Meet Courtney Alameda

My favorite biographies often have bibliographic leanings, as I believe books create watershed moments in the lives of their readers. For me, two books altered the course of my life so drastically, I often wonder what I might have become without them—Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Garth Nix’s Sabriel. The former taught me the language of symbolism and made me want to major in English. The latter made me realize I wanted to spend my life writing for young people.

Thanks in part to those books, my entire career has had a bookish bent: I spent seven years working for Barnes & Noble and had the good fortune to watch the young-adult section grow and flourish with the commercial success of titles like Harry Potter and Twilight. In 2009, I made a shift into library services, first as an events coordinator, and later as a young-adult librarian. Over the years, I’ve realized that my joy doesn’t just come from working with books, but from connecting people with great literature of all shapes, sizes, and classifications.

I started writing in college. I dallied with all kinds of genres, forms, and markets; but it wasn’t until I took a graduate-level writing seminar during my senior year that I found my voice. I met twice a week with a wizened old professor who owned a wicked red pen. He slashed through my fiction, rolled his eyes at my attempts at humor and romance, and declared me an outright failure at mystery. Science fiction and fantasy weren’t entirely forbidden, but frowned upon.

About halfway through the term, the professor took off his glasses and said, “Stop trying to impress me, and write whatever exists in your head without you having to forcibly put it there.”

So I wrote him a ghost story. He read the entire piece through without picking up his red pen, and afterward declared me an idiot. “You’re a horror writer and you don’t even know it, and there’s talent here reminiscent of a young Stephen King. Mark my words, girl, in ten years, you’re really going to be something.”

I’m afraid my work doesn’t live up to his pronouncement yet—but I still have a few years before I can celebrate the tenth anniversary of those words.

Shutter came about the way most of my novels do, through mind’s-eye glimpses of a young person doing something incredible. In Micheline’s case, I imagined a girl fighting an ultraviolet ghost with a Nikon camera. The more time I spent with her, the more her story and world expanded. A few weeks into our acquaintance, she spoke her first words to me: “Call it reaper’s insomnia, but the dead won’t let me sleep at night.” Those words now comprise the novel’s opening line.

“Fixer” is a prequel short story to Shutter, as told from Ryder’s point of view. The story examines some of the emotional trauma dealt to Micheline and Ryder on the night Micheline’s mother and brothers die, which presented me with several unique challenges. I spent several weeks trying to write this story from Micheline’s perspective, but her memories of what happened in the panic room were too raw and painful for young-adult fiction. So I switched to Ryder’s head, which meant I had to invest time in fleshing out his voice and unique worldviews. He’s significantly less observant than Micheline, especially in terms of texture, color, and shape; which makes sense, he’s not a photographer like Micheline. Also, his voice is rougher around the edges, less lyrical, and so very Aussie.

If I can claim any literary godparents, I would name Michael Crichton for his monsters; J. R. R. Tolkien for magic and myth; and Stephen King for the macabre. Also, Robin McKinley bestowed the blueprints for the strong, dynamic heroines in novels like The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown. I see their influences—among many others, including Bram Stoker’s—in Shutter’s pages.

 

 

FIXER

by Courtney Alameda

NOW

It’s a rare night I can’t fix broken with a bullet—any reaper knows how to stop the dead. But when the monster you’re aiming for wears a familiar face, the trigger kills on both sides of your barrel. It’s not the kind of broken I can fix: The nightmares in my head can’t be shot down and nothing will erase what happened to Micheline and me that night, or what I did to save her.

“Hey, slacker,” Jude says as I climb into the Humvee. It’s been ten nights since Micheline’s mother and brothers died and the bastard’s finally shown up at the Helsings’ safe house. But he’s not here for Micheline, no. He’s here for me.

When Jude arrived, honking in the driveway like the bloody redcoats were coming, Micheline’s old man handed me his Colt .45 and kicked me out of the house, promising me he’d keep an eye on her. But I know old man Helsing won’t look after her right—he’s suffering almost as bad as she is, but he’s old enough and stubborn enough to tough it out … least on the outside.

