“The egg your mother kept in this box,” Harken said. “It’s Malleus’s heart, black as coal and turned to stone.”
“Seriously?” I said. Just because it was so weird, I had to say it out loud. “Her heart?”
“Yes. You saw what happened when I cut it out. It was your family’s job to protect it, and it was my job to protect your family until it was time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for you to quicken, I surmise. The Sisters were never definite on that account.”
“So you’re winging it?”
“Does it matter? As long as you save your sister and destroy Malleus.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“You can do it, Willow Jane.” Harken took my cold hands again, warming them up. “With my help.”
Words caught in my throat. I wanted to pull away, but his touch was so comforting, I could feel tendrils of familiarity wrapping around my brain.
Harken held up the iron needle. “Show me your thumb.”
I hid my hand behind my back. “That’s exactly what the Shadowless—”
“Call her Malleus. Giving evil a name lessens its power.”
“—said when she stuck those wicked scissors—”
“Shears.”
“—in the door. Why did she want my thumbs?”
“She collects them, like hunting trophies, and wears them tied around her neck.”
“Around her neck?”
“I should have kept that detail to myself. Hand, please.”
“I like my thumbs.”
“Notice there are no appendages dangling from my neck.”
He caught my eye, and I relented. “Don’t get crazy with that needle.”
Harken gently took my hand again. The heat flowed up my arms to my neck and into my blushing cheeks. He was definitely working some magic, though I couldn’t fathom why he was wasting his sparkle ponies on me.
“How do I start this time turning?” I said. “Instead of, y’know, making wishes on my putrid thumb.”
“If you will stop asking questions, I can show you.”
“Does it require any body parts or sacrifices? We’re Catholic, so we’re not into that.”
“No sacrifices. Be still, please.”
“Who else knows about this secret magic club of yours?”
Another, deeper sigh. “If it will shut you up . . . Humans don’t believe in norns. Lesser norns are looked down on by greater norns, who lord over the lesser and try to gain more power by practice, manipulation, and dumb luck.”
Even though my debate team brain told me to keep arguing, my heart knew there was a grain of truth to it. All my life I’d felt out of sync with the world. “What about my type of norn?” I asked.
“Uncanny are very bossy and bullheaded, but they are not norns.”
“Ahem?”
“Worse, they show very few signs of power until their sixteenth birthdays, when they cause all sorts of mischief. Once trained, however, they can be very powerful.”
The idea of being very powerful appealed to me. Powerful girls didn’t get plowed on the ice. They didn’t get bullied by teachers. They didn’t lose their fathers. But could I be powerful enough to face Malleus, though? “What about those Sisters?”
“The Fates do not concern themselves with affairs of norns or humans, only with the weaving of time.”
“They concerned themselves with Malleus.”
“She broke the rules so badly, they had to.”
“And I can move through those threads? How far back?”
Harken wrinkled his brow, then understood exactly what I was getting at. “It’s impossible to save your father. Once a spirit is ferried away, it is out of reach.”
“How do you know for certain?”
“Because you wouldn’t be the first one to try it,” he said, digging the rusted needle through a pocket of pus, then drew out a sliver of thread.
“Holy frickdoodles, that hurts!” The sliver glistened in the light like a metallic filament. “Wait! The thread is growing in my skin?”
“It’s gossamer, not thread. Imagine it as a metaphorical manifestation of chronology. It allows an Uncanny to control time.”
“Been there, suspended that twice,” I said. “A metaphorical manifestation of chronology? Seriously?”
“Imagine time as being woven one strand of gossamer at a time on an infinite loom,” he said. “As each thread is woven into place, it’s still fluid. Until a new thread is woven over it, the weaver can break the thread and twist in a new strand to reweave it. But when the thread is woven into the fabric, time becomes locked into place, and it can no longer be changed.”
“My sweaters unravel all the time.”
“That’s knitting, not weaving. A seamstress’s daughter should know better.”
