The Blue Girl (22 page)

“Whatever. It still doesn’t change the fact that Brent deserves this way more than Imogene.”

“Because he’s such a terrible person?”

I nod.

“How do you know he can’t be redeemed? How do you know that he won’t change his ways and perhaps make some great contribution to the world?”

“How do you know Imogene wouldn’t?”

“We don’t,” John says. “But it’s already too late for her.”

“Do you have to keep harping on that?”

“Apparently, since it doesn’t seem to stick with you.”

I bite back the sharp retort forming in my mind and change tack. Because something occurs to me.

“Okay” I say. “I get what you’re saying. I can’t swap Imogene for Brent, or probably anyone else, right?”

John nods. “I’m sorry, Adrian. This isn’t something designed to frustrate you personally. It’s just the way it is.”

“But what if I want to give myself up in her place?” I ask. “Is that doable?”

I can see the answer in his eyes before he speaks.

“You know what that means, right?”

I nod. “I just ... stop.”

“Forever. Whatever comes next, you don’t get to find out.”

“I know. Just tell me, is it possible?”

What I remembered was the look of respect he had for me when he first thought this was what I wanted to do. Something about that look, and the way he’s regarding me now, tells me it
is
possible. Not that I’ve actually got the guts to do it. But I figure, if there’s a way to put myself in Imogene’s place, then there might be a way to fix it that so that Brent gets taken instead.

“Yes,” John says. “Supposedly it’s possible.”

It’s obvious he’s reluctant to tell me even that much. “So how does it work?”

“Adrian, this isn’t the way to—”

“How does it work?”

“Not easily. The problem is petitioning the
anamithim
before they simply eat your soul.”

“And how do you do that?” I prompt when he doesn’t go on.

“I’ve heard conflicting stories. The method that’s supposed to work best has you offering them a loaf of unleavened bread that contains sugar but no salt. Like an Indian flatbread, I assume. You offer the loaf from within a circle that has been drawn with salt.”

“Salt wards them off?”

“Among other things,” John says. “But their patience is infinite. If you call them to you from that circle and don’t give them what they want, they can wait for eternity for you to leave the circle. Or for the wind to blow a gap in it. Or rain to wash it away.”

“Unless you did it indoors,” I say, “except I guess it would get pretty boring sitting inside a circle for the rest of your days.”

John nods.

“So that’s it?” I ask. “You just offer them this loaf?”

“No,” John says. “That’s just to get their attention. I guess you’d call to them as well.”

“And then when you have their attention ...?”

“You bargain with them.”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why would that do anything?”

“They’re big on respect,” John says. “On receiving it and giving it. And the one thing they respect above all else is bravery and selflessness. For you to offer yourself to them in place of your friend would show both.”

I nod slowly. “I guess  ...”

I’m trying to think how I can turn this around so that it’s Brent they take instead of me. But then I realize something else.

“How do I get the loaf?” I say. “I can’t touch anything. I couldn’t even make the salt circle.”

“I know,” John says.

“But you can touch the physical world, right?”

“I won’t be part of this,” he tells me.

“But—”

He lifts his hand to stop me. “No. And don’t call me again, Adrian. Not even if you change your mind about this and decide to go on like you should have done in the first place. Someone else can help you cross over.”

He fades away before I can argue further. Color seeps back into my surroundings. I can hear the traffic on the street again, see people walking by on the sidewalk. Imogene, I think.

I don’t have any choice. I have to ask Imogene to get me the bread and salt, to make the circle. Only how do I do that without having to explain everything else? How could it work without her totally hating me?

I think of the fairies then.

They owe me, but that won’t make any difference to them. Maybe I can think of a way to trick them into helping me.

Yeah, I think as I start back to the school. Like that’s something I could ever pull off.

It’s funny. Tonight’s the first time in a long while that I’m not nervous about going to bed. I’m actually looking forward to that weird music and seeing Pelly. No, I’m
counting
on seeing him. But as soon as I start to drift off, the shadows pull loose from the corners of my room, and I jerk awake.

Being awake doesn’t help.

The shadows are still too deep in the corners, their edges moving as though I’ve got a candle burning. But I don’t have a candle and now I think I see things in the darkness. There’s more than movement. I feel the weight of
something’s
attention.

I remember what Thomas said about not showing fear.

Yeah, like
that’s
going to happen.

My pulse is drumming a crazy tempo. I draw my legs up, arms wrapped around my legs, and back up against the headboard, comforter pulled to my chin like it’s somehow going to protect me. I want to scream, but I’m not so panicked that I don’t realize what that’ll do. It’ll bring Mom and Jared running in. I’ve already messed it up so that Maxine’s part of this weird curse I’ve acquired, but I’ll be damned if I drag anybody else into it.

Now I think I see eyes in the shadows. Slanted, kind of yellowish, with deep red-black centers. Like little fires. Like
hungry
fires. They flicker, marking me, then they’re gone, only to reappear a moment later in another part of the shadows.

It’s not fair. I’m
awake.

But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? I’m on the edge now, straddling my world and Fairyland. I know  ...  for real, for sure ... that the fairies exist, and that knowledge makes me fair game for these things in the shadows.

I think of the space under my bed and wish I hadn’t.

They must be under there, too. Creeping out from below my box spring.

“P-pelly,” I manage. “This’d be a good time to show.”

I’ve gone through the last few years of my life with a who-cares attitude, but right now I find I care very much.

That makes me think of Adrian, and I feel a surge of empathy for him, cut down so young. Another victim of these damn fairies.

I can see actual shapes in the shadows now, pulling free from the darkness. Vague hairless heads with those burning eyes. Arms and torsos.

