The empty pin box still clutched in her hands, Veronica winced. “T-thanks,” she said, but didn’t mean it.
“Nothing delights us more than chaos.”
“Delights?”
The stranger smiled through broken teeth and black gums, sending a shiver down Veronica’s spine. She quickly grabbed a U-shaped magnet to clean up the pins. Should she call Remember? She was taking lunch at home, trusting Veronica with the shop, which she hardly ever did, but Remember usually dealt with the really freaky customers, and Veronica stuck to the awkward magician wannabes. Maybe if she just took her time cleaning up the pins, the freaky guy would leave? Or was it a woman? Who could tell with that outfit?
The stranger examined a bolt of red silk, rubbing the fabric with fingers tipped with broken, yellowed nails.
“Hey!” Veronica grabbed a pair of white gloves. “Don’t touch the fabrics. The oils from your skin will ruin them. They are pretty expensive, and you don’t look like—”
The stranger turned, slowly and deliberately, like a corpse twisting in its grave. “You will find our skin is quite . . . parched.”
Veronica, pressing a black lace sleeve to her nose, backed away until she was safely behind the counter. “Can I show you a costume? Sexy vampire? Slutty werewolf?”
“We seek . . . an egg.”
“So yeah, this is a magic slash costume shop? We don’t sell eggs.”
The stranger stared into Veronica’s eyes, and she felt herself getting colder. Goose pimples rose on her skin, and she shivered. Her eyes rolled back. Her mouth went slack.
“It is an unusual egg,” the stranger said, her voice sounding like it was underwater. “A special egg, with an iron needle the length of one’s hand—a bodkin.”
“A needle?” Veronica said dreamily. “I might be able to help you find one.”
“It would be a coveted possession, an heirloom passed through generations.”
“My boss works with a few expert seamstresses,” Veronica said, opening a ledger on the counter.
The stranger slapped a necrosed hand over the page. “I do not seek a few!” she snapped. “I seek only one, an artist with the needle, one with an . . . uncanny touch.”
“Uncanny?” Veronica said. “I don’t know of anybody like that.”
“Liar, liar, flesh afire.” The stranger grabbed Veronica’s arm and inhaled deeply. “The nornish stink perfumes your skin.” The stranger sniffed again. “Would you care to keep it?”
“Keep what?”
“Your skin.”
Veronica wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t find the word. Her mouth wouldn’t open, and her tongue wouldn’t move. She desperately wanted to run, to flee this horrible creature and disgusting stench, but something held her in place.
“Speak.”
“My friend who’s big into cosplay? She hires this one lady.” Veronica pointed to a line on the ledger. “She does period costumes, hand sewn, if you’re interested. My friend swears she works magic with a needle.”
“We have no interest in magic,” the stranger hissed. “Only in the needle.”
“Y-yes.” Veronica quickly scribbled the address on a scrap of paper. “I think she’s the one you need.”
“Pray that she is.” When she opened the door, the iron bell made no sound. “Else we shall return and bestow even more gifts upon you.”
The stranger snapped two bony fingers and turned away.
Veronica ran to lock the door. She had taken only three steps before she gagged on something lodged in her throat.
A foul odor made her lungs burn, and she fell into a violent coughing spell that dropped her to her knees. Eyes stinging with tears, she crawled to the door and flipped the lock. Safe, she thought, before a furious itch began in her nose. She rubbed her face, an attempt to scratch what couldn’t be scratched. Her eyes watered fiercely, and mucus poured from her nostrils, dripping off her chin onto her black lace shirt. So much that she gagged and coughed, then sneezed.
A mass of black mucus and blood landed on the floor. Veronica leaned close and examined it, not believing it had come out of her body, until the mass buzzed and spread four veiny wings. She screamed and tried to back away. Her boot heels slipped as she tried to stand, leaving long marks in the tile. Her fingers found the lock.
It wouldn’t turn.
