Again with this stupid prophecy. “But what did they do to Mother?” I demand, wishing Roger Williams would just focus here.
“She is deep in a sleeping enchantment. I think they thought it would get your guardian to talk more about your whereabouts. I do not know if she talked or not. The exposure to the Seelies left her as such exposure does.”
He says it casually, but I can feel the cold that his words leave behind. “Left her how?” I whisper, my throat dry.
“Quite insane,” he responds simply.
I stare at him. “But it’s reversible? I can fix it? If I find these other faeries, and I do this prophecy thing, I can save my mothers?”
“The one in the sleeping enchantment, most certainly. Once you eliminate the faerie holding the enchantment over her, she will recover. As for your guardian…I have never heard of such a recovery.”
I sit back in my seat. I am just barely aware of Trow reaching out his hand, covering my own in a tight, reassuring grasp.
“Why now?” I manage. Because I still don’t understand. Yeah, I told Trow my birth date, because yeah, the Seelies came for me. But why now? I know it’s a why question, but I can’t help it.
“It is not for us to choose the time. It is for the stars.”
“Stupid stars,” I say viciously and scrub my hands into my rainbow hair and take a deep breath to keep from crying.
I stand up and walk slowly into the living room and stand there. Mother is still sleeping—in her sleeping enchantment, Roger had said. Mom is no longer wailing; she is sitting, silent, her head on the couch next to Mother’s, as if she is just waiting for her to wake up, as if there is nothing to be done until she wakes up.
“I’m going to fix this,” I promise Mom, swallowing down all of my tears. I say it as a determined vow.
“Yes,” says Mom vacantly. “Rewrite the story.”
CHAPTER 11
I walk outside with every intention of looking up to watch the stars dance and find out where these other faerie people are, so I can get this stupid prophecy over with and save Mom and Mother. But I take two steps and almost keel over.
Luckily, Trow was walking close enough to me that he catches me before I hit the ground. “Merrow?” he says, confused.
“What is it?” Roger asks eagerly, scurrying up to me. “What did you see?”
“Nothing,” I gasp, which is true. “I heard it. A baby. Crying. No. Three babies crying.”
“Three babies crying,” says Trow numbly.
I look at him. Three babies. I think of his triplet toddler sisters. “Yes.”
“I have to go home,” says Trow quickly, and takes off at a run.
I chase after him. I know I need to read the stars and save my mothers, but I’m not going to let any other people get hurt if I can help it, especially not anyone related to Trow, who has done nothing but be there for me in all of this craziness. I’ve already failed my mothers today by fleeing when I should have stayed to help. I will not also fail Trow.
We run for long enough that I am panting. “Trow, how far away do you live? Maybe we should get a ride. Would it be quicker?”
“From who?” he snaps back scathingly. “Roger Williams?” He is running unerringly now, following the river down, and then a car with bass thumping comes up out of nowhere. This car is lit up like a Christmas tree. I have never seen a car like it. It draws to a halt next to Trow, who turns immediately to face it.
The passenger window rolls down. “Trow,” says the kid who’s driving the car. He has a black-and-white Red Sox cap pulled down over impressive dreadlocks. “Your sisters have been worried sick about you. They sent me out to find you. You okay?”
“Yeah,” Trow says and pulls the car door open. “Can you give me a ride home?”
I slip into the car too.
The kid driving says, “I’m Mark. It’s nice to meet you.” He shakes my hand. “Are you Trow’s girlfriend?”
We’ve never clarified it like that, but I say, “Yes. I am absolutely Trow’s girlfriend.”
• • •
Mark gives me a lecture on what a catch Trow is as he drives us. It would be totally sweet if my mothers weren’t both lying in danger in Edgar Allan Poe’s house and I hadn’t heard three babies crying.
Trow, understandably, practically bounces in his seat with nervous energy.
Mark finally says, “Trow, calm down. They were fine; they were worried about you. This is why you guys need cell phones, you know.”
“We can’t afford cell phones, Mark.”
It sounds like an old argument. Mark shakes his head and mutters under his breath. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “You got a cell phone?”
“Yeah,” I admit, feeling like I’m betraying Trow as I do it.
“Of course you do. You are normal. I like you, Trow’s girlfriend.”
I am, according to my new pal Roger Williams, apparently anything but normal. “Actually, I’m a faerie who can tell the future. Or something,” I remark.
Mark laughs like I’m hilarious. “She is a funny one, Trow,” he says delightedly.
Eventually we pull up to a three-tenement house on a crowded street. The first two floors are dark but every light is on in the third-floor apartment, and I feel sure that’s where we’re going.
“Thanks for the ride, Mark,” Trow says as he gets out of the car.
“No problem. Tabby said you might be needing some more diapers?”
“We are always needing more diapers.”
“You have got to train those kids, you know,” Mark says, as if he is the foremost expert in toilet training.
Trow says, “I know, I know.”
I say, “Nice to meet you, Mark,” as I follow Trow out of the car.
“And you,” he replies brightly. “See you around.”
