Thirteens

by Kate Alice Marshall

  But it seemed as if all the joy had gone out of Eden Eld along with the color. The witches and pumpkins in the windows had lost their smiles; they stared with empty eyes and blank expressions. No one wore costumes, and everyone shuffled slowly down the sidewalk, eyes downcast. They didn’t just look gray—they were acting gray. A man walked past with slow, ponderous steps. The wind snatched the hat from his head and sent it bumping and rolling down the sidewalk. He halted, half turned, and watched it for a moment. Then he just kept moving.

  Pip and Eleanor clung together and walked slowly. Any one of these people could be part of the January Society. Any one of them could be dangerous.

  A gleaming black car pulled onto the street a few blocks away. It looked just like the ones that had pulled up outside of Otto’s house. Pip gripped Eleanor’s arm and hissed a wordless warning.

  “This way!” Eleanor said, and dragged her into an alleyway beside them. They crouched behind a garbage can as the car whirred past. It was only when it was gone that Eleanor realized they were holding hands again, their fingers laced so tightly together her bones hurt.

  She gave Pip’s hand one last squeeze before she dropped it, and the two of them straightened up. “Should we—” Pip began.

  Clackclackclack! Clackclackclack!

  The sound burst in the air around them, and a black shape dropped from the sky with an angry scream, claws raking at Eleanor’s face.

  Pip let out a yell and swung her walking stick like a bat. The big black bird swooped up out of reach and then dived again. Clackclackclack! Clackclackclack!

  Now Eleanor could see what was making the sound. It was the rattlebird, and beneath its feathers hung dozens and dozens of bones. Bones of all sizes, rattling at the end of lengths of dirty twine that wrapped him like a net. His claws glinted like steel. His eyes were yellow as a jack-o’-lantern’s glow. Pip swung again and missed again.

  “Just run!” Eleanor said, and they did, pounding through the alley. They could see the street on the other side.

  And then the graveyard dog stepped out in front of them. He put his head down and growled. Eleanor and Pip skidded to a stop.

  Eleanor whipped her backpack around and grabbed the sandwich bag that she’d left sticking out of the top of it. She ripped it open and snatched a handful of ashes, flinging them at the dog.

  The ashes drifted over the dog’s face.

  He sneezed.

  “I don’t think that worked,” Pip whispered, as the dog shook his head and growled again.

  A low, feminine voice laughed above them. The cat-of-ashes waltzed along the top of the wall to their left. And then, in a single leap, she landed on the ground between them and the dog, swiping at the air in front of his nose and making him jump back.

  The rattlebird landed on a dumpster behind them. Clackclackclack. His talons screeched on the metal.

  “Language is a funny thing, isn’t it?” the cat-of-ashes asked, swishing her tail. “The fierce one had it right.”

  Ash, Eleanor thought. Ash was the soot at the bottom of a fireplace, but it was also a type of wood. “It’s the walking stick,” she whispered. The cat-of-ashes purred in approval.

  “Told you all I needed was the hittin’ stick,” Pip said.

  “Iron for the dog, ash for the bird,” the cat-of-ashes said.

  The dog snarled. “Why are you telling them,” he said, not bending it at the end of the sentence like a proper question.

  “Troublemaker,” the rattlebird croaked. “Trickster, traitor, spy.”

  “Oh, boo. You’re just mad your leashes are tighter than mine,” she said. “I’m here the same as the both of you, aren’t I? As ordered. Now, come on, kids. We’re bringing you in. No struggling.” She winked one green eye. The creatures still had color, Eleanor realized.

  “Tell us what works against you,” Eleanor said. “Salt?”

  “I’m nice, but I’m not that nice, kid,” the cat-of-ashes said. She waggled her haunches and settled into a crouch. “Now, surrender quick before my canine friend gobbles you up and gives your bones to the bird.”

  “No,” Eleanor said. “We’re not giving up.” She reached over to Pip’s backpack and pulled the iron poker free.

