That certainly explained the abundance of strange vegetation in Willowbee and its New England architecture. The whole damn town was a sinister ball of magic, slithering through space to escape its sins. She wouldn’t be surprised if Willowbee had existed, in some form, before the 1700s. If it had drifted across the Atlantic Ocean with Nathaniel Grace when he thoroughly infuriated his home country. Its migration, she guessed, powered by a strange breed of fairy-ring mushrooms that fed on extravagant dances.
“You backed me into a corner,” Abe said, as if that absolved him of all sins. “Ready, my siblings?”
His so-called siblings raised their hands, grotesquely imitating a rapturous choir. Buzzing arcs of electrical light zipped between their fingers. Their digits resembled rods in a Jacob’s ladder.
As the air sparked with magic, Ellie realized that Dr. Allerton was going to get away with everything. Again. He’d erase all evidence of his crimes, reinvent history, move somewhere else, and continue profiting off others’ misery. There would be no justice for Trevor. No justice for any victim of Willowbee.
No.
Dr. Abraham Allerton would not get away with anything. If Ellie had to fly into the sun to stop him, so be it. She’d fly into the sun. She wasn’t Icarus. She was Elatsoe, daughter of Vivian, Pat, and the Kunétai. Six-great-granddaughter of a hummingbird woman who protected her people.
“Jay,” Ellie said, “tell my family that I love them. I love you too. Be good.”
She closed her eyes, exhaled slowly, and summoned the dogs of her ancestors. All of them.
THIRTY-THREE
IF ELLIE FOLLOWED her family tree to its ancient roots, she’d find few people who did not depend on one or more animals for companionship, protection, or labor. The dogs of her ancestors were numerous enough to rule their own underworld country. Ellie had sensed them, these marvelous dogs who recognized her as part of their extended family. With all her strength, she summoned the pack. Ellie called to them in every language they might understand: English, Spanish, Lipan.
Dog! ¡Perro! Né łe!
They sprung from the warped hardwood, leapt through the walls, and rained from the ceiling: hundreds of dogs, yapping and whining and barking, anxious but not yet aggressive. Their invisible bodies resembled a mirage tsunami that surged over the people of Willowbee. The magic-users lost their balance and sank under a wriggling layer of ghosts. Ellie nearly laughed at the way they floundered. They were trying to swim in ghosts! Each dog that the exorcists sent back to the underworld was immediately replaced with another. Only Ellie and Jay escaped embarrassment. The good dogs were thoughtful enough to respect their human’s personal space.
“They’re beautiful!” Jay said. He tentatively reached for the nearest shimmer and petted its intangible head. The ghost made a contented sound, something between a sigh and a bark.
“My pack,” Ellie said. “Wish I knew how to make ’em all visible.”
She walked toward Dr. Allerton. He knelt beneath the ghosts’ paradoxically heavy bodies. The pose was rather pathetic, but she didn’t have time to gloat.
“Hey, Doctor,” Ellie said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re coming with me.” He pulled back, trying to escape her grip, but could not throw off the dog pile.
“Going where, exactly?” he asked, strained.
“You’ll see.” Ellie returned to the feeling that had drawn her into a dead ocean: familiarity. Her heart brimming with grief, she sought for similarities in sorrow. Wasn’t the underworld a vast and frightening place? Wasn’t the Earth vast and frightening, too? The Above and the Below were two sides of the same coin, and Ellie could feel hurt and lost in each.
The dogs appeared gradually, in pieces. They swarmed as a mix of floating black noses, wagging tails, and attentive brown eyes. A pup brushed against Ellie’s hand, and though she could not see its back, she felt its wiry fur.
“Jay,” she said, turning, wondering whether he’d fallen through the door she opened.
He was gone, though a Jay-shaped shadow darkened the wooden planks. Jay’s shadow ran back and forth, at one point passing through her. He called her name, his voice faraway and fading. “Ellie! Ellie! Please, Ellie!”
Gradually, his shadow faded, too. Ellie and Dr. Allerton were the only humans in sight, Allerton now partially concealed by furry bodies. “It’s like we crashed a doggy ball, Kirby,” she said. “Can I have this dance?”
His floppy ears perked up. With a pleased cheer, Ellie wrapped her arms around Kirby and lifted him bridal-style. “So heavy!” she said, giving his forehead a big smooch. Kirby wiggled until she let him go free. With a sharp yap, the kind that meant “Let’s play!” he scampered around Ellie’s legs and wagged his tail so enthusiastically, his whole butt wagged too.
“We’ll visit the park tomorrow,” she said. “With a Frisbee. No googly-eyed skulls. Never again. I promise, you sweet little guy.”
By the time Dr. Allerton escaped the dog pile, the ghosts were indistinguishable from the living.
“You can go now, Doctor,” Ellie told him.
“Go where?” He stood very still, as if afraid that sudden movements would attract violence. However, the dogs paid him little attention. Satisfied that Ellie was safe, they dispersed. Some jumped through the broken ballroom windows. Others, unconcerned with finesse, trotted straight through the wall.
“Dunno,” she said, shrugging. “Pick a direction and start walking.”
Dr. Allerton sidestepped to the nearest window, never turning his back toward Ellie. He stood against the wall and peeked outside. “You moved my house!” Dr. Allerton cried. “How?” He actually sounded betrayed, as if Ellie had broken a promise to respect Willowbee’s spatial autonomy.
“It’s a secret,” she said. “Much stronger than your trick. What do you see?” Ellie dared not approach the walls.
“Mesquite trees,” he said. “That’s all. It’s the middle of nowhere.”
“Great. Goodbye.” Ellie meditated on home, ready to return, but Dr. Allerton’s blabbing broke her concentration.
“Who’s that? You there! Hello?” He leaned outside, his brow furrowed, and then leapt away from the window. “God! Oh, God, no! Ellie, don’t leave me here! Please!”
She put her fingers in her ears and tried to ignore him. Home. Think of home. Think of her mother, her father, and her cheerleader. The toxic river behind her house. The high school she almost missed. The movie theater and summer blockbusters with …
“I’ll cover your college tuition,” Allerton said. “That’s a blood oath.”
… popcorn that cost more than the movie tickets, and …
“They’re between the trees! They’re everywhere! Listen to me!” Allerton leapt toward Ellie and tried to grab her by the elbow, but Kirby lunged between them, his teeth bared.
“They’re coming into my home,” Allerton said, his hands up and then clasped penitently. So it was possible for the man to look regretful. “Don’t let them. Please.”
Faces peered through the window. They looked like they belonged to people. Ellie suspected otherwise, however. Their jaws were tense with fury. Their eyes were wide with delight. The emissary of vengeance had asked Ellie if he and other emissaries had a purpose. She still could not answer his question.
“Do you know them?” she asked, stepping back, moving to the far end of the ballroom because the other side was filling with angry people. “Are they your victims, Doctor?”
“Am I yours?” he spat back.
“You tried to kill me.”
“What do you want?”
“You tried to kill my friends and family.”
“What do you want?”
“You killed …”
“Be merciful. Help me.”
The emissaries had stopped crawling through the windows and walking through the walls. Slowly but deliberately, they approached. Their steps resembled a terrible march.
“Trevor tried to help you once,” she said. Dr. Allerton’s victims w
ere so plentiful, they couldn’t even fit in the ballroom. “This,” Ellie said, her heart breaking, “is me showing mercy to the people who will live now that you’re gone.”
In Dr. Allerton’s stunned silence, Ellie put her hand on Kirby’s head and thought of home.
The emissaries charged.
Dr. Allerton charged too.
He collided with Ellie. She fell on her back, and when Dr. Allerton tried to wrap his hands around her neck, she kicked him in the stomach so hard he wheezed. As Ellie scrambled away, she felt a sharp tug on the back of her head; he’d grabbed her by the braid.
If she tried to return home now, Dr. Allerton would tag along like a tick. Or a leech.
If she didn’t return soon, the emissaries might kill them both.
Ellie grabbed Kirby by the scruff and drew Trevor’s Swiss Army knife. With a violent swipe of the two-inch blade, she chopped off her braid.
Home, she thought. Finally. Home.
Dr. Allerton grasped for her again, but before he could touch Ellie, Kirby broke free and attacked. Dog bit man, and then dog shook man, flinging Dr. Allerton side-to-side like a rag doll. As the underworld slipped away, Ellie called for Kirby. “Here, boy! Come!”
His ears perked up attentively.
“Leave the bad man!” she urged. “Come!”
Kirby turned and looked at her with his bright, dark eyes. Then, panting happily, he began to run.
“Good boy!” she praised. Just one more leap, and they’d be together. The world seemed to shimmer, as if little more than a reflection in a pool of water. Ellie reached for her dog, expecting to feel his soft head beneath her fingers.
Instead, she grasped her mother’s hand.
“Elatsoe!” Vivian said. “My baby.”
Ellie felt herself squeezed in a vise-tight hug as she looked around her. They and other party survivors sat outside the Allerton mansion. Above; no sign of Allerton or the emissaries. Ellie did not see anyone she recognized from Willowbee either. Perhaps, adrift without their leader, they all fled. “The doctor?” Ellie asked. “Is he … did I …”
“That jackass disappeared. There’s no telling where he went.”
“I know exactly where he went, Mom,” Ellie said. “Where’s Jay?”
“I’m right here!” Jay peeked around Vivian. “But you left us!” He knelt, taking Ellie’s hand and patting it twice, as if confirming that she was real. At least Jay didn’t poke her in the forehead this time.
“It’s okay now.” She gave Jay a gentle hug, careful not to upset his bruises. “Is Ronnie safe?”
“She is,” he said. “Al, too. And the bridesmaids.”
“Can you stand?” Vivian asked. “We should drive to the hospital. Your father is a couple minutes away.”
“Dad’s here?”
“He took the first available flight when I told him about the bicentennial.”
“Everyone’s safe, then. Except …” Ellie called for Kirby. Waited.
Nothing.
It was normally so easy to wake him. Second nature, like typing on a keyboard or riding a bike. Why didn’t he respond? Those vengeful emissaries wouldn’t hurt a dog, right?
She mentally shouted his name, and when that didn’t work, she called it out loud, too. “Kirby, come! Here, boy! Kirby!”
He did not respond.
At last, Ellie wept.
THIRTY-FOUR
HOURS LATER, ELLIE and her parents left Willowbee for Lenore’s house in a rental car while Jay, Ronnie, Al, and the bridesmaid trio used Vivian’s van. Ellie was grateful to be in the less crowded vehicle. Grief felt like a stone in the pit of her stomach, and she wanted to let its weight drag her into the deep-sea depths of quiet suffering.
“He’ll come home,” Vivian said. “Dogs always find a way.”
Alone in the back seat, Ellie nodded unenthusiastically. Her mother might be right, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the death of heroic Six-Great. One of the world’s best adventurers stepped into the underworld and never escaped. What if the same thing happened to Kirby?
Listlessly, Ellie watched the sun rise through a streaky window. She, her parents, and her friends had spent all night dealing with the Allerton fiasco fallout. The manor had been swarming with federal agents. She didn’t know how they’d reached Willowbee so fast, but at least they weren’t evil wizards like the local cops.
“In one mile,” the built-in GPS intoned, “turn right.”
Ellie jolted in her seat, startled by the deep robotic voice. It had been especially unsettling because the back-seat speakers were directly behind her head. For a moment, she thought some ghost had followed them from the manor.
Ellie’s father turned off the highway, taking a road that cut through the semi-wilderness outside Willowbee. It looked so familiar. The bridge, the ditch, the juniper and mesquite.
A cold realization: it was the road where Trevor died.
“Dad, what are you doing?” she asked.
“Huh? What? Are you okay?”
“Why are we here?”
“It’s the fastest way home, I guess. If you trust robots.”
Of course he didn’t understand. Ellie’s father had been hundreds of miles away when she and Jay discovered the real crash site. Plus, the wilderness had started concealing most of the damage. Pale leaves sprouted from the half-crushed bushes, and fresh weeds carpeted earth that had been stripped of vegetation by rubber wheels.
How long would it take for the earth to heal? When would the sap on the metal-scarred tree harden into amber? It seemed odd that an act so violent and cruel could leave gemstones in its wake.
A minute after they passed the crash site, a woman dressed in jeans and a worn gray T-shirt stepped from the nearby tree line and stuck out her thumb. Her brown hair was restrained in a fluffy ponytail, and she carried a paper bag emblazoned with a waffle logo.
“Should I stop?” Pat asked.
“No stopping,” Vivian said. “She may be a cultist.”
As the car passed, the hitchhiker shouted something that sounded like “Hey, wait! Please?” Reflexively, Ellie turned to look out the back window. “Dad!” she shouted. “Stop!”
He slammed on the brakes. “What?” he asked. “Is there a squirrel in the road?”
“No. Look.”
The hitchhiking woman was gone. Or, more specifically, her human form was gone. In the woman’s place stood a coyote. The takeout bag from the waffle place dangled from her toothy mouth.
“Is that a coyote person?” Ellie asked. “I’ve never seen one before. Reverse, or something. We have to give her a ride!” The animal people had been in hiding for so long, it was beyond lucky to meet one. A blessing, really.
“Well,” Pat said, “I’m obliged to help all critters in need. It’s the Hippocratic oath of veterinarians.”
“She can sit in the back with Ellie,” Vivian said. She sounded less than enthusiastic, but it had been a long twenty-four hours.
Ellie rolled down her window and waved. In response, the coyote trotted up to the car, and with a mirage-like shimmer, she was in human form again: a weathered-looking woman of indiscriminate age with a mane of pale brown hair barely restrained by her hair tie, fine laugh lines around her eyes, and a hopeful smile. “Give me a ride?” she asked.
“Where to?” Pat asked.
“Anywhere,” the coyote said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Huh! Then why do you want a ride, Auntie?” Vivian asked.
“Because I feel like it.” She looked up, and her human-shaped nostrils flared and wrinkled as she scented the air. “Something changed last night. It’s safer.”
“Get in,” Ellie said. “We’re going anywhere.”
She opened the door and scooted over. With a thankful nod, the coyote woman climbed inside and placed her takeout bag on the narrow middle seat between them. The bag reeked of breakfast sausages. The savory aroma—grease and spices—quickly overpowered the bottled new car smell, a definite improvement.
>
For a moment.
Cheap sausages reminded Ellie of Kirby. When he was alive, he’d sit beside the dining room table every morning and beg for scraps of bacon and eggs. As the world became blurry through a haze of tears, Ellie thought she saw the coyote transform into a wiry canine. She wiped away her tears and realized that it hadn’t been an illusion; the coyote had dropped the human facade. She was about the size of a medium dog, but lankier and scruffier than most. Perhaps mistaking Ellie’s astonished stare for hunger, the coyote nudged the bag with her paw and said, You can have one.
In the way of animal people, she did not speak with her mouth, instead using a language that all living things could understand. It blossomed in Ellie’s head like a dream, a series of thoughts she did not consciously control.
“No, thank you,” Ellie said. “I filled up on doughnut earlier.”
Why are you sad, then?
“My friend is gone.”
Gone where?
“Below,” Ellie said.
Oh. Sure, sure. Many of my friends have gone there, too. The coyote lowered her yellow eyes and sighed. It was a distinctly canine sigh, a too-quick whuff of air through her black nose. More there than here. Have we met before? I meet so many people. It’s hard to remember every face. Sometimes, I see a stranger that makes me feel something. So I think: maybe this is not really a stranger.
“What do you feel when you look at my face?” Ellie asked.
Friendship. Also worry.
“How old are you?” Ellie asked. She frowned. “Is that rude? If it is, I’m sorry.”
Not rude. The coyote tilted her head. Why would it be? Older than you. By a lot. I don’t count the years.
“Maybe you knew my six-great-grandmother. There’s also my five-great-grandmother, my four-great-grandmother, my three-great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my grandmother. They’ve all lived the kind of life that makes people worry. Especially friends.”
Huuuuhm, the coyote said. Maybe. Let me mull it over. She closed her eyes, and her ears swiveled on her head, as if searching for radio signals. A minute passed.
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