Nightbooks

by J. A. White

  Long fluorescent tubes dangled above the tables. They gave off a faint, purplish glow.

  “Isn’t black light what they use to make bloodstains show up at crime scenes?” Alex asked, remembering something he had read while doing research on forensic investigations for a story.

  “Is it?” Yasmin asked. He expected to hear disgust in her voice, just like other kids when his gruesome interests spilled into the conversation, but instead there was only mild interest. “The only time I’ve ever seen black lights in the real world was at this indoor mini-golf place. All the windmills and golf balls and stuff glowed in the dark. Just like this, except without the magic plants.”

  “These plants are magic?” Alex asked.

  “It’s a witch’s nursery,” Yasmin said. “What did you expect? Geraniums? Come on. We need to hurry.”

  She set off between the tables, walking at a fast clip. Alex had to practically run to keep up.

  “If these plants are magic,” he asked, “what do they do?”

  “Nothing yet,” Yasmin said. “They’re just ingredients. You have to put them together the right way for anything to happen.”

  An electric thrill ran through Alex’s body.

  “Are you talking about magic potions?” he asked.

  “According to Natacha, no one wants potions anymore,” Yasmin said. “Customers refuse to put up with the taste. These days it’s all essential oils. People put a few drops in these misters, like the kind you use to make the room smell good, and breathe in the magic.” She sighed, remembering something. “That reminds me, I have to check the distillers. I started a new batch of wealth oil yesterday.”

  “You’re the one who makes them?” Alex asked in amazement.

  “Anyone can do it,” Yasmin said, though he thought he detected a hint of pride in her voice. “There’s no magic involved. You just have to follow the recipe, like cooking.”

  “What about the blue oil that Natacha puts in her diffuser?” Alex asked. “Are you the one who—”

  “No way,” Yasmin said. “I make the harmless stuff. Like, the oil that will give you good luck on a job interview. Natacha’s not stupid. She doesn’t teach me how to make anything that can hurt her.”

  “Do you at least know what the blue oil is for?” Alex asked.

  Yasmin walked faster, clearly uncomfortable with the change in topic.

  “Never really thought about it,” she mumbled.

  “I have a theory,” Alex said, catching up with her. “It’s total fairy-tale stuff, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Natacha looks like she’s what—twenty-eight, thirty? I think she’s a lot older than that and it’s the blue mist that keeps her young. So many things start to make sense then. The way the apartment is decorated, the furniture, the wallpaper, those creepy little statues of kids—it’s like a grandma’s house, you know. And all those books in her library? Some of them are ancient. I’m sure she’s been collecting them for decades, maybe even centuries. . . .”

  Yasmin stopped short and turned to face him.

  “It’s best not to talk about things like this,” she said sharply. “It doesn’t concern me. Or you.”

  Her eyes flitted around the room and then settled on Alex, urging him to silence. Finally, he understood.

  I forgot about Lenore! She’s probably standing nearby, eavesdropping. The little spy will report anything we say about Natacha.

  “You’re right,” Alex said. “It’s really none of my business what Natacha does.”

  Yasmin gave him the slightest nod: Now you get it. A tiny surge of joy sparked inside Alex. It felt good to talk to someone without using words. That was something that friends did.

  “What did you need my help with?” he asked as they started walking again. He fiddled with his goggles, which were beginning to fog up from the exertion.

  “Almost there,” Yasmin said. “And don’t take your goggles off. The light can really hurt your eyes.”

  “I’m surprised Natacha cared enough to give you them in the first place.”

  “She doesn’t care,” Yasmin said. “I’m just no use to her if I’m blind.”

  As they moved, Alex glanced over at the long tables, his eyes jumping from wonder to wonder. Small placards, like you might find in a regular greenhouse, sat in front of each planter:

  WIDOW ORCHID.

  Mix water with snake venom. Spritz daily.

  DEMON’S MANE.

  Feed dried tarantula legs when petals are open. Beware of acid.