He drives off, and Trow tips his head back and looks at the top floor of the three-tenement. “Can you still hear them crying?” he asks.
I shake my head. “It was a flash, really. It came and it went. Who knows if it’s anything?”
“You’re supposedly able to tell the future or something, and you happen to hear three babies crying when I have three babies at home.” Trow sounds grim. “If Roger Williams was telling the truth, and you seem to think he was telling the truth, then it’s something.”
I follow Trow as he dashes up to the top floor, where everything is chaos. There are no babies crying, but there are three toddlers who seem to be constantly underfoot, throwing things and causing general chaos. There’s a set of twins, maybe seven or eight, sitting at the mismatched kitchen table and also throwing things. Generally, there just seems to be a lot of throwing in this household.
“Hi, Trow,” they all chorus when he comes in.
“Where have you been?” asks one of the twins.
“You are in trouble,” says the other.
And then two more girls come in, older, closer to our own age.
“Where’ve you been?” asks one, giving Trow a tight hug. The other is eyeing me in confusion. “We got nervous when you didn’t come home after work.”
“I didn’t go to work,” says Trow.
“Didn’t go to work?” says the one still eyeing me.
“This is Merrow. She… It’s confusing,” Trow says. “But the triplets are okay?”
“What?” asks the girl who had hugged Trow, sounding confused, and the one eyeing me looks at him finally. “They’re fine. Why wouldn’t they be fine?”
“Merrow heard them crying.”
“She what?”
Now I am the center of all quizzical attention.
I open my mouth, not sure what I intend to say.
And then I hear the bells chiming.
CHAPTER 12
I don’t know why the bells should fill me with such immediate
terror, but they do. “Get them out,” I say to Trow immediately.
“What?” asks Trow, a question that’s echoed by the older girls.
“Get all of them out,” I say. “Now.” And I give him a little shove to get him moving.
Trow gestures, and babies are grabbed and stuck into arms and everyone scurries out of the room, toward the front of the apartment. I assume there is another exit that way, which is good, so I throw open the back door and recklessly fling myself out onto the staircase.
Which puts me immediately face-to-face with…creatures I have never seen before. I can’t describe them. They look like humans. But I know unerringly that they’re not. They are taller than humans, lithe and slender, and they are all very pale, with white-blond hair and eyes that have no color to them. They look astonished to see me, just as astonished as I am to see them.
My instinct is apparently to turn into some kind of wry spy chick, like in a movie. “Hi,” I say like this is perfectly normal and we’re all going to chat.
And then my brain catches up and says, What the hell are you doing, idiot? and I leap backward into the apartment, slamming the door shut and reaching out to turn the deadbolt. Oh, good, I tell myself hysterically. That’ll definitely keep whatever those things are out. Good job.
I turn and run as the bells seem to knock right up against the door, just as Trow appears in the kitchen doorway.
“Merrow, what—” he begins.
I grab his hand as I rush past him. “Let’s go,” I say, tugging him, and then suddenly we are flying through the air.
Not in a good way.
I scramble for the ground. You know what’s not awesome? Losing gravity. Gravity really is one of those things you don’t appreciate until it’s gone.
I dimly register that Trow is thrown against the wall. I am not so lucky. I go straight through the window, splintering glass all around me, and then I wheel desperately, clutching for the windowsill before there’s no hope left and I go plummeting to the ground and die.
Trow suddenly leans over the windowsill, grabbing my hand at the very last second.
I stare up at him, wide-eyed, and he starts to pull me up and gets me halfway over the windowsill before he’s flung backward again. The creatures are in the room—they’re in the room—and Trow, having somersaulted into the far wall, has cracked his head against the mirror there. The mirror breaks, and it’s smeared with blood when Trow slides down to sit on the floor.
The creatures move fast. One is on Trow before I can blink, and the others seem to be flooding out the apartment’s front entrance after Trow’s sisters.
I do the only thing I can think of to do, since no one seems to be paying attention to me. I finish clawing my way into the apartment, and I pick up a book and throw it at the thing that’s menacing Trow, who’s apparently unconscious on the floor. The book deflects off the creature as if it’s wearing armor. All it manages to do is attract the creature’s attention. Which I guess is better than nothing, getting it away from Trow.
It narrows its transparent eyes at me as I scramble my way up and toward the kitchen, stumbling over my own two feet. The thing is coming very slowly, as if it knows I’m trapped and it might as well take its time.
“You must be Merrow,” it says in a voice with perfect diction, just like a human voice, except when it says it, pain chases through me, and I almost lose my balance, doubling over.
I grab at the kitchen counter and I stare at the salt that happens to be in front of me. I can tell prophecies through salt. It’s the only thing I can think of to do. I straighten and fling the entire shaker of salt against the far wall, where it shatters.
The salt doesn’t spill down the way you would expect it to. It floats in the air like dust motes, dancing all around us. The thing that has been pursuing me looks at it in apparent surprise and then back at me with interest.
“You read prophecies,” it remarks.
I look at the salt all around us. “Not really?” I say, even though I know this is apparently a lie these days.
