“Jump!” Harken barked.
“I don’t like hiiiiiii—”
He shoved us and slid down after. “That should buy some time!” he said. “Follow me!”
I looked up at the Shadowless, who was standing, just standing, on the fire escape. I caught a glimpse of her paste-white face and black pool mouth. Then she screamed, and the night was filled with the cries of thousands of birds. I clapped my ears, deafened by the sound. Tears rolled down my cheeks, even though I wasn’t crying.
Another scream, and the Shadowless leaped from the landing. Her long coat fluttered like wings, then she seemed to disintegrate, as if the night had opened up and swallowed her whole. Just like that, she was gone.
“Willow Jane!” Harken yelled, pulling Devon along. “What part of ‘or you die’ don’t you understand?”
I followed them, running toward the Harley parked twenty yards away, praying that the Shadowless wouldn’t materialize from thin air in front of us.
When we reached the bike, I looked him dead in the eye. “What just happened? Who the hell are you?”
His copper-colored eyes locked with mine for too long, then he smirked, and the spell was broken. “Don’t stand there like an idiot!” he said. “Get on!”
“I’m not riding a motorcycle.”
“You. Are. In. Danger!”
“What danger?” I said. “From that thing or from you?”
“Damned stubborn Connings.” He pulled off his jacket and draped it over Devon’s shoulders. He swung her gently onto the seat in front and then started to pull off his crimson hoodie, exposing rock-hard obliques dotted with white scars, and I felt something tighten in my own stomach when he handed the hoodie to me. “Put this on.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” I protested.
“Giving you a sweater,” he said. “You’re shivering, a symptom of shock. It will keep you warm.”
“It’s a hoodie. And keep it,” I said. “You’re just wearing a shirt.”
He noticed his bare belly and tugged at his shirt. “Right.”
Did I see a flash of embarrassment?
“You’re pretty,” Devon told him. “So’s your tummy. Willow Jane likes your tum—mmm.”
I clapped a hand over her mouth. “Is this a rescue or not?”
“It was,” he said, “but now I’m having doubts!”
A crow the size of a condor dived at us, claws extended, wings beating the air, talons ready to rip me to shreds. Before it could, thunder rolled across the sky, and lightning lit us up like a new dawn, and the crow fled.
“Get on the bike!” Harken yelled. “Now!”
“Why are you afraid?” Devon asked. “It’s just a bird.”
“When Malleus the Deceiver is involved, little one,” Harken said, revving the engine, “there’s no such thing as just a bird.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THE sky dumped hail the size of marbles onto the street. Harken weaved the Harley through traffic, riding bumpers and nicking side mirrors, trying to outrun the storm. He whipped in and out so fast I felt the air being sucked from my lungs. Colors ripped past, and sounds bled together, but we couldn’t outrun the ice that pelted us, stinging our faces.
I tried to hang on, struggling to make sense of what had just happened. My arms were wrapped around him, one hand locked on my wrist and the other pressed against his chest. His shirt was soaked with rain, and I could feel his muscles right through it, the tendons working as he steered, the heat from his body. I pressed my head between his shoulder blades and felt him breathe, slow and steady, like this was just a joyride.
Then I remembered the white face.
The death rattle voice.
The wicked sharp scissors dripping with blood.
And my separate peace was gone. “Whose blood was on the scissors?” I yelled, but before he could answer, I heard a weird buzzing sound and looked up.
Birds.
A swirling, dazzling cloud of noise that widened and thinned, then turned toward us.
“Look out!” I yelled.
Harken swerved as the swarm swept past, and birds splattered the windshield of a delivery truck, leaving a smear of blood and guts. The driver yanked the wheel, and the truck sideswiped the bike, slamming us into a parked car. The bike whiplashed, and Devon flew over the handlebars.
“Devie!”
I saw my little sister skid along the pavement until she lay still in a pile of hailstones.
“No!” I beat Harken on the back. “Stop!”
I heard a rushing noise and saw nothing but white. The city was gone. The street was gone. Only a white sidewalk remained, where I stood in front of Urban Market’s plate-glass window.