  NIGHTBERRIES.

  Plant in soil from freshly dug grave.

  Water with a child’s tears. Great for baking!

  “You take care of all of these plants by yourself?” Alex asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Wow,” he said, suddenly feeling guilty for his lazy days spent combing books in the library. “That’s a lot of work for one person. How do you keep up?”

  “I like to keep busy,” Yasmin said. “Always have.” She paused to pluck a few needles from an orange herb and slip them in her pocket. “It would be a lot easier if these plants weren’t so fragile. Feed them the wrong thing, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong way, and bad things happen. Which is why I brought you here in the first place.” She scratched the back of her neck. “I screwed up. Big-time. I was so tired, and it’s hard to read those little signs in front of each plant with these goggles on, and I ended up feeding a snapping vine rat’s blood instead of bat’s blood.”

  “You have both?”

  “And cat’s blood. There’s a whole blood shelf. That’s not the point. The point is now the plant is . . . um . . . sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “The good news is I know how to fix it. I’m sure Lenore’s going to tell Natacha, one way or the other, but I figure if everything is better already—that should help, at least. Problem is, it isn’t something I can fix on my own.”

  “We’ll do it together, then,” Alex said.

  Yasmin removed her cap in order to fix a few strands of hair that had slipped free. Her face was ashen.

  “You’re nice,” she said. “And I appreciate your help. But this still doesn’t change anything. I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want any friends. Not anymore.”

  There was no anger in the words, only sadness. Alex had assumed that Yasmin kept her distance because she thought he was a weirdo. Now he wondered if there was a different reason, something that didn’t involve him at all.

  Why doesn’t she want friends? Alex thought.

  He followed Yasmin deeper into the darkness.

  10

  Danglers

  They walked between a series of long tables, their way lit by glowing plants. Alex passed a neon-green flower with toothlike petals that snapped at him as he passed, a miniature tree no bigger than a marble, and a perfect red rose that Yasmin warned him was the most dangerous thing in the entire nursery.

  Alex supposed that he should have been scared, but mostly he was just excited. He couldn’t help it. Creepy plants were awesome.

  At last, Yasmin stopped walking.

  “This is it,” she said.

  Alex followed her gaze to a tall trellis that had been erected on the opposite side of the tables. Vines twisted up, over, and between the diamond-shaped spaces, their colors bright against the darkness. Some were spiky. Others had thorns. One yellow vine hung lower than the rest, as though weighted down. Along its bottom dangled dozens of tiny sacs about the size of golf balls. Alex caught a whiff of something foul.

  “That the vine?” he asked, holding his nose.

  “Yeah,” Yasmin said. “It’s gotten worse. We have to hurry.”

  “You have something we can cut it down with?”

  Yasmin scoffed.

  “If it was that easy I would have done it myself,” she said. “Look. You see this?” She leaned over the tabletop and pointed to one of the sacs hanging from the underside of the vine. “It’s a dangler. They grow on sick plants—the magic kind, at least. Like
an infection. This poor vine’s got them everywhere now.”

  Alex leaned over the edge of the table for a closer look. The thin skin of the sac was pulled taut over a black shape, like a chrysalis.

  “What’s inside?” he asked.

  “Could be anything,” Yasmin said. “I’ve only seen two danglers actually open. The first one was just a regular old spider. The second one . . .” She fiddled with her cap. “I don’t like to talk about the second one. Luckily, we got it right away.”

  “We?” Alex asked, surprised. “Natacha actually helped?”

  Yasmin gave him a curt nod and continued. She seemed eager to change the topic as quickly as possible.

  “Right now the thing inside this dangler is just chilling,” she said, “sucking up plant juice. We cut down the vine, though, and it’s like taking a bottle away from a baby. It’ll wake up—they’ll all wake up.”

  Alex jumped in surprise as the sac in front of him suddenly twitched, causing a chain reaction that continued all the way down the vine, like a string of lights caught in the wind.

