“There is a Dark Man, Phoebe. A real Teilo. Everything they’re doing is for him. Phyllis, Hazel, Gene. They’ve all given themselves over to him. You can’t stop them. My father tried and look what happened to him.”
“Are you talking about David?”
“Yes.”
“Phyllis said he wasn’t your father. And besides, he killed himself.”
“A hell of a coincidence, though, right? Before we went away to Cape Cod, he told me and my mom that he was tired of the secrets. He was going to put a stop to it—tell the world about Teilo and poor Gene in the basement. He wanted to take me and my mom away from all of it. He said he’d never stopped loving her.”
“So what? Are you saying someone drugged him? To keep him quiet and stop him from leaving Phyllis?”
“I don’t know,” Evie said. “But something happened while we were gone. Teilo found a way to stop him. There was this drawing my father had done in his sketchbook—a man without a face. Teilo paid him a visit, all right.” Evie caught her breath before continuing. “And then, that last night before his second overdose, he tried once more to put a stop to all the craziness. I told him I was worried they were going to take Lisa and he tried to call the police. The next morning, when we woke up, he was being taken away in an ambulance.”
“But there is no Teilo, Evie! It was Gene all along,” Phoebe said. “He was the one in the woods. He got Lisa pregnant. They were just trying to protect Gene. To keep all their dirty little family secrets hidden!”
“Listen to me. The secrets they’re keeping are way bigger than that. Lisa wasn’t pregnant that summer—not yet. They chose to take her, Phoebe. Gene didn’t pull her out of that hole. My mother and Phyllis did.”
“But Gene . . .”
“Gene may have started it, but once Lisa got her period, Phyllis knew she was ready. Ready to be Teilo’s bride. So she used the work Gene had already done to abduct her own daughter.”
“Evie, for God’s sake. I don’t know if you believe this shit or if you’re still playing their game, or what. There are no fairies, no Teilo—it’s a pack of fucked-up lies!”
“If you want to save your baby, you’ve got to believe me: Gene is not Teilo! He’s Teilo’s son. But Teilo is so much more. And you know that. Just . . . stop for a minute. Think. You’ve known him all along, haven’t you?”
Phoebe shivered.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a trapdoor under a bed opened and there was a clawlike scrabbling sound as something let itself out.
“I’ve heard them talking,” Evie said. “They say Teilo chose you to give him Sam’s firstborn.”
“But that’s impossible. How—”
“He wouldn’t choose just anyone. You know that, right? You know who you are.”
“Who I am?” Phoebe stammered.
“Haven’t you sensed it your whole life? That you’re different from other people. You don’t fit in, no matter how hard you try. You know things you shouldn’t. You see things other people don’t.”
“I don’t understand what this—”
“You’re his daughter. Teilo’s flesh and blood. Half human, half fairy. You walk between the worlds.”
Phoebe leaned against the crib, holding on to it.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. My father was just some guy my mom met in a bar. A drifter. He picked fruit and tobacco. She thought the words but couldn’t say them. The air felt suddenly thin. The walls were closing in, making Phoebe feel as if she were in a tunnel. And there, at the end, was her Dark Man, waiting for her.
“We all have our destinies, Phoebe. And you know, you understand, don’t you, that the child you’re carrying belongs to him?”
Phoebe disconnected the call and flung the phone across the room, just as a strong contraction rolled through her, bringing her to her knees.
“Breathe, baby! Breathe! You’re doing great. We’re almost there.” Sam stood beside her, flushed and expectant. Behind him, the doctor and nurse worked.
“Push now,” they said.
Phoebe heard them through the thick haze of pain and medication, heard them, but wasn’t entirely sure she had any control over her body. But she tried.
“Good,” they said.
“Oh my God!” Sam said. “There’s the head!”
“Push, honey,” the nurse said.
Once the idea sunk in, Sam had fallen in love with the idea of being a father. Once he understood he’d promised his firstborn to his invisible cousin, not to some terrifying supernatural being, he seemed downright joyous about fatherhood. He threw himself into it with a fury, reading books on parenting, coming home with organic unbleached cotton diapers and onesies.
He painted the nursery with environmentally friendly nontoxic paint and stenciled Humpty-Dumpty borders.
Phoebe watched him up on the ladder, hand painting all those fragile, smiling little eggs in short pants sitting on a wall.
All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again
But what if there really was a Teilo?
What if she really had been chosen—if the very reason she’d even been born is because Teilo planned it, seducing her mother, watching over Phoebe her whole life, waiting to bring her to Sam.
The idea gnawed at Phoebe. She told Sam about the phone call from Evie when they were on their way to the hospital.
“She said I was Teilo’s daughter,” she told him.
