glance down.

An ancient watering can, decades old, coated with grime and rust.

Harriet approaches, soaked with rain, bright eyes in a dark face, panting.

I stoop, seize the watering can, swing at her --- but I'm dizzy, off balance, and the can slips from my grasp, sails away.

She ducks.

And then she steps through the rain. Toward me.

"This is perfect."

She mops water from her face, moves toward me. Her coat is sodden; her scarf sags around her neck. The letter opener juts from her hand.

"I was going to break your neck, but this is better." She cocks an eyebrow. "You were so troubled" --- she smiles --- "that you jumped from the turret."

I shake my head.

Her smile widens.

"You don't think so?" A pause. "What have you got there?"

And then she sees what I've got here.

The rusty gardening shears wobble in my hands --- they're heavy, and I'm shaking --- but I lift them to her chest as I advance.

She isn't smiling anymore.

"Put that down," she says.

I shake my head again, step closer.

She hesitates.

"Put it down," she repeats.

I take another step, snap the shears together.

Her eyes flicker to the blade in her hand.

And she recedes into the wall of rain.

I wait a moment, my breath heaving in my chest.

She's melted away.

Slowly, slowly, I creep forward.

I stop, the spray misting on my face, and I poke the tip of the shears through, like a divining rod.

Now.

I thrust the shears ahead of me and leap through the water.

If she's waiting for me, she'll be ---

I freeze, my hair streaming, my clothes soaked.

She isn't there. I scan the turret.

No sign of her by the overhanging vines. Near the gray walls. Lightning overhead, the sky blazes white, and I see the turret: it is desolate; a wasteland of straggly vines and frigid rain, a graveyard of dust and rust.

But if she isn't there, then ---

She crashes into me from behind, so fast and so hard that the scream is knocked out of me. I drop the shears and fall with her, my knees collapsing, my temple slamming against the wet concrete; I hear the crack.

Blood floods my mouth.

We roll across the concrete, once, twice, until our bodies ram into the iron railing at the edge of the turret. I feel it shudder.