The past, the present, the future.
As Mae looked down into the pan, for a second, she saw something on the crisp moons. The disks winked up at her, glistening with hot oil.
“What was that?” she spluttered, holding up the spatula like a katana, poised for a fight.
Bobby rolled over and sat up, a monochrome sphinx.
“The harder you look, the more you see. You might not like all of it.”
“Bobby, would you come on? You don’t usually talk like this!”
“These aren’t usual times, Mae.”
Mae sighed and peered back into the frying pan. No glyphs, no symbols, just potato flecked with onions, crisping in the heat. Had she been fooling herself? How much of magic was just fooling yourself, anyway? Giving wiggle room for belief. Still the boxty stayed as it was. So she fished the cooked cakes out of the pan and placed them on a plate lined with tinfoil to keep them warm, then started all over again.
The sizzle, the scent. She tapped her fingers on the kitchen counter, waiting. Then she flipped them: one, two, three, and yes—there it was again—but it was gone as quickly as it had arrived. It was just beyond Mae’s vision, but she was thrilled by the proximity of a new ability.
Rita interrupted her then, decked out in black leggings and a vest, hair scraped into a bun, padding in from the garden. Strangely small in the absence of her usual cardigans and shawls. She looked spritely and modern: a yoga teacher, not a witch.
“Bobby, I’m going to have to have a word with her,” Rita said, as if midconversation. “I feel something. He has his talons into her again, and poor stupid Rossa’s going to follow her wherever she tells him to go. She’ll eat him alive.”
Mae’s stomach dropped. Rita sat down at the table in a heap, procuring a cigarette from somewhere and lighting it, heedless of the food cooking on the stove.
“You said Audrey had this taken care of, Bobby,” Rita continued.
“I thought she did,” Bobby retorted, licking his paw and roughly cleaning his ear.
“What’s happening?” Mae asked, refusing to be left out any longer, standing like a dumb piece of furniture behind the drama.
Rita leaned back in her chair and posed her cigarette elegantly by her jaw, her wrist slight, her fingers long.
“Bevan was eating the sorrow of our guests, Mae. Inhaling it like smoke. I’ve never seen anything like it, not in a long time. She didn’t learn that from me.”
The steam from the pan soured. Mae inhaled sharply; she’d left the cakes there too long. She hurried to flip them from the pan, and three bright silver symbols stared up at her from the metal.
The icon for cups. The tarot in her frying pan. Three cups. Three cups suggested—or forewarned—of a union of three women. Three witches. Macbeth’s beginning, Hecate’s faces. The card always seemed celebratory to Mae: three girls dancing, toasting full chalices, victory and unity and friendship. The crone, the siren, the—Mae supposed she was, as always, the child. Mae didn’t draw Rita’s and Bobby’s attention to the vision: it was hers. She should work with Rita, it said to her, and even with Bevan. This house had called her and she would answer. She wasn’t even scared. No, she was brave.
Something lurched in the atmosphere around them, then. Rita leapt up out of her chair and Bobby’s back arched.
“Something is happening,” the cat cried.
Rita flew across the kitchen, grabbing a black wrought-iron lantern. She knelt by the furnace and, to Mae’s horror, opened it wide and thrust her hands inside. She removed hot coals and some odd, glassy shapes that Mae couldn’t quite make out, and placed them in the lantern.
The air around them lurched again.
Rita, hands black, kicked shut the furnace door, not bothering to lock it. She stood up, the red glow somehow changing her face, her skin. “Well then,” she said. “Up we go.”
Mae didn’t even think to put the spatula down. Or turn off the stove.
Chapter
Eleven
A thick, dark streak of blood led from Rossa’s nose to his upper lip, but he couldn’t even move his hands to wipe it away. Before him, the mouth of an owl split open to reveal a room beyond the wall. He couldn’t think or feel. It was like the cut in the woods but worse, far worse. The girl inside was slight and sharp featured, dressed in a black-and-white suit. Saddle shoes. She stopped at the lip where one world became another, hands on her hips, scowling.