As for Micheline? Damned if I couldn’t fix her kind of broken, either. It wakes her up screaming, has her breaking glass to cut her wrists or dyeing her hair black with ink milked out of Sharpies. I might’ve saved her life with a bullet, but I can’t mend my girl’s heart. I stop, wondering when Micheline became my girl. Rather than face the thought, I settle into my seat and say, “Last time I checked, slacking was your prerogative, mate.”

“I’m the slacker?

You’ve been holed up here for more than a week. If we don’t post numbers tonight, those asshats in Chicago are going to catch up to us on the killboards,” Jude says, backing out of the driveway. “How’s Micheline?”

“Go in and see her yourself.” I don’t give a rat’s arse about the killboards tonight. Jude hasn’t visited Micheline at all, not even with Ollie, and it pisses me off to the point of wanting to adjust that cocky jaw of his with my fist.

“Somebody’s cranky,” Jude says. “You forget I held her hand during the funeral—”

“And you’re a goddamn saint for it, you’re right.”

He scowls at me. “Hey, mate, it gave me a real good look at what happened back at the big house that night.” Jude’s a perceptive bastard, and he picks up on memories and possible futures just by touching someone. “She doesn’t need me in her headspace, adding to the noise. I’m doing her a favor, okay? Just tell me how she’s doing.”

Now it’s my turn to scowl, because we both know he’s doing himself the favor. I thump my boot up on his dash and he groans about the detailing, but doesn’t force me to ease off, either.

Honestly, I’m not sure how to answer his question. Over the last week, Micheline’s hollowed out, speaking no more than a handful of words at a time. Her gorgeous peacock blues look as vacant and eventual as open graves—she cries little, never complains, and says nothing about what happened in the panic room that night. I wish she’d scream, throw a punch at me, do something to tell me the girl I knew still exists inside her, somewhere, and wants something more than to write her own life off.

I settle for saying, “She’s holding up best anyone could, I reckon.”

Jude lifts a brow. I’m a shitbox liar and it shows to anyone with a pulse, but he doesn’t press the issue. Typical of him. “Did you get the new brag tag already, or what?”

He means the Harker cross tattoo I got for saving Micheline’s life. The three-day-old ink on my biceps aches like a new bruise, but I shrug. Thanks to my bloody waffling that night, Mrs. Helsing’s teeth missed Micheline’s jugular by inches. I don’t deserve the Harker cross for saving her; I’d been one bite away from losing her for good.

The Harker cross is a medal that can’t be taken off; like they say, once a reaper, always a reaper, and nobody walks away from Helsing alive.

“You want to stop acting like a douche and actually answer me?” Jude asks.

“The tat’s a beauty, hey?”

He groans. “Let’s hope a good hunt loosens you up so you can pull the stick out of your ass.” He waves to the guards as we drive through the safe-house gates.

I tch and look out the window, watching the upscale Palo Alto neighborhood blur by. Guess I couldn’t expect him to understand what it was like to pull the trigger on something … no, someone you loved. We’re killers, Jude and me, but we’re used to cutting down faceless things: Point, shoot, and don’t think twice about the trigger. If I told him what happened that night, ’specially the parts nobody else knew, he’d bluff his way through his shock, shrug it off, and tell me to man up. And I swear, that’s all I’ve been doing since I shot Micheline’s mum dead.

“The boys are meeting up at Potrero Point,” Jude says. “Travis found a big pod of Glasgow girls in the generating station. You game?”

Like I’ve got much choice. I chuckle darkly and say, “Hells yeah.”