  “If we can’t cut down the vine,” he said, “then what do we do?”

  “Remove each and every dangler,” Yasmin said. “One at a time. If we’re careful enough, whatever’s growing inside the dangler won’t realize that it’s been cut off from its food, at least for the first minute or two. That’s more than enough time to kill it.”

  Alex examined the sac in front of him. It dangled slightly from the vine on a purplish strand, like a fruit on its stem. If you managed to twist it just the right way, it looked like it would come off. Still, he couldn’t imagine touching the fragile-looking skin without the entire thing bursting in his hand.

  “If the dangler breaks . . .” he started.

  “. . . then the thing inside wakes up instantly,” Yasmin said. “In your hands. Not a good thing.”

  “My hands?” Alex asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Yasmin said. “I’ll take care of the hard part. You just have to—here, I’ll show you.”

  She handed him a pair of cacti that glowed like phosphorescent coral and then took two of her own. Alex followed her the lengths of three tables until they reached a tiny metal door on the floor. Yasmin placed the cacti around the door like work lights and then lifted it by a curved handle, revealing a hole filled with swirling darkness.

  “I’ll hand you the dangler,” Yasmin said. “You throw it into the void here.”

  “The void?”

  “It’s magic,” Yasmin said. “There’s a few of them in the nursery—the one closest to the door is where I take the trash out every day. Basically, this is the world’s greatest garbage chute. You drop something down there, it’s gone forever. So, you know, don’t stick your hand in.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Alex said, taking a cautious step back from the hole.

  They returned to the beginning of the vine. Lenore was waiting for them. The cat had found a good spot and settled in, confident that something was going to go terribly wrong and wanting to have the best view possible when it happened.

  “Stay put,” Yasmin told Alex. “I’ll twist a dangler off and hand it to you.”

  “How do I make sure the sac doesn’t break?” Alex asked, wishing he had found better gloves.

  “Be gentle,” Yasmin said. “Like when someone blows bubbles and you catch one on the tip of your finger.”

  “They always pop when I do that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Not encouraging. But that’s cool. How about this? Hold your hands together, like cupping water. Only the water might eat you if you drop it.”

  Alex did as she asked. His hands only trembled a little.

  “Perfect,” Yasmin said, though she didn’t look very confident. “We better get started. Try to go as fast as possible. But not too fast. Make sure you don’t trip. And maybe don’t breathe too much. Also, the danglers sometimes move. So be ready for that.”

  “Anything else?” Alex asked between gritted teeth.

  “Nope, that about covers it.”

  Yasmin climbed onto the rickety table. It wobbled beneath her weight.

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves too?” Alex asked.

  “Need my fingers free,” she said. “This takes a delicate touch.”

  Yasmin reached up and pinched the spot where the sac joined the vine between her thumb and index fingers, then she twisted gently. The sac resisted at first but finally came free, sliding into Yasmin’s palm like an egg yolk. She rushed it to Alex’s waiting hands. Even through the thick gloves he could feel the heat of the dangler, warm with life. He carried it as quickly as he could to the hole in the floor. Just as he was about to open his hands, Alex felt the small shape inside the amber fluid twitch suddenly, as though it had just woken up.

  He dropped it. The darkness swirled faster for just a moment, as though swallowing, and then the dangler was gone.

  “See,” Yasmin said with a crooked smile. “Easy.”

  The children shared a look. There was something different between them now, a link that hadn’t been there before. For the first time, they were acting as a team.

  They moved on to the next one.

  Hours ticked by to the steady rhythm of work. Twist, pull, walk, drop. Twist, pull, walk, drop. The danglers came in all shapes and sizes. Most were insectoid in nature, but Alex occasionally glimpsed fur and teeth through the thin sacs. Every so often a dangler shifted in his hands—usually at the last moment, as if sensing what was coming. After nearly losing his hold on one, Alex began to cup them between his hands, like trapping a firefly. He even did this with the danglers that were little more than squishy ooze, though he suspected that these ones hadn’t grown correctly and would never wake up at all.