“I’m losing my mind,” I said, blood trickling from both nostrils.
A crack made of ever-growing blue and red triangles opened in my vision, and pain poured through the crack. The pain grew brighter and fiercer until I curled up in a fetal ball, moaning.
And then, it stopped.
The wind.
The sound.
The light.
The pain.
Stopped.
And I was standing on the sidewalk. Facing a shopwindow, a finger on the glass, where shaky letters spelled out, Do not accept her cold caress. For the Shadowless will kill.
“Hey, ya big ginge.” Devon tugged on my sleeve. “That’s the same poem.”
“It is?” I wondered how she got here but wrapped my arms around her anyway. “I’m glad you’re not dead anymore.”
“Why’s everything so white, Willow Jane?” she whispered. “It hurts my eyes.”
“I’m sorry. I just. Just . . . Can you see that?”
The window looked like the surface of a winter pond, dappled with crystals of ice that sent ripples through the glass. A pinprick of light glinted from the center. It grew lighter and brighter as it expanded. The light was hypnotic, and it held me in its spell.
Devon walked toward the expanding fissure, laughing and raising her hand to the mist that rose from the frosty glass. Her fingers sank into it, and instantly the light changed. White turned to sickly green, and the ice melted around her wrist. A sulfur-infused stench drifted from the hole, an odor so strong my stomach heaved.
“No!” I screamed. “Stop!”
She turned and smiled. Her eyes were vacant and dark, and she covered her mouth with a hand and giggled, a lilting, high-pitched sound that sent a shiver through me. I leaped across the sidewalk and reached for her, hearing laughter. My face appeared in the glass as a blur of red hair and porcelain skin that transformed into a bone-white skull and a row of jagged teeth.
The Shadowless, I thought. She’s come for me.
But it wasn’t me she reached for.
“Devon!” I snatched at my sister’s coat, catching nothing but air. She seemed impossibly far away. “Don’t go with her, Devie! Stay with me!”
Like an antique doll rotating its head, Devon turned. Her face was a blank, glistening slate. “The dead girl wants to play.”
My blood ran cold.
Kelly’s reflection appeared in the window beside mine. She wrapped an arm like a tentacle around my waist, pressed her body against my back, and put her cheek against mine. She stank of dirt and rot, and when she thrust her lips to my ear, I thrashed against her embrace. But she held me too fiercely, laughing with quiet ferocity, and pulled me away from the window.
A long, bony hand covered Devon’s mouth. “Treasure for treasure,” Malleus said. “The clock ticks, Uncanny. The clock ticks.”
Then they were gone.
“No! You can’t leave! I can make you come back!” I bit my thumb and tried to pull out a gossamer thread. “Damn it, work! I need you to work!” I bit down again. All I got was skin. “Come on, stupid thread!”
“Uncanny tricks won’t work in the land of shadows,” Kelly said, mocking me.
“No!” I gasped. It was the only sound I could manage, a weak, impotent noise, as insignificant as I was.
“Submit,” Kelly said. “Submit and be free.”
An ill wind flowed in from the bay. The air blew straight through me, and I felt Kelly’s teeth on my earlobe, tugging and tasting my skin.
“Devon and Willow swinging in a tree,” she sang, “H-A-NG-ING.”
Then she stepped through the window and was gone. Without a sound, she was gone. The rippling glass solidified, the fog dissipated, and I alone was reflected in the glass.
Above me, the clouds had parted, and the dark sky was pocked with silver stars. I stared at them dumbfounded, until Harken, the street, and the world came back in a rush of color and sound.
I stepped off the sidewalk, and Harken caught me before I could fall into oncoming traffic.
“Steady there!” he ordered. “Willow Jane, where is your sister?”
“Devon is gone.” I heard myself say. “To the place of shadows.”
PART FOUR
MAN KNOWS NOT HIS TIME
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I woke up on my living room couch covered with the hand-stitched throw that Ma had given Devon for her sixth birthday. It smelled like bacon and my sister’s shampoo. I inhaled deeply, then sat up with a start.
