She ran her finger along the caption under a color diagram of a cell, then looked up. “The point is to learn everything I can about my field.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Your field?”
“Pharmacology, they’re calling it now.” She closed the book and leaned back. “Scientific knowledge changes so fast that it’s hard to keep up, but Emma’s been really nice. She explains a lot of the horticulture. I’ve never actually grown things before and it’s nice to understand things like seed propagation. She’s been giving me lessons.”
I nodded, reflecting that in a place like the House of Mayhem, keeping houseplants was likely to be tricky.
“Emma,” my mom called from out in the hall. “Are you going to use all that peat moss, or should I put it away?”
At the sound of her voice, Janice got a strange, awkward look. She turned toward the door.
“Emma,” my mom said, coming into the family room, and then she stopped.
Janice stood up, offering her hand. “Hello, I’m—”
“Get out,” my mom said. “I know what you are. Get out of my house.”
“Please . . .” Janice trailed off, taking her hand back, picking at the inside of her elbow.
My mom stood with her chin up and her shoulders back, like if she looked away for even a second, that might be all the time Janice needed to do something terrible.
Emma came in behind her with an armful of books and then just stood there. Janice was already edging toward the door, looking sad but like this was about what she’d expected.
Emma watched her. Then she turned and stared at our mother. “What’s going on? What did you say to her?”
My mom breathed in like she was making herself taller. “Tell her to get out,” she said, and the look on her face was one I’d never seen. “Tell her she’s not wanted here.”
Emma raised her eyebrows and made her mouth very small. Her cheeks got pink, which was a sure sign she was about to say something regrettable. It was normal for her to get pissed at our dad, but she never yelled at our mom. I couldn’t figure out if she didn’t because it would be too easy or because something about our mom’s flat silences could be scary.
Finally, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, like she was trying to sound patient. “She’s helping me with botany class.”
It sounded almost convincing, but my mom wasn’t deterred for a second. “She’s unnatural.”
I dug my fingernails into my palms, while Janice just stood there.
Emma kept her temper for roughly three seconds. Then she threw down the stack of books. “So, you’re determined to hate her just because she’s not exactly like you? Does it matter that she’s nice or that ever since I met her, she hasn’t done anything but help?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. She’s the worst kind of creature.”
“You don’t even know her! They’re not automatically bad. What about Mackie?”
“Don’t you dare bring him into this. Mackie is fine. He grew up in a decent household, with decent principles. He’s like us.”
Emma stood over her scattered books and said, very quietly, “Well, maybe they’re like us too.”
My mom didn’t answer right away. When she smiled, it was hard and bitter. “Like us. Tell me, do any of our friends and neighbors have a fanatical devotion to a demon? Do they steal children? Do the parishioners at United Methodist kidnap babies and farm them like cattle and sacrifice them to a lost cause? Mackie is a sweet, normal boy, and they are monsters.”
All of us got very still. The dropped books shifted and slid over each other, coming to rest on the carpet. My mom looked like she wanted to cover her mouth with her hands, take it back before she went too far.
Suddenly, I was sure this was it. We were going to talk about all the nasty, screwed-up things in Gentry, like how nice, normal babies got switched out for freaks. Maybe even how I wasn’t really her son and a kid named Malcolm Doyle was dead because a bunch of people who lived underground got off on collecting blood.
We were going to get into the dirty stuff.
My mom took a deep breath and said with her hands clasped tight, “They always come back. It was just a matter of time. They watch and they wait, and then, when you let your guard down, they come in and take everything.”
“Stop calling her they. She’s a person!”
My mom just went on in the same deadly voice. “I knew they’d take my children if I gave them the chance. I did everything I could to prevent it, every trick and charm. I filled the house with bells and coins and embroidery scissors, and in the end, it didn’t matter. Someone took down the scissors, and they came in and got him anyway.”
She and Emma stood looking at each other. I pictured the house, full of her charms and tricks. How later, she must have had to throw all of it away just so I’d stop screaming in the crib.
Emma took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I took them—I took the scissors down and didn’t put them back—I did it. Is that what you want? Is that the big revelation you were waiting for? That I was four years old and a stupid little kid?”
The room felt too small for the four of us, even with me trying to make myself inconspicuous and Janice backing up against the bookcase. My hands were shaking and Emma looked furious.
I realized numbly that she did blame herself.
There were the simple reasons—because she took the scissors down, because she didn’t scream or call out when someone came in the window and took her brother. Because she didn’t even go for help after he was gone but stayed with me all night, sticking her hands through the bars. But those were the simple reasons. More than that, I was here because she’d spent years smiling and listening and protecting me. Because she loved me. I was everything because of her.
“Fine!” Emma yelled, and her voice spiked up, weird and shrill. “Fine, it’s my fault, okay?”
Our mom stood alone in the middle of the room, shoulders slumped, arms limp at her sides. “No,” she said. “It’s mine.”
Her tone was defiant, though, like when people really mean that it’s someone else’s fault.
