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The first time Pearl sees him again is in the fifties, in some hole-in-the-wall in Atlanta that’s more hole than wall at this point. It’s mostly empty, the only other patrons are a pair in the corner giggling as they whisper to each other and an old man with a bushy white beard who looks like he’s been sleeping since the flood. The bartender glances up from her newspaper when Pearl walks in but doesn’t say a word.
He’s sitting at the bar, nursing a glass of something that’s hard to make out through the smudged fingerprints. She sits down next to him and doesn’t even pretend to be there for the drinks. It’s a long moment before either of them move. “They killed her,” she says bluntly, no preamble to it.
He finally turns. “A howdy-do might be nice.” He looks the same as he did back then, same long hair in need of trimming, same cracked hat on his head, same insufferable smile on his lips. She wagers the shirt’s new, though.
“They killed her,” she says again like he might’ve missed it the first time. “And it’s your fault.”
Skinner laughs loudly before the bartender’s glare quiets him down. “And just what’s meant to be my fault? Way I remember it, I saved your ungrateful life before I got the hell out of that two cent town. Didn’t do nothing to anyone.”
“Hattie.” She grits her teeth. “You remember Hattie? They turned her, and made her attack me, and-” She stops suddenly, like whatever she might’ve said has gotten stuck in her throat and would hurt to come out.
“And what?” he prompts. “Sounds like you should be blaming them for your little friend. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You turned me!” she cries. “You made me this-this thing and none of this ever would’ve happened if you had just let me die!” She isn’t crying. She’d rather eat nails than do that in front of Skinner of all people. But she’s waited thirty long, monotonous years to find this man and make him face what he’s done, and, well, he had better take this seriously at the least.
“If you want to die, you and I both know there are ways, huh, dolly?” The smile is no longer insufferable so much as it is cruel.
“It’s not me I’m concerned about anymore,” Pearl tells him. “I just want her back.”
“Killing me’s not gonna get you that” --he eyes her nails gouging into the soft wood of the bar, the dangerous glint to her eyes– “but I love the sentiment.” His tone is nonchalant, but she can notice him tensing up, his teeth looking a touch sharper than usual. He’s not above revealing himself in front of an audience. Neither of them really are.
Pearl’s smile is grim and self-satisfied all at once. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to tell you all about her, and what she meant to me, and then–when you’ve finally gotten it through your thick skull what you’ve done–then I’ll kill you.”
“I’ve killed a lot of people, and I'm sure a lot of them were good once upon a time. None of that ever made me any sorrier for doing it.” Skinner’s tone is almost warning, near but not quite apologetic. It doesn’t matter though. Her mind is set and she knows he won’t leave. He can make more trouble here than about anywhere else in Atlanta if he chooses, and she’s betting that he knows it too. And so, over top of the noisy hum of the lights and the bartender’s paper rustling behind the counter, she starts telling him.
The theatre is dark and hot; the people are all packed in and whispering to each other while they wait for the curtain to rise. “Isn’t this exciting?” Hattie murmurs to Pearl, fidgeting slightly in her seat. “I haven’t been to a movie in ages and ages.”
“Me neither,” she whispers back, in love with her new partner’s excitement.
“I hope there’s some romance to it.” Hattie nods. “I know it’s silly, but I’d rather watch one of those than the ones that are all fighting.”
“I don’t think that’s silly. And I think there will be. I heard someone talking about it at the diner the other day.”
“Really? Oh, I’m so glad you wanted to come!” Hattie has expressed a similar sentiment at least three times already. Her feet are bouncing on the floor now a bit too. The curtain rises and she grabs on to Pearl’s arm before quickly letting go while apologising, then apologising again when their neighbours tell them to shush. Pearl just laughs and tells her it’s alright.
When the movie’s over they are spilled out into the hall, eyes wide and talking animatedly. “I’m going to be an actress, you know,” Pearl says conspiratorially.
“Really?” Hattie asks, thrilled by it all. “I think I will be, too.”
