And maybe I was just bat-shit crazy.
Days blurred into each other. I slept little and ate less. I roamed the bookstore every afternoon with a glass of wine and a book, but nothing held my attention for more than a chapter. All my favorite authors and their words seemed to dull and lose their shine. Even my favorite re-read had me wondering why I had loved it so in the first place.
I bought a new cell phone online. It was too bright outside to go buy one at a store. The first call I made was to Megan. I left her five messages.
She never returned my calls.
I called the audition committee and explained to them about the death of my grandmother. They said their condolences, but they were no longer hosting auditions; by not showing or calling, I had forfeited my spot.
I cried for two days straight.
On the fourth day home, I waited until dusk and took a bus to the police station, but the detectives had nothing to tell me, which I knew, so I asked for the rest of my grandmother’s personal effects. What I wanted was her book.
They handed it over without an issue.
I sat on my bed and stared at it for an entire day without opening it once.
That night, I installed Tinder on my new phone and made four separate dates with four different men. I was so lonely.
The next day, three of them stood me up. The only one who showed up fell asleep on me in the middle of a conversation—he just leaned his head on his hand and snored away. I pushed my chair back from the table and stood, watching him, admiring how peaceful he was until I kicked the leg of his chair. He woke startled and asked me if I was still D.T.F.
“No, I am most definitely not,” I snapped, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m leaving. Thank you for…showing up. It was great watching you sleep.”
The poor guy went for some lame excuse, but I didn’t want to hear it. I walked away, humiliated, and watched him rush out of the bookstore with a skip in his step like he just had the best freaking nap of his life.
The shop was crowded, and I stood in the chaos of people, never feeling more invisible, never feeling more alone. I haunted my own life like a ghost. It was like I never really lived while I was here.
I ended up hiding upstairs, back to staring at Addy’s book. It sat in my lap, my fingers trembling over it. The cover was worn leather and hand sewn, the stitching frayed in each corner. I hadn’t realized that night in the police station how very old the book was—I was probably balancing hundreds of thousands of dollars on my knees.
Blood stained the leather the color of deep, dark wine. How could a ghost bleed? How could my grandmother have been a ghost here? Those were questions for another time—or maybe—maybe I would find the answers inside. This was the same book I skimmed through in Ravenswood, but here it wouldn’t turn to dust before my eyes.
The title was embossed in crimson red across the cover: The History of Ravenswood, and just underneath was a subtitle I hadn’t been able to make out before: Of Gods and Monsters.
Of course it said that.
On the inside front cover, scribbled in a messy hand were these words:
There are traces of you left everywhere here. It’s as if the city is calling you back.
Another flower grows from a vine in the tower of the music room the same color of your eyes. Where you are, can you feel my heart ache every time my father curses your name?
I keep wondering what to do with the pieces of you left here with me. The truth is sad, I never want you back here—yet sometimes I think I feel your warmth in the icy winds and I throw open my doors to welcome you home.
I will not come to you as you once asked of me, just know you’re like a flower in my wintery heart and I long for the warmth of spring.
And for the first time since I got home, I let myself think of the dark-haired man with the ice blue eyes in the city of the dead who was said to hold the other half of my soul.
And I cried for him.
Chapter 26
The drop in temperature was what woke me. My shoulders trembled, my fingers stiff as ice, clutching the book against my chest. I had been dreaming of Mathias, of his lips touching mine, but the longer we kissed, he became too cold and covered with frost and ash. Another harsh reminder the only person who could truly love me like I’d prayed for all my life was already dead.
My eyes squinted open to a darkened room. Someone had switched off my overheard lights and lamps. A weak glow from the oven light reached halfway across the small apartment, enough for me to see my breath fogging as I softly exhaled. Cold sliced over my skin, numbing the tips of my ears and nose.
A shadow shifted in the corner of my vision—something dark and moving slow. Crawling. Slithering. Slinking. I sat frozen, listening. Someone was coming toward me, creeping nearer and nearer in small unhurried steps. I cringed at each creak of the floorboards the closer they came.
The first thing to reach me was the rotting scent of decay, tingling the hairs in my nose and tightening the back of my throat. An icy shiver crawled through the small hairs of my arms and curled over the back of my neck, then down my spine, one vertebrae at a time.
A loud hiss sizzled out from the kitchen, and I caught the stench of rotten eggs. It filled up the room, making my throat spasm and gag. It was gas.
Someone was messing with the gas valve in the stove.
I jumped up, spinning around to face the shadow. I could see nothing in the dimness, so I lunged for the light switch and flipped it up. Nothing happened. “Damn it,” I cursed out, running over to the stove. The gas valve was in the cabinet next to the oven. I remembered the installer needed some sort of a tool to open the valve, and I hoped I could just twist it closed—
“Boom,” Hemlock’s voice whispered in my ear, harsh and deep, jolting me back.
