Pretty Little Dead Girls by Mercedes M. Yardley Page A

perfect dusky hands (save for the two broken and ragged fingernails) in her own. “I love you, and you are utterly exquisite and now you have been marred because of me. I have stayed too long.”
    Bryony kissed Syrina’s cheek and turned to the door. It was blocked by Rikki-Tikki.
    “Excuse me,” she said to Rikki-Tikki. He just shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest.
    “What a silly girl,” Syrina said. She hopped off the table and stood beside Rikki-Tikki. She looked angry, amused, frustrated and frighteningly fierce. She was a radiant warrior, a delicate guillotine. Bryony very nearly wanted to step away from her, but then she remembered it was Syrina, and she felt brave again.
    “I would die if you were hurt,” she told Syrina. “I wouldn’t want to live any longer.”
    “Bryony, don’t you see the implication of what happened here tonight?”
    Bryony didn’t see. She saw that Syrina had walloped the daylights out of an unfortunate criminal who chose the wrong house to break into. She knew deep within herself that he had been wandering down a darkened street in the evening, and had said, “Gee, which home should I plunder this evening? I shall most certainly cause some wild mayhem.” and she knew her apartment shone with a luminosity that made his heart pop with the brilliance of it, and he thought, “There, that’s the place! Oh, the wonders I shall behold and the magnificent havoc I shall wreak.” Only he didn’t really partake in any scintillating misbehavior at all because Syrina swooped upon him with her fiery Saucepan of Vengeance, and Bryony felt quite sorry for our poor would-be murderer for a moment.
    Syrina sighed. “The implication is this: that man came into our home in order to hurt you, but he failed.”
    “Because I wasn’t home,” Bryony said, and the tears almost started again. “I wasn’t home and so you had to defend yourself against him.”
    Rikki-Tikki laughed. “She wasn’t defending herself, Bryony. She was defending you.”
    “What?”
    Syrina nodded eagerly. “Don’t you see? He came in to hurt you, and neither Rikki-Tikki nor I were going to allow it. That man slithered into our home with a weapon and I grew so angry. How dare he come after you. How dare he enter our home and try to draw the breath from your lips. Fate took a swing at you and what happened? We stood and we fought and we won. He’ll go straight from the hospital to a jail cell, and we will never deal with him again. It is a wonderful thing.” Why, Syrina looked quite drunk on her victory, and Rikki-Tikki smiled so hard that his eyes disappeared, and Bryony’s heart began to lighten and turn its face to the sun and scream, “Yes! Yes, I have survived!”
    “We won’t leave you,” Rikki-Tikki said simply, and for a brief second fate choked and quaked and drew back from the power of these two fierce protectors, who stood together in a united front between it and the Star Girl. How was it to get to her? It was much too difficult. After all of its work, plans, and delightful scheming. Everything was nearly lost.
    And then fate shook its head and narrowed its eyes, growling deep in its throat as it remembered how crafty and venomous it could be. And when that venom is stoked by wrathful humiliation, well. Well. Careful, Star Girl. Your time has nearly come.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    He Kills Again
    Fate grumbled and schemed and plotted. Sending an enthusiastic but second rate robber to do a professional killer’s job certainly didn’t seem to work. Now the gloves were off. It was time to call in the big guns.
    It is time to check in on our murderer.
    What the murderer really wanted, of course, was Bryony. He did not know her name. He did not know anything about her. She could be a young doll-maker named Cassandra or she could be young man-turned-woman who was originally named Maurice, although he did not quite think so, and he had a fairly decent eye for that sort of thing.
    But he also wanted