The Blue Girl (33 page)

“Where’s Maxine?” I ask, and put away my knife.

“I haven’t seen her. I haven’t seen anybody.”

My eyes are adjusting to the dim light in here. I can make out Pelly now, the knapsack slung from one shoulder.

“Did you look in any of the other rooms?” I ask.

Pelly nods. “There’s no one.”

“But she said she was meeting us here.”

“Maybe she went home,” Pelly says.

“Yeah, right.”

Pelly shrugs, but I know he’s worried, too. The only reason Maxine wouldn’t be here is if she ran into trouble.

This is why I should have my own cell phone. If I had one, I could just call Maxine, and we’d know exactly where she is and how she’s doing.

“I called her about a half hour ago,” I tell Pelly. “She was in the basement then.”

Pelly walks by me, heading for the door.

“Then that’s where we should go,” he says.

“Are they here?” I ask him as we leave the room and start down the hall. “Is there something watching us from the shadows? Because I can’t tell.”

“There are always things watching from the shadows,” Pelly tells me.

And isn’t that comforting.

“The
anamithim,
I mean,” I say.

The halls are dimly lit. Instead of all the fluorescents glaring supermarket bright, like they are when classes are in session, there are only lights every twenty feet or so. Which leaves plenty of space for shadows to gather. I study the dark patches ahead of us, trying to sense what he does. But my senses aren’t nearly as finely attuned.

He nods. “I know what you meant. I can’t tell. Shadows are a kind of borderland, and there is always traffic in the borderlands.”

“What kind of traffic?”

“Everything from the soul-eaters to the curious beings and spirits that like to peer into the worlds on either side of the border, simply because they can.”

I don’t find any of this comforting. All I can think of is Maxine, alone in the basement. I quicken my pace, my boots clomping on the marble. I know the noise might attract Sanderson, but at this point, he’s the least of my worries.

“What about the fierce lights?” Pelly asks, hurrying along at my side.

For a moment I don’t know
what
he’s talking about. Then I remember our plan.

“You mean the spotlights? We don’t have time to set them up. It’s not like we can just ask the
anamithim
to hold on a sec while we get ready.”

“But without them—”

“I know. We’ve got nothing except for the junk you’re lugging around in that pack.”

Truth is, I wasn’t all that confident that the lights would have worked anyway. The whole
real
idea behind my plan was to let me confront the
anamithim
without everybody trying to talk me out of it. I don’t like plans. I know they work for some people, but I’ve always preferred to solve problems as I go, hoping that in the middle of the crisis, a solution will come. It’s worked so far in my short little life.

Just as I’m thinking this, the room we’ve just trotted by registers, and I get an idea.

“Hold on,” I say, and start backtracking.

“But Maxine  ...”

“I know. But I’ve got an idea.”

I get back to the door of the art room and open it. There’s no time for fumbling in the dark with the flashlights in Pelly s pack. I flick on the overheads, and we both blink stupidly for a moment in their sudden glare.

“Back there,” I say, pointing to where the art supplies are stored.

I grin at Pelly’s confused look.

“C’mon,” I say, “and give me a hand.”

After I get off the phone with Imogene, I stand there for a while, staring down at the five little piles of clothes on the cement floor. Should I gather them up now—that’s the compulsive neatness Mom’s drilled into me kicking in—or leave them here in case some fairies haven’t gotten their outfits yet?

I’m still trying to make up my mind when I hear footsteps. By the time it occurs to me that footsteps mean that someone’s coming, and therefore I should find a place to hide, Adrian steps into view.

I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware of holding.

“You,” I say.

I’m angry, not so much at his startling me like this, but because of how he got us into this whole mess in the first place. So he’s pretty much the last person I want to see at the moment, if you can call a ghost a person.

I stare daggers at him, except he doesn’t even seem to notice.

“Maxine,” he says. “What are you doing here?” His gaze goes to the piles of kids’ clothing. “Are you the one who sent the fairies packing?”

“Maybe.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Maybe we didn’t like them. Just like we don’t like you.”

“You don’t like me? What do you mean? And who’s ‘we?’”

He’s looking around the room while he fires these questions at me, as though he expects someone to come popping out from behind one of the furnaces or tanks.

“Well, considering how you sicced these soul-eaters on us,” I say, “what did you expect?”

“Oh, that. But it wasn’t really my fault.”

I give him a look.

“Okay, so I’m partially responsible. But that’s only because Tommery didn’t explain what he was going to do. It’s not like I meant for any of this to happen.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that our lives are in danger.”

“What do you mean ‘our’? Are they after you, too?”

His alarm appears genuine.

“We re not sure,” I say. “But probably. Or they probably will be.”

“You keep saying ‘we.’ Is Imogene here?”

“I don’t really have time to talk,” I tell him.

I go to walk around him—because I’m really not up for the weird chill of another ghostly encounter—but he grabs my arm. I jump back, pulling myself free.

Then I realize what just happened.

“You’re real,” I say, rubbing my arm.

It’s not sore or anything. I’m just a little stunned from his actually being able to touch me.

“I mean, you’re really here,” I add.

“It’s Halloween.”

“So you just get to walk around on Halloween—I mean, with your body and everything?”

He nods. “Yeah, I know. It’s weird, isn’t it? I didn’t know it could really work.”

“You never noticed any other year?”

“It’s not an automatic thing. You have to be at the place you died exactly at moonrise, or it doesn’t happen. I didn’t know that.”

“Another one of those stupid rules,” I say.

“What rules?”