  Into the void they went.

  By midafternoon, two-thirds of the vine had been cleared. With their goal now in sight, Yasmin grew even more focused. Alex’s energy, on the other hand, had begun to flag. His stomach grumbled, and his hands itched like crazy from the gloves. Nevertheless, he refused to suggest a break. He wanted to prove to Yasmin that she could rely on him.

  We need to work together, he thought. Share what we know. That’s our best chance of getting out of here.

  As they neared the end of their task, however, he wondered if he was kidding himself. Is helping Yasmin today going to actually change anything? She hadn’t said a word to him in hours. What happens if things go back to the way they were after this? What if she refuses to talk to me?

  He couldn’t let that happen. This might be his only chance to convince her that they were on the same side.

  I should tell her about Unicorn Girl, he thought. I just have to make sure that Lenore doesn’t overhear us. If Natacha finds out what I know, she might kick me out of the library. Or worse.

  He glanced over at the cat. For the first hour she had tracked their every move. When it became clear that nothing interesting was going to happen, however, she placed her head on her paws and closed her eyes. Every so often she would hiss in her sleep and flicker in and out of visibility.

  “Yasmin,” Alex whispered as she walked along the tabletop, searching for the next dangler. “Can we talk?”

  She gave him an annoyed look, anxious to get the work done.

  “You need a break?” she asked. “Because Natacha’s going to be back soon. We should push on.”

  “That’s not it,” Alex said.

  “Then what?”

  He was just about to tell her when he took another sidelong glance at Lenore. She wasn’t there anymore. He heard the tiniest creak of the table to his right, saw a pile of soil flatten as though pressed down by an invisible body.

  She’s listening, Alex thought. She probably wasn’t ever asleep at all. That was just a trick.

  Yasmin lifted her Mets cap and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

  “You ever been to Citi Field?” Alex asked awkwardly. He knew he couldn’t talk about Unicorn Girl with Lenore around
, and baseball had been the first topic that popped into his head. Yasmin gave him a strange look and then turned her attention to the sac dangling before her. Alex figured that was the end of it, that she would ignore this question just like every other question he had ever asked her about life before the apartment. After a few moments, however, she answered. Maybe she sensed, like Alex, that the silence needed to be filled in order to keep them sharp.

  Or maybe she’s finally starting to trust me.

  “We go on my birthday every year,” Yasmin said. “Left-field bleachers. It’s sort of a tradition.”

  “Cool,” Alex said. “We’ve been, too.”

  “You’re a Mets fan?” Yasmin asked, with an actual glimmer of excitement.

  “Not really.”

  “You like the Yankees?” she asked.

  Judging from the look on her face, Yasmin found this prospect even more disgusting than the danglers.

  “Neither one,” Alex replied. “My brother’s the sports fan. He’s this big jock. His room, you walk in and it’s nothing but shiny trophies, like a dragon’s hoard. An athletic dragon. John’s pretty much a slob, except for his trophies. Those he keeps spotless. He has this special cleaning kit my mom got him when his football team won the championship.”

  Yasmin nodded, half listening while she positioned herself to twist off the next dangler. “You like any sports at all?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Alex said. “John’s always trying to get me to watch more football. He says it’s good for me, like a vitamin or something. And then when my attention wanders, because watching people go up and down a field a few feet at a time is really boring, he gets ticked off. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just like sports like a normal kid?’”

  “Your brother sounds like a jerk,” Yasmin said, grimacing. She was growing frustrated with the dangler. It wasn’t twisting off as easily as the others.

  “John isn’t all bad,” Alex said, suddenly feeling disloyal to his brother by speaking ill of him. “Sometimes he watches old Twilight Zone episodes with me. And one time when this kid was being mean to me at school . . .” Alex trailed off, noticing that he had lost Yasmin’s attention. “How about you?” he asked. “You have any brothers or sisters?”