The thing grew larger. More wings sprouted, and the shop filled with buzzing. A dozen moths hatched at once, followed by a hundred, then a thousand, until it was a swarm. The swarm took flight, and Veronica covered her face with her hands to ward them off. The girl didn’t interest them. The silk did, and they descended on the bolts like a biblical plague, consuming the fine fabric like blowflies devouring a corpse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“WAS that bizarre or what?” Siobhan followed me into Mr. Pearce’s AP English classroom. “Did you see her fire the pen at me? Saxon’s totally lost it!”
Honestly, I hadn’t seen Saxon throw the pen or anything else. I remembered erasing the board and walking back to my seat. After that the room spun, and I woke up to find everything in a shambles and Saxon screaming that she wasn’t paid enough to put up with our BS. She had stormed out a minute before the bell, leaving the class too stunned to talk. That lasted about ten seconds, then the room erupted again, and we all started talking at once.
“Totally bizarre,” I said, sliding into the middle seat of the center row and taking out my homework. It was one of many bizarre things, and they just kept piling up. “Oh, crap.”
The letter. I had left my dad’s letter on the coffee table. In the confusion after, I had left for school without it—and without reading all of it. It was going to drive me crazy not knowing what else he wrote.
Siobhan sat in the seat behind me. “What’s wrong?”
“My homework!” I said. “I did most of it Friday and then forgot about it. I usually go over my planner on Sunday, but with the party, I didn’t.”
“Did somebody say party?” Kelly dumped herself into a desk next to Siobhan. “Couldn’t have been you losers, since you guys totally bailed last night. Wait till you hear what happened!”
Actually, I really had forgotten my homework. Mr. Pearce had assigned twenty vocab words over the weekend. I had fifteen done. Maybe if I worked through a couple before the bell . . . I got down to work, then looked up at Kelly and said, “Can I borrow two hundred dollars?” It just popped out, like the cork on a bottle of skunky champagne.
Kelly did bat an eye. “I spent my allowance already, but if you return the scarf I gave you, it’s worth three hundred plus tax. The gift receipt’s in the box.”
“But,” I said, “it was a present.”
“So? I always return re-gifts and buy what I want.” She waved a hand, like it was nothing. “You guys want to hear what happened or not?”
Siobhan pulled her pop bottle glasses down her nose. “You jerks probably just paid some homeless dude to score a six-pack and sat on the Common drinking it.”
“So not true.” Kelly scoffed. “We drank it in the cemetery.”
“Underage drinking with dead people.” Siobhan rolled her eyes. “What a wicked pisser that is.”
“I know, right?”
“Sarcasm, Butt Chin.”
“Know what?” Kelly said. “I’m not even going to tell you what happened.”
“Guys, please,” I said, a little too harshly. My mind was racing. If the scarf was worth that much, then I was saved! After the game I’d take the bus home, return the scarf to Neiman Marcus, then catch a bus to Louie’s. It would be tight, but it was doable. Yes! No! The receipt had blown away when Devie opened the bag. “Dammit!”
“Somebody’s grumpy,” Kelly said.
“I’m not grumpy,” I said.
“Maybe it was having her sweet sixteen ruined by jerkface assholes,” Siobhan said.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Kelly said. “You might be a jerkface, but not an asshole.”
“Ha freaking ha,�
� Siobhan said.
“Seriously.” Kelly’s voice dropped low and well, serious, along with an unfamiliar quake of fear. “Some stuff happened last night, and Willow Jane, there’s something I need to ask you.”
“Just a sec,” I said, scribbling furiously.
“Like what stuff?” Siobhan snapped. “Got something to get off your chest, Kells? Other than Will Patrick?”
Kelly’s face turned whiter. “What—what about Will Patrick?”
The bell rang, and Mr. Pearce closed the door. “Attention, inmates! Pencils down! Hands in the air! You guys had all weekend to do twenty vocab words, so if you didn’t finish, may the Lord have mercy on your souls.”