  “Don’t like that one. It tickles,” the dog said, tensing up like he was ready to jump. His nose twitched in the air, and he narrowed his eyes at Eleanor. “You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Now!” Pip yelled. She swung for the bird. Eleanor charged forward, holding the iron poker out like a lance as the dog leaped. Her eyes jammed shut of their own accord and she yanked the poker up in front of her to block him.

  Something hot and prickly passed over her skin. She whipped around, opening her eyes. The dog had broken apart in a flurry of sparks and ashes. They swarmed together on the other side of her, forming the rough shape of the dog—but it seethed and billowed like a smoke cloud, not quite turning solid again.

  Pip’s walking stick swung again and again. She couldn’t hit the rattlebird, but she could keep him off.

  “Use what you’ve got, kid!” the cat-of-ashes cried. She reared up on her hind legs. On instinct, Eleanor flung out a hand to block her. The cat’s teeth sank into her palm even as Pip’s walking stick finally found its mark, and Eleanor screamed in pain.

  “Miscreant!” the rattlebird yelled, as his body turned to smoke and ash, still in the shape of a bird. He flapped up high out of reach and hovered overhead.

  The dog snuffed and snorted, whirling around like he was chasing his tail. He was getting more solid.

  The cat-of-ashes hissed, and her fur puffed up until she seemed twice her size. Her green eyes were wilder than ever, and between her teeth spat sparks.

  Pip had the salt carton out. She twisted it so the holes were open and flung the salt in the cat’s direction. It hit her fur and went up in a shower of sparks as she howled and writhed and twisted.

  “Ouch! That hurt, you whiskerless wretches!” she yelled as she turned to smoke and ash and streaked away, down low close to the wall. “Curse you all. And good luck!”

  Pip and Eleanor charged out of the alley, breaking into the open. Eleanor looked left and right. All she saw was gray. Use what you’ve got! the cat-of-ashes yelled in her mind. The weapons, or—

  She yanked the crystal lens out of her pocket and stuck it to her eye.

  Color flooded back into the world. Most of the street looked normal, back to red brick and black streets and green trees. She twisted to look behind her. The rattlebird wheeled overhead, gray-gray-gray, and the dog, nearly re-formed, was gray all the way through. The walking stick glowed.

  And so did a door, way down the street. It was a huge, ornate door, filling nearly the entire south side of the clock tower wall. Eleanor lowered the crystal for a moment. Without the crystal, the door wasn’t there at all. She lifted it and it reappeared.

  “I know where Bartimaeus is! Come this way,” she said. Pip followed her without hesitation.

  Please be unlocked. Please be unlocked. Her breath sliced at her throat, cold and ragged. The dog’s snarling and snapping got louder, more solid. They reached the door and Eleanor grabbed at the big brass doorknob, twisting desperately.

  It opened.

  Twenty-One

  Eleanor shoved the door open and toppled in without checking what was on the other side. She spun and moved to let Pip in past her, and saw the dog charging up the street, solid again, crossing the distance in only a few giant strides.

  She slammed the door shut and threw the lock. The dog struck the other side with a wham. The door shook. Eleanor could hear his claws scrabbling, and then a deep howl. It snuffled and snorted at the bottom crack. And then there was only silence.

  “I think it’s gone,” Eleanor whispered. Pip didn’t answer. She was looking the other way, her eyes wide. Eleanor turned, too.

&n
bsp; They stood in a large room with a vaulted ceiling. The room had all its normal color, but the things in the cases and shelves that filled it didn’t. They were gray. A gray sword that looked like it was made of stone. A skeletal gray hand on a gray silk cushion. A gray candle burning with a gray flame.

  The shelves had glass fronts and heavy padlocks. The cases were locked up, too, and every item was marked with a number and a date on yellowing paper.

  In a glass birdcage, a scraggly, crow-like bird shivered and shook. It thrust its beak against the glass, rap-rap, but made no sound.

