Phil lost all rationality.
"Poppy," he said, hearing the dangerous, unbalanced tone in his own voice. "Poppy, come on. Poppy, wake up!"-on a rising note. His hands were shaking violently, scrabbling at Poppy's shoulders.
Other hands pushed his away. "What the hell are you doing?"
James said quietly.
"Poppy? Poppy?" Phil kept staring at her. Her chest wasn't moving. Her face had a look of-innocent release. The kind of newness you only see in babies.
And it was-changing. Taking on a white, transparent look. It was uncanny, ghostlike, and even though Phil had never seen a corpse, he knew instinctively that this was the death pallor.
Poppy's essence had left her. Her body was flat and toneless, no longer inflated by the vital spirit. Her hand in Phil's was slack, not like the hand of a sleeping person. Her skin had lost its shine, as if somebody had breathed on it softly.
Phil threw back his head and let out an animal sound. It wasn't human. It was a howl.
"You killed her!" He tumbled off the bed and lurched toward James. "You said she was just going to sleep, but you killed herl She's dead!"
James didn't back away from the attack. Instead, he grabbed Phil and dragged him out into the hallway.
"Hearing is the last sense to go," he snarled in Phillip's ear.
"She may be able to hear you."
Phil wrenched free and ran toward the living room. He didn't know what he was doing, he only knew that he needed to destroy things. Poppy was dead. She was gone. He grabbed the couch and flipped it over, then kicked the coffee table over, too. He snatched up a lamp, yanked its cord out of the socket, and threw it toward the fireplace.
"Stop it!" James shouted over the crash. Phil saw him and ran at him. The sheer force of his charge knocked James backward into the wall. They fell to the floor together in a heap.
"You-killed her!" Phil gasped, trying to get his hands around James's throat.
Silver. James's eyes blazed like the molten metal. He grabbed Phil's wrists in a painful grip.
"Stop it now, Phillip," he hissed.
Something about the way he said it made Phil stop. Almost sobbing, he struggled to get air into his lungs.
"I'll kill you if I have to, to keep Poppy safe," James said, his voice still savage and menacing. "And she's only safe if you stop this and do exactly what I tell you to. Exactly what I tell you. Understand?" He shook Phil hard, nearly banging Phil's head into the wall.
Strangely enough, it was the right thing to say. James was saying he cared about Poppy. And weird as it might sound, Phil had come to trust James to
tell the truth.
The raging red insanity in Phil's brain died away.
He took a long breath.
"Okay. I understand," he said hoarsely. He was used to being in charge-both of himself and of other people. He didn't like James giving him orders. But in this case there was no help for it. "But-she is dead, isn't she?"
"It depends on your definition," James said, letting go and slowly pushing himself off the floor. He scanned the living room, his mouth grim. "Nothing went wrong, Phil. Everything went just the way it was supposed to-except for this. I was going to let your parents come back and find her, but we don't have that option now. There isn't any way to explain this mess, except the.truth."
"The truth being?"
"That you went in there and found her dead and went berserk.
And then I called your parents-you know what restaurant they're at, don't you?"
"It's Valentino's. My mom said they were lucky to get in."
"Okay. That'll work. But first we have to clean up the bedroom. Get all the candles and stuff out. It's got to look as if she just went to sleep, like any other night."
Phil glanced at the sliding glass door. It was just getting dark.
But then Poppy had been sleeping a lot these last few days.
"We'll say she got tired and told us to go watch TV," he said slowly, trying to conquer his dazed feeling and be clearheaded.
"And then I went in after a while and checked on her."
"Right," James said, with a faint smile that didn't reach his eyes.
It didn't take long to clear out the bedroom. The hardest thing was that Phil had to keep looking at Poppy, and every time he looked, his heart lurched. She looked so tiny, so delicate-limbed. A Christmas angel in June.
He hated to take the stuffed animals away from her.
"She is going to wake up, isn't she?" he said, without looking at James.
"God, I hope so," James said, and his voice was very tired. It sounded more like a prayer than a wish. "If she doesn't you won't have to come after me with a stake, Phil. I'll take care of it myself."
Phil was shocked-and angry. "Don't be stupid," he said brutally. "If Poppy stood for anything-if she stands for anything-it's for life. Throwing your life away would be like a slap in her face. Besides, even if it goes wrong now, you did your best. Blaming yourself is just stupid."
James looked at him blankly, and Phil realized they'd managed to surprise each other. Then James nodded slowly. "Thanks."
It was a milestone, the first time they'd ever been on precisely the same wavelength. Phillip felt an odd connection between them.
He looked away and said briskly, "Is it time to call the restaurant?"
James glanced at his watch. "In just a few minutes."
"If we wait too long they're going to have left by the time we call."
"That doesn't matter. What matters is that we don't have any paramedics trying to resuscitate her, or taking her to the hospital. Which means she's got to be cold by the time anybody gets here."
Phil felt a wave of dizzy horror. "You're a coldblooded snake after all."
"I'm just practical," James said wearily, as if speaking to a child. He touched one of Poppy's marblewhite hands where it lay on the bedspread. "All right. It's time. I'm going to call.
You can go berserk again if you want to."
Phil shook his head. He didn't have the energy anymore. But he did feel like crying, which was almost as good. Crying and crying like a kid who was lost and hurt.
"Get my mom," he said thickly.
He knelt on the floor beside Poppy's bed and waited. Poppy's music was off and he could hear the TV in the family room. He had no sense of time passing until he also heard a car in the driveway.