“Devon!”
The apartment was a shambles. The place had been ransacked, and the curio cabinet was demolished, a pile of glass and splinters. Our family heirlooms had been smashed and ground into the floor, destroying generations of family history, destroying us.
All of it was Malleus’s doing, Harken had said when he brought me home. That monster had been in our house. She had invaded our home and taken my sister. Why? What did she want from us? I dashed from room to room in sheer panic, feeling like a wild animal in pain with no way to make it stop.
“Willow Jane, I’ve put a kettle on.” Harken sat at the kitchen table with the egg box, the iron needle, and two mugs. “Join me. We have business to discuss.”
“Where’s my phone?” I said. “I’m calling the cops.”
“There,” he said in a low voice. “But you will not be calling the police. Sit, please.”
The please didn’t sound like a please. Before I could argue, the kettle whistled, and he got up for it. I grabbed my cell phone but couldn’t enter the password. Numbers were alphabet soup, my eyes were roasted marshmallows, and my tongue felt like a wad of chewing gum. And there on the coffee table was my dad’s letter. Right where I’d left it, unread.
“Willow Jane.” Harken stood two feet away from me, just stood, but I could feel heat emanating from him. “We are running out of time.”
“Potty break!” I said, tucking the letter under my shirt. “Be right back!”
He said something in reply, but I was moving too fast to care. I ran past the bathroom and slammed through my half-open door. It rattled in the frame when I kicked it shut and threw the bolt. I plugged in my phone and ducked into the closet to open the letter.
When I was a little girl, I used to dream that there was a door to Narnia in the back of my closet. My dad would read me a chapter a night, and many mornings, Ma found me sleeping among the winter coats, sucking my thumb, and talking about magic. She didn’t like it a bit. Dad, though, he always said there nothing wrong with a little magic in the darkness. That was a long time ago, and I had forgotten about magic in the winter coats.
Dearest Sweet Willow:
I write this on the eve of your sixth birthday with you snug in your bed, your belly full of cake and soda pop and your heart full to bursting with the love of friends and family. You are reading it on the night of your sixteenth birthday, and as the letter was given by your ma, I was not there to share it with you. I pray that your day was filled with joy and that you’ve not missed the old man overmuch. For my part, I’ve not missed you at all, because St. Peter and I will be drinking buddies by now, and he will allow me the window seat to look down upon my sweet Willow anytime I like.
This letter isn’t a hello from your dad, but a word of warning. Soon, today or tomorrow, you will meet a young man. He’ll have news for you, and you must listen to it very closely. Don’t fear him, for he’s come to do you no harm. Though he might seem a bit touched, you’ll know in your heart that all he says is true, and you’ll know a peace like no other. Odd things have been happening to you, and perhaps you think you’ve gone mad yourself. I wondered the same thing when he found me.
On the back of this paper, you will find words that only you can read. Set them to memory and set them to heart, so that they will serve you well hereafter. Remember that words are magic, and so is she that speaks them. Take care of yourself the way you take care of others, and all will be well.
Your Loving Father,
Michael Danvers Conning
“All will be well,” I repeated. Hadn’t Harken just said those very words to me? You will meet a young man. He’ll have news for you, and you must listen to it very closely. Don’t fear him, for he’s come to do you no harm.
I flipped the letter over. The page was blank. The surface was scratched up, as if it had been written on with a dry calligraphy nib. There were no other marks and certainly no words to memorize. I turned the letter back over, and at the bottom, under a folded edge of paper, a postscript: I hope you will be there for your ma and sister, as I hoped to be there for you.
Someone knocked on the closet door, and I started. “How did you get in here? The door’s locked.”
The closet door opened, and Harken stood there, arms folded. “It was locked, and now it’s not. Take my hand.”
Don’t fear him. Fear him? Give me a freaking break, Dad, what kind of daughter do you think you raised?
“Either walk to the kitchen,” he said, “or be carried. Your choice.”