“She’s a nut,” he said, putting his hand on her belly. “You know that—she was victimized by my psychotic mother and aunt, and I pity her, I truly do. But in the end, she is just as crazy as they are. All this foolish worrying isn’t good for you or the baby, Phoebe. We’re done with those people. Let’s just focus on us. Us and our baby, who we’re going to be holding in our arms very, very soon.”
“Doing great, Mom,” the doctor said through his blue surgical mask. “One more big push and you can meet your baby.”
Phoebe closed her eyes, concentrated on the entire lower half of her body, which she couldn’t really feel but trusted was there. There was the faintest sensation of pressure, and the pain. There was always the pain. Even through the drugs, she felt like this baby was splitting her in half like an overripe seed. She pushed. She pushed with all the strength left in her, making a low, guttural, whalelike cry.
“Oh my God!” Sam said again, his voice shaking.
I’ve given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth.
The baby squalled. Phoebe opened her eyes.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor announced. “A beautiful baby girl.”
Phoebe looked up to see a tiny form, covered in mucus and blood, all arms and legs, the tiniest tuft of wet, matted hair.
And there, behind her baby girl, the doctor, nurse, and Sam, a figure hovered in the doorway. Just a silhouette—a tall, dark shadow, watching.
“Who is that?” Phoebe asked.
“It’s our baby,” Sam said, coming to take her hand, kiss her. “Our daughter.”
“No,” Phoebe said, “in the doorway.”
Sam turned. “There’s no one there, babe.”
“Do you want to cut the cord, Dad?” the doctor asked. And Sam was gone again down to the other end of the bed. When he reappeared, he held their infant daughter in his arms, cleaned up, swaddled in a fuzzy flannel blanket. He leaned down and carefully placed the baby on her chest.
“I think she’s hungry,” Sam said, as the baby pecked and snuffled at her breast, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut. Sam helped guide her to the nipple. Phoebe stroked her damp hair, breathed her in while she sucked and gulped, latched on determinedly.
“Willa,” Phoebe said. “She’s definitely a Willa.”
Phoebe closed her eyes. Smiled.
Her daughter. She was here. Healthy. Perfect. Ten fingers and ten toes.
“I love you,” Sam said. Then he kissed the baby’s hair. “You too, little Willa,” he said.
The doctor and nurse hovered, then drifted out. Another nurse came in.
“You rest now,” she said.
Phoebe let her eyes close, holding the baby to her chest, Sam beside her.
“I’m just going to take her for a minute,” the nurse said, startling Phoebe from sleep. She’d been dreaming about her mother. Her ma had been sitting on the edge of the bed, cooing at Willa, her clothes inside out and dripping wet.
“We need to check her bilirubin levels,” the nurse explained. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She smiled cheerfully down at Phoebe, her hair a perfect blond bob.
“Sam?” Phoebe said, handing the baby over. The nurse smelled faintly of cigarette smoke covered up with perfume. “Where’s Sam?”
“I’m not sure, sweetie. Probably just went for a cup of a coffee or to get some fresh air.”
Phoebe nodded.
“He’ll be right back, I’m sure,” she said, giving Phoebe’s hand a comforting squeeze.
The young nurse took the baby, said, “Come on, little peanut. I’ll have you back to your mamma in a jiffy.”
Phoebe sat up, looked out the door after them into the fluorescent-lit hallway. She saw only shadows. Heard muffled voices. Somewhere, something beeped once, twice, three times. A doctor was paged. A cart rolled by, pushed by a man in green scrubs.
Phoebe rubbed her eyes, leaned over to the rolling table next to the bed, and got herself a drink of water.
“Mommy,” she said to herself, smiling, still not really believing it. But she was a mother. And she was going to be a damn good one, too, in spite of how she’d been raised. She’d figured out that to be a good parent, all she needed to do was imagine what her own mother would do in any given situation, then do the exact opposite.
“You think it’s that easy?” Her mother was there again, perched on the edge of the hospital bed. Phoebe blinked. Once. Twice.
Phoebe could read the labels and see the stitches of the seams of her mother’s clothes. Water dripped off her ma, soaking through the thin hospital blanket and sheet, making Phoebe’s feet damp. She stank of rot and cigarette smoke.
Her ma smiled at Phoebe, waxy blue lips pulling back mechanically. “You can’t run from the Dark Man, lovie,” she said. “Not once he gets inside you. Not when you’ve got something he wants.”
Phoebe reached for the call bell on the bed rail but couldn’t find it. She scrambled frantically, and just as she’d given up and was about to start screaming instead, the young nurse returned, carrying the baby, still swaddled. Phoebe glanced down at the foot of the bed. There was no one there. The covers were dry.