I smirked. Of course I knew the difference. I just liked giving him shit. It was almost as much fun as feeling his touch . . . Willie! I yelled at myself in Siobhan’s voice. Get your head outta your ass!
“Rule number one about gossamer,” he said. “Never cut the thread. Only break it.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“If you cut the gossamer, time will unravel, and you’ll be lost within it.”
“So I’ll die?”
“Worse. You’ll become Unmade, like Malleus when the Sisters wrapped her in her own gossamer. She’s cursed to live forever but can no longer glimpse. Rule number two: Never glimpse the same moment twice. Rule number three—”
“You have lots of rules.”
“Number three: Never raise the dead.”
“Why not?”
“Even an Uncanny can’t pull a spirit back from the veil, and then you have a reanimated corpse on your hands,” he said, drawing out the thread.
In a blink I became the only moving thing in the room. “Are you just screwing with my head,” I said and waved a hand over his face.
“You know, Harken,” I said, “you’re cute, in a tattooed bad boy sort of way. Too bad you’re so obnox—”
Something warm hit my lip. I touched the spot with my finger and drew away a spot of blood. My nose was bleeding again. “Damn it,” I said, dabbing it with my thumb. Like wax melting, the gossamer filament dissolved, and Harken was animate again.
His eyes widened at the blood pooling in my hand. “The sink!” he yelled and spun me around. “Now!”
I leaned over the drain. Blood dripped like a leaking faucet. “Don’t just watch me. Do something.”
“Right.” He twisted a piece of paper towel and stuffed it up my nose. “This is going to hurt.”
“Ow! Jeezum!” I tried to lean back. “No kidding it hurts.”
“Nosebleeds are serious side effects,” he said. “If you glimpse too long, you’ll bleed out.”
“This sucks.” I spat a clot of blood and mucus into the sink. “Maybe I’ll pass on the whole Uncanny thing.”
“It’s your destiny to be Uncanny,” he said. “Your quickening caused a disruption in the fabric of time and space so powerful, it caused Malleus to stir in her grave.”
“You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.” I tried to gently pull out the paper towel, but it stuck. “I let Malleus out? It’s my fault Devon got taken? And we’re standing around talking and not going after her?”
“Chasing after Malleus is always a bad idea,” he said. “We will get your sister back—you still have the heart.”
“Not anymore,” I said, feeling stupid and defeated and small. “We needed money, so I hocked the egg. It’s locked up in a pawnshop safe, waiting for that dipweed to close a sale.”
“Providence is on our side then,” he said. “We’ll have to retrieve the egg before the pawnbroker can sell it.”
“Hello? It’s locked up in his safe.”
“Locks,” Harken said, smiling gleefully, “are meant to be unlocked. Before we retrieve the egg, there’s something I have to do.”
“Like what?” I said, with a flash of anger that surprised me, and I re
membered the words I’d said when Devon was taken. “My sister’s in the place of shadows. What’s more important than keeping your vow to protect us?”
“Trust me.” He caught my eye and held it for several seconds, then touched the torc. “Willow Jane Conning, I have your name. I need you to sit on the sofa and wait there until I return.”
His words coalesced in my brain. I tried to force him out, but it made my head hurt. The only way to stop the pain was to obey him and take a seat on what was left of the couch, which seemed like the best idea ever.
“I’m sorry,” he said with regret in his voice. He caressed my cheek with backs of his fingers and drew his thumb to my chin. He held it there for a few seconds, like he didn’t want to go. “You’ll be safe until I return. Then we’ll rescue your sister. I promise. Cross my heart and—never mind, that’s probably not the best vow to make.”
“Where are you going?” I said, staring at the carpet, although I meant to say, Sorry for what?
“To arrange for the exchange, the egg for your sister.” He picked up the long iron needle and stuck it in the lapel of my coat. “For safekeeping. And stay away from the tea. You’ve had quite enough for one night.”
