Fiendish

  “I don’t want a fortune,” I whispered, suddenly so scared that she would tell me I was the thing that Shiny had said—the reason behind the reckoning—and then everything I was deathly afraid of would be true. It was one thing to fear and think and turn it over in my mind. It would be another to hear the words from someone else’s lips.

  As soon as I said it, the fiend’s eyes went dark as bad dreams. “You called me out of the black like a genie out from someone’s lamp, and now you don’t want to know your fate?”

  I shook my head. “We didn’t call you.”

  She smiled a jagged, hungry smile. “Darlin’, you’ve got enough wise old blood in you to call every fiend for a hundred miles. And they’ll be here too in a minute clamoring to tell you your ending, so if it’s someone else you’re wanting, by all means wait. Otherwise, pay the charge, hear your fate, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Next to me, Fisher cleared his throat. He was breathing in long gasps. “Whatever. Just do whatever she says so she’ll leave us alone and we can get out of here.”

  The fiend turned her strange, blurry gaze on Fisher. “Give me some of that good red,” she said again. “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

  Without a word, he reached over and took the screwdriver from me, smearing his bloody hand on the bit end. He held it out and the fiend took it from him. Then, with a smile as hungry as an alligator’s, she licked the blood off.

  Her tongue was long and pale, wrapping around the steel like a snake. She sucked her bottom lip and handed the screwdriver back to me.

  “You’re old-family wrong,” she said to Fisher. “Crooked as they come, but that’s no secret. I don’t imagine any of the good folks up there in town ever wondered too hard or too close about what you were. I imagine they just let you be. But you’re not one to let things be. You’ve got a whole mess of questions in you, and the answers have been slow in coming.”

  As far as fortunes went, it was county fair vague, but the way Fisher stared at her, she might has well have just looked straight into the bottom of his soul.

  “Say your question,” she said. “I know you want to.”

  He pressed his hand against his torn shoulder and said hoarsely, “Where is it I belong? Is it like Isola says, and I belong down here with you?”

  His voice was so raw when he asked it that I wanted to drop my eyes, but the fiend only smiled, twitching her shoulder like the prettiest girl at a party.

  “The look of you right now, I’d say you’d be a fool to want that.” Her smile dimpled and then got wider. “I’ve known a man to give himself to the hollow from time to time. Crooked people come down here when they lose all reason and their blood gets the best of them. I’ve known them to go back to the land when they’ve got no place else that wants them. But that way’s not for you.”

  I watched Fisher’s face. I’d thought he might be grateful or relieved, but he just nodded, like a part of him had been hoping something else.

  With sly, narrowed eyes, the fiend turned on me, tipping her head to the side. “And what about you, chickadee?”

  “I don’t want my fortune told,” I said again, backing away with the screwdriver held against my chest. The way she had seen so deeply into Fisher frightened me. “I don’t want you to drink my blood.”

  She gave a stiff little shrug. “Then how about a piece of advice?”

  I wasn’t sure advice was any better, but Fisher had said to do what we had to do to get out of the hollow, so I nodded.

  “It doesn’t matter what you call yourself,” the fiend said, waving a gnarled hand. “Any of these DeVores or DeWitts or Bedevils—some borrowed name your mama got somewhere, from whatever man she picked to be your daddy—I know a Blackwood when I see one. But not every crooked child is so obvious as you all. Take that Dalton girl. She’s a clever one, and good at hiding her craft when she ain’t using it.”

  “What has Rae got to do with any of this?”

  “Just that there’s five of you creatures up there in town now. Knocking around with craft in your blood and your bones. Five kinds of wrong, and that’s one wrong thing for every point on the reckoning star.”

  “That’s not advice,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. “That might be a riddle, but it’s not advice.”

  Beside me, Fisher made a groaning noise, but the fiend seemed to consider this. She stood in the shadows, under the canopy of leaves, and her hair looked very white.

  “I know you think you’re the one to start up this engine, baby,” she said. “But you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s the light from the hollow—it’s coming for you, leaking out slow right now, but it won’t stay slow forever, so we got to do something. See to your blood, and I’ll see to mine, don’t you worry. Just see to your craft, keep it low when you can, and mind that reckoning star.”

  Then she turned, stepping down through the shallow water, into the woods, and out of sight.

  I was of half a mind to run after her and demand that she be straight with me and stop talking in riddles, but Fisher was shivering in the dark spot under the trees, nearly colorless. I got his arm around my shoulders and we started up the hill.

  * * *

  We made our way through the thicket, fighting through the brush until with no warning, we spilled out of the trees into a clearing that was all tall grass and fresh air and open sky.

  We’d gone all the way through the dark, endless woods and come out into the bottom of Harlan Beekman’s north pasture.

  The black sky of the hollow had rolled back to a dusky blue, clear as a jewel and waiting for stars. The larks had all stopped singing and the night birds hadn’t started yet. Everything was desperately quiet.

  “How did it get so late?” I whispered, looking around the darkening pasture.

  Fisher shook his head. “The hollow isn’t like other places. It’s got its own clock, and sometimes it eats time.”

  Now that we were out in the regular world, I could see the colors again, shining around him. A haze of pain glowed red, bright as fire and worse when I closed my eyes.

  “Fisher?” I took a step toward him. “Can I do something?”

  He kept his face away from me. All I could make out was the paleness of his skin, the dark, shaggy mess of his hair. I blinked and saw the bright shape of him against my eyelids, throbbing with a dull, orange heat. The pain looked electrical, all razor jags of red and black, loud and sharp and ugly.

  He was hurting bad, but I didn’t know how to stop it or what to do.

