Who caught Cock Robin's blood?
I, said the Fish,
with my little dish,
I caught his blood.

—

Martha Dunnstock was the first Westerburg suicide. She killed herself in freshman year, walked into traffic and was hit dead-on by a semitrailer. Before Martha's death, Heather Chandler said and did some cruel things and recruited Martha's only friend to join the Heathers.

Heather wasn't thinking about the past, squeezing out the bottle in front of a fog-tinted mirror. The hair dye was 8SC, Medium Copper Blonde, not the one she'd asked for, 6.5R Light Radiant Auburn. That asshole probably got it wrong on purpose. Fuck him. Heather wrapped up her hair and stepped out of the shower. She expected to have the place to herself for a few more hours. She rolled up her dress and walked out in a towel. She might as well see what she could dig up here.

She struck paydirt and found a pair of women's jeans and a light brown shirt at the bottom of one of the suitcases. Remnants of some ex-girlfriend? Ha, as if anyone but Veronica would give the likes of him the time of day. Or did J.D. murder some other woman on the road and bury her in a barrel and keep the clothes for a trophy? It seemed oddly plausible. But mom or older sister was more likely - and these were old and unfashionable enough for mom to be the best bet. An interim solution to avoid walking around in a ridiculous pink dress.

She opened a window and stuck her arm out into the daylight. Stupid to even test such a thing; she was fine. She gave a stray thought to it: if she were a creature of the night equipped with heavy-duty fangs, whose throats would she rip out first? Life's full of tough choices. Veronica on the top of the list for betraying her; Country Club Courtney and boring Peter Dawson and J.D. on general principles; David Harper because he was Heather's boyfriend after all, and should damn well follow her into undeath if he knew what was good for him.

Just a fantasy.

She looked down from the attic window and saw J.D. peel himself out of a pickup truck, alone. Heather went to meet him.

She stabbed an emotion out of him the moment he saw her, waiting for him under the hall light. She felt a grim vicious triumph at her success.

"Take those clothes off," J.D. growled at her.

There were two main directions Heather could take that one; emotional-devastation and all-men-are-perverts. She went with the first option.

"So these were your mommy's?" she said. "Did she leave you all alone? Must have been your pleasant personality."

"No points for reusing the joke," J.D. managed to snarl. He pulled a giant red garbage bag in behind him. "Not funny at all."

Heather loved weaknesses, when they belonged to other people. "Or is mommy dead? Don't tell me, you kept some clothes in the back of a suitcase for the smell. How very Norman Bates of you."

Of course Heather knew all about dead moms. In her case, it was childbirth complications, like some Disney-film mom conveniently got out of the way for the plot, and she'd called her dad's wife 'Mom' since she could remember. There had once been photos of Heather as a two-year-old flowergirl in her father's second wedding that depicted her lifting her yellow dress to show off her frilly panties, but she'd made damn sure to hunt those down and destroy them long ago. Heather's mom was a good mom, if your definition of that was 'bought her daughter anything she asked for and pretty much did as she was told'.

"You'll never guess what I found in front of the thrift shop," J.D. said "A huge pile of trash, thrown out like it didn't matter at all."

Heather dived toward the garbage bag. She recognized too many things in there. Some fucking retard had let her face powder break in the bag, spilling over her favorite red dress and least-favorite leggings. All clumped together, like it meant nothing, Westwood and Levis and L'Oreal makeup tumbling over each other. She ordered it dragged up to the attic anyway and yelled at J.D. to keep the hell away while she changed.

She came back in her own jeans and a good jacket, acting like nothing had happened.

"Did they miss you?" J.D. said, halfway through a cigarette. "Sure, that's why your parents junked your stuff. Do-They-Have-Thanksgiving-In-Africa Heather is beyond devastated - she thinks it's just awful they only got a day off and not a week off for your funeral. The Courtney creature's simpering like a cat that got the cream. Betty Finn's all broken up. Veronica wanted to see you puke your guts out. Your boyfriend David was so devastated he asked Moby-Dick Heather for a hot date at the funeral. Now she really respects your memory - she's sold her story to a dozen TV networks already. Have fun." He smirked, threw the remote at her head, and walked off. How kind of him.

TV shows all about Heather Chandler. Now that sounded like quality entertainment. Heather smiled at the thought. They all mourned for her tragic death, and she'd be even more popular when she miraculously came back. She sat down to watch.

Heather Duke was on practically every channel, including one in Spanish. What a geek; Heather hadn't realized she was actually fluent in the stuff.

And Duke looked happy. Smiling and comfortable to be on camera. Wearing a red skirt, even though Heather Chandler always wore red. If she'd told Duke once, she'd told her a thousand times, red was not her color because it clashed with her hair. Too bad no one else had noticed. None of those reporters had told Duke she looked ugly and needed to lose about ten pounds of puppy fat. None of those reporters told Duke to shut up.

"We were best friends who always wore each other's clothes because we were the same size, so we mixed it up," Duke lied. "She seemed so bubbly on the outside, but inside Heather was full of pain. I tried to give her a helping hand, but now I know I wasn't enough to save her." Duke smiled a misty smile into the cameras, eyes batting up and down with fake tears. They loved her. They all loved her. Heather changed the channel yet again, one after one after the next, and it was all the same. Fuck, Heather, how many networks did you have on speed dial? She couldn't bear it any more.