I flailed my arms out and screamed with my whole body. Fire burned up from my chest, scorched my throat, coating my mouth with bile. Pain tore into my side as I fell against the counter, hitting the corner with my waist and scraping along my arms and shoulders as I slid down against it. My elbow hit the floor first, then my cheekbone against the hard corner of the counter, exploding white-hot pain across the bridge of my nose and jawline. Sparks of light burst across the back of my eyelids, and when I wrenched them open, horrible vivid images of shadows and monsters faded before my eyes.
I sat up quickly, heart hammering, drenched in sweat. I was still on the couch, Addy’s book still in my grasp, and that sickening sensation when you just wake up from a horrible nightmare. My mouth was dry, and my lips felt raw and chapped. I tried to swallow and couldn’t, so I ran over to the kitchen sink to cup some water into my mouth and ease the sawing feeling that stabbed through my throat.
All the lights were on. The clock on the microwave read 5:56 am.
There was no rotten egg smell. No gas leak.
No shadows creeping up on me.
But when I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, the right side of my face was bruised and swollen, a thin scratch beaded with drops of blood slashed through the middle.
Was that how Hemlock got to Addy? The police said no one broke in to her apartment. Did he just come out of the shadows or maybe just straight out of one of her nightmares?
I gently pressed a wash towel of warm water over my cheek and kept an eye on the mirror to see if anything would be sneaking up behind me. I couldn’t shake the feeling I still wasn’t totally alone—my spine tingled like someone was right behind me—and it wasn’t anyone with good intentions.
In my bedroom, I changed quickly, layering for the cold with a heavy sweater and packed a bag with the book, a small empty notebook, and pen. I didn’t know where I could go, but I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. I needed to be around people and get my thoughts straight. Hemlock wasn’t going to be leaving me alone, he would haunt me and play with me until the end, then snuff me out like a candle. Just like he did to Addy.
Outside, I followed the scent of coffee and caramel to the small cof
feehouse down the block. A line of morning commuters was inside, getting their first cup before heading off to the train heading for the city.
I stood in line and ordered a caramel latte when it was my turn and listened to the people around me grumble and complain about traffic and politics. No sweet family apparitions near any of them.
Maybe Hemlock trapped their loved ones just like the little spirit said, maybe that’s why these people were so alone, standing in line, hating life.
Grabbing a table in the far back, I sat down and pulled the book out of my bag and sipped at my coffee. It was too hot and burned my tongue. I moaned out a small noise that got the attention of a hipster with a man bun sitting at the next table. He wrinkled his nose at me and looked away quickly.
Whatever, dude. Like you’ve never burnt your tongue on coffee. I had a crazy ass dead king after me—I couldn’t wait to drink coffee—I needed it immediately.
I cleared my throat and opened the book. The musty perfume of the pages relaxed my shoulders, settling my nerves a few notches lower, and I began reading.
In Ravenswood, a soul is the only true currency left. The Dark King Hemlock collected them, hardening and blackening the world above and the world below by separating those who where created to find one another. These lost souls will roam the earth and underworld, bitter and full of the blackest of hate in every shadow they find.
The more volatile Ravenswood became, the more evil Hemlock grew. He spread up through the ground and poisoned the world above. So great his brutally became, he became more powerful than the gods that cursed us long ago, splitting what little remained of his soul over and over again and hiding each piece, making him impossible to destroy. King Hemlock became immortal once again.
I knew I must do something.
I continued reading, sipping at my cooling latte. Every so often, Mathias’s script would darken the page and I’d softly trail my fingers over it. He scribbled about hidden magic and spells cast through some ancient language. I didn’t understand a word of it.
Addy’s writing though, I understood why Hemlock would want her dead and this book hidden deep inside Ravenswood. There was music. It told all his secrets, just not the important ones, like how the hell I was going to get him to stop trying to kill me.
I pulled out my notebook and wrote out all the things I knew so far:
All humans were born with souls
The gods trying to teach humans to back it down a bit split their souls in half.
Each half spent lifetimes searching for one another
King Hemlock and his wife were once happy on Earth
Ravenswood was not always a shitty deathtrap
Around me, the coffee shop’s volume seemed to rise, but I ignored the noise and tried to focus on my thoughts.
The wife found a way to leave
Hemlock lost it without her
He finds my mother, who was preggers with me
She likes him at first but realizes he’s a monster
I’m born in Ravenswood
I have some kind of thing inside me that gives life to the dead
Even though we should be enemies, because of what his asshole of a king father did to my mother and Addy, Mathias and I are souls made from the same stuff (I’m still not ready to call a man I just met my insta-soul mate)
Addy found a way to take me Upside and live as a “living” family
But my soul was in Ravenswood
Addy’s said she wanted her soul back and—
I slammed the notebook closed fast and stared into space. I didn’t want to write down the words of what I just figured out. I had to have figured it out. She was dead up in New York, but she kept herself alive by wearing her soul in a locket around her neck.
My mother had the same locket.
That had to be how it worked. Maybe, anyway.
Your soul was the only true currency in Ravenswood.