  Once when I was little, we’d had a redbone dog who’d stepped on a piece of glass and sliced the bottom of her foot. My mama had boiled a needle and sewn it up, but the cut got infected anyway, and when I went to touch it, the skin of our dog’s foot had been hot and tight. She’d tried to bite me, even though she’d known me since I was a baby. My mama told me that when things were hurting, sometimes it made them wild.

  It seemed to me now that this was true of Fisher, that he might be wild. More wild than he was on a daily basis, anyway. He leaned forward again, holding his arm against his chest, breathing in long, trembling gasps.

  When I reached for him, he stepped back like I’d slapped him, stumbling over his own feet.

  “Please—” My voice sounded shaky and high-pitched. “Please, you’re not okay. Just let me help you.”

  “Help with what?” he whispered, keeping his face turned away. “How are you going to help?”

  I hugged myself, trying to sound sensible and like I had some sort of command over the situation. “Well you can’t take care of yourself. You can barely walk.”

  He straightened, still holding his arm against his chest. “I’m cool, just dizzy for a second. Come on. I need to get home, mop up.”

  He hauled himself over the fence without hesitating, and I had an idea that maybe I’d been wrong, that maybe he didn’
t need a doctor, didn’t need my help or anything at all. Then he staggered and went pitching face-first into the road.

  I chucked the suitcase down in the weeds and scrambled over after him. He was on his hands and knees, making a hoarse, moaning noise by the time I got there.

  “Are you okay?” When I said it, I didn’t sound like myself—not even like my new self with the rough, scratchy voice. The words were thin and shrill. I sounded scared.

  Every time I blinked, I saw the shape of him printed inside my eyelids, covered in twists of green and black squirming through a red fog.

  This time, he bowed his head and let me reach for him. When I slipped myself under his good arm, he slumped against me, leaning what felt like his whole giant weight on my shoulder. For a second, I thought we were both going to lose our balance and fall into the road or the ditch, but I held him up, trying not to let the curve of my arm touch the places on his back where he was torn up the worst. The poisonous smell of the hell dogs burned my nose, but I didn’t lean away.

  I left the suitcase where it lay, half-hidden in the pasture.

  The walk into town took a long time—the kind of time where it’s hard to know how much is passing, because every step felt like an hour, and I knew without him ever saying so that it hurt just to keep breathing.

  Broom Street, where he lived, was as wide as a river, lined with oaks and sycamore trees. The pavement was less worn than the roads lower down, and the houses were nicer than anywhere else.

  At the very end of it, a white house rose out of the dark, three stories tall and situated atop a little hill. It was surrounded by slippery elms and giant oaks, and the slopes of the roof were wickedly steep. It looked grand, but uneasy—the kind of house where a witch would live.

  As I stepped onto the paving-stone path that led to the porch, we were met by the frantic, tooth-jarring sound of dogs baying. Then a whole pack of them came pouring around the side of the house

  “Get back,” Fisher muttered. “Get away.”

  The dogs yelped and whined, but when he clucked his tongue at them, they all ducked their heads and slunk back toward the porch.

  We stumbled up into his yard with our arms around each other and our legs shaking. The whole space around the front door was covered in china rabbits and angels, flocks of tin chickens and gnomes that sat around the front walk like a bunch of fairy-tale creatures.

  On the porch, I put my hand on Fisher’s arm and peered up at him, trying to get a look at his face. In the yellow splash of the porch light, his skin was chalky, and then he jerked away, turning so I couldn’t see his eyes.

  “I’m coming in with you,” I said, reaching around him for the door.

  “No.” He moved to cut me off, keeping his back to me. “I’m fine. Just go home.”

  I stood on the porch and waited to find out if he meant it. Or more likely, if he’d fall or faint or stumble. All I knew was that if the same drawn, stoic look had been on my face, it would have meant that I was scared. That I was hopeless and hurt and didn’t want to be alone. The way Fisher wore it, though, he made it seem like nothing.

  “You cannot come in,” he said again. “There’s nothing you can do to help, and if my grandma sees you, she will lose her mind.”

  Then he went inside and shut the door.

  PART III

  BREATH

  DIRT MAGIC

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Any other place, any other night, I might have let it go—sat down to wait, or just gone home. Fisher was hurt too badly to leave him, though, no matter what he said, and I stood on the lawn under the oak trees, trying to know what to do.

  Overhead, the sky was black. The stars were hazy, a million miles off, and the sounds of night birds were low and mournful, making my skin crawl.

  All around me in the bushes, things were rustling. I stood hugging myself, gripped by a chilly conviction that the hell dogs or the burning woman or some other wicked, awful creature from the hollow had gotten out and followed us into the world.

  After so long it seemed like forever, a light came on at the top of the house. I stood hugging my elbows, looking up at that bright yellow square. All the other windows were dark.

  I considered climbing the porch, knocking on the door, and asking his grandmother to let me see him. Then I remembered the pencil-drawn face we’d come across out in the woods, with its stone-black eyes and its ruinous mouth. If Isola in real life was half as grim as in the drawing, she might come down to see who was rude enough to call at this hour, but she was not going to be likely to let me in.

  No, the only thing left to me was that one little window and that one burning light. I could feel him there, his nearness trembling in the air around me. He was in that attic room, with the window open and the curtains back, the lamp balanced on the sill like a signal flame.

  I cupped my hands to my mouth and called up as softly as I could, “Fisher?” There was no answer and I called louder. “Fisher, are you awake?”

  I waited with my head cocked, listening, more and more agitated when no one called back.

  “Fisher!” I whispered, dropping to my hands and knees and feeling around in the dirt for something to throw.

  I was prying a cherry-sized rock out of the ground under the oak trees when the dogs came pouring around the corner of the house again. I froze on my hands and knees and held as still as I could, trying not to do anything that might make them start barking. They surged around me, snuffling and whining against my face.

  “Shh.” I waved a hand at them, