“Sometimes,” Macy admitted. “Sometimes I know I’ve just had the best dream, but I can’t remember it when I wake up.” Several times Macy had dreamed that Nick came back. In the dream it turned out that it was all a big mistake. He wasn’t actually dead. He’d just been traveling and had forgotten to tell them where he was going. Nick would walk right through the front door and it all made so much sense. Of course! He had just been on a trip. That explains everything! Every time she woke from those dreams she felt raw and cheated—like someone had been lying to her. Her own brain, she supposed.
“Do you dream now?” Macy didn’t want to stop talking. It felt like as long as she was talking to him, it wouldn’t end—this little secret world she had created around him.
“I don’t think I even sleep.” Henry closed the distance between them. “You really are though. Beautiful, I mean. I wish I’d known you when I was alive. You would have liked me. Everyone liked me when I was alive.”
“Is that right?” Macy smiled, though she felt a little strange smiling. With the huge moon and her breath floating in front of her face, nothing was quite real. She couldn’t see his breath, she realized. Ghosts don’t breathe.
Henry flashed her his white, slightly translucent teeth. “I think it was my smile. My mom used to tell me that I had a cat-who-caught-the-canary smile.” He reached out and put his hand on her cheek.
She flinched like he had slapped her. “You can’t—” she said. Backing away, she pulled out her knife and flipped it open.
He closed the distance again, wrapping his hand in her hair. “I can.” He put his other hand on her cheek again, holding her tight. “I think I would have loved you when I was alive. Or maybe you remind me of someone I used to love. But now . . . I don’t think it’s the same.”
“What are you?” Macy asked, transfixed by his hand on her face. She tried to reach out with her mind—to feel the edges of him like she did that first day by the Door. Once again, she felt him push back, only so much stronger. It felt like touching an electric fence.
“I remembered after that first day. I knew exactly what I had to do.”
She could see the light of the Door behind his eyes.
“Every day, when you came to see me, I told myself—one more day. Just give her another day. But now there’s no more time.” He gripped her wrist, pushing her knife hand away from him. She struggled, but he dug his fingers into the tendons of her wrist. Her hand went numb. When he took the knife from her, she felt like she was floating.
“No.” Macy tried to shake her head—tried to move away from him, but he held her fast. Her brain filled with a mixture of shock and hysteria that left her feeling one breath away from what was happening to her. What was going to happen. She heard something behind her—a rustling sound, but she couldn’t look away from Henry.
“What’re you doing?” she whispered, her throat tight. She couldn’t get enough air. She needed another breath. One more deep breath. If she could just catch her breath, she could concentrate. Macy didn’t need her knife. She was strong—stronger than any of the others. That’s what they told her. She pushed harder, feeling her mind beginning to latch onto Henry. She just needed a little more time.
“I’m going to save the world, Macy. And you’re going to help me.” He leaned forward and pressed his cool lips to her forehead. Then he turned her sharply, so her back was pressed against his stomach. Henry brought his cheek to hers. He was so cold. “Don’t worry,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s not so bad . . . being dead. I promise.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When Macy left the party, Jackson followed. He didn’t even really follow her this time—he just went straight to the Door. Where else was she going to go? He waited for almost ten minutes—she was so slow—and tried to focus his eyes on the Door. Tonight it looked brighter for some reason—more like light reflecting off a window.
When Macy appeared, she looked like she belonged there in the woods. Her cape fluttered in the wind, but it didn’t look red in the dark. It looked black.
And when she pulled out her knife, Jackson didn’t freeze—not the way he did at the lake, when Sam was first pulled under the water. He didn’t hesitate. Jackson couldn’t see what she saw, but he ran towards her, his feet ripping through vines and breaking sticks.
Jackson had never had one of those dreams where you are running in slow motion, but that was how it seemed right then. He ran, but it didn’t feel like he got any closer. Then Macy turned so she was facing him. Something had her—holding her arm out to the side. The knife was gone from her hand.
As Jackson ran toward her—almost there—he watched a red line grow across Macy’s neck. Her eyes went wide and she fell into his arms. “No,” he said, pressing his hand to her neck—trying to hold the blood inside her. But it flowed through his fingers. So much blood. Too much. He sank with her to his knees, cradling her in his arms. “It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “You’re okay.” Macy made a little choking sound and she moved one of her hands up to his—just grazing his fingers with the tips of her gloved hands. He couldn’t see her face—just the back of her hair and the curve of her legs as her body went limp against his. Jackson couldn’t get his phone out of his pocket—couldn’t dial 911—because he had to keep his hand over her throat. The blood was so warm, so sticky. It didn’t feel real. None of it could be real.
Macy’s blood covered them both and soaked into the ground at the base of the Door. In that moment, the Door grew bright—the light pulsed and rippled, just as Macy had always described it. Jackson blinked tears from his eyes, and then he saw a boy—not Nick—standing beside the Door. He looked familiar, but Jackson didn’t think about that. He just thought a single word over and over. No.
The boy shook his head and frowned down at Jackson. Then he stepped through the Door and was gone. The Door flickered, wavered. It filled Jackson’s eyes, until that was all he could see—that one blinding light. He wanted to close his eyes, because it was like staring into the sun. But he couldn’t. And then, when it seemed as though the Door was going to burn out his eyes and devour him from the inside out, he felt something cool brush over his face. It felt like a hand at first, and then like a sharp, stabbing pain on the side of his head. He blinked, and for just an instant he thought he saw a person standing in front of the Door, leaning over him. But then the Door seemed to implode—squeezing into itself until it was just a tiny point of light. Then it winked out completely, the last dying ember from a bonfire extinguishing itself in the wind.
Forests of the Night Page 10