The scream I don’t want to give in to is pushing up my throat. I almost let it go, but then I hear a faint sound of discordant music—my fairy orchestra starting up—and the closet door bangs open.

Pelly’s there, holding a clenched fist high in the air. He bounds across the room and lands on the bed, then shakes his fist at me, opening his hand. Like in that slo-mo instant in a traffic accident, I see that he’s throwing some kind of powder at me. It glistens and sparkles. I feel like I can see every granule. Then it lands on me and I breathe it in.

I cough, my eyes tearing.

I hear a low moan—from under the bed, from the deep recesses of the shadows.

A pressure I didn’t realize I was feeling is suddenly gone.

They’re
gone.

I cough some more, clearing my throat. Relief flows in a wave over me, and I kind of collapse against the headboard. Pelly bends down closer to me.

“Imogene,” he whispers. “Imogene?”

“I  ...  I’m fine.” The words are hard to get out. But after the first couple, it gets easier. “You got here just in the nick of time. Thanks.”

“It was nothing.”

“No, it was a big-time rescue. Another minute and they’d have had me for sure.”

I can feel some strength returning to me and sit up straighter. Then I realize there’s something wrong with my arm—with the skin of my arm, I mean. It doesn’t seem the right color, but it’s hard to tell with the faint light coming in through my window.

“Watch your eyes,” I say, closing my own as I turn on my bedside light.

When I open them again, I see that my skin’s blue. I hold up my other arm. It’s blue, too.

I give Pelly a confused look, then get up on my knees and look at my reflection in the mirror on my dresser. Everything about me is blue—my skin, my hair  ...

“I’m sorry,” Pelly says. “I didn’t know it would have that effect.”

“I’m blue.” I turn from my reflection to look at him. “How can I be blue?”

“It must be from the pollen,” he says.

“Pollen,” I repeat.

He nods. “It comes from an herb called vervain. There’s a special strain that grows in the Otherworld. It’s a ward against the
anamithim
—that’s what they’re called, those creatures in the shadows. The soul-eaters.”

“So we
can
fight them off.”

He sits back on the comforter and gives me another nod. “But the warding effect is only temporary. It will wear off in a day or two.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying I’m going to be blueskinned for the next couple of days?”

“I’m afraid so. Your hair, too.”

“The hair I can live with. I dye it all the time. But how am I supposed to walk around with blue skin? What do I tell my mom? How can I go to school?”

Pelly starts to get such a miserable look that I shut up about it. After all, he did just save my life.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “They didn’t say.”

“Who’s they?”

“I went to Hinterdale, deep in the Otherworld, to ask for advice. They have a huge library there with the answer to every question, supposedly, if you have the time to look. But those answers can take a lifetime to find.”

“Luckily, it didn’t take you a lifetime,” I say.

“I never looked. There were some scholars there who told me about the vervain and where to find it, but it was deeper still away. They also told me of a shop in Mabon where I could trade for some, though they warned me it would be dear because it’s very rare.”

I’m trying to imagine libraries and shops in Fairyland— somehow I’d never considered the place to have either. “What did you trade?” I ask.

“A week’s worth of stories.”

I give a low whistle, because that
is
a lot. Back in the day, when Pelly and I played together near the commune, he told me about how in some worlds, stories were more valuable than anything. Just imagine how many stories you would have to tell to fill up a whole week.

“Did you have that many?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “And I didn’t have time to tell the ones I knew. But the woman in the shop was very nice and allowed me the credit after I gave her a sample. I told the one about the Clock Man who stole Jared’s spare time.”

I smile. “I told Maxine that one awhile ago.”

“I didn’t mean to use the pollen all at once the way I did,” he says. “But when I saw so many of those shadowy creatures, closing in on you from all sides, I panicked.”

“I was panicking, too. So I’m glad you did.”

“Except now we have to start all over again. The woman gave me the last of the vervain pollen she had in her shop, and it’s a very long and arduous journey to get any more.”

“We’ll think of something.”

I look at my arm again, lift my gaze to the mirror. I feel like some cheesy extraterrestrial in a low-budget science fiction film where the best they could do was give the alien blue skin. And I
really
don’t know how I’m going to show my face outside my room until the blue’s all gone.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” I say, “that if magic is going to be real, it should be so malevolent.”

“It’s not,” Pelly says. “Or not always. It’s no different from your world—there’s good and there’s bad.”

I shrugged. “I suppose. All I know is, I never heard about these shadow creatures before. In all the stories I read as a kid, there might be some evil magician or monster that the heroes had to put down, but just being aware of Fairyland didn’t automatically make you a target for this kind of crap.”

“It’s not,” Pelly tells me, beginning to sound like a broken record so far as I’m concerned. “You’re in this situation because someone directed the attention of the
anamithim
onto you.”

I know that, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

“Well, we’ve been busy, too,” I say. “We’ve got a whole pile of info, but it has to wait until we go over to Maxine’s. I told her we’d be over, and after what just happened here, I’m worried about her.”

Pelly nods.

“Wait here a sec,” I tell him.

I grab a handful of clothes and slip out of my room, down the hall to the bathroom. Pulling my T-shirt nightie over my head, I check myself in the mirror.

Yep. Blue all over.

I wonder why I’m not more freaked. Something like this should be wigging me right out, but all I can think of is the inconvenience of having blue skin. Truth is, if it wasn’t for that, I’d kind of like it. It’s sort of like having a full-body tat, with the extra bonus of it keeping me safe from the creepy crawlies waiting in the shadows. Maybe I could make like the blue skin was my new fashion statement, and wouldn’t that get the Doll People going at school? Maybe I could take a bath in blue dye once this wore off.