Jude hits the gas as we merge on the freeway toward San Francisco. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”

THAT NIGHT

I started up the road to the Helsings’ big house after finishing my homework at the shooting range. Fog twisted through the compound’s big eucalyptus trees and softened the sounds of traffic on Highway 101—the big road cut through the Helsing compound at the Presidio on its way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

The wind whistled and shrieked, cold from skipping over the bay. I grit my teeth, ignoring how human it sounded. But a heartbeat later, there was no ignoring the shriek that cut through the night. The sound was faint, maybe tires squealing on the highway. The night raged too late for civvies to be messing around, ’specially on a weeknight. Maybe it’d been an animal, or even a few cadets playing pranks somewhere in the trees.

The noise cut through the fog again—a scream ripped straight out of the big house.

Micheline.

I dropped my backpack and sprinted up the road. Dead run, full tilt. The copse of trees cleared out, and all the lights in the Helsings’ house blazed bright. The house looked homey, cheery even; but the screaming sliced through the pounding in my ears. I leapt up the steps and found the front door locked.

“Micheline!” I shouted, beating the door with my fist. Another scream slammed into the wood and cut off mid-pitch. I kicked the door, once, twice. When it held, I shot out the lock and shouldered the door open. Everything looked normal save for the bloody handprint stamped onto the stairwell wall.

“Micheline!” I shouted again. Screams raced down from the second floor to answer me.

Bracing myself for the worst, I leapt up the stairs.

NOW

Jude parks the Humvee outside the generating station’s gates, his lights flashing over a rusted red sign that reads POTRERO POWER PLANT, 1201-A ILLINOIS STREET. Two other Helsing Humvees sit on the road, their boxy forms outlined in the street lamps. There’s no light beyond the gates and no moon, so I barely make out the shapes of power poles, sagging cables, and smokestacks. Jude whistles. “Old and abandoned, just the way the necros like ’em.”

“Who else’s here?” I ask.

“Travis and Elena scouted the pod,” Jude says, nodding to the other trucks. Guys are jumping out, arming up, and pounding fists. “Looks like Garrett and Rory are with them. Did Trav have to bring the ginger Wonder Twins? Rory likes to spray-and-pray with an M-sixteen, so watch your back out there. His aim’s some scary shit.”

We need six top-tier cadets? “How big’s this pod?”

Jude waggles his eyebrows and jumps out. “Big enough to remind the Chicago kids that the top academy killboard spots belong to us.”

I grin and grab an M16 rifle from the munitions locker in the back of the truck. Maybe Jude’s right—a hunt will do me good. Micheline will survive a night in her old man’s care.

Maybe.

When the other guys see me walking up with Jude, their faces fall. I know it’s nothing personal, and it’s got everything to do with respecting the girl back at the safe house. The blokes nod; Elena steps forward to give me a loose hug.

“We’ve missed you in class, Ryder,” she says, and her voice is all Spanish lilt and honey. Deceptive, because I’ve seen the girl take out reanimates at thirty yards with throwing knives. “How are you?”

It’s the first time in days anyone’s asked me how I’m doing, and the answer sure isn’t bloody gorgeous. So I shrug, ’specially with the guys around—I don’t want them to think I’m going to puss out. “We’re all taking things a day at time.” An hour at a time, sometimes.

Elena steps back, her lips pressed together, doe’s eyes soft and sad. “And Miss Helsing? I’d hoped she’d be … Is she…?”

“Okay?” I shake my head and wipe my jaw with my hand. If it was just Elena and me, I’d tell her how I broke Micheline’s bathroom door down two nights ago and pried a butterfly knife from her bleeding hands, or how I spent half the day today holding her when a night terror shook her awake. Maybe I’d tell her that the half-moon-shaped cuts on my arms are from Micheline’s nails, or that I hadn’t slept in a proper bed since that night.

Or maybe … maybe I’d tell Elena what happened after I carried Micheline out of her home or hell or whatever the big house was to us now. But how does a bloke say something like that out loud?

I shot …

No. I had to shoot …

He was …

He was just a kid.

No. He was already dead.

