“You’re the doom girl.” Ruby poked Celia in the chest with her pointer finger.
“What?” Celia took a step backward and looked at both of them. “What?”
Amber nodded. “Most of the time, when a big magic spell is cast, a prophecy appears that gives clues about what’s going to happen. It’s like . . . some kind of natural protection against all the mayhem. A prophecy invades creative people’s thoughts, and they don’t even know what it is. So you see it in graffiti, hear it at poetry slams, and hear people singing about it on street corners. The doom prophecy showed up last night, all over the place, after the earthquake. And this one is all about you.”
“But . . .” Celia took another step backward and thought about how people kept saying they’d dreamed about her. “I don’t understand . . .”
Ruby looked bored. “The city will shake and the girl will be found. You’re the girl in the prophecy and we found you. It’s not that complicated.”
“Actually,” Celia said, “I found you.”
“That’s what you think.” Ruby smirked.
Celia spoke in a rush of words. “Is this part of how your game works? Am I the doom girl because I was the last to arrive at the meeting? Or because I found your flyer and whoever finds it and comes to your meeting, they’re the doom girl? How does any of this work?”
“This isn’t a game, Celia,” Amber said. She looked up at the gray sky. “I wish it was. But this is real life. Our life.”
“And yours now too,” said Ruby. “Get used to it.”
Celia shook her head. She hadn’t eaten much today and her stomach hurt. Cold came at her from all directions. “I don’t get you guys at all. I’m going home. None of this is real and you are both . . .” Celia shook her head. She didn’t even know how to finish that sentence. Rain dripped down her neck.
Ruby sighed. “You can’t run away from this. You’re the doom girl.”
“Yep. You’re prophesized to, uh, save the city,” Amber added. “You’ll save us all.”
They both looked at her like they needed her.
Delusional, Celia decided. They aren’t playing a game, they believe all this, somehow. “It’s been really nice to meet you, and I hope you both stay safe until the electricity and all that comes back,” Celia said. She took a step backward, forgetting she was close to the stairs. She started to fall down the slick white marble.
Ruby grabbed her arm and steadied her.
“‘The doom girl’ might sound bad, but it’s a good thing,” Ruby said. “You get to be the hero. And we’ll help you. You don’t have to do any of this alone.”
Hero. Celia blinked and thought about every movie full of girls saving the day, and what if . . . “Not that I believe you, but what kind of things would I have to do?”
“We don’t know.” Ruby shoved her hands into her pockets. She glanced up and down the street. People walked by hidden under their umbrellas. “The prophecy will come true, one way or another. We’ll play it by ear and figure it out.”
“This is the weirdest joke ever, right?” Celia said.
“Bizarre things have been happening to you ever since the earthquake, haven’t they?” Amber whispered.
Kids running up to the roof right after the quake and a girl saying she’d seen Celia in her dreams. Demetri hiding in her apartment from something huge that thudded overhead. A callused bruise on her face where Demetri had touched her. A picture of a girl who looked exactly like her above the doom prophecy. Some hunter kid saying he’d dreamed of her. And right here, right now: two girls looking way too serious as they talked about impossible things. “Nothing that strange,” Celia lied. She took a step away from them, careful this time not to fall on the stairs.
Ruby gave her a hard look. “If not yet, then soon. Things are going to get stranger and stranger for you. Nowhere is safe. You’re at the center of all this. Your normal life? It’s over,” Ruby said. “At least until the three parts of the doom prophecy have happened. You’re lucky we’re the ones who found you first.” She cracked her knuckles. “Nothing we can’t handle. This is bigger than anything we’ve faced, but we’re good at what we do. Amber has more brains than ten kids combined. And I’m the leader of the hunters. Wanna know why?” She thrust out her arm and pointed at all the leather bracelets on it. “I earned one of these for every Big I’ve taken down.” There were dozens of them. “Stick with us and we’ll save the city together.”
Celia took another step away from them. “I’m just a normal girl.”