  The only sound in the room was their own breath—and a faint scritch-scritch-scritch at the end of the room. A man, white-haired, sat at a big oak desk, nearly identical to the one in the house. The man’s head was bent over a big old book, and he was writing something in it with a fancy pen. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Scritch—

  He stopped and looked up at them, over the tops of his half-moon glasses. “Well?” he said. “Come on, then. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.” He chuckled like it was a joke.

  Eleanor bit her lip. Pip lifted a shoulder, like, What else are we going to do?

  They made their way between the cases. A one-armed doll tracked their progress, her eyes rolling and eyelids fluttering. A book flipped itself open and fanned its pages before slamming silently shut again. When they reached the back of the room, the man set his pen down and sat back in his chair. He wore a vest and tie over a crisp white shirt. He looked the same way: crisp, almost ageless, just a little worn around the edges.

  “You’re Bartimaeus Ashford, aren’t you?” Eleanor asked.

  “Miss Barton. Miss Foster,” he said. “But young Master Ellis isn’t with you, I see.”

  “How do you know our names?” Pip said suspiciously.

  “I make a point of keeping track of these things. And Miss Barton lives in my house, which does make it easier. I must say, you have done much better than most. Though the fact that only two of you have gotten this far does not bode well.”

  “How are you alive?” Pip asked. “Bartimaeus Ashford would be, like, two hundred years old,” Pip said.

  “Oh, not quite,” he said. “I was nineteen years old in 1851, which gives me a few years yet before my bicentennial, but I will allow that past a certain threshold, a decade does not make much of a difference. What you mean is that I should be dead. And that is so. But you can fool death a little, or at least delay him, by remaining in certain spaces. Certain in-between places. I don’t recommend it,” he conceded with a small gesture, “but my options are few.”

  “If you’re Bartimaeus Ashford, then this is your fault,” Eleanor said, anger rising in her chest. “You’re the one that made the deal.”

  “One of the dealmakers,” Bartimaeus said. “I could excuse myself by pleading youth and desperation, but it was an evil deed done for selfish reasons. We wanted to take what wasn’t ours and we wanted to keep it, and he offered us that. I regretted it nearly at once, but it took me a shameful number of years to turn that regret into any kind of action. And you are reaping the consequences of my failure. I am very sorry, children, though I imagine that means very little to you.”

  He uncapped his pen and, muttering to himself, went back to writing. Eleanor craned her neck. He was recording numbers and dates next to short descriptions of the items in the room.

  “What are you doing? Why are you just sitting there?” Eleanor asked. “Why don’t you help us?”

  “Oh,” he said, sounding surprised. “I thought it was obvious. I’ve already done everything I can. I built the house. I hid my treasures away in it. Things of use I kept there, and I locked up everything of the gray that I could here. I wrote the book so that children like you could learn its warnings. I did my part. The rest, my dear, is very much up to you.”

  “You’re an adult!” Eleanor said, nearly shouting. “You know things! You can do things! You can’t just sit here and let us die!”

  “You won’t die,” Bartimaeus said. “Oh, no. The People Who Look Away are not killers, Miss Barton. They have never killed a soul—not in Eden Eld, at least, and not that I know of. What good would you be to them dead? Of course, what they mean to do with you isn’t more pleasant.”

  “What are they going to do to us?” Pip asked.

  “They want to open a door,” Bartimaeus said. “The door has been locked for a very long time. Things seep in through the cracks around the edges. I believe you call them wrong things. And they are wrong. They’re in the wrong world. They belong to the gray world; they shouldn’t be here at all. But the man we call Mr. January and his sisters want to open that door. There is something on the other side, you see, or perhaps someone, that they wish to let out. But if they were to manage it, it would have the rather unpleasant side effect of bringing the whole of the gray and the whole of our world into the same spot. Smashed together, mixed together, muddled up like two colors of paint until they’re something new. To open the door, they need the keys. And you . . .”

  “We’re the keys,” Eleanor guessed.

  “Precisely. Or rather, you’re one of the keys. You are Mr. January’s particular project. His sisters share his ambition, but I get the sense they are somewhat skeptical that this method is the best to achieve it. He can only fashion one key at a time, you see, only with the proper three children and at the proper intervals, but he’s quite close. You’re the last, in fact.”

