“Andrea, it’s time for you to go downstairs and call your sister, I think.”
“Yes. But—”
“Nan will be worried sick, Andrea. Just worried to death.”
She grabbed the two teacups by their handles and tossed them in the sink, moving quickly, feeling a kind of delirious lightness. She plucked the phones off the kitchen table, handed Andrea’s to her and stuck her own in her pocket. “Susan?”
She led Andrea by the elbow, down the hallway and to the door.
“Glad to help. Good night, Andrea.”
Susan stood with her hand on the doorknob, listening to the muffled patter as Andrea scurried down the steps. Cimex Lectularius: The Shadow Species had said in no certain terms how the curse could be undone, how the badbugs could be sent back to the other side.
And now there is only one question left: How to get rid of them?
Unfortunately, there is only one way to remove the blight.
Someone invited the bugs in. Someone opened the door to the darkness.
That person must be discovered, and destroyed.
Pullman Thibodaux was unequivocal on that last point. Susan marched back to the kitchen counter, where the knife block sat thick and squat, like a gargoyle. She ran her fingers along the protruding handles, hearing Alex’s voice in her head, condescending, chastising. I’ve told you, save the good knives for when you really need a good knife.
“Totally,” Susan said. “You’re totally right, honey.” She wrapped her fingers around the heaviest handle and slid the butcher’s knife free from the block.
26
The little TV on Alex’s dresser was on, as if he had intended to wait up for her and continue their conversation, but he had fallen fast asleep. He lay in a nest of pillows, his thick curly hair splayed out around his head, mouth half open, snoring gently. Susan turned off the TV and watched him sleep, the handle of the butcher knife sweating in her palm. The room was silent but for the baby monitor on the night table, emitting its steady sibilant crackle.
Susan crouched beside her husband and whispered in his ear:
“Bad news, Alex. We have bedbugs.”
He muttered something unintelligible, licked his lips, and turned over, presenting her with the back of his head. She whispered again, a little louder, in his other ear: “Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of them.”
He slept on.
“Dammit, Alex, wake up.” She smacked him on the side of the head, as hard as she could, cracking the butt of the handle on the base of his skull.
“Get up.”
Alex shot up into a crawling position and then fell forward again, gripping the back of his head. He flipped over, blinking, confused, the covers bunching around his torso. “Susan? Did you — what—”
He saw the knife and froze with his mouth open. His hair sprung out in all directions, a crust of drool pooled at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were brown and wide. Susan had always loved his eyes. As she held up her knife, watching him tremble, she felt a sudden sharp sting at the back of her neck: new bite. New itch.
Susan winced but did not release her grip on the knife. He had done this to her. All of the pain and confusion and misery. All of the itching. He had done it.
“What are you doing, Susan?”
“Why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
She swung the knife, inexpertly. He jerked back and the blade just barely caught him, tracing a bright line of blood along the tan flesh of his forearm. Alex shrieked, high and womanish, pulled back against the headboard. Both of them stared at the long line of the cut, and then up at each other.
“What were you doing at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel the Friday night after we moved to Brooklyn?”
“What? Susan—”
“Friday, September 17. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel.”
All the details were completely clear to Susan, totally available to her. Now she knew the story, of how her life had fallen to pieces, and why. Because of whom.
“I seriously don’t know what you’re—”
He cut himself off, midsentence, and lunged for the knife. She jumped backward, steadied herself on her back foot, and parried forward, nearly cutting him again. Alex retreated against the pillows, lifting the comforter over his chest as if it were a shield.
“Susan, I swear to God I have never been to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.”
“Don’t lie,” Susan said flatly. The knife trembled in her hand. “Please, don’t lie.”
“You’re sick, Sue. You have—”
She cut him again and did a better job of it, swinging the blade like a scythe, right across his ribs. The knife bit deep, biting into the fat layer of flesh above his heart, and she could feel the resistance of meat beneath the blade. Alex brought his arm down and then up, staring at the sticky mess in his hand.
“Oh, God. Susan—”
“Tell me the truth,” she hissed.
“OK,” Alex said slowly, pressing his hands against the wound, keeping his eyes on the knife, now smeared and dripping with his blood. “All right. Um … I did. That night, the …”
“The seventeenth.”
“I ran into this girl. This old friend of mine.”
“What’s her name?”
He swallowed hard, staring at the knife.
“Uh, Theresa.”
Susan scowled. “Theresa?”
“From — from college. You don’t know her. She’s a photographer, too, from my program. Nobody special — just this girl. ”
As his confession unspooled, tears trickled down Susan’s cheeks. Not because he had cheated on her, had betrayed her, had fucked some stupid girl from NYU in a hotel room. Susan was crying because she was going to have to kill him in order to end this terrible torment. He had drawn the badbugs to the hot stink of his evil, and she would have to sacrifice him like a pig on an altar or they would consume her.
“Susan?” He looked at her in the darkness, his eyes wide and wet with fear, his chest drooling blood around his hands. Susan felt the prickly heat of a thousand itches all over her body, felt the weight of the knife in her hand, heard it demanding action. She stepped toward the bed and was distracted by a small shifting noise over the monitor, a barely audible pop and crackle: Emma shifting, adjusting herself in sleep. Out of sheer instinct, Susan turned her head to the sound, and Alex leaped at her.
The next six minutes passed in a wild panting frenzy.
Alex rolled from the bed, tossing the sheets and comforter to the ground, kicking his legs into Susan’s midsection. She went down hard on her ass, and Alex flung himself on top of her, wrestling her arm down, slapping at her hands, grabbing for the knife. She brought her knee up into his stomach and then cracked the knife handle into his jaw. He cried out and reared back, clutching his mouth, blood gushing between his fingers, more blood spilling from his chest. Susan slipped out from under him and hurled herself out of the bedroom.
He stumbled after her onto the landing, shouting, “Goddamn it, Susan, stop!” and then “Shit!” as his toe connected with the split in the floorboards. Susan halted, abruptly, stepping to one side just in time to let his big lumbering body chase itself past her, onto the top step. And then she was behind him, pushing him, hard, two hands in the middle of the back. Alex went tumbling down the steps, banging his head against the wall as he fell, and she chased after him, butcher’s knife clutched in two hands.
When he landed at the bottom, she was towering over him, straddling his body with her legs.
“Susan. Please. Think about what you’re doing. Please.”