“Just a girl destined to save the city,” Amber said, and smiled with a false, bright smile.
“Just a stupid girl who still doesn’t know anything,” Ruby grumbled.
Beyond them, a couple of cars lumbered down the broken street and honked at each other to go faster.
“Prove it.” Celia’s heart beat hard beneath her coat. “Prove anything you are saying is real, or I’m going home.”
Amber held out her hand. “You still have the flyer you found at the library?”
Celia took the crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket. Amber took it from her hand, smoothed it out, and dropped it. By the time it drifted to the ground, all the handwriting had faded off it and the paper had gone blank.
Celia blinked. She picked it up, and as soon as her fingers touched it, the ink bled back onto the paper and formed words again.
“The Council of Elders told us we had to try to find you,” Amber said. “They got a spell made for us that only the doom girl could read. We put it out at the library, at every food bank, and on lots of street corners. For everyone else, it looked like a blank piece of paper.”
A shiver rolled up Celia’s spine. She let the paper drop, watched it go blank, and then caught it. Ink swirled back across the paper.
“It’s . . . magic?” Celia swallowed hard. “Magic is real?” Half of her still thought this was a joke, but only half.
“Uh-huh.” Amber bounced on her toes. “I love studying magic, even if humans can’t do much with it. It’s my favorite thing to read about.”
If humans couldn’t . . . then who could? Fairies? Trolls? The cold from the marble steps seeped up through the rubber soles of Celia’s tennis shoes. What if magic was real and there was a whole secret world out there? She dropped and caught the piece of paper, loving how the ink faded and came back.
“I’ll show you something else.” Amber’s face went serious as she looked up and down the street, then pushed up her coat sleeve. Thick ropy scars ran down her forearm in angry lines. “That’s from Bigs. They attacked and killed my parents, who didn’t even fight back because they couldn’t see them. They almost got me, too. But then hunters rescued me, took me in, and taught me how to fight back. Without the hunters, I’d be in foster care, probably. . . .” Amber’s face went a muddy gray color. “You have to stop Bigs from hurting other families like mine, Celia. You just have to.”
Celia looked away from the scars.
Ruby put her hands on her hips. She tilted her head up and surveyed the sky. “The sun sets early this time of year. It’ll be dark enough to go hunting in an hour. They leave trails in the dark. Come on—we’ll buy you a hot chocolate and explain everything. If, after that, you still want to pretend you’re just a normal girl, it’s your funeral.”
Celia looked at the paper and then at Amber’s scarred arm. Part of Celia wanted to hide in her room under all the blankets until normal came back. But another part of her wanted to go to a café with two intense girls who thought that the world had magic in it and that she was the chosen one, and maybe, just maybe, they were right. Celia wrapped her scarf around her neck. “Something warm sounds good.”
Celia followed them down to the sidewalk. She checked the cell phone. There was still no reception. Because of a spell, the hunters had said.
They walked down the buckled road, and the gray day grew darker and slicker under a steady trickle of rain. They passed storefronts with displays full of tumbled-down mannequins and o
thers with plywood nailed up over broken windows. Restaurants were closed. Apartments flickered with candlelight. A white-haired woman sat in one of the windows wearing dark glasses and staring out at nothing. Her hair was pulled up in a perfectly round bun at the top of her head. She held so still she looked like a statue.
Shadows lengthened. Thick shards of glass lay scattered across the ground. Amber and Ruby linked elbows. Celia hung back a couple of steps, but Amber turned around and linked arms with Celia too.
“Hunters stick together,” Amber said.
Celia almost reminded her that she wasn’t a hunter, but it felt so nice to be included.
They walked on through the shaken city. Handwritten signs sat propped outside some high-rise apartment building saying Repent, The End Times Are Here, and The Girl Will Be Found. The sidewalks were mostly empty, and the few people they passed moved hunched over. People kept pulling out their phones and staring at the screens before slipping them back into their pockets. Celia thought of her parents. A weighted cold settled into her.