“Haven’t you noticed that everything to do with fairies and magic’s all bound up in rules? Like the way we got rid of the fairies by leaving clothes out for them and thanking them for a job well done.”

“What job did they ever do well besides getting me killed, putting you and Imogene in danger, and, oh yeah, pretty much tormenting anyone who happened to catch their interest?”

“It was just what you’re supposed to do to get rid of them.”

“Oh.”

He looks down at the clothes that I still haven’t decided what to do with yet, though I’m leaning more and more toward just leaving them here on the floor.

“So, it really worked?” I ask. “They’re all gone?”

He nods. “But that’s not going to stop the
anamithim
.”

“We’ve got another plan for that.”

“I want to help.” He’s peering into the shadows again. “Where is Imogene anyway?”

“I don’t think your helping is such a good idea,” I tell him. “Considering how you got us all into this.”

“I told you, that was an accident.”

“Well, we don’t need another accident.”

“Oh for—”

“And I’ll tell you something else. If anything happens to Imogene, I’m going to find a way to get you for it.”

This time the angry look I give him registers, and he takes a step back.

It’s funny: I can’t stand up for myself, but it turns out I can be totally fierce for Imogene.

“But I really want to help,” Adrian says. “That’s all I’ve been trying to figure out these past few days.”

I want to stay mad at him, but he looks so miserable that I can’t. Instead I tell him what we’ve found out so far, from Imogene’s research—“Oh, I heard about the bread bit,” he says—to Esmeralda’s odd warnings about the ballad “Tam Lin” and how Imogene figures we can use spotlights from the drama club to trap the creatures in their glare.

“That’s a better idea than I had,” Adrian says.

“What were you planning to do?”

“First I was trying to figure out a way to give them somebody else in her place.”

“Oh,
nice.”

“Well, it was going to be a creep like Brent Calder.”

“Too late for that,” I say. “He’s already in the hospital.” So then I have to tell him about it.

“Wow,” he says. “She really
is
tough.”

I give a slow, unhappy nod. I mean, I’m glad that Imogene’s okay and everything, but it’s weird, especially the way she can just carry on afterward like it’s no big deal.

“So I assume you changed your mind about the sacrifice,” I say.

“Well, yeah. It wouldn’t be right. Even for someone like Brent.”

“So what then?”

“Well, I was going to offer myself up in her place. You know, nothing fancy. I’d just  ...” He faces the darkest corner of the basement, spreads his arms wide, and declaims in a loud voice, “Okay, here I am and I’m telling you that you can’t take Imogene. You want someone, I’m right here, waiting for you.”

I’m trying to stop him as soon as he starts. I grab at his arm, but he shakes me off.

“What?” he says. “I’m just showing you  ...”

“I just don’t think you should be  ...” I’m saying at the same time.

Our voices trail off as we hear it—no, we
feel
it. Something stirring in the shadows of that dark, dark corner.

I so don’t want this to be what I know it is.

“Oh,
crap.
”Adrian says.

I echo that sentiment, but the words can’t seem to get past my lips. As the three figures step from the shadows, my mind’s too numbed to be able to do anything so complex as make my muscles work.

The first thing I think when they come out into the light is that they’re like angels. Or at least the way I always imagined angels to be: stern and tall and way too bright.

Except no way are they angels. Because angels have mercy, too, right? And these ... these creatures  ...  I’m sure they have none. They’re gaunt and hairless, wearing thin, loose robes that reach to the floor and cling to their shapes so their musculature is hyperdefined. Their gazes are flat, I mean
completely
expressionless, like we mean nothing to them. I
know
we mean nothing to them.

And they seem to be made of light.

But it’s not a light that shines out, so much as in, as if they swallow it into the slick sheen of their skin. It was gloomy enough down here in the basement before they showed up, but as soon as they stepped from the shadows, the overhead lights went dimmer. And right now I can feel
myself
going dimmer, as though just being in their presence is taking something from me.

Shadows writhe around the bottoms of their legs, as though dozens of half-realized things are shifting shape down there, unable to completely take form, or unwilling to settle on just one. I see, here, a small triangular head with a mouthful of sharp teeth; there, a bony limb ending in claws or talons.They’re horrible, but not nearly as bad as the motionless figures towering over them.

It’s funny. Before the
anamithim
showed up, I knew this was all real—that the soul-eaters were for real—but deep inside, I never quite believed it. I’d sit there making plans with a blue-skinned Imogene and a fairy-tale Pelly, but I never truly believed that these creatures actually existed.

I believe it now. How can I not believe in these tall white figures with their legs disappearing into that fog of shifting, squirming shadows?

The foremost one beckons for us to approach, but no way am I getting any closer. I can’t move anyway, but if I could, I’d be running as fast and far from here as my legs could take me.

He—it?—says something in a language I don’t understand; the words make my skin crawl, like there are cockroaches flowing all up my legs and torso and scurrying into my ears.

And then my body betrays me, because it takes a step forward of its own accord.

I fight the loss of my body’s motor control, but I might as well be trying to bottle a spoken sentence.

My body takes another step.

I’m wailing in my head—this gibbering wordless panic that would put horror movie actors to shame if it could ever come tearing out of my mouth.

I know I’m going to walk right up to the
anamithim.

I know I’m going to let them put their hands on me and I’m going to feel the touch of their horrible light-stealing flesh on mine.

And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Right then—if I was never sure before—I know that we all do have souls that burn and glow like a light inside of us.

We carry beautiful, warm fires that the darkness covets.

And they’re going to take ours from us.