Heather wrenched off her pink bridesmaid's heel, and threw it at the screen as hard as she could. It only bounced off. Heather screamed; she couldn't help it. She marched over, reclaimed her shoe, and used the heel to hit the glass over Heather Duke's smug face again and again until it finally cracked. The television burst into white static for a single satisfying moment then turned black. Heather kicked it over on its face for good measure.

She went to bed on a mattress in the attic, dusty and awful and closed-in. She was tired, as if whatever had happened to her over her burial had cost something. Not that she was any of the stupid things J.D. had suggested. She'd seen a couple of horror-movie posters in his bedroom - how lame. Ketchup blood and green rubber monsters were for kids. Heather rolled over, sleep catching up to her behind her eyes.

She figured J.D. wouldn't be that upset at her amusing vandalism. Annoyed, yes, but he'd provoked Heather on purpose and so part of him would be gleeful he had succeeded. He'd soon learn that he couldn't afford to provoke her without similar inconvenience to himself.

Heather had been asleep and dreaming something that felt reasonably peaceful, if kind of dull. She came half awake to hear a door open. Nothing to worry about; go back to sleep. She heard a phone being picked up - weird, a phone at this hour. Something about buying. Who'd be that desperate for a TV? Later, still drifting through sleep, she heard two raised men's voices, arguing. It wasn't the same excitement as two guys directly fighting over her, especially not since one of them was as old as her dad, but it was good enough. Good work, Heather. There were no sounds even close to someone walking up to the attic. She turned over and rested on.

—

Heather Duke unwrapped a Kit Kat from under her pillow. She split the chocolate bar carefully in half, bit a piece off each end, then dipped it in the cocoa in front of her to use as a straw. The triple chocolate hit her in a rush. She'd done this when she was a little kid, when she and her friends didn't care about looking silly in public. Her bedroom door was locked and she looked very good in public, thank you, or at least ninety-nine percent of local news stations agreed about that.

Duke's true prediction, her magic, was a secret she'd kept hugged to herself. No news reader could get that out of her. She'd read all the books, urban mages and lost princesses raised by peasants and cartoon superheroines, and the first rule was always that you didn't tell people you had special powers.

Heather McNamara was a total fake. Duke was different. She'd always hoped the cards really spoke to her and said something meaningful, even if she also learnt a lot of card tricks and practiced all her mystic speeches in front of her mirror. Those tricks were just to make sure. She had power.

Foretelling Heather Chandler's death was the first time Duke had actually done something that the normal laws of science couldn't explain away. The first and only time, a traitorous voice within her said. But surely there would be others. She'd drawn the Star for herself with Veronica and that meant something, though it was true she'd drawn the Two of Wands and the Page of Cups and the Jester for herself at other times.

Duke wiped her chocolate-coated fingers carefully with a monogrammed linen napkin. She set her cocoa carefully aside on a completely different surface. Then she laid out her tarot spread again.

"My powers are real," she said into the empty room. Just reminding herself. Midnight ticked over in her moon-and-stars clock on the wall.

She turned over three simple cards. The Highwayman, a black-shrouded man on a black horse with eyes that glowed brimstone in the night. The Moon Maiden, a pale slender woman with midnight black hair and half her face hidden by a mask, her blue dress merging with dark water mixed with stars. And the card of Death again.

Duke and her friends had of course picked cards for each other, before they had even shared the trend outside their group. Heather Chandler was the Red Queen, no-prizes-for-guessing-that, the Queen of swords and rubies and fire and blood. Duke had secretly wanted that card for herself; she'd once loved stories about women with swords. But instead she had to pretend she wanted the High Priestess, mistress of the cards. Heather McNamara was the Page of Light, a golden young man - or young woman, it was hard to tell - with sun-tossed curls and a brilliant smile, laughing joyously at something out of the picture. And by popular vote, Veronica was the Moon Maiden, although maybe she'd have preferred the Ace of Wands.

The Moon Maiden; mysterious and attractive, but also two-faced and deceptive. Perfect fit. And wasn't Veronica dating (ugh! Fucking was a better word for it, gross) a guy who was practically a highwayman, the sort of guy who brought guns to school for fun?

Duke stared at the Death card again. "You don't always mean literal death. You can just mean change," she said. "Veronica changes boyfriends, that's a big surprise, no one could possibly have seen that coming. It's not that I care about Veronica's boyfriends or how many times she bangs them on the neighbour's swingset. I'd just like her to stay away from my swingset, thanks. And she can feel free not to tell me about any of it."

There was a chilly breeze in Duke's bedroom. She looked up at her closed window, seeing the glint of glass in the slit between the curtains. The curtains weren't moving. She looked at the gap between her door and the floor next, but the thick pile of her carpet was unblown.

Duke put her arms by her sides and stiffened them rigidly. The card on her table was moving, and she was not touching the card or the table. The cold wind grew stronger. Only the Death card was moved, only the Death card was lifted. It rose into the air by itself, touching nothing, showing its full face to her. It bobbed up and down.

This was magic, real power. It couldn't be anything else. And Duke was absolutely terrified. She wasn't doing it; she couldn't make it stop. She stared helplessly at Death before her, her Death, a grinning psychopomp waiting for her in the air at midnight.

The card seemed to grow in size. It rushed toward Duke's face as if borne by a mighty tempest. Then she saw nothing but Death, Death flying toward her eyes. She understood the message.

She would be next. She would die. She would be murdered.

She collapsed on her desk in a dead faint.