“Devon? Kelly?” I whispered and was relieved when neither of them answered. If only Harken were here, I thought, then, WTF? Michael Conning had raised his daughters to take care of themselves, not wait for some guy to do it. So I grabbed the shower curtain and threw it aside.
“Hell’s bells,” I whispered.
The tub was full of dolls. All of them paper. All of them with the heads cut off. We found a girl who was not there. A doll of paper she became. I dug deep, looking for my sister. When my hands hit bottom, I had found nothing but paper cuts.
Whoosh! A flash of movement in the living room. “Come back!” I called and left the bathroom, rushing toward it, almost reaching the entryway, when the door swung shut.
“Will she? Will she?” came a high-pitched voice. “Will she be hanging from the hanging tree?”
Oh god. My heart hammered in my chest, and I jumped into the front closet, breathing so hard, it sounded like an iron lung. The closet was deeper than I expected and black as pitch, except for the slit of incandescent light under the door.
There came a scuttling noise from the entryway, then something blocked my sliver of light. I squatted and backed away, bumping into winter coats behind me, until something meaty and cold touched my face.
I reached up. My fingers traced a set of knuckles, then touched the sticky stump of a severed thumb.
“Oh hell,” I said as my boots slipped. My hands checked my fall, and then I felt something tacky, like honey or syrup or—
Drying blood.
“Oh bloody hell,” I whispered.
I looked up at a face hidden by shadows, but I already knew who it was.
Miss Haverhill hung from the ceiling. Her throat had been ripped out.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
“HARKEN!” I yelled, even though he was gone and even though it was a waste of breath. I kicked the closet open and fled the apartment. “She’s dead! Miss Haverhill’s been . . . been . . .”
“Murdered?” A septic voice drifted down the hallway. It slinked from the ornate heating vent, a creeping murk that scraped its snout along the peeling planks of the hardwood floor, licked my bare ankles, curled around my shoulders, and yipped softly in my ear, “Murdered most foul.”
“K-Kelly?”
I managed to step away from the voice, but before I could take another step, the front doors flew open, and the corridor was filled with screaming birds beating their wings and attacking with jagged claws.
“No!” I kicked and screamed. “Let me go!”
Bounding through the cacophony on all fours, Kelly made a sudden leap and hammered my knees with her shoulder. When I went down, she clamped my hair with taloned nails and dragged me through the frenzied flock.
“I’ve come to fetch the mistress’s egg.” Kelly gave my hair a wicked twist. “Give it to me, and your sister will know a quick death.”
Death? “She sent you for it? Harken said Malleus would trade Devon for the egg.”
“I came for it.” Her face was no longer human, nor was she. “The Shadowless does not bargain with lesser norns.”
“But I’m not—”
“Liar!” Kelly dragged me back into the apartment.
I grabbed the doorframe and wrenched my hair from her grasp. I had already lost my father. If anything happened to Devon, I’d lose her and Ma, too.
“Let go!” I kicked her knee, and with a pop of ruptured ligature, her hold broke. I turned for the back stairwell, then realized: Kelly was my best chance of finding Devon. “Come get me,” I said and crooked a finger, “if you want that egg.”
Kelly shrieked, and I leaped up the stairs to the next landing. The sound of footsteps rose behind me, along with the swish of cloth and the stench of sewage. Where had Harken gone? Together the two of us could take Kelly out. Without him my only hope was to outrun her, then double back and try to jump her. Maybe lock her in a closet till Harken came back.
“Run, run as fast as you can,” Kelly called. “Your Life Plan stops when you are dead.”
Where was Siobhan when I needed a smartass retort? My nerves were firing, and I could feel my pulse sparking in my fingertips as I reached the third-floor landing and looked back. Kelly was taking the stairs on all fours.
She looked up at me and licked her lips.
“Oh shit!”
I dived into my apartment. In a swirl of dead leaves smell and dank air, Kelly followed me. Before I could shut her out, she stuck her arm inside. The door slammed on her. Bones cracked, and Kelly’s forearm flopped at a ninety-degree angle.
“Ouch,” she said, then laughed. “That’s going to leave a mark.”
I laughed, too, even though I was horrified.
“Give me the egg,” she howled. “Or I’ll take off your head!”
“You can’t have my head!” I blurted out. “I’m still using it!” Come on, Willow Jane. Think! I pushed the door open so I could slam Kelly again, then saw my only hope. On the wall beside the opposite apartment was a fire extinguisher. Below that, in large letters was the warning “Break Glass in Case of Emergency.”
If this wasn’t an emergency, nothing was.
I hip-checked Kelly to the floor. I smashed the glass panel and yanked the extinguisher from the broken shards. My finger popped the protective plastic ring, and my hands squeezed the operating levers closed. I swung around, and carbon dioxide burst from the nozzle as Kelly appeared behind me.
A thick paste of yellow dust covered her face like a death mask. For a moment she froze, and I thought I had won. Then her black-ink eyes blinked open to reveal the liquid orbs beneath. Her mouth opened, and a long tongue flickered out, glistening red.
“Nice shot.” She licked her lips. “What else you got?”
“This!”
I swung the extinguisher at her temple. Steel rang, bone crunched, and she staggered backward, while I slipped past her.
But not fast enough.
Kelly clawed at my clothes and pulled me to the floor. She dragged herself onto my belly, pinning me down. I gasped for air—my chest caved in, wheezing like dying prey.
Kelly grabbed my face and sank her tattered claws into my skin. “May I have this dance?”
“I wish . . .” Do it, Willow Jane! I bit my thumb and tried to draw out the thread the way Harken had shown me. The filament slid between my teeth, and before I could seize it, Kelly jerked my hand away. “I wish you’d let me go!”
“If wishes were horses,” Kelly hissed, “we’d be eating your guts for dinner.”
“There’s a thought,” Siobhan said and caved in Kelly’s temple with the extinguisher.
Kelly collapsed atop me, leaking blood on my cheek.
Siobhan rolled her off and pulled me to my unsteady feet. “Holy batshit sandwich!” she said. “I think I killed her.”
“No,” I said and bit my thumb. “She was already dead.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
A few minutes after he left the Conning girl in a trance, Harken entered the T station at Dot Ave and Southampton Street. He followed the crowd of commuters into the entrance and slipped beside a young mother as she pushed her infant through the gate. The mother and the daughter went left, and Harken turned right, thinking of the Uncanny and gossamer and the powerful electric shock when the girl had touched the torc and wondering why it hadn’t killed her and finding himself very . . . pleased . . . that it hadn’t. What was he feeling? When did he start feeling at all?
No, he had no feelings. It was just the girl’s power that electrified him, nothing more. And how powerful was she? As strong as Malleus had once been? If the blood of a callow Uncanny child would have made Malleus strong enough to usurp the Three Sisters, how strong would Willow Jane’s blood make her?
No, not Willow Jane. Just Conning. Just another in a long line of foolish, small-minded lesser norns.
Except there was nothing lesser about Willow Jane. He could no longer deny it or the foolishness of wanting to be rid of her. Be rid of her, he thought, scoffing
at himself. He couldn’t even use the correct word for it.
Harken moved to the end of the platform and leaned against the wall. The train roared past him, blowing wind across the platform. He dropped to the tracks, avoiding the electric current coursing through the third rail, and walked into the murk. The ground between the rails was littered with paper bags, empty cups, and smoked cigarettes. Harken was surprised. Was everything so easily discarded now?
Up ahead the tunnel split in two. The scent coming from the left was pungent and strong, and he knew that he was getting closer. He grabbed a piece of rebar and took a few practice swings. He had gone into battle with worse weapons, all for Malleus and her insatiable lust for power.
Harken followed the path of the tracks for a half mile. The rank stink grew stronger with each step, until he heard a squeal to the left. He heard a second one, followed by another, and he knew he had found his former mistress.
Illuminated by a shaft of light, Malleus held a plump rat to her mouth. Its long pink tail whipped about, and it attacked Malleus’s fingers with sharp teeth. All of the rat’s effort was wasted. There was no flesh left on Malleus’s bones to gnaw.
“Having a snack?” he asked.
Malleus pulled back her desiccated lips and snapped her jaws shut. One last squeal, and the rat stopped squirming. She spat out the head and squeezed the body so that blood dripped into her mouth. A soft gurgle came from her throat, a moan of ecstasy. Then she tossed the carcass onto a pile of fresh bodies.
On the ground beside her, wrapped in a blanket, Devon lay unconscious. Her face was pale, as if all the blood had drained from her body, too. Harken held the rebar close, wrapping his fingers around the dirty cold metal.
“We knew you were here, familiar,” she said. “We could smell you.”
“I can smell you, too,” he replied. “The stench of your rotting flesh. The stink of a thousand senseless deaths. Or perhaps it’s just your breath.”
Malleus slunk toward him, disjointed, disarticulated, like a wounded spider trying to walk on two legs. “No tender greeting for a long-lost friend?”
“You were my captor, not my friend,” he hissed. “You stole me from my crib and left a changeling in my place.” He extended the rebar and felt her ribs hit the tip. “One more step, and I’ll bash whatever shriveled brains you have left.”
“Have you come to rescue the poor waif as you saved her forebear so long ago?”
The insult stung, but his face was a hard mask. “I’m here to broker a trade.”
“We make no trade—” Malleus ripped the rebar from his hands and tossed it aside. It clattered on the rails, throwing sparks, the sound echoing in the darkness. “—with traitors.”
“I had hoped you might,” he said, watching her closely, “let bygones be bygones.”
“We are not the . . . forgiving . . . kind.”
“It’s not forgiveness I want,” he said, edging closer to Devon. How many children would he allow Malleus to take? He bowed his head to hide his expression and knew what he had to say. “It’s freedom. Only you can give it to me now.”
“Your fate was sealed when you nailed that damned casket shut.”
“Then they yoked me to a clan of lesser norns. Three hundred years of servitude is enough.”
“Fate is fate.”
“You can change fate. For a price.”
“Do you know the price, familiar? Are you willing to pay it?”
Harken pointed to Devon. “Give her back to her family, and they will give you the egg.”
“Our servant is even now striking that bargain,” Malleus said and pursed her lipless mouth. “What need do we have from you?”
“What only I can give,” he said and reflexively touched the torc at his throat. “The blood of the Uncanny.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
WHEN I got back to the apartment, I was shaking. Whatever bravery I felt fighting Kelly had seeped from my body, leaving me feeble with weariness. My next-to-best friend had just tried to kill me, and my real best friend had barely saved me. Now Kelly lay on the floor of the empty apartment next door, one of Ma’s old sheets covering her.
“Jeezum!” Siobhan said when we went inside and locked the door. “What shitstorm landed here?”
My heart fell and soared at the same time. The glimpse had erased the fight from Siobhan’s memory, but it was too short to hide the carnage Malleus had left behind. What was I going to tell Siobhan? How could I begin to explain the wreckage in the living room? The blood smearing my palms? Our dead friend?
“Hello!” I heard her say in her telephone voice. “I’m at my friend’s house. Some assholes have busted in here and tore the place up. It’s totally wrecked!”
“Put the phone down,” I said, coming up behind her. She was listening to the operator and didn’t hear me, so I took it away and pressed the End button. “No cops.”
Siobhan looked at me, at the cuts and bruises on my arms and the streaks of mud and blood in my hair. “Oh my god, Willow. Your face.”
“What?” I said, then gazed past her and saw myself in the hall mirror.
My eyes were so sunken, they looked bruised, and my face was pale as a corpse. My shoulders shuddered, and with a loud whoop, I started to cry, great sobbing sobs. Siobhan wrapped her arms around me and pulled my head to her chest. I kept crying, feeling like a statue of cracked porcelain, needing only one more tremor to shatter into a thousand pieces.
“Willow Jane?” she said after a moment. “Where’s Devon?”
“She’s gone,” I said into the soaked cloth of her hoodie. “The girls in the shadows took her away.”
“The girls in the what did what?” Siobhan dropped her arms and stepped back. “Willie, what the hell’s going on? Did something happen to your sister?”
The front door swung open. From the darkness of the hallway, Harken entered. He was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his eyes. When he looked up, his eyes glinted in the lamplight, and his face had just a second to register before Siobhan knocked him out cold.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
“I don’t have time for more questions,” I told two Boston detectives. “I’ve got calculus homework and an essay to write.”
“You’re worried about homework,” one of them barked at me, “at a time like this?”
“Willow Jane’s wicked stressed,” Siobhan told them. “Cut my girl some slack.”
In the hour since Siobhan had knocked Harken out cold, the cops had arrived—thanks to Siobhan’s first 911 call. I’d tried to do another glimpse, but the filament wouldn’t come out, and then it was too late. Harken had been arrested, the SVU had arrived, and the BPD had escorted Ma home from the theater. Other than a couple of long hugs and whispers, she and I’d barely had the chance to speak. The detectives swarmed us, questioning me in the living room and Ma in Devon’s. Our home had been invaded by blue Windbreakers, yellow caution tape, and silver fingerprint dust, the modern criminal version of a witch hunt.
The cops exchanged a look and told me to take a minute to compose myself. I made a production of opening the bay window and leaning outside. A gurney with Miss Haverhill’s body slid into the mouth of an ambulance.
Siobhan joined me, and we watched them tuck my landlord away, cleanly and efficiently.
“Miss Haverhill was mean, but I should be sad for her, right?” I whispered. “But all I care about is Devon and Ma. Does that make me a bad person?”
“It’s shock. They say we’ll feel nothing, and then boom! it’ll hit us all at once. That’s what the school counselor told me when your dad . . . y’know.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t mention Kelly, which made me feel a hard twist of guilt, even if she had tried to kill me.
An EMT shut the doors and gave the thumbs-up to the driver. The ambulance rolled past a woman with a brown pageboy haircut. She was dressed in blue slacks that matched a SVU Windbreaker. She wove through the crowd of cops, slurping coffee.
I opened the wi
ndow and leaned out, the way Ma did when she spied on the neighbors.
“O’Connell, what’s the situation?” the woman asked an officer, loud enough that I could hear. Why were cops always so loud?
“Hey, Bishop,” O’Connell said. “Victim died of multiple stab wounds. Medical examiner says that both thumbs were lopped off with a sharp blade of some sort. They won’t know what kind until they’ve run the body through the lab.”
“Sharp blade, huh?” Bishop said. “What about the kidnap victim?”
The officer tapped his ink pen on the clipboard. “Name is Devon Renee Conning, age seven. Abducted from the residence. Command put a BOLO out, along with an Amber Alert.”
She gave her empty cup to him. “The mother’s here?”
The officer pointed right to the bay window. “Upstairs. Third floor. She’s with the sister, Willow Jane Conning, our only witness.”
“She talking?”
The officer shook his head. “When the first unit arrived, she was bawling like nobody’s business. We made her calm down, but nobody’s gotten squat from her since.”
“What about our suspect?” Bishop looked at the squad car where Harken sat in the back seat. “BPD likes him for the murder?”
“Yeah,” the officer said. “But he denies taking the kid.”
When Bishop reached our apartment, I was sitting between Siobhan and Ma on the couch. Ma had been patient with the detectives questioning her, alternating between answering the same question over and over and casting furtive glances at me. The sand in the hourglass of patience had just about run out, though. It was two minutes after nine, and my temper was growing as short as my mother’s.
“I’m done talking,” Ma told the detectives, dabbing her eyes with a dishrag. “Go find my daughter.”
Uncanny Page 19