None of those words would make someone understand what I had to do or how the memory would stalk me till I died.

“Damn, I feel like I should salute you, man,” Travis says. We clap hands, and he pulls me in for a half embrace. He’s not my crew; but if I didn’t hunt with Micheline, Jude, and Ollie, I’m dead sure I’d be reaping with Travis and Elena. Their skills are heaps better than everyone else’s, and I trust them with my life.

After everyone makes nice, Elena pulls out the business: “The pod’s holed up in the basement of the generating station.” She motions to a building about two hundred meters up the road. “We’ll move through the switchyard together and split into three teams once we hit the tank farm. Hang right and head for the smokestack near the shore, taking out any bogeys as you go. We’ll regroup at the plant. Everyone clear?”

Nods. We sync our headset comms and move out. The night’s clear and fogless, so the switchyard’s towers cast shadowy skeletons over the road. Elena takes point, followed by Travis and the twins. Jude and I bring up the rear. I brace my rifle’s stock against my shoulder and flick the mounted flashlight on, downshifting into the rhythm of the hunt. Adrenaline drips into my system, sharpening my senses. For the first time in days, I remember how I live for this.

After fifty meters, we reach three massive tanks. Travis motions the twins forward, then points Jude and me left, toward the tanks. He and Elena move right, headed for a redbrick building.

The tanks used to house fuel oil for the plant and stretch some twenty meters in diameter apiece. Jude and I skirt the edge of the first one, our rifles pointed at the ground to decrease our chances of our flashlights being spotted. The place is silent except for the city’s whispery, AM-radio-like chatter and the soft hiss of the bay surf. Nothing moves in the switchyard. No cars pass on the street. My adrenaline hikes, but I’m grinning like a fool. After being cooped up so long, it feels good to be out in the night air, hunting deadly things.

We round the tank at a jog and halt. There’s a necro standing in our path by the second tank, his back to us, hidden in the deep shadows. Long, tangled hair spills over his shoulders. He’s dressed in a ratty white shirt and torn jeans, and he shivers and jerks in the breeze.

“It’s gotta be a bait-and-switch,” Jude whispers. Glasgow girls hunt in packs, luring prey to the bait while the others sneak up behind and slash the victim’s mouth from ear to ear with their claws. Victims die a day or so later and join the pack—females become hunters, males are scapegoats and reaper bait. Clever as hell, Glasgow girls. Just not clever enough. “Where’s his partner?”

“Dunno.” I glance back at the switchyard, but the darkness lies still.

Gunshots break up the silence. The guy’s head snaps up, and he shrieks when our flashlights hit him in the face. Blood still weeps down his gashed cheeks, and his teeth glow like bloody pearls.

An answering cry echoes overhead. Footsteps pound the top of the empty tank.

“Heads up,” I shout. A black form leaps off the edge, landing like she’s boneless and darting toward us fast. The necro lunges for Jude—and before I can react, stabs her claws into his mouth.

I squeeze the trigger and freeze—

’Cause I swear it’s Mrs. Helsing standing there.

THAT NIGHT

Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I found.

I ran up the stairs and hit the second-floor landing. The lights in the Helsings’ panic room blazed, throwing the scene at the end of the hall into high definition: Micheline, scrambling backward as her mum lunged. Gore gloved the woman’s hands and arms, aimed at Micheline’s throat for the kill.

I tore my handgun from its holster. My sights wavered, because in no world I knew could Mrs. Helsing turn necro and attack her own kids.

Micheline screamed, and the sound drove nails into my heart and ripped it in two. I punched the trigger. The gunshot cracked the air open, leaving me alone with the shock of silence. Mrs. Helsing crumpled. Christ, I heard my own pulse pounding in my ears. Gunsmoke burned my throat. Nothing moved in the panic room, except for the cherry ooze dripping out the back of Mrs. Helsing’s skull.

Bloody,

Bloody,

Bloody,

Hell.