“What does it say, Merrow?” it asks me, its eyes hard and cold, exactly like ice.
I wince as if he’s reached out and slapped me, and I stare at the salt, feeling helpless. “Nothing,” I say. “It doesn’t say anything.” But even as I say it, I look at the salt and I can see it. I can see it. Trow is what it says. Trow who was written in the stars. And what the stars is that supposed to mean?
“Liar, you are reading it right now,” says the thing. “You think I cannot make you tell me the truth, you foolish, delusional fay?” it demands, stalking me slowly.
I back up against the wall and throw the pepper shaker at it, because I can’t think of anything else to do. It catches it with lightning-fast reflexes and throws it back to me. I duck out of the way of it as it goes whistling by my ear, and I wish I weren’t fresh out of ideas.
“Hey!” Trow shouts from somewhere behind the thing in front of me, and for a moment, I am surprised that he regained consciousness so quickly.
The thing doesn’t even register him, continuing to move forward toward me.
Then Trow launches himself onto the thing’s back, going for a stranglehold. The thing shrugs him off effortlessly, with enough deceptive force that Trow staggers back into the kitchen table, which skids into the wall with a sharp crack.
And then the thing shudders, shrinking back a step—again, and again, and again, until suddenly it disappears right in front of us.
I stare before collapsing into a heap, unable to keep myself upright any longer.
Trow says, “What the hell?” and Roger Williams comes striding into the kitchen, looking at us sharply.
“Are you all right?” he asks, looking between us.
Trow and I, both collapsed on the floor and panting for breath, give him do we look all right? looks.
“Take a deep breath,” says Roger. “You’re hyperventilating.”
“Don’t you tell me to chant shanti or something,” I shout at him. “What the stars was that thing?”
“Unfortunately for you,” says Roger grimly, “that was your family.”
• • •
There are bells ringing as we make our way out of Trow’s building—church bells, from the church next door, chiming the hour. Except that they’ve been chiming the hour for a while now. Certainly since Roger showed up in the kitchen. I am bruised and battered, and my head aches. The bells are annoying; I can feel them reverberating through my skin.
Trow must be rattled by them too, because he checks his watch and then looks up at the church. “What’s the matter with that thing? It shouldn’t be chiming at all.”
“That’s the only way to keep the Seelies out,” Roger responds simply. “They hate church bells.”
“You’re doing that?” I say.
“Of course. Do you think church bells just ring?”
I did, actually. Roger Williams clearly thinks I’m an idiot. “Well, can they stop now? They’re driving me crazy.”
He looks at me for a moment, curious and close, and then says, “Oh. Yes. Of course. They would, wouldn’t they? Sorry about that, but it can’t be helped for the time being. Until I get you somewhere with actual protective enchantments built in, this is the best I can do. Hello, children.” He says this with a smile to the crowded assortment of Trow’s seven sisters.
All of the younger ones are crying, and I don’t blame them. The older ones are glaring, and I don’t blame them. And they are all crowded around Mark’s car. Mark is out of the car, and he is pacing tightly around it, exclaiming, “Did you see that? Did you see that?”
“What happened?” Trow asks, looking at him warily.
“I ran this thing over!” exclaimed Mark. “It jumped right in front of me! Then it disappeared!”
“It’s perfectly all right,” says Roger smoothly. “Don
’t worry about it.”
Mark boggles at him. “Who the hell are you?”
“Would you be so kind as to transport all of us back to my house?” asks Roger.
Mark looks around at the entire motley crew of us. “All of you?” he says faintly.
“We’ll fit,” Roger assures him and then gets confidently into the car.
“We don’t have car seats for the babies,” says one of Trow’s oldest sisters.
“I feel like that’s the least of our problems right now,” says the other one, glaring at me.
As if I caused any of this! I don’t really want to be on bad terms with Trow’s sisters, but I think that is super rude of her, considering I just got violently knocked around by one of those things.
“Come along,” Roger calls out the window of Mark’s car, as if it’s totally normal for the founder of the state of Rhode Island to be sitting in a muscle car.
Well. I guess for the time being, it is totally normal. So we all get in.
CHAPTER 13
Mother’s still frozen on the couch when we get back, and Mom is still fretting and not making sense. Trow’s oldest sisters take one look at all of this and have a million questions. I don’t blame them.
Roger just says, “This way, please,” as if there is no reason to be stalled in the living room with one comatose person and one insane person.
He leads us all back into the kitchen and then he says politely, “Tea?”
Trow’s two oldest sisters stare at him, and then one of them says, “What is going on? Who are you?”
“This is going to sound crazy,” Trow says.
“Too late to warn us about that,” retorts the other sister.
“This is Merrow.” Trow gestures at me.
“Yeah,” says one of them. “You said.”
“She’s…” Trow hesitates, looks at me, looks back at his sisters. “She’s basically my girlfriend.”
They stare at him, juggling the toddler triplets in their arms. “You never mentioned having a girlfriend.”
Girl Who Read the Stars Page 9