Janice was still standing against the bookshelf, still touching the inside of her arm. When I cut my eyes toward the hall, she just ducked her head and slipped out. A few seconds later, I heard the front door open and then close, and we were alone with fifteen years of silence and the sad, patient ghost of Malcolm Doyle.
None of us said anything and the room seemed to buzz with a low charge that had nothing to do with the lights or the wiring.
Then Emma sighed and threw up her hands. She gave me a hopeless look and walked out. My mother stood alone in the middle of the room with her back to me and her hands pressed against her face.
“Mom?” I reached out and turned her by the shoulders. “Mom, don’t.”
“What have you been doing?” she said, and her voice was high, bordering on hysterical. “Have you gone underground? What in God’s name did you do?”
I jerked away. The panic in her voice was alarming and I couldn’t close my mouth.
“Sit down,” she said. “We need to talk.”
I sat on the edge of the sofa and when she sat across from me, she didn’t say anything for a long time. Against the wall, the upright clock ticked steadily on and on. I had a scary picture of the two of us, sitting across from each other for the rest of my life and never knowing what to say.
After a long time, she reached across the coffee table, taking me by the wrist.
I held still and waited.
She rubbed her thumb across the back of my hand. “When I met your father, I thought it would be my chance at forgetting. A fresh start, but I was so naive. They’re never really gone when there’s still a chance they could gain something.”
I closed my eyes, trying to think of something they’d want to gain—something I could give them. They had the whole House of Mayhem, full of laughing monsters and flooded tunnels. “I already gave them wha
t they wanted. It wasn’t even bad or dangerous. They just want to be loved.”
She laughed and it was an unpleasant sound, hard and bitter. “Love? Don’t you believe it. They’re looking for a warm body. They have a tax to pay, just like everyone at United Methodist tithes to the bank box each year and the same way everyone lines up in April to give money to the government. It’s like that, except their account only comes due every seven years and the coin of the realm happens to be blood.”
I nodded and didn’t think about Malcolm Doyle. I didn’t think about his blond hair or his true-blue eyes or his bad, bloody death. If I let myself picture it, I’d be dreaming about him for years.
My mom sat with her head bent, looking at her hands. “They guard the town and keep it safe and they make us lucky. It takes certain sacrifices to do that. And because they’re not completely immune to sentimentality, they prefer to use someone else’s children.”
“You, you mean?” But what I meant was Malcolm Doyle, Natalie Stewart, anyone who was stolen away so they could donate their blood.
“I was a special case. Not intended for general use.” Her eyes were vague and downcast, like I was supposed to see how ironic the whole thing was. “The Lady liked me. She called me precious and kept me like a pet and told me about all the offerings they’d made to her. Little kids who cried and screamed. How six hundred years ago, they used warriors who came to her offering their victories and defeats. How she would never let anything happen to me. She kept me for so long it was like being kept in a jar.”
“But if the Lady didn’t want you to go home, why didn’t she just stop you from leaving?”
“She would have. She would have kept me, but someone came and took me back. A strange creature—a monster— took me out of the hill one night and led me out through the park. Then she left me on my parents’ doorstep, the way you’d leave a lost dog.”
I stared at her, trying to understand the hurt in her voice. It made no sense. “But that should be a good thing, right? You went home.”
“You can’t,” she said. “Not really. They find ways to stop missing you after a while. They move on. And what do you do with a girl who can’t stand the smell of car exhaust? Who goes blind in the sunlight? Listen,” she said. “I know them. I know how they think, and it’s always in terms of what they can gain.”
“But what can they gain?”
She shrugged, loose and jerky. “I don’t know, but you can be sure it’s something. They’ll use you, manipulate you, and then they’ll throw you away when they don’t need you anymore.” She smiled suddenly, a scary, helpless smile. “I sat on a cushion at her feet and played with a clockwork bird. I sang little songs and she sang them back. You can’t go back to them. Not for any reason.”
I took a deep breath. “They told me if I didn’t help them, they’d hurt Emma. I can’t just sit around and let that happen.”
My mom raised herself up and leaned close. “Emma is almost twenty years old. She can look after herself. You are rare—maybe valuable—and they want something from you. When someone underground wants something, it’s never harmless. Do not go back.”
“What if they do something awful to her to punish me?”
“They’ll always punish you,” she said, “because they hate to lose. When they stole Malcolm, it was to punish me for leaving.”
“But you weren’t the one who decided to leave. You were just a kid—a victim.”
“But I did leave, and the Lady can’t forgive that because it’s all that matters.” She took her hands away from her face and looked up at me. “They’re just going to use you, Mackie. What will it take to make you see how dangerous they are?”
But when I tried to picture dangerous, there was just the look on Janice’s face, this mix of loss and confusion. Having Emma explain seed propagation wasn’t using, it was just sharing a common interest. It was what you did when you wanted to be friends.
“I’m better,” I said finally. “This is maybe the first time in my life I’ve ever felt okay, and it’s because of them.”
“Don’t you understand? They bought you. They found your price.”