Mr. Pearce was in his early thirties and a huge fan of prison movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Green Mile. His room was, air quotes, The Block, and when you got sent to the dean, you served time in, air quotes, The Box. He called it thematic teaching. Siobhan called it a blatant and pathetic attempt at being, air quotes, cool.
“Pass your papers up!” Pearce said and hit Start on his laptop.
His PowerPoint on the importance of comic relief in Macbeth was met with a chorus of boos.
“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.” Siobhan cackled behind me. “Only Pearce could make witches more boring than Julius Caesar.”
“Seriously, Willow,” Kelly whispered. “We need to talk.”
The lights dimmed, and the LED projector cast a warm blue glow over the room.
Time.
My constant nemesis.
I passed my incomplete paper to the kid in front of me, one of Will Patrick’s douchey bros.
“Got one for the Box, Mr. Pearce!” Jerk Bro called me out. “Conning didn’t finish her homework! Dead girl walking! Dead girl walking!”
“Be quiet,” I whispered.
“You wish!”
“I wish,” I said, snapping my fingers, “you’d just shut it!”
Something yanked on my belly button, and I felt my stomach twist into a knot. A gurgling sound came from Jerk Bro’s throat, and click, he stopped talking.
He wasn’t the only one. The room, which had been filled with the shuffle of papers and the whir of the projector fan, was silent. Euphoric giggles rose in my stomach like tiny bubbles.
“I’ll take that,” I said, grabbing my paper from Jerk Bro’s rigored fingers.
In the dead silence I raced through the words, quickly filling the rest of the page. “Finished!” I said and raised my paper, expecting time to thaw.
But it didn’t. Kelly’s face was still frozen, her eyes at half-mast, and Siobhan was holding a lock of black hair in mid twirl.
The room was a graveyard.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
No one breathed.
They’re all dead, I thought, but knew it wasn’t true. They were just very, very still, ships stuck in the doldrums. Then from the hallway I heard a knocking sound, a periodic rapping noise like the one from my dream, testing every door as it moved methodically down the hall.
Something was coming.
Coming for me.
I covered my ears and pressed my eyes shut, then slid under my desk. The knocking grew louder and closer, and like a little girl hiding from monsters under her blanket, I stayed as still and quiet as a mouse, praying the noise would pass me by.
The knocking stopped. The old wood door shook, and the brass knob rattled. Above it, the glass transom was open to let in the air. It let in a smell, too, potent and earthy like a fresh grave, along with a voice that I recognized.
“Willow Jane?” Will Patrick called softly. “Open the door and let her in or bad things will happen.”
“Get the fuck away from me!” I screamed.
“Bad things will happen, Willow Jane,” he said, then crooned in a ghostly voice. “Willow, Will-ow Jaaaane.”
I buried my face into the crook of my arm. The room swam, and a xylophone murmur filled my ears, before it turned into the whispers of my dead girl calling from the bottom of a dark well, “Come drown, come drown, come drown.”
“Willow Jane,” Mr. Pearce bellowed. “Conning! Back in your seat!”
“Huh?” I said, my brain full of voices.
On the board, written in letters of red ink, was another verse:
And if you feel the Shadowless
When she blankets you with chill.
Do not accept her cold caress
For the Shadowless will kill.
“That’s your handwriting, Conning! In permanent marker!” He swiped the whiteboard to prove it. “Out of my classroom!”
“Willow didn’t do anything.” Siobhan protested. “She was sitting right here the whole time.”
“Of course you would be involved, Siobhan,” he yelled. “To the Box! Both of you!”
He stood shaking, waiting for us to gather our things. I’d never been kicked out of class. I wasn’t sure what to take, so I packed everything and followed Siobhan like a child.
“Come with me, young Padawan,” Siobhan said as we left. “Now you will know the power of the dark side. And if you’re lucky, there’ll be cookies.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“DEAD girls walking!” Siobhan danced into the dean’s office, which was on the bottom floor of Beacon Hall. “Hey, Jaybird. Miss me?”
