“Ma,” I said and sniffed. “They’re beautiful.”
“You like them? The gift’s okay?”
I set the box on the table and took her hands in mine. “Best birthday present ever.”
“You’re just saying that. What teenage girl wants old thimbles?”
“Hush. It’s perfect.”
I threw my arms around her. I could feel her spine and the sharp edge of her shoulder blade. Ma needed a cookie. For a second or two, she let the hug linger, then she gave my back two quick thumps, the signal that the display of affection had gone too long.
“Here,” she said after extricating herself, “let’s put them in the curio. No use hiding your treasure.”
She swung the cabinet door open and set the thimbles on the shelf next to the egg box. She paused and tilted her head, considering the placement of the box. She reached for it, and I gasped.
“What?” she said.
“The dust!” I said, snatching a hand towel from the rack. “Look at how much built up in just a week.”
With practiced ease, I hip checked Ma and pushed the egg box aside. I went after the dusty shelf like a sparrow chasing a worm. I kept Ma away by keeping my hip between her and the cabinet, then moved on to the next shelves when she gave up and returned to the kitchen.
I turned the boxes just so, then closed the cabinet. “Ta-da,” I said, shaking out the hand towel. “Perfect, right? What do you think?”
“I think you ate too much cake.” She reached for the old cookie tin where she hid the Christmas fund and pulled out a yellowed envelope. “From your father. He left it with me, in case . . .”
Her hands were shaking when I took the letter from her. Scrawled on the front in faded black ink, in my dad’s own hand, were the words To My Darling Daughter on the Occasion of Her Sixteenth Birthday. My hands started shaking, too, and I ran a fingernail under the flap, breaking the crumbling glue, but Ma stopped me.
“He meant for you to open it alone,” she said, her voice cracking. She tucked it into my pocket. “Those were his very words, alone, and you know how Mike was about words. So after dinner, okay?”
“Words are magic,” he always said. “How long ago,” I said and cleared a lump from my thumb, “did he write this?”
“Ten years ago, when you turned six.” Ma pressed a finger under her nose to stop her tears. “It’s almost like—like—”
Like he knew he was going to die.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MA really meant the alone thing, but the instant I tried to sneak off to my room to read, there was a sharp knock at the door.
“We don’t want any!” Devon yelled.
Another knock.
“Who can that be?” Ma looked down her nose. “It’s dinnertime.”
“I’ll get it.” I put the note in my pocket, expecting it to be Siobhan, who liked to drop by when her parents were going at it, but I saw the landlady’s nose in the peephole. Her nose meant trouble.
“Sorry to keep you,” I said after slipping into the hallway. “We’re making dinner.”
Miss Haverhill, as she insisted we call her, had inherited the house from her great-aunt when I was thirteen. She was tall with long, wavy tresses and a handsome face. Her skin was Sleeping Beauty pale and thin, like an alabaster sculpture, and the air that wafted from her clothes carried the odors of licorice and anise.
“Sorry to wreck your dinner,” Miss Haverhill said, but her tone indicated she wasn’t. “The rent’s due.”
When Haverhill’s great-aunt owned the house, she would let the rent slide, knowing that Dad would catch up when some money came in. She died, and her niece took over, and she laid down the law.
“Already?” I nervously peeled the paint on the door casing. “Ma doesn’t get paid till next week.”
“Next week’s next week.” Miss Haverhill poked her nose at my face when I refused to meet her eye. “Rent is today. Let’s talk to your ma.”
She tried to rap on the door, but I blocked her. “I’ll get you the money. Promise.”
“The same way you got it last month?”
“You—” I said. Somehow she knew my worst secret. “You heard about that?”
“Word travels.”
“Louie told you?”
“A little bird did.” She grinned through crooked teeth. “Bring me that egg, and I’ll forget the rent. Next month’s, too. Just remember the needle that goes with it.”
The needle was the only thing I could give her. When I hocked the egg, I had pulled a long, thick iron needle from the egg and set it aside. “Louie said it was only worth a couple hundred at most.”
“The scumbag’s a pawnbroker,” she said. “Give me the egg, and I’ll not darken your door for two months straight. Three, if I don’t have to ask again.”
“Louie still has it.” A little voice told me she was scamming me. Free rent was tempting, but that egg meant more to Ma than the thimbles, and I still planned to get it out of hock. “I can’t just wave a magic wand and make him hand it over.”
“You’re a smart girl. Figure it out.” She sniffed the air, then recoiled as if I had smacked her nose. “Is that stench boiled cabbage?”
“Good old New England food. Green beans, cabbage, boiled potatoes, and fiddlehead ferns.”
“Ferns? Waste of a good houseplant.” She started down the steps, then paused. “It would be so sad if the widow Conning learned her own daughter had stolen her prized possession.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Double-cross me, and you’ll find out what I’m capable of.” She started to turn, then she reached for the letter poking out of my pocket. “What’s this? Cash?”
I smacked a hand over the envelope.
“Temper, temper.” She wagged a manicured finger in my face. “Don’t do something stupid and ruin your birthday.”
She cackled, actually cackled. A minute later, her apartment door banged closed.
Her demand was impossible. Louie would never just hand over a valuable. My father used to use his services for “unwanted items,” and the guy busted Dad’s chops on every deal. How did she think a sixteen-year-old reeking of desperation could pry the egg out of Louie’s sweaty hands? And why did she think I would turn it over to her for a couple months’ interest? Better yet, why was a plain glass egg so valuable, and why did Miss Haverhill suddenly want it so badly? I vowed right then that I would get the egg back, no matter what it cost.
“Who was that?” Ma asked when I came back inside. I stuffed my letter in my book bag. He meant for you to open it alone.
“Just Siobhan.” I hated lying, but when it came to paying the bills, telling little white lies came as easily as breathing. I kept telling myself it was for the best. “Needed help with math.”
“That’s nice of you,” Ma said.
“Um hmm.” I started clearing the table. “Hey Ma, want to read to Devon tonight?”
“I’ll do the dishes.” Ma gave my shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “It’s your birthday, and Devon likes your stories better than mine.”
“What about Dad’s letter?”
“Later. It’s bedtime reading for now. Want me to set aside some cabbage for your school lunch?”
My nose wrinkled. “Ew. Not if I ever want anyone to sit with me again.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“YOU’RE way old enough to read to yourself, you know,” I told Devon when I found her tucked in and ready for bed. With her dark hair spread over the white pillow, she looked more beautiful than cute. She had Ma’s fine features and Daddy’s wry grin. She was going to break some hearts when she got to high school.
“So?” she said. “Ever tried telling yourself a story?”
“Touché.” I opened the first page of Owl Moon and began to read.
“Not that one,” she said. “It makes me think about Daddy, and that makes me sad.”
“Yeah,” I said and thought, Me, too. Nothing like a picture book about a father/daughter bonding experience
to make you realize how unbonded you feel. “How about The Monster at the End of This Book?”
“I am seven years old. I know the monster’s Grover.”
“Maybe, or maybe it ends differently this time.” I made a demonic-sounding laugh. “Maybe there’s a monster that eats the monster.”
“I wanna real story. A once upon a time, but scary.”
“Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a fairy princess who dressed only in pink.”
“No, a zombie princess!”
“A zombie princess who dressed only in pink—”
“Rags!”
“Who dressed in rags and loved with all her heart, the prince of—”
“Not a prince! A thief! With one hand!”
“Who loved a thief with one hand—”
“Tell it in your scary voice. Bwahaha!”
“You’re one weird little chick, you know that?”
“Hell’s yeah I am!”
“Shh! Don’t let Ma hear that mouth.”
“Do the laugh!”
“Bwahaha!”
I laughed deeply, summoning the sound from my gut. It shook my whole chest and gave me a side stitch worse than wind sprints, but if it made Devon happy, it was worth it.
“Once upon a time,” I said, “in a far, far away city called Toronto, a zombie princess stalked the land, dressed in a soiled wedding gown, seeking the prince who had left her jilted at the altar. The prince had many times professed his undying affection, only to turn his wandering eye to another, more wealthy duchess from the foreign land of Quebec. Heartbroken and inconsolable, the princess wasted away in the royal tower, refusing to eat or drink or bathe.”
“Eww.” Devon held her nose. “Stinky.”
“Until like a whisper on the wind, the princess passed beyond the veil. But with her last, dying breath, she cursed the fickle prince and swore that she would one day crawl forth from her grave to bring her vengeful wrath down upon the prince and destroy all that his evil machinations had brought him.”
“What’s a machination?”
“It’s an evil scheme,” Ma said from the doorway. The light in the hallway behind her formed a halo around her tangly mass of red curls. “Willow Jane, you’re going to give your sister bad dreams.”
“No, she won’t! Scary stories help me sleep. They give me something else to dream about.”
Ma and I traded a look. Since the shooting, Devon’s nightmares had become constant. To fight against them, she developed this bedtime ritual. She’d lock every door three times and check every window, even though most of them were painted shut. Then she would surround herself in bed with paper dolls and sing the same song over and over until she fell asleep. Her recent favorite had been “Will and Willow sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-ing.”
I inclined my head in a question to Ma. She sighed and nodded.
“Just one story,” Ma said. “There’s only so many zombies a mother can take.”
Devon clapped and began forming the paper dolls in a circle around her. I remembered when I was little and Ma would read me a story and Daddy would tell one of his own. I wished I could be little again, cuddled under cool sheets and warm blankets, when the only monsters were imaginary and confined themselves to the space under my bed.
“Where was I?” I asked.
“Machinations. Wicked evil ones.”
“Right. The princess is undead, and her love for the prince is undying. Vengeful but undying.”
“Where’s the thief?” Devon said. “I want a thief.”
“Hold your water,” I said. “Everything bad can’t happen at once.”
I started with another story but realized after a moment that Devon wasn’t listening. Her head was tilted at an odd angle, as if she were hearing something in the distance. Her eyes glazed over.
“You okay?” I asked.
She rotated her head slowly back to me, lifted a hand to point at the heating grate, and rasped in a low, gruff voice, “That’s where the dead girl hides when you’re asleep.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KELLY exited the T at the Park Street station with two sixers, which she’d procured by trading her dad’s cigarettes and twenty bucks to a package store cashier on Dot Ave. She had skipped curfew by telling her mother that she and Siobhan were cramming for a math test. Her mom had been against it until Kelly explained that Siobhan was flunking math and really needed the tutoring but was too proud to ask. Mom said it was kind to help, but she really liked the idea that her daughter was superior to her friends. Kelly sucked at tutoring, but she knew how to play on her mom’s need to appear compassionate.
When she got to the Granary cemetery, she found Will Patrick and Flanagan in the middle of the grounds, leaning on Franklin’s obelisk and sharing a smoke. They were hard to pick out at first—the spotlights on the hotel across the street cast long, thick shadows. Her eyes had trouble adjusting to the difference between light and dark.
“You guys were freaking invisible,” she said, pulling down her hoodie and peering at them. She swung her backpack off. “Who’s thirsty?”
“I’m parched,” Will Patrick said. “Couldn’t refuse my invitation, huh?”
Truth was, no, she couldn’t. Will Patrick was too damn sexy cute to resist, even if he had just broken up with her old friend—emphasis on the old. Willow Jane was cool, though. She’d understand, and if she didn’t, c’est la guerre.
Flanagan yanked a beer from her backpack, twisted the cap, and got a face full of foam. He held the bottle at arm’s length, then sucked half of it down. “Ah,” he said, “that’s the stuff.”
Kelly clicked her tongue. “Sixteen years old, and you’re already looking at liver damage.”
“Eighteen years old.” Flanagan nodded the bottle at her. “And you can kiss my ass.”
“You’ve got a nasty mouth.” Kelly spat into her palm and rubbed his face with it. “Somebody needs to scrub it clean.”
He didn’t try to stop her. “Knew you wanted to swap spit with me.”
“Ew,” she said. “Not on your life!”
“Knock it off, bro.” Will Patrick pulled a crowbar from his duffel. “Kells, follow me to the tomb.”
“It’s really a grave?” Kelly asked. “I thought you were just screwing with me.”
Will Patrick walked to the far left section of the cemetery, then jumped straight into a black hole. “Not just a grave, a tomb.”
“Holy shit!” Kelly switched on a yellow utility flashlight. “It really is a tomb! How’d you guys find it?”
Will Patrick held up his arms to catch her. “Would m’lady care for a hand?”
She wasn’t so sure about jumping into a dark tomb, but there were worse things than a cute guy waiting with open arms. “Which way now?”
“Down, obviously,” Will Patrick said and took her hand.
With Flanagan following, he led Kelly deeper into the ground. They turned left into a stone-walled room. Her flashlight fell on a casket. It was a plain rectangle, more like a sarcophagus, with a heavy lid covered in symbols and pictures.
“Jeezum,” Kelly said, bumping her head on the low ceiling. “That’s a real casket.”
“With a real dead person inside.” Will Patrick flashed an empty smile, and it made her blood run cold. He held up a crowbar. “Want to see her?”
“Her?” Kelly said. “How do you know it’s a her?”
“Who cares? Step aside, ladies.” Flanagan yanked the crowbar from Will Patrick’s hands and attacked the lid, chipping off chunks of stone. “We ain’t got all night.”
“Stop defiling the casket,” Will Patrick said, his voice hollow. “You’ll pay hell for that.”
“As long as the devil takes Visa.” Flanagan laughed. “I’m good.”
“Wait.” Kelly said. Then something caught her eye. “Hey, there’s words on the lid.” She held the flashlight up and began reading. “‘You cannot hear the Shadowless when her breath is in your ear. You cannot see the Shadowless.’ There
’s more, but I can’t make it out.”
“Who gives a rat’s ass about some poem?” Flanagan said. “All I want is treasure.”
“It’s not a poem.” Kelly crossed herself three times and spat over her shoulder. “It’s a curse.”
“I’ve got more spit if you need it,” Flanagan said.
“Don’t mock me!” Kelly slapped his shoulder. “Just ‘cause you’re too damn stupid to be scared!”
“Calm the hell down,” Flanagan said, pushing her away. “It’s just a joke.”
“It’s . . . It’s not a joke. Will Patrick, tell your asshole friend the poem’s not a joke.”
Will Patrick stared at the casket lid. “The girl has been given leave to go,” he said in the same hollow voice.
“Yeah, if you’re so freaked out, go home,” Flanagan said. “We don’t want your ass to get cursed or anything.”
“Up yours, Flanagan. And yours, too, Will Patrick. Thanks so much for sticking up for me.” Kelly ducked and backed into the wall of the tomb. “Can one of you jerks give me a hand up?”
Flanagan glanced at Will Patrick, who stared straight ahead. “She came to see you, asswipe.” Then he rolled his eyes and gave Kelly a boost until she climbed out of the hole.
“Thanks,” she said, looking down at him.
“Whatever,” he said.
“Go ahead then, jerk. Open the casket and see what happens.”
“Like I said,” he said, turning his back on her, “whatever.”
“Been nice knowing you.” Without a backward glance, Kelly pulled her hoodie tight against her face, thinking that if she were to look back at the tomb, it would be the last thing she ever did.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TEN minutes after church bells struck midnight, I opened my bedroom door and peered down the hallway to make sure the coast was clear. Ma wasn’t a night owl by nature, but designing and making the costumes for the revival of The Crucible had kept her working late into the night.
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