NOW

Jude drops his gun and grabs the Glasgow girl’s wrists, keeping her from tearing into his face.

The male rushes me, his claws spread wide. His shriek snaps me back, and I realize the girl Jude’s fighting looks nothing like Mrs. Helsing—she’s a brunette and too tall. I shoot her off him, then pivot to face the male charging at me. My rifle shouts and bucks into my shoulder. The male tumbles to the ground, loose-limbed. He rolls to a stop just a few feet away from me, his vacant eyes staring at the sky. Blood seeps out from the hole I punched in his corpse, his dead blood black as crude oil.

Jude hunches over, hands on his knees, coughing and spitting. He uses his index finger to check the corners of his mouth for cuts. Glaring at me, he grabs his gun off the ground, straightens, and kicks the Glasgow’s corpse as he walks away.

Jude can walk away; Micheline almost didn’t. My bloody hesitation’s almost killed two of my best mates now.

That night broke me, too, the way it broke Micheline and her old man. I never guessed my cracks would spread so easy—if I want to help Micheline, I’ve got to start by keeping my own shit together.

Setting my rifle’s stock against my shoulder, I follow Jude to the rendezvous point.

I won’t hesitate again.

THAT NIGHT

“Micheline?” I pointed my gun’s muzzle at the floor, surprised by how hoarse my voice sounded. By the way it echoed, as if I were the last thing living in the world. “Micheline?” I asked again, louder this time. She didn’t answer. Dammit, don’t die on me, girl, I thought, sprinting for the panic room.

I shut out the gore on the walls and the small, tattered corpses on the floor. I grabbed Mrs. Helsing by the shoulder and yanked her away, and damned if the body wasn’t still warm. A freshie, even, her mouth a smear of red and her eyes all fogged up. My .45 caliber bullet smashed her forehead open. White-blond hair fanned out around her, soaking up the blood on the floor. Her fingers still twitched.

Micheline sobbed and scrambled away from her mum’s body, spattered in blood and bone, bruised, and bleeding from a bite in her trapezius muscle. She pressed two shaking fingers against the wound, her chin trembling when she pulled her hand back and saw her bloodied fingertips.

She lifted her gaze from her fingers to my face. “Ryder…” She hiccuped, her breaths fluttering in and out of her parted lips. “Y-you shot her.”

Yeah, but not fast enough. I knelt in front of her to block her view of the little boys’ bodies. Wet warmth seeped into the knee of my jeans. I holstered my gun and put two fingers on her throat, her skin clammy, her pulse weak and rapid. The bloodstain on her T-shirt spread fast.

I’d seen enough shock in the field to recognize it on Micheline: the vacant gaze, the light breathing, and the damp skin. The confusion. No Helsing reaper in her right mind would be surprised to have a necro shot off her; but how could anyone be in her right mind when she watched her mum go all Night of the Living Dead and kill her little brothers?

I rolled my jacket off my shoulders. Micheline and I had given death the finger more times than I could count. I wouldn’t let her die from a bite wound I hadn’t been fast enough to prevent.

“She’s dead,” Micheline said. “My mom’s dead.”

“I know, love. Stay with me, I’m going to fix you right up,” I said, using my hunting knife to slice my jacket into strips. If she didn’t get the H3 antinecrotics in the next twenty minutes or so, her chances of surviving the infection from the bite dropped to fifty percent. I can fix this, I told myself. I can save her.

Micheline grabbed me by the arm as I laid a strip of canvas on her wound. “The boys first,” she said, those blue eyes of hers glittering with dammed-up tears. “Help my brothers first.”

I looked away, unable to tell her there wasn’t enough of those boys left to help. I could deal with people dying; it was the crying that turned me chicken. ’Specially her. My girl could be stubborn as stone, but she wasn’t unbreakable.

“Ryder,” Micheline insisted, gripping my wrist tighter.