Bevan stepped forward, eyes flashing. “It’s you again. You took him away before.”
“Yeah, well.” Audrey folded her arms. “You can make deals with devils, but you can’t make deals with whatever Sweet James is. Sweet thing, are you there?” She peered around, theatrical.
James. What an ordinary name for a terrible thing, Rossa thought. As though naming it something usual made it manageable, instead of sickening.
The wall trembled and spewed moths. An almost-voice said, i grew tired of you, audrey.
“Surprising absolutely nobody,” Audrey spat. “There’s a hunger in you that won’t ever be sated. Not even by this girl. Not even by this boy. You’ll just keep eating and eating.”
you have always known this.
“Well, Bevan knows it now too. Girleen, I think you and me should have a little talk. Why don’t you come back here with me?”
Bevan glowered. “Why would I go anywhere with you? You took him from me.”
Audrey closed her eyes and shook her head. “I did. But he’s never going to fill you up, either. He’ll just eat away. You still have a chance, you know.”
“I don’t want a chance. I will follow this—I will follow him as far as I can go.” Bevan scowled and Audrey smiled, wry and knowing. “Ah, you sound just like me.”
“How am I like you?” Bevan leaned away from Rossa now, her body inclining toward Audrey and the wall.
Audrey’s and Sweet James’s voices were a chorus:
because there is no place for you here.
“Because there is no place for you here.”
Audrey jumped a little. “James, don’t do that to me! Ugly old parlor trick!”
The owl laughed, and Audrey rolled her eyes. “Now, if I can speak—thank you, James—because there are things back here that are bold and strange and enough for you. Because you’ll never again be able to live in this world without them.”
“Audrey O’Driscoll?”
Rossa turned and there, in the wood-and-brick doorway of Bevan’s room, stood Rita and Mae and Bobby. Rita was between the huge cat and the girl, holding a lantern full of fire. The room swayed and color flipped negative to positive to negative again, the air reeking of medicinal sage.
Rita stared past Rossa, eyes only for Audrey. “You came back.”
The old woman stepped across the sandy carpet scattered with gray moths, and the closer she came to the portal, the younger she turned. Audrey took a slight step back, her mouth open, pupils black and huge. Rossa could move again, finally, so he edged out of the way. He shot a look at his sister, standing in the doorframe behind the cat that flickered lion. But Mae was not looking at her brother. She was gazing at the three women at the edge of the world, and she was chalk in the face, fists clenched.
Rossa was struck then. None of this was ever about him or his sister. He and she weren’t even pawns on the chessboard. They were teacups that happened to be on the same table where the game was being played. The floor wavered beneath his feet and he almost lost his balance.
Rita barked, “Stay still!”
The house obeyed.
The closer she came to Sweet James’s door, the more it flickered, reality unable to sustain itself. She faced Audrey, two girls on two different planes of existence.
“Have I given you enough time yet?” Audrey whispered.
“I . . . I think so. I don’t . . . mean to ask—but . . . you won’t stay here, will you?”
“No.” Audrey was barely able to keep her balance as the floor on her side gave another nauseating swell. “Rita,
you know I can never come back. But you can come with me. These—these aren’t your children, are they?”
“No,” Rita said, almost sounding scornful, and Rossa felt a sting from how sharply this reply cut. “I’m so old now, they’re Brendan’s grandchildren. Can you believe it?”
Audrey laughed suddenly, high and bright.
Rita laughed with her for a second, like it was just the two of them there. When the laughter stopped, a thick silence sat in the air a moment before Rita said, “This can’t be goodbye again. It can’t be.”
The wall winked ordinary a second, wallpaper blank just as it had been. When it opened up again, Bevan gasped and leapt forward, past Audrey and Rita. She was away then, becoming smaller in the strange perspective of the other room’s neon glow, opening and slamming a faraway door that shouldn’t be there at all, that led who knows where.