But in the grand scheme of things, my price wasn’t unreasonable. They’d given me more than I’d ever hoped for, but the tipping point hadn’t been relief from pain or exhaustion or even the promise of being normal. Emma was a thought so big and clear suddenly that there was no room in my head for anything else. “I didn’t have a choice.”
My mom sat on the edge of the high-backed chair with her arms around herself. Her eyes were clear and hard. “Everything in life involves choice.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BEAUTY AND TRUTH
Emma and my mom were already gone by the time I went down for breakfast on Tuesday, and I ate cold cereal alone, standing over the sink.
I closed my eyes and tried to hear the roar of the crowd at the Starlight, taste what it was like to kiss Tate, feel her hand in mine. But there was just the conversation with my mom the day before, like a scrape I could test with my finger. Something about the rawness made me want to reach for it and just keep digging.
In the living room, my dad stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the empty street.
I sat down on the floor and leaned against the couch. The sound of the rain was giving me a dull, hazy feeling, like I might be sleeping but wasn’t sure.
I leaned against the couch, thinking how hard it was to ever communicate with anyone. How I couldn’t ever figure out how to say all the things I meant. Because it was more complicated. More complicated than kissing Tate and more complicated than the terrible secret I knew about her sister. It was the claustrophobic idea of someone getting that close, of knowing that much about you. How, for her, I’d have to turn into something real.
I kept thinking about her mouth. How she’d slid her hands under my shirt. How I was so excellent at picking things that weren’t right that it was hard to know if anything was what I should actually want.
I couldn’t help thinking that maybe making out by the churchyard had been some kind of reward, a prize for believing her or a bribe so I’d tell the rest of what I knew. That Natalie was still alive. But I’d only just discovered that interesting fact myself, and there was no way she could have known, so the thing in the grass had to have been real. It had to mean that she’d wanted to kiss me. At least a little?
“You’re in a brown study this morning,” my dad said, turning from the window.
I shrugged and didn’t correct him. What I was was completely out of my depth.
I left for school earlier than usual, trudging along Orchard and cutting across the footbridge. It was foggy down in the ravine and mist hung around my feet as I crossed the bridge, thinking about my mom’s warning, which was in complete agreement with what the Morrigan had said about keeping out of the Lady’s way.
I crossed Welsh Street with my hands in my pockets. The neighborhood was deserted and I was starting to feel lost again, the same way I did at night sometimes, like maybe I didn’t exist, when I saw someone ahead of me. Someone in a gray jacket, with short, messy hair, and I hurried to catch up.
“Tate, hey.”
She looked over her shoulder and made a face that wasn’t even close to a smile. Waved one hand, dropped it again.
I came up next to her. “How are things?”
She shrugged and didn’t answer.
I turned so I was in front of her, walking backward. “Did you do that worksheet for English?”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t pretend this is a normal conversation, okay? Don’t keep acting like everything’s fine.”
“What do you want me to say?”
Tate sighed. “Why do you keep asking that? I don’t want you to say anything. I want it to matter that she’s gone.”
I felt hot and awkward suddenly but didn’t look away. “Nobody’s saying it doesn’t matter. It’s just not something we can help, you know? It’s not like we
can do anything about it.”
And that was true. It was the indisputable truth, but I felt like a liar saying it. Natalie was alive until Friday. Right now, I should be figuring out a way to save her because that’s what brave, honorable people did and I had a weird feeling that Tate could see the guilt on me, this big dishonest smear, splashed across my face.
Everything about her seemed to have locked down since our fifteen or twenty minutes by the graveyard. It was disconcerting to think that I had kissed her and now I could barely look at her.
“How come you don’t have your car?”
She pushed past me. “It wouldn’t start.”
I stepped in front of her again. “What’s wrong with it?”
“If I knew that, don’t you think I’d have fixed it?” She gave me an exasperated look. “Look, I’m in kind of a hurry. Could you maybe let me keep walking?”
By the time I got to English, I was feeling pretty agitated, but I couldn’t tell if it was with myself or with Tate. The idea that she’d only made out with me to thank me for finally admitting I believed her or else to make some kind of point was just low, but on another level, I didn’t really care. I still wanted to kiss her.
A few rows in front of me, Alice sat staring at the whiteboard and playing with her hair. She kept winding it around her finger, then unwinding it again. Her face was smooth and regular, like something you already know is going to be imperfection free.
“Tate,” Mrs. Brummel said, with a sugary smile, like she was trying really hard to prove that nothing uncomfortable had happened on Friday. “Would you hand back the quizzes, please?”
Tate slid out of her desk and she was more like something by Van Gogh, all color and texture and light. Her hair was standing up in a kind of rooster crest and her elbows were sharp through her thermal shirt. She took the stack of quizzes and started down my aisle, sorting through the papers.
I leaned forward in my seat. “Jenna—Jenna, do you have a pen?”
Jenna fished one out of her bag and handed it to me, smiling like a toothpaste ad or how a cat would smile if it had braces and highlighted hair and something to smile about.
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