All I could do was shake my head. She’d know what it meant; she read my wordless gestures better than anyone. Her face crumpled. I wiped some of the gore off her cheek with my thumb, and then laid three more strips of fabric over her wound. I’d save her life first, and fix her heart later.

“Ethan?” Micheline asked in a small voice, calling for her brother. “Fletcher? Guys”—she hiccuped again—“it’s not funny, answer me.”

I tied two large strips around her chest and one under her arm to create some pressure, then took her left hand and clamped it over the makeshift bandage.

“Ethan?” she cried, louder this time. “Fletch?”

“Hold tight,” I said, scooping her off the floor. I edged out of the panic room, shielding her from the horror show. No need to stab a stake into the shreds of her heart.

“Oh God,” Micheline said as I carried her down the hall. She tried to look over my shoulder, but winced and gasped. “Oh God, she killed them, it’s my fault she killed them, I couldn’t stop her…”

“Shh, it’s not your fault,” I said.

“She killed them, she killed them…” Micheline repeated the words over and over again, down the stairs and through the foyer, her voice dying to a whisper. I clung to her, the last bit of home I had now. Her family took me in, gave me a place in a world that’d kicked me into the gutter and left me for dead.

Now Mrs. Helsing had a bullet from my gun in her skull. And as for the littlies … I’d never forget the sight of them limp and lost to us, not so long as I lived.

I kicked the front door open. Old man Helsing’s truck sat in the driveway, doors unlocked. I helped Micheline into the passenger seat. She stared straight ahead as I buckled her in, shaking, eyes unblinking. The sight of her could’ve broken my heart if I looked too long, so I didn’t spare her more than a glance.

I dashed around the truck’s hood and jumped in, but the keys weren’t in the visor. Or the center console. Or in the glove box, goddammit.

“Micheline, where are the keys?” I asked. If she heard me, she didn’t respond. Cursing, I sprinted back into the house. I searched through the foyer table drawers, knocking family pictures to the floor. The keys weren’t in the bloody kitchen, or in old man Helsing’s study. I hustled up the stairs double-time, thinking maybe he’d stashed them on his bedside table, and froze.

A small figure stood in the hall, outlined by the panic room’s light. Ethan wavered on unsteady legs, his right ankle bent at an angle. His head lolled on his tattered neck, blood gelling down the front of his shirt. He looked at me with the foggy eyes of the dead. It wasn’t right, freshies were supposed to take at least twenty minutes to turn. The kid hadn’t been dead more than three minutes, tops.

“Oh shit,” I said softly. “No, kiddo, not you, too.”

He snarled at me, his voice raspy, the vocal cords shredded. My hand shook as I took aim at his forehead. This trigger would fuck me up for real, fuck me up forever, but there was only one way to fix dead and mobile.

We both crumpled under the pressure of the trigger.

NOW

Jude and I don’t talk for the rest of the hunt, both of us bloody ruthless, both of us angry. My kills cool me off quick, but Jude throttles the steering wheel all the way back to the safe house, popping a couple of stitches in his shooting gloves.

When he finally parks in the drive, all his frustration explodes.

“Where was your head tonight, McCoy?” he snaps. “That necro was inches”—he pinches the air between his thumb and index finger—“away from ripping my face open.”

I scrub my face with my palms—I can’t do this anymore, can’t bottle it in, can’t pretend like I’m stone cold when all I can think about is that kid and his mum. “I know, mate, I’m sorry.”

“‘Sorry’?” Jude asks. “Were you planning on telling me sorry while they stitched my face back together? For God’s sake, you looked like you were about to piss yourself out there.”

I tune out his bellowing, realizing I’d only disarm him with the truth. But it doesn’t matter what he thinks of me anymore, because all I want is for him to shut up, pull his head out of his arse, and realize I walked out of the big house alive but not unscathed.

The words slide out of me so easy, they take me by surprise: “I shot Ethan.”

Jude stops. Some of the red rage drains out of his face. He blinks. Breathes. “What?” he asks, his eyes narrowing to slits.