Mr. Johnston, dean of students, was in his early sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He wore a white button-down, khakis, and scuffed loafers with no socks. His nickname had followed him from Boston Public, where he’d worked thirty years before coming to Beacon.
I hung back, clutching my book bag and wondering if I had lost my mind.
“Good morning, Miss Ferro,” he said. “What was your crime this time?”
“Crime?” Siobhan plopped into a chair and propped her red plaid Chucks on his desk. “I’m innocent, I tell ya. Filthy rotten screws.”
“Mr. Pearce wouldn’t think his prison motif was so clever,” Jaybird said, “if he had to listen to all the bad James Cagney imitations.”
“James who?”
“The actor you’re imitating so horribly.”
“No shit?” Siobhan snatched a snow globe from his desk. It was one of twenty, all depicting different cities—New York, Chicago, San Francisco. She was holding Phoenix. “It doesn’t snow in Phoenix, by the way.”
Jaybird confiscated the globe. “What’s the charge?”
“Writing on the board without a license,” she said.
“Thirty minutes of wiping tables at lunch,” he said, handing down the sentence. “Go back to class and behave.”
“What about my co-conspirator?” she said and pushed me inside. “Your turn, nerd girl.”
I waved. “Hi.”
“Hello, Willow Jane,” Jaybird said. “Did you need something?”
“Mr. Pearce sent me,” I said quietly. It was my first visit to the Box, and I didn’t know the drill. “I wrote on the board and told this douchebag guy to shut it.”
“If you told a guy to shut it,” Jaybird said, trying to hide a smirk, “then he deserved it. So thirty minutes of wiping tables at lunch with James Cagney here, and we’ll call it even.”
“Yes, sir,” I said and shook his hand.
He gave me a quizzical look, and I felt like it was the most awkward thing possible, so I yanked my hand away and in the process, swatted the closest snow globe and sent Salem MA falling toward the floor. It turned end over end, the witch inside tumbling with her broomstick through the scattered bits of snow. My hands were faster than my mind, though, and I snatched it out of the air.
“Save us,” the globe whispered. “Before the shadows fall.”
“What?” I said.
“I said, nice catch.” Jaybird took the snow globe and set it on his desk. “Got it at the witch museum. I’d hate to see it broken.”
“Me too,” I said and clumsily picked up my book bag. “It’s bad luck to mess with witches.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SIOBHAN was
waiting for me by the stairs. “So what happened?”
“Same sentence as you. I can’t believe he let us off that easy,” I said as we walked back to class.
“I can’t believe you said douchebag,” Siobhan said, “in front of the dean.”
“I did not say douchebag.”
“It rolled right off your tongue like a little nugget of poetry.”
“I made nuggets?” I covered my mouth and stopped short. “Oh my god! I don’t even remember nuggets. I need to apologize!”
Siobhan grabbed my arm, steering me back to class. “No matter how many tables you have to wipe or toilets you have to scrub, never apologize, not a single time.”
“But.”
“No buts.”
“But.”
“While we’re on the subject of butts,” she said and her voice turned serious, “there’s something you need to know.”
“What’s wrong with my butt?” I cocked my head and waited, hoping it was good news for once.
The day had been weird enough without Siobhan confessing some secret sin. Not Siobhan. After Dad died, she was the only person I could depend on. She was my rock in a stormy sea, but if I ever told her that, she’d make fart noises and pretend not to hear me.
She lowered her voice. “It’s about Butt Chin and Will Patrick.”
“What about him?” I drew back. “I dumped him. So who gives a shit about him?” I paused. “Is that the right kind of attitude? Too forceful?”
She took me by the shoulders. “That skank Kelly, our friend? Our effing friend and teammate? She was with him last night.”
“No, she left with us.”
“Yeah, and then she snuck out and met him and that jerk Flanagan at the cemetery to drink a few cold ones. Guess what time she got back home?”
Uncanny Page 10