“If your plan was to get me to like the girl better,” Skinner tells her, “it’s not working. She was a girl with dreams too big for her, just like everyone else.”
“She wasn’t just like everyone else.”
He looks at her but says nothing.
The river is cool on their feet as they sit on the banks, though the sun is trying its level best to make up for it by burning their skin right off. Pearl’s got a book that she’s using to cover her head currently, and Hattie is methodically peeling the moss off a nearby rock.
“You’ll never guess who asked me to lunch today!”
“Ms Cahill?” Pearl tries.
Hattie makes a face. “No, silly. It was a gentleman caller.”
They both laugh. “I don’t think that’s what that means.”
“It was Bill!” She rips a particularly large chunk off the rock and tosses it into the water. “He took me to Eunice’s.”
“Bill?” Pearl tries and fails to keep herself from making a face. “The guy with the tangly moustache and the lady’s bracelet?”
“You have terrible taste in men so you are not allowed to judge mine,” Hattie says, then goes on before Pearl can protest, “and anyhow, it’s not a lady’s bracelet. It’s very distinguished, I think.”
Pearl is not jealous that Hattie’s this excited. That would be absurd. Still, she has to work her way past something in order to muster up the proper amount of enthusiasm and ask Hattie all about how it went. Hattie launches into the story, and she settles herself down, ignoring the itch of the sand on her legs as she listens.
Skinner laughs like something’s finally worked itself out in his mind. “Dolly,” he says. “Dolly, do you remember what I told you a long while ago?”
“A lot of bullshit.”
Again, he laughs. “I’m sure. Remember what else?” He answers for her, “Two of us, we’re not quite so different as you might like.”
“Like I said, a lot of bullshit.”
“Rent’s outrageous in this town.” Hattie viciously stabs her fork into her egg, making the plate clatter against the pock-marked wooden table. “You can’t charge me movie star prices before I’m even a movie star.”
“Your landlord must see a lot of potential in you.” Pearl giggles. “But you’re right. I can never seem to catch up with it.” She sighs and turns a bit of toast over thoughtfully. “Say, Hattie?”
“Hm?”
“What if we were to live together, you know? Save tons on rent.”
“Why, Miss Jones!” Hattie says with mock solemness. “I do believe that’s an excellent idea.” And she sticks her hand across the table for Pearl to shake.
He interrupts her then, swirling his ever present stick of peppermint in the last of his liquor before draining the glass. She makes a disgusted face but no comment. “Better hurry your poor little love story up. My drink’s all gone.”
Pearl motions the bartender over. “He’ll have another. Put it on his tab.”
The bartender looks displeased to be interrupted from her reading, but bends down and finds a bottle anyway. Pearl’s pretty sure it wasn’t what he was drinking before, but none of them say anything about it. When the bartender is back in her chair, absorbed in her paper again, Skinner says, “I wasn’t exactly planning on paying that tab.”
“I know you’re not. Now sit down and shut up until I’m done.” He looks like he might say something more, but she speaks again before he can. “And it’s not a love story.”
“You’re mooning over some girl who died. I’m sure there’s a party for that out there somewhere; go tell them.”
“They didn’t kill her.”
“Neither did I.”
“Yes,” she says, very deliberately, “you did.”
When she gets the phone call, all she can think is how on earth. How on earth did they find Hattie? How come she didn’t get away in time? How on earth can Pearl stop all of them? Henry offers to help and her mind is still in a daze, but somewhere in the back of it she thinks that he’d be in danger too, and she drives off, leaving him in a cloud of dust clutching his now pointless gun. The entire drive, that terrible, mad race through the dark, the only even slightly clear thought is that she must save Hattie. Pearl didn’t ask for any of this, but Hattie couldn’t be allowed to be hurt just for knowing Pearl. She just couldn’t.
So when Pearl arrives at last, with Hattie back and collapsed in her arms, she thinks her mind might be starting to work again. Everything slows down to a more manageable speed, her head stops humming like a stagehand. And so she’s unfortunately perfectly, completely lucid when she realises that they’ve turned Hattie too.