“That night … the kid turned, and fast,” I said, swallowing hard and looking straight ahead, out the window, anything to avoid Jude’s gaze. “Micheline, she … I’d already taken her outside. When I went back in for the car keys, I found the kid on his feet, his whole bloody throat ripped out and shit—” I shove my hands into my hair. I’d loved that kid, taught him to do proper cannonballs into the pool and to trap small game in the woods around the big house. “His head sounded like a melon when it hit the ground—hollow, y’know? How can I forget that? How can I ever get that out of my head?”

Jude’s silent for a long moment. When I look at him, he sniffs hard and swipes his upper lip with the back of his hand. The tendons in his jaw contract, relax, and contract again, as if he’s trying to stop himself from saying something thoughtless.

“Goddamn,” he finally says. His seat creaks as he leans back, and he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “This shitshow gets worse by the minute, doesn’t it?”

“Just wait till you see Micheline,” I said. “She dyed her hair black the other day.”

Jude scrunches his face up. “You didn’t tell her about Ethan, did you?”

“Hell no,” I say. “Do I look like a dumbarse?”

“I’d say you’re a jackass, but dumbass is an acceptable substitute.” He grins when I cuff him on the shoulder. “Get out of here, and tell Micheline I’ll see her later today.”

“You’d better damn well make good on that promise,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. “Get out, McCoy, before I decide to be pissed at you again.”

I kick my door open and jump out of the Humvee. Dawn’s graying the sky up a bit, and I jounce my shoulders to shake the night off. I feel … lighter, but not better. Everyone knows I shot Micheline’s mum to save her life; but hardly anyone knows I shot her little brother, too—just the coroners, investigators, old man Helsing, and now Jude. That’s it.

I find Micheline sitting on the marble floor in the foyer, resting her head on her knees. When she looks up at me, I do my best to keep my poker face. Dead easy for a reaper, even when her vibrant, peacock-feather blue eyes make me feel like the floor will fall out from under me. I might’ve saved her that night—the new tat on my arm and the ragged space in my chest’s proof enough of it—but how do you save a girl from her heartache?

Micheline pushes off the floor and runs to me, throwing her arms around my waist. She sniffles and shakes, but she’s still too proud or too stubborn to cry. This girl’s my Micheline and yet she’s not; this girl’s the one I’ve grown up with, the one I’d learned to shoot with, the one I’d sworn to protect with my life. She’s mine, and yet she isn’t; she’s alive, and yet something about her died back there with her mother and brothers, some part of her I couldn’t save. The thought makes me want to hit something. Hard. I want to make something bleed for it, even if that thing’s me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, kicking the door closed behind me.

“Nothing,” she whispers. “Everything. Do you know what a fixer is, Ry?”

She’s talked a lot of nonsense over the past few days. I let her go, chucking her under the chin so she’ll look up at me. “A fixer? What are you talking about?”

“It’s the chemical I use to stabilize photographs after I expose them. A fixer removes the silver particles from—” But her eyes well up, and she presses the back of her hand against her mouth and nose, stopping up her tears. “At least I don’t look like her anymore. I don’t have to look in the mirror and see her dead face staring back at me.”

“Aw, Micheline.” I put my arms around her again. “Is that why you dyed your hair?”

She nods against my chest. “Does it look awful?”

“No, you’ve always looked badass in black.” I put my chin on the crown of her head, soaking up the fact that she’s said more than twenty coherent words in a row. “Everything’s a fixer now,” she says. “The dye. The black. You.”

Fixer.

Fix. Her.

Problem is, I don’t think I can. The best I can do is be here for her when she needs me, and hope that, someday, she picks up her exorcism cameras and Colts and rejoins our crew in the field. I have to believe she’s not so far gone.

“You stabilize me, Ry,” she whispers.

I hold her so tight, I hope I squeeze all her broken pieces back together.