Her hair is messy, almost matted, as if she hasn’t been bathing regularly. Her typically stylish attire is gone, replaced by a hodgepodge of clothes that don’t match — pajama bottoms with a leather jacket and flip flops on her feet. Her eyes have that same vacant look I remember from the other night, though there’s something else in their depths now, as they shift to stare into mine. Something infinitely scarier.
“Helena,” I say slowly, holding out my hands in front of me like a shield. “What are you doing here?”
Her head tilts. She doesn’t answer.
My pulse starts to pound.
“Helena, why are you here?” I repeat, backing away. My mind is racing, trying to remember where I left my cellphone.
Is it still sitting at the bottom of my purse? Or charging on the kitchen counter?
She takes a step toward me, hands shoved deep inside the pockets of her coat. Her absolute silence is eerie.
“How did you know where I live?” I try to stay calm as I back away and she follows me deeper into the house. “How did you get through the gate?”
“I waited for him to drive away,” she says, sounding empty. A broken doll with a voice-box. “The door was open.”
“Helena, you shouldn’t be here. You should be in Palm Springs. Didn’t Grayson take you there?”
Her head shakes. “He told me it was secret. That he was going to make me better. No more doctors. No more medicine. No more, no more, no more,” she sing-songs crazily, laughing at nothing.
Fuck.
Grayson didn’t take her to the medical center; he took her to Malibu. Tried to fix her himself, the idiot.
When I get my hands on him, I will break his freaking neck.
I shuffle a few steps backward, wary of turning my back to her. She’s may well be harmless… but the unhinged aura surrounding her is making every hair on my body stand on end.
“Okay, Helena,” I aim for a soothing tone. “I’m going to call Grayson, he’ll come get you.”
She perks up at the sound of Grayson’s name, like a dog who hears the word “walk” in casual conversation and knows, without context, that the rest of the gibberish somehow applies to it.
“Grayson,” she echoes dully.
“Yes.” I lick my parched lips. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Okay?” Her head tilts and she laughs again — that maniacal, mad laugh that sends a chill down my spine. “It’s not okay.”
“I promise, it’ll be all right.”
“You took it all.” She starts to close the gap between us, eyes on my face. “My Grayson. My movie.” Tears are leaking from her eyes as she advances. Her voice grows anguished. “Mybaby.”
My hands fly to my midsection. “Helena…”
Run, run, run.
All my instincts are kicking into survival mode. Fight or flight. If it was just me, maybe I’d fight. But it’s not just me, anymore. And I’m not about to risk the tiny dictator’s life in a scuffle with a crazy bitch a foot taller than me who, more than likely has snorted opiates up her nose at some point in the recent past, rendering her essentially immune to pain. I’d have better odds wrestling a professional MMA fighter to the ground.
“Wait here, Helena,” I say with a calmness I don’t feel, picking up speed as I backpedal away. I’m nearly to the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.”
“No.” Her voice is totally hollowed of all emotions. She sounds inhuman. I suck in a breath when her hand moves out of her coat pocket and I see the dull gleam of a knife clutched in her fingers. It’s big — the kind you keep in a wood block on your kitchen counter. Even from here, I can tell it’s sharp.
“Helena,” I whisper, feeling fear flood through me. “Put that down.”
Her eyes meet mine, focusing for a nanosecond, and I see the pure madness there. Even before she speaks, I know there’s no reasoning with her.
“You took my baby,” she says again in that terrifyingly empty voice. “You took my baby.”