Then they turned a corner and saw a place lit up with LED flashlights hanging from a crooked awning. The glowing lights, a spot of cheeriness inside the growing murk, drew them forward.
Amber and Ruby slipped inside. The bitter smell of coffee wafted out the door, mixed with the sweet smell of hot chocolate. Celia’s stomach rumbled.
She hesitated on the doorstep. If she went home now, and didn’t pay attention to sounds on the roof, or knocks on her door, or pieces of paper that ebbed and flowed with magic ink, would life turn normal again? Would she be able to stay safe and lonely and bored?
Or was normal over from now until the prophecy ended? Doom girl, Celia thought, and wanted to know more about what that meant and what was going to happen. Maybe, even though the world felt chaotic and scary, maybe a bunch of good things could come out of this too. And no matter what, at least it was interesting. Celia was so tired of normal, when all that meant was feeling sad and lonely all the time.
Amber stuck her head back through the door and grinned at Celia.
“Come on,” she said, waving her in.
Celia pulled her parents’ list of rules out of her backpack. She’d broken way too many of them already.
4. Celia will not traipse around town like a vagabond.
5. Celia will be home every night well before sunset.
12. Celia will not hang out with strangers.
15. Safety first, no matter what.
Celia sighed and turned to the last page. She reread the very last rule.
27. Our amazing daughter has a smart head on her shoulders and she doesn’t really need this list because we know she will use good judgment. Celia, we love you and trust you and have fun but not too much fun and call if you need anything!
I love you too, she thought, and rubbed away the tears that welled up in her eyes. If they were here right now, they would say she should go home, lock all the doors, and eat food from cans until they came home. But they weren’t here.
Celia stepped forward into the light and noise of the café.
7
Shouldn’t Be Real
The coffeehouse was crammed full of people sitting knee-to-knee and talking loudly over the battery-powered boom box that played hip-hop. Tea lights flickered on every table and counter-top, and hurricane lanterns glowed from the corners of the room. Small camping stoves were set up on the counters, heating delicious-smelling drinks.
Ruby ordered for everyone: three hot chocolates with extra whipped cream and a plate full of pastries. The barista, a midtwenties guy with a ponytail and a patch over one eye, didn’t make her pay. He said they were trying to get rid of everything before things went rotten. The three girls wandered to the back of the place and found a small wooden table carved with decades of hearts and initials.
Ruby passed out pastries. Her spiky purple hair had fallen down in the rain and lay limply on her head. She swiped a finger through her whipped cream and licked it. “Shall we?” she asked Amber.
The other girl nodded and leaned toward Celia. “So. Once upon a time, people could be magicians, if they learned the right things, studied hard, and were smart. They could take magic from all living things and manipulate it.” Amber took a sip of her drink and gave herself a whipped-cream mustache. “Then, about a hundred and fifty years ago, humans stopped being able to use magic. We can still activate spells, if someone else makes them for us, but that’s all. We can’t take raw magic and do anything with it.”
Celia nodded slowly. “Okay. What changed?” she asked.
“No one knows what happened, but magic closed to us on the same day Littles and Bigs showed up.”
Celia dipped bits of cinnamon roll into her cocoa and licked the vanilla-scented icing that dripped onto her palm. With every sip, she felt more awake. She took a deep breath. “So what are Littles and Bigs?”
Amber leaned forward. “We call them that because it’s safer than saying what they really are. Some Bigs have really good hearing.”
Ruby’s hands curled into fists.
Amber’s eyes darted around the room. She leaned closer until Celia could smell the fruity scent of her shampoo. “What they really are is . . . monsters.”
Monsters? Celia rolled her eyes and looked from one girl to the other. Neither of them smiled.
They thought monsters were real, and had made the earthquake using magic, and that she was part of some prophecy having to do with . . . monsters? She almost started laughing, except . . . the word did something funny inside her. It made her breath catch and she found herself looking in all directions, as though there might be a monster in this café, which was ridiculous because there was no such thing as monsters. Everyone knew that.