With a quick bow, he was out the door, leaving me sitting there, watching dust fall to the carpet.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
SOMETIME later, my phone buzzed. I read the message from Siobhan but didn’t answer. My fingers seemed too far away.
A minute passed.
A new message: Effing answer me!
Siobhan seemed angry. My fingers felt closer, so I typed: I know.
She replied: Your house. Fifteen minutes. Be there or ass will be kicked.
That made no sense, so I typed: Whose?
I put my phone on the couch cushion and wondered whose ass Siobhan was planning to kick. Her ass-kicking list was very long. It was taped to the mirror behind her door. I wondered if Kelly was on it for missing the game. My mind was still processing the idea when the laughter began.
It began as a giggle. It sounded like the crystal bell ornament from our Christmas tree. The light, tinkling sound that made me pause. I cocked my head and listened, waiting for it to return. For a long moment, there was silence, interrupted only by the muffled noises of voices on the sidewalk and traffic on the street. I could hear the refrigerator humming and the slow, endless, drip, drip, drip from the bathroom sink.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood will have—
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
—blood.
“Stop!” I stumbled to the bathroom, a hand on the wall for balance, and twisted the handle until the dripping ceased.
“Willow Jane,” Devon said softly, and I whirled around, sure she had crept up behind me. Only bare walls and cold white tile greeted me.
I’m losing my mind, I thought, and the laughter floated up from the heating grate. It was louder this time, more sharp and metallic and singsong.
“Will she? Will she?” the voice sang inside the air duct.
I dropped to hands and knees in front of the grate. “Devon? Is that you?” Could she be inside the house? Could she somehow have escaped from the Shadowless? Or was it a trick? “Answer me, please.”
More laughter, longer, high pitched, followed by singing. “Will she? Will she? Will Willow be hanging? Will she? Will she? Will Willow be hanging from the willow hanging tree?”
“Devon!” I yelled.
The singing stopped.
Then, “Will and Willow swinging from a tree.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!”
The voice was still.
“Devon! No! Don’t go! Don’t leave!”
I threaded my fingers through the grate and tried to yank it off. It was an inch thick and buried into the tiles with heavy brass screws. I braced my feet against the wall and heaved. Something sharp sliced my fingertips, and I screamed until my voice gave out, crying for my sister to answer, but all I heard was giggling.
There’s nothing scary about the sound of your sister laughing unless you’re in the house alone.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
FOR the hundredth time in the last couple hours, Siobhan looked at the words call ended on her phone. She licked her lips, wondering when was the last time Willie had hung up on her. Ninth grade? Middle school? It had been a long time, maybe even never. She was too polite to cut a call short. Kelly would for sure, Siobhan herself had dropped calls probably a hundred times, mostly because the caller was some guy who turned boring and who has time for boring? Willie? Never.
But Willow Jane Conning hadn’t been herself since her sweet sixteen, which Siobhan realized hadn’t been all that sweet. Your dad getting murdered on your birthday kind of screws up the rest of them. She had hoped that a kickass party would erase some of the yuck, but then, when they were eating cake, she saw Willow Jane staring at the pictures of her dad on the wall, and Siobhan had kicked herself for letting Mrs. C choose Tom’s Pub. The idea was to exorcise the ghosts, not eat cake and ice cream with them.
In psych class she had read about victims of violent crime burying their emotions as a way to cope with grief, then later a traumatic event opened the door, and the feelings came out. The party! Instead of helping Willow, she had screwed her up totally!
“It’s all my freaking fault.”
She was about to hit Redial when her phone buzzed. Kelly’s photo popped up.
“Yo, Kells,” she answered. “What’s up with your skank self? Coach’s so pissed you’re going to be skating suicides till you wish you were dead.”
“Siobhan?” Kelly’s mom said.
“Oh, hey, Mrs. O’Brien. You’re using Kelly’s phone?”
“Have you seen her?”
“Kelly? Um, no, not since lunch. She totally bailed on hockey, so—”
“She has gone missing, Siobhan. When she didn’t come home after the game, we called her cell phone, and the assistant principal, Mr. Johnston, answered it. He found it in the trunk of her car.”
“In the trunk?”
Mrs. O’Brien kept jabbering on and on about personal responsibility and consequences and bad influence and how they had just about reached the end of their rope with this latest manifestation of oppositional defiant disorder when Siobhan’s phone blew up. Text after text flooded her home screen, along with Twitter and Tumblr and even Facebook. They all said the same thing:
Will Patrick’s dead.
Suicide.
Will Patrick’s dead.
Hanged himself.
Will Patrick’s dead.
A photo—a cut noose—popped up on Snapchat.
Hanged himself.
Suicide.
Suicide.
Suicide.
“Mrs. O,” Siobhan said. “I gotta go.” She hung up and texted the news to Willow Jane: Jeezum Crow. Will Patrick’s dead! He hung himself!
She hit Send.
The message status changed to Read.
Siobhan stared at the screen, waiting for the message bubble to show she was typing a reply. “Come on, Willie, you read the damned thing. Answer!”
In Dunkin’s dining room, the other hockey girls and a couple of cops looked over at her table. She tucked a tuft of crazy-curl black hair behind her ear and pointedly ignored them. Then their phones buzzed and binged, too, and the whole room turned bedlam. She heard screams and one girl crying and lots of OMGs, but her phone stayed silent.
A minute passed.
She typed, Effing answer me!
Sent.
Delivered.
Read.
No balloon.
Then.
A reply: I know.
“You freaking know?” Siobhan said and typed furiously: Your house. Fifteen minutes. Be there or ass will be kicked.
Reply: Whose?
Siobhan started to type, as if that was a question, then paused and realized that she wasn’t sure of the answer.
&
nbsp; CHAPTER FIFTY
THE intercom buzzed twice. I pressed the button. “Hello?”
“Is your sister home?” Kelly’s languid voice seeped through the speaker. “The Shadowless wants to play.”
“Kelly?” I said, snapping out of it. “What the hell are you talking about? Where’s my sister?”
The intercom went dead, and the front door downstairs banged shut. I heard footsteps on the stairs, fast and light, coming closer. On the landing and then outside my door. I reached up to turn the dead bolt, and fists hammered on the frame.
“Little pig, little pig, let me in.” Then Kelly cackled and slammed her eye against the peephole. “I see-ee-ee you.”
Go away! I wanted to shout. But I made myself take a deep breath. “Kelly, where is my sister?”
“Open the door and let me in,” she whispered. “And I’ll tell you with my chinny-chin-chin.”
“You can tell me with words, too,” I said, using the calming tone therapists had used on me.
“Words are sharper than knives. Shall I carve my master’s message into your belly?”
“Kelly!” I shouted. “You asshole! Tell me where Devon is, or so help me god, you’ll regret it!”
“Yesterday, upon the stair,” Kelly sang, “we found a girl who was not there. A doll of paper she became. Oh wish, oh wish, the girl would hang.”
“Hang this!” I yelled.
I opened the door.
The landing was empty.
Laughter drifted down the hallway.
“Devon?” I stepped outside and saw a paper doll on the back stairwell.
More laughter, and I chased after it, past the doll and down the back stairs, which were too narrow and slick, and I fell on my butt at the bottom.
The laughter had stopped.
What now? I thought, rubbing my ass. There was a paper doll peeking from under Miss Haverhill’s door. Keeping to the shadows, I crept to the landlady’s apartment. I picked up the doll. Its head had been sliced off. I knocked quietly but frantically and whispered, “Miss Haverhill, I need your help!”
The door swung open, and I saw that the jamb had been shattered. Her apartment had been tossed, like ours.
I followed a trail of paper dolls to the bathroom. She had an old-fashioned pedestal sink and a claw-foot tub that looked deep enough to bury a body. The trail of paper dolls led to the tub, which was surrounded by a mold-crusted shower curtain that hung from metal rings on a bar suspended from the ceiling.
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