Someone was making a loud banging noise.
“Do you mind?” the man bun guy said, interrupting my thoughts.
“Do I mind what?” I asked, confused.
“Well, you’re making an awful lot of noise, aren’t you? You’re making everyone leave with you banging your chair like that. Have some decency.”
Across the table from me, the empty chair suddenly jolted back and slammed forward, smacking loudly against the table.
Shoving my things back into my bag, I immediately stood up. The chair still convulsed like it was alive. I looked at the man bun guy and shrugged. “That, Mr. Man Bun, is not me. But thanks for your concern. You’re a real gentleman.”
I rushed out of the building as the chair flipped over on itself and rattled along the floor. Man-bun guy screamed like a girl.
Above me, the skies opened up to a cold, icy rain, instantly chilling me to the bone. I looked up, cursing and squinting into the raindrops. When I dropped my gaze, someone across the avenue was standing in the rain, watching me.
Hemlock.
Dressed as a businessman with a sinister smile, he wore a beige overcoat tied at the waist, and a dark leather briefcase dangled from his hand.
We stared at each other, both of us becoming wetter and wetter as the rain pelleted down around us. I brought my bag up and hugged it to my chest and watched his smile widen, his eyes flickering past me.
I followed his line of sight and just to my right, on my side of the street, stood another Hemlock. This one dressed in jeans and winter coat, a baseball cap topping his head. He waved to me and barked out a loud, haunting laugh.
“Oh God,” I breathed, stumbling off balance and tripping over my own feet. My jeans were wet and tight against my skin, hindering every effort I made to move. In front of me, someone walked out of the store I stood in front of, another Hemlock, smelling of rotting flesh and filth.
How could he be everywhere?
“Do you think you’re safe anywhere?” he asked, with a vicious laugh.
I ran, splashing through the slush pooled in the cracks of the street. Freezing water seeped through my sneakers, flooding my socks with an icy fire. My body surged forward, leaping into the street. I turned my head in time to see the bright red hood of a car, its horn blaring a long, stretched out scream. It slid on ice and wet road, an inch away from me, blasting my wet hair wildly around my face. I didn’t stop. I kept running.
My lungs squeezed and pinched, and the ping of icy darts of rain and hail hit across my skin. I slogged through a deep drift of snow and wet ice, my muscles trembling with exertion. There was only one place I could think to go to—only one place that would be safe. I rounded a corner, not daring to look behind me. I knew Hemlock was close behind, reaching his dead arms out for me.
Up ahead, a gray steeple climbed up to the clouds, and I pushed myself a few more paces to reach its entrance.
The church doors were closed but unlocked. I staggered in, cold and wet, falling to my knees.
I never learned much about religion. What I knew of God, Addy taught me—praying for forgiveness. I just never understood what anyone had done wrong, especially me.
I stared at the wooden doors before me. Through them, colorful stained glass cast a beautiful ethereal glow about the room. No one ever explained the violent pictures depicted in the windows either. I never understood how something so bright and pretty could also be so terrifying and cruel.
“Are you okay?”
I whirled around on the floor, leaving a perfectly round wet spot on the rug. A man stood in a doorway, a curious expression on his face.
“I’m Rainey Harleow. My grandmother owned the book-book-sh-shop.” My teeth chattered uncontrollably.
“Come, child,” he said, reaching out a papery thin hand. “Come in and get warm.”
He helped me to my feet and led me to a room just off to the side of the entrance. He poured me warm tea that was weak and bland and wrapped a heavy wool blanket around my shoulders. “You’re safe here. Are you running from the person who did that to you?” The man n
odded to my cheek.
“Y-yes, b-but it’s not what you th-thiink,” I stammered.
“No, I guess it never is.”
“Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?”
The man’s dark eyes turned glossy. Up close, I could see heavy circles around his eyes and hundreds of webbed wrinkles crisscrossing his skin. “Do you?”
I didn’t want to answer him. “Do you believe in mythical gods and human souls being separated in two?”
“Sweet child, how could one's soul be separated in two? The absence of any part of one’s soul would be awful, don’t you think? Would you like me to get the priest so he can counsel you?”
“No,” I whispered, “I don’t think he’d have the answers to my questions either. I stood up, stiff and achy, and handed him back his blanket. “Thank you for your kindness,” I said.
Instead of walking out the way I had come in, I slipped out the side entrance into the small graveyard attached to the grounds. When I was younger and my grandmother’s church services were too overwhelming for me, I would wander through the gravestones and read my books under a large oak tree.
I scanned the small yard quickly, and not spying Hemlock, I walked further through the graves toward the tree. A strange feeling fluttered low in my stomach. Foreboding crawled in sharp, icy trails down my spine as I walked closer. In front of the tree was a tall headstone.
I shivered, the hair raising up along my arms as I read the name: Raine Halerow. He was making me see things that weren’t yet real.
“That’s not real,” I said loudly to myself.
“Why not walk across it, child? See how unreal it is,” his voice said from behind me.
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