  “And what happens? If our worlds get muddled up like paint?” Eleanor asked.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. But do you really want to find out?” Bartimaeus asked. Eleanor shivered.

  “Then why would anyone help him? Why would my parents—” Pip bit off the words and looked at the floor.

  “We made the bargain expecting we would all be long dead before the true price was paid,” Bartimaeus said, with a mild, apologetic tone. “And as time went on, it was the only thing sustaining the town. The cost of change was too high. You must understand, I was very afraid. Afraid of my world. And afraid of theirs. Once we made the deal, he made it clear that anyone who failed to bring him his promised keys would be pulled into the gray world forever. His prisoner. If you make someone afraid enough, they will agree to many evil things.”

  “I’m terrified,” Eleanor said. “And I wouldn’t do anything like that. My mom was terrified. She was as scared as anything. And she didn’t give me up.”

  “Your mother was not party to the agreement and not subject to such punishment,” Bartimaeus said. “But I take your point. The fear is a reason, but it is not an excuse. They made their choices—everyone in the January Society. Including me.”

  “So how do we stop it?” Eleanor asked. “How do we save ourselves?”

  “I cannot tell you how to save yourselves,” Bartimaeus said impatiently. “I am bound by the agreement.”

  “Like the cat-of-ashes?” Eleanor asked.

  “A different bargain, and being a cat, she’s found a bit more room to squirm within it, but it’s the same concept,” Bartimaeus replied. “But,” and here he sat back, “if you ask the right questions, you’ll have the information you need.”

  The right questions. Just like in the fairy tale. “We get three?” she asked. Did that count?

  He waved a hand. “Literary license. Ask whatever you will. Whether I can answer or not is the limiting factor.”

  She frowned and looked at Pip. “There must be something more you can just tell us,” Pip said.

  “There’s really very little I can do,” Bartimaeus said, starting to sound irritated. “I’ve spent my resources aiding you as much as I already have. You really must take responsibility at some point.”

  Eleanor didn’t think that was fair. Bartimaeus was the one—one of the ones—who caused all this trouble. He’d made a mess and was insisting because he’d handed them a raggedy broom and a cr
acked dustpan that he’d done all he needed to. But she set her jaw. “What is the agreement, exactly?” she said.

  “Now that is an excellent question,” Bartimaeus said. He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a sheet of paper with tattered edges. The paper was thick, and the writing on it was spidery and brown. Signatures, thirteen of them, crowded the bottom. The cursive was hard to read, but she made out a few familiar names. Barton was there, along with Foster and Ellis and Langston and Ashford. Above the signatures was a block of clearer text.

  Every thirteen years, on Halloween night, we shall bring to the gray door three children, and put them through the door. The children must be thirteen years of age, to the day, and they must be born in Eden Eld. When one of us should die, another of our blood shall take our place. We will always be thirteen. We will always keep the pact. And if we should not, we will be claimed, one and all of us, and cast into the gray. If we should keep the pact, our town will flourish, and it shall not fade. No plague will touch it. No fire or flood will ravage it. No violence will fall upon it from outsiders. Harvests will be bountiful and winters mild.

  We make this agreement on January the first, in the year 1851, with the ones who look away.

  “That’s it? That’s all?” Eleanor asked. She’d thought it would be more complicated. More precise.

  “That’s all,” Bartimaeus said. He took the page back from her and placed it carefully in the drawer. It clicked shut. He blinked at them. “What are you still doing here? What you need to succeed is there. That was the right question. Well done. You may go.”

  “What if we stayed?” Pip asked. “They can’t get to us here, can they?”

  “I don’t like children buzzing around when I work. And it isn’t healthy for living things to stay in a place like this,” Bartimaeus said. “The secret room in the house, either. It has a way of stirring things up in your blood. Things you might not want stirred. It has a way of thinning out all the little tethers that keep you in your world. Especially on a day like this.”