“Breathe, Celia. Just breathe. If there’s anywhere safe in Youngstown right now, it’s here with us in a loud, crowded place.” Ruby grabbed hold of Celia’s cold hands.
Celia whispered, “Monsters aren’t real.”
“They shouldn’t be real,” Amber whispered back. “But they are.”
Celia shook her head.
“You’ve seen monsters. Kids can see them,” Ruby said. She ran her hand across the tea light’s flame, close enough to leave black marks on her fingertips. “Deep down, if you think about it, you know we’re telling the truth. Kids see Bigs and forget about them right away, because our minds refuse to believe it. We glimpse Littles and think they are just dressed funny, even though a part of us knows they aren’t real kids. Hunters see monsters and don’t forget like other kids, because monsters have hurt us. You’ll be able to see them too, now that we’ve told you about them, but you’ll have to work at it at first.”
Half memories of shadow-things flickered through Celia’s mind. That time she’d been camping in the Cascades and saw something huge and misshapen flapping above the trees. Or how once, at Washington Park, all the shadows had turned strange and it had felt like they were chasing her. And even though monster was just a normal word, a word people used all the time, she didn’t want to say it out loud, because what if Amber was right and something out there might notice?
Ruby pushed a stale chocolate croissant toward Celia. She touched a star-shaped scar on her neck. “You’re going to start seeing stranger and stranger things.”
Celia looked at the front door and wanted to run down a dozen streets until she made it home. But what if they were really out there, ready to attack her? She took a bite of pastry but didn’t taste it. “If all this is true, how come no one knows?” Her voice sounded faraway and small.
“Monsters own magic, so they’re good at hiding. They make spells to hide any proof that they exist. And even though no one knows they’re real, people can’t stop telling stories about them,” Amber said.
“Think about all the stories about things that go bump in the night,” Ruby said. “Think about how many horror movies there are about monsters. No one knows, but at the same time everyone is obsessed with them because deep down, people sens
e stuff.”
Celia opened her mouth and shook her head. Monsters weren’t real. She remembered a lullaby her dad used to sing to her about locking all the doors and lighting all the lanterns to keep safe. She thought about the rows and rows of monster masks at the Halloween store, and all the books about monsters she had read. Celia traced her finger over a carved skull-and-crossbones etched into the table and wondered, What if all this is real? “Tell me more,” she whispered, and filled her mouth with the bittersweet taste of cooling cocoa.
Amber took out a pen and started doodling on a paper napkin.
“First you have a Big. That’s what we call an adult monster.” She sketched a shaggy, gorilla-like creature. “Then you have a Little. A kid monster.” She drew a kid with devil horns. “Then you have us. Normal kids.” She made arrows between the pictures. “Every Big used to be a Little, and every Little used to be a normal kid.”
“What? Monsters are human?”
“Not even slightly. But they used to be,” Ruby said.
The tea light flickered. That meant . . . people could be turned into monsters? “How?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Amber said. “A Little can change a regular kid into a Little by touching them for a while. The second a Little changes someone, that Little turns into a Big. When a Little changes us, that makes them Big, get it? Littles can only change other kids, though: not grown-ups.” She redrew her arrows on the napkin.
Celia thought about viruses and how quickly they could spread. “How many millions and millions of them are there?” She looked around the room.
“Not that many.” Amber stared into the tea light. “First, because hunters hunt them. And second, Bigs enslave the Littles they make for years and years. But eventually, every sneaky Little finds a way to escape and attack a new kid, and the whole scruddy cycle starts all over again.”
“So hunters kill these . . . Littles and Bigs?” Celia hated killing anything, even mosquitoes.
Amber looked startled. “No. Just Bigs. And we mostly don’t kill them.”
“But you said Littles are the ones who attack kids, right?”
Little Apocalypse Page 4