The face is what she notices first; long, wickedly sharp teeth coming at her, and she wonders why though she’s seen Hattie a thousand and one times, she doesn’t look any less pretty as a vampire. They’re grappling in the dust, and even when Pearl has the advantage for a split second she still uses it to ask, “How?”
“The question,” Hattie says, with something not quite a grin but not too far from it, “is why.”
“Why?” she repeats, trying to pry a long-fingered hand off her shoulder. “You didn’t–you wouldn’t…”
There’s a hint of triumph in Hattie’s voice. “I did.”
Pearl’s weaker than Hattie, on this moonless night, but Hattie’s newer to the whole undead thing. She’s a little slower to use her newfound talents, and so there’s a moment where Pearl can see a whole set of actions laid out in her mind. Sees them, and can follow. Roll, grab the dropped stake, wait until Hattie lunges again, and…
There’s a moment where Hattie is right above her, eyes meeting hers with something like regret in them. Time seems to stretch on, and when Hattie opens her mouth to say one last thing, it snaps back into place. And then she’s gone.
The bar seems too quiet now. Pearl has been deliberately staring at his glass, not him, for the past ten or so minutes as she speaks. She’s not sure what his expression is, but she thinks she might kill him right here and now if she were to see it.
At long last, he breaks the silence. “You.”
She still can’t look at anything other than the dirty glass, the liquid not really reflecting the dim overhead lights, his finger on the rim.
“You killed her, then.” He laughs, once, but it’s a bit shorter this time. “Alright, then. Good twist, dolly.”
She doesn’t trust herself to speak without yelling, or possibly just biting him. What little good that would do.
“What’d you want me to say? Your tale’s fucked up, but I’ve heard worse.” Skinner tilts his head, considering. “Hell, I’ve done worse.”
“I want you to care,” she says at last, in careful, warning tones. “I want you to know, before I kill you. Know what you’ve done.”
He shakes his head with something akin to disgust. “You still think I’m to blame for all your woes, somehow?”
“If you hadn’t have turned me…”
“What? You would’ve been dead and she still would’ve ended up with the pale and blood-sucking. Way I see it, this way at least one of you’s still alive.”
“She wouldn’t have been turned!” Her voice is rising, but she’s too worked up to care much now. She needs him to understand this much. “She just wanted to make sense of what happened to me, is all!” Pearl takes a breath before finishing, “She was only trying to look out for me.”
“Or they got to her first like they got to you, or she sat down on her knees and begged ‘em cause she wanted to be young and pretty forever, or a hundred and one other reasons that I don’t care about.” And that’s enough for her to grab him by his collar and pull him much closer than she would ever like Skinner Sweet to be to her with a snarl, and all he says is, “I’m not some brain doctor interested in any of your repressed bullshit. You killed her cause she attacked you and was trying to do the same. We’ve all done it. Get over it.”
“She wasn’t one of your dime-a-dozen victims, asshole. She was different.”
“To you.” He grips her wrists and tries to pull them off of him, but she refuses to budge an inch. “I’m not all convinced she would return the sentiment.”
“What’s that meant to mean.” The warning on her face is very clear.
“It means not everyone can like you back,” he answers, mocking. Her grip on his shirt loosens for the slightest second, and he uses it to pull her hands off him and spring towards the door. He stops for one last moment in the doorway to say, “So get over it.”
The bartender gives a perfunctory ‘Hey!’ before turning to Pearl. “So, you gonna pay for your friend?”
After a long, dazed moment, Pearl shakes her head slightly. “He’s not my friend.” Spewing a bunch of nonsense before running out was pretty normal for him, actually, but this was a little closer to home than usual. And she still has an item left on her list. “I’m going to go kill him.” And so she runs back into the hot Atlanta streets, ignoring the bartender’s shouts, looking for a sign of the man that ruined her life.