“Touch me,” I wanted to say, “and lose some teeth. Your choice.” But my dad had never let me down. I prayed this wouldn’t be the first time and took Harken’s hand. He pulled me up so quickly, I gasped. His skin was hot, and even though his jaw was set, the mischief was still in his eyes. He held my hand for only a few seconds, but when he let go, my skin felt cold.
I stalked past him to the kitchen and sat down. I smoothed out the letter, my hands shaking, and tried to sort out the conflicting emotions that had turned my brain to stew. “How did my dad know about you?”
“That’s a long story.” He poured the tea, first my cup, then his, with absolute precision, then took the chair opposite me. “And the clock is ticking.”
The clock is ticking, Uncanny. Long story or not, I knew I needed to hear it. “My father wrote this when I was six,” showing him the letter. “He knew I would meet you. He knew it would be today. He said, Odd things have been happening to you, and perhaps you think you’ve gone mad yourself. Yes! Exactly! Don’t pretend you can’t read that!”
“I can’t.”
“It’s right in front of your face!” Then I gasped. “Oh! You can’t read?”
“I can’t read it,” he said and held the paper to the light. “Because there’s nothing written on it.”
I took it from him. “Yes, there is! Right here!” Where the page had been blank before, faint lines appeared, ink seeping into the scratches that I’d noticed before. The ink darkened and spread. The lines became letters, and the letters became words, and the words became a poem:
You must not wake the Shadowless
When she sleeps within her bed.
But kiss the lips of the Shadowless
And the morning finds you dead.
You cannot hear the Shadowless,
When her breath is in your ear.
You cannot see the Shadowless,
When she raises up her shears.
And if you feel the Shadowless
When she blankets you with chill,
Do not accept her cold caress—
For the Shadowless will kill.
To end the sleep of Shadowless,
Weave silver ‘twixt her eyes,
Cut gossamer threads with sparks coalesced,
Then
the Shadowless shall die.
“The poem!” I waved the letter like a victory flag, a warm sensation flowing through me, a mix of joy and relief. “I’m not crazy! My dad wrote the poem. For me.”
“And he gave you implicit instructions to trust me.” He sipped from his cup and stared at me from under his eyelashes. They were really long lashes, as black and thick as his hair. Devon was right: He was very good-looking. Not pretty like Will Patrick but handsome. “Drink. Tea helps.”
“I’m a coffee girl,” I said. “How old are you again?”
“It depends on how you count years.” He smirked and took my hands in his, rubbing them gently with his thumbs, and the warmth spread over my wrists and up my arms. “I’ve lived nineteen years, four months, and twenty-six days. If you told me I seemed older, you wouldn’t be the first. Nor would you be wrong.”
It was suddenly very warm in the room. I felt a knot in my throat. I wanted to pull away, but his touch was warm and comforting, and it had been so long since anyone had tried to take care of me. After Dad died, caring for Ma and Devon became my job.
“No matter what age I am, I know what I’m doing, so listen to everything I tell you.” His voice was calm and firm, and it made me calmer, too. “It is the only way to get your sister back.”
I pulled away and folded my hands in my lap. “I’m listening.”
“Drink.”
I took a sip of tea, then downed it all at once and winced at the aftertaste. “Bitter,” I said. “So I have a bazillion questions about—”
He held up a hand. “Hear me out first. Let’s start with your thumb. When did it start festering?”
“This morning, when I used magic to save Devon’s life.”
“It’s not magic per se.”
“It was magic.”
“No, you’re not a norn. Also known as cunning folk, sorcerers, and witches.”
“So I’m a witch?”
“Not witch, not a norn. You can’t do magic.”
“Black magic then.”
“Hell’s bells, you Connings do love to argue,” he said, sounding annoyed but looking amused. “Let me explain it this way: All norns can do magic. Lesser norns have lesser magic, often called talents. Greater norns have, well, greater magic. The most powerful norns, the Three Fates, have the greatest magic—the ability to control the past, present, and future. Then there are the Uncanny like you. No one’s really sure what you are.”
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