“Everything’s fine,” the nurse said. “She looks perfect.”
Phoebe nodded, held out her arms, pulled little Willa to her and held her tight.
But something was wrong.
This was not her child.
The hair and eyes were darker, the skin more translucent. And the smell was all wrong—this child was dank and mushroomlike. The baby started to cry. It was a high-pitched, frantic cry, strangled sounding.
“This isn’t her,” Phoebe said.
“Excuse me?” said the nurse.
“This isn’t my baby.”
“Of course it’s your baby.” The perfect blond hair was slightly askew. A wig. My God. It was someone wearing a wig. And underneath the smile, the makeup, didn’t she recognize this face?
“Becca?”
The nurse took a step back. “I’m sorry?”
“What have you done with my child?”
“I’ll go and get the doctor,” the nurse said, turning. As she walked, no—practically ran—from the room, the cuff of the left leg of her pants rose up just high enough that Phoebe could see she wasn’t wearing socks. She had on silver running shoes with black laces. And there, on her ankle, was a tattoo. Teilo’s mark.
Phoebe began to scream.
“What is it, babe?” Sam asked, hurrying in, two nurses behind him.
“It’s not Willa. The nurse took her. She switched her.”
“No one took her,” one of the nurses said. “She’s been in here with you the whole time. Look at her bracelet—it says ‘Baby female Nazzaro. And see the band we’ve got around her ankle? It’s an electronic sensor—if anyone tried to leave the unit with her, an alarm would go off.”
Sam stroked Phoebe’s arm. “It’s her, Bee. It’s Willa. Maybe you were dreaming.”
“I was not dreaming,” Phoebe hissed at Sam. “Where were you?”
“I had to go down to Patient Registration. They needed a copy of our insurance card.”
How had they known? They must have been watching, waiting.
“The girl who took her had blond hair, but it was a wig. And silver sneakers. A tattoo on her ankle. I think it was Becca, Sam.”
“Pinkie?” he said, frowning, a shadow of disbelief crossing his face. “I don’t think so, Bee.”
The nurse shook her head. “We don’t have anyone working here who looks like that,” she said.
“She was here!”
“You have to be buzzed in to get on the floor,” the nurse said. “No one like that was here. I was at the nurse’s station. I would know.”
The second nurse left the room, returning quickly with the doctor.
“Please,” Phoebe said. “You have to listen. She’s got to be in the hospital, still. You can stop her. Sam, please! Go look for her. She’s got our baby!”
Sam shook his head. “She’s right here, Bee. You’ve got her in your arms.”
Phoebe looked at the squalling, pale-faced child, pushed her away. “This is not my baby!”
Sam took the baby in his arms, rocked her, which just made her squall louder.
The doctor left the room and returned with a needle. He shot something into Phoebe’s IV line.
“Please,” she said. “Just look at her. This is not the baby you delivered.”
“You need to rest now,” he told her.
She heard Sam say something in a worried voice about postpartum psychosis. A history of alcoholism and mental illness in the family. “Her mother committed suicide,” he whispered.
“No,” Phoebe moaned. “Listen—” She fought to keep her eyes open, but it was no use.
As she closed them, she saw it again, clearer this time.
There, hovering in the doorway to her room, was the Dark Man. A form made entirely of shadow, he seemed to gather light and swallow it like a black hole. It was something you could get lost inside. Something that went on forever. And there, where his face should be, she was sure she could see the flash of a smile.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank:
My agent, Dan Lazar, for all he does.
My editor, Jeanette Perez, and the whole team at Harper, for helping to shape the book into what it is today, and for being so understanding and supportive when I had to put everything on hold during my mother’s illness.
My father, Donald McMahon, who talks up my books to everyone, from the oil delivery guy to strangers in the checkout line at Stop & Shop.
Alicia Partridge, for her honest feedback and clever ideas.
Kenny Klein, for sharing his knowledge of fairies, and letting me read Through the Faerie Glass before it was published.
And as always, Drea and Zella, who go on believing in me, no matter what.
Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover photograph by Ron Levine/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DON’T BREATHE A WORD. Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer McMahon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition June 2011 ISBN 9780062079459
Version 06142013
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Dedication
In memory of my mother, Dorothy Elizabeth McMahon—my co-conspirator, my teller of tales, my blue-eyed newt.
I know we’ll meet again; you’ll be waiting one day, with a bottle of gin and a smile. We’ll climb into your old Vega, crank the radio as loud as it can go, and ride right on out into the stars.
Contents
Dedication
Neptune’s Last Victim
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART TWO
DAY ONE
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
DAY TWO
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle Page 109