Audrey groaned. “Rita, I’ve to go and get her. I’ll have a talk with her about Sweet James. Meet me in the woods. At the glade. I’ll try and open the cut there. I’ll deliver her back to you. This door needs to close, or it’ll take the whole house down. Bring me some smokes, won’t you? Oh—and actually, Bobby?” The girl waved. “Looks like you’re winning. Congratulations.” With that, she turned on her heel, and the wall slammed back to normal—or more normal, at least. Merely shifting and twisting vines, rather than a mind-bending hole in the world.
On one vine sat an owl. It blinked and turned its head almost all the way upside down.
bobby, he said. rita. you have become very, very strong. well done.
Rita held up her lantern, some kind of defiance. “Don’t you try anything, Sweet James. I’m not afraid of you.”
Sweet James laughed low. i believe you. you are not afraid of me. but you need me. you need the rent i pay, you need the power i bring. look how strong i’ve made you.
Bobby took padding steps into the room, quaking with energy, growing and growing.
tell the humans to leave.
Bobby looked around at Rossa, Mae, and Rita.
Please.
Rita turned on her heel and took Rossa by the arm to lead him away. Mae was already gone. The door slammed on the owl and the cat, and the corridor stretched limitless before the Frosts. Mae was a hundred paces ahead already. Rita did not let go of Rossa’s arm, the lantern lighting their way. The air was hot. Rossa was sure he could smell smoke.
Chapter
Twelve
The second the door of the neon room slams behind you, you scream in delight. You laugh. You roar yes, yes, yes! What if you never went back? The air of the other world crawls all over you—there in the long white corridor, great trees of gray moths are a forest, undisturbed by your jubilee. They seem less sinister, you think, dancing forward, arms outstretched. You grab fistfuls of them and eat them like paper candy. Mine, mine, mine!
You pelt on, through the next doorway. The room with the twelve white baths where you’d met Audrey for the first time. If she wanted to talk to you, she’d have to come in and find you. You stroll around, hot steam rising from each of them but the last on the left. You trail your fingertips over the hot surfaces, leaving ripples and wakes. You promise yourself a long bath in each one, someday. You stand at the end of the room, a door to your left, a door to your right. You close your eyes and remind yourself you will be able to go through all the doors eventually. You can’t hear Sweet James’s voice anywhere, outside or inside your head. You almost—a little—wish he’d give you instructions. As you listen hard, trying to will his voice into existence, you realize that nobody will give you instruction again. There is no strong gust to pull you from this world. You are a tiny pioneer, a girl adventurer tumbling through the unknown.
You feel very strikingly alone. Is Audrey actually going to come after you? Does she really want to talk? Will she be able to find you? Your eyes bead with panicky tears. Is this stupid? Is this really what you wanted?
You cautiously open the door on the left, lean and black. You step into the next place, eyes wide, hoping that some new wonder will distract you from the panic hatching under your diaphragm, crawling up the inside of your rib cage. It doesn’t. It’s an office.
A small, poky office full of paper. Stacks and stacks and stacks of white paper filled with black ink are piled from the floor to the low ceiling. A huge wooden desk, gargantuan. A hat on a hat stand and a door behind the hat stand. A blanket heaped on a swivel chair. On the desk, more paper. Pens snapped in half. The place smells of pine and chemicals, and the sharp and sudden feeling hits you that you shouldn’t be there, that you chose the wrong door. The blinds are drawn on the narrow window, so you step over the carpet to peek through, to see if there’s a world out there. But a small, high sound scares you so acutely that the jump almost hurts your bones. You swing around—what was that, what was that? It happens again.
A canary perches in a cage, hanging by the desk. It peeps again. You laugh in relief, double over to catch your breath. Peep peep.
You go over to it for a closer look. Peep peep.
“Hello, little buddy. You aren’t going to start talking to me, are you?”
Peep peep.
“Good.”
Peep peep.
“I’m going to look out that window, then I’m going to leave.”
Peep peep.
You turn to the window and open the blind, expecting a street, a meadow, an outdoors.
You are wrong.
This is a mistake.
Your breath leaves your body and you slide down to the floor, holding your face. The blind swings closed. Your eyes, your brain—what have you just seen? There was too much out there. Too much. The inside of a body, the outside of the galaxy—you don’t know which it was, but it was not a street, it was not a meadow. Your stomach lurches: you can’t throw up in someone else’s office, you have to get back to the room with the baths—you crawl across the floor and the canary peeps and peeps and the sound of it pierces through you. You crawl out the door. Peep peep.
The tiles are blessedly cool on your skin. You close the door behind you, on your hands and knees, then lean against the door and press the heels of your hands into your eyes. Your ears are ringing.
“Well, you weren’t ready for that, were you?”
Audrey’s voice is a surprise and a relief. You are glad not to be alone.
“Was that your office? Your bird?” you ask, not taking your hands off your eyes.
“Ha. Oh no, no, no. He wasn’t there? That’s probably better for you. Bet you didn’t even knock before you went in.”
You groan, “I feel so sick.”
“You looked out the window?”
“Of course I did!”
“Was the canary singing?”
“Yes!”
“Well, that’s something. Here, let me look at your eyes.”
She leans in, her cold hands removing your own from your face. The world is a blur, and light is only abstract as you try to focus. You can see, at least you can see, though you wouldn’t be surprised if what lay behind that window had rendered you blind. Your brain feels like it is full of static. Your ears still sing a terrible, high note. Audrey’s sharp, small face comes into focus.
“Oh, it made a right mess of you. You’re very bloodshot. Can you see me?”
You nod.
“Well, lucky you.”
“What was that?”
“The rest of things. Do yourself a favor and don’t look out any closed windows while you’re back here, please. If a window is draped shut, there’s a reason. Not everything is as even as these rooms.” She tucks your hair behind your ear. “You’ve a lot to learn.”
“Whose office was that? Why was there a bird?”
“It doesn’t matter. You might meet him, you might not. There’s lots of folks back here. He keeps birds so that if I drop by, I know quickly enough whether the room is safe to be in. Some spots have less breathable air than others, some spots have—well, things in them that would do away with a
canary pretty quickly, for food or for pleasure. So no singing? No go. It’s very thoughtful of him, actually.”
“There are some rooms that aren’t safe?”
“None of this is safe, Bevan. You haven’t been safe since the first time Sweet James set eyes on you. Come on. This room isn’t the place to be recovering.”
She takes your hand and leads you to the other door. You squeeze her hand hard, and she squeezes back. Your eyes hurt and the light in the next room makes them sting, a high summer midday light. You’re outdoors, walking a long grassy path lined with shrubbery, but there’s a ceiling above you. A black ceiling, hanging as though it were installed above the ground—a roof that shouldn’t be there. Light shouldn’t be this strong without a sun or a source. You can’t see any doors, or what is beyond the shrubbery, only pale blue sky that ends sharply where the hard dark of the ceiling closes off the world.
Audrey leads you along the grass to a bench, painted white. It feels familiar. She sits you down and rests at the other end, folding her legs up. She produces a nail file from a pocket and begins to run it along the edges of her fingertips. The ringing in your ears is fading. Your eyes still sting. But you’re not so sick, not so afraid.
“We can’t stay long. I’ve got to go and meet Rita at the cut. You can ask me anything you want, for now, though.”
“Do you know where the cut is from back here?” You rub your eyes again. A little blood comes away.
“Don’t touch them, you’ll only make it worse. Of course I know where the cut is. I’ve been back here for more than twice the length of your life. I know where lots of cuts are.”
“Is it near here?”
“Not really. But I know a couple shortcuts.”
You summon the big question in the silence that follows, and ask it.
“Audrey, why did you take him away from me?” You aren’t looking at her. The sound of the file against her nails stops.
“Because I thought if he’d left you be, you’d find a place in the world for yourself. I was wrong. You can either go on living out there with all the questions of these rooms alive in you, eating you as you grow—or you can come here. Stay here. Adventure on alone.”
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