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.
Waves of chills washed over Phillip. No, he didn't know that, but he did know-he could suddenly picture vividly-what it was going to be like for him after Poppy died. How empty the world was going to be without her.
For a long time they both sat in silence.
Then Poppy fell back onto the pillows again. Phillip could see pastel blue smudges under her eyes, as if the conversation had exhausted her. "I don't think it matters," she said in a faint but frighteningly cheerful voice. "I'm not going to die anyway.
Doctors don't know everything."
So that's how she's dealing with it, Phillip thought. Total denial.
He had all the information he needed, though. He had a clear view of the situation. And he knew what he had to do now.
"I'll leave so you can get some rest," he said to Poppy, and patted her hand. It felt very cool and fragile, full of tiny bones like a bird's wing. "See you later."
He slipped out of the house without telling anyone where he was going. Once on the road, he drove very fast. It only took ten minutes to reach the apartment building.
He'd never been to James's apartment before.
James answered the door with a cold, "What are you doing here?"
"Can I come in? I've got something to say."
James stood back expressionlessly to let him in.
The "place was roomy and bare. There was a single chair beside a very cluttered table, an equally cluttered desk, and a square unbeautiful couch. Cardboard boxes full of books and CDs were stacked in the corners. A door led to a spartan bedroom.
"What do you want?"
"First of all, I have to explain something. I know you can't help being what you are-but I can't help how I feel about it, either.
You can't change, and neither can I. I need you to understand that from the beginning."
James crossed his arms over his chest, wary and defiant. "You can skip the lecture."
"I just need to make sure you understand, okay?" "What do you want, Phil?"
Phil swallowed. It took two or three tries before he could get the words out past the blockage of his pride.
"I want you to help my sister."
CHAPTER 9
Poppy shifted on her bed.
She was unhappy. It was a hot, restless unhappiness that seemed to swarm underneath her skin. Coming from her body instead of from her mind. If she hadn't been so weak, she would have gotten up and tried to run the feeling off. But she had spaghetti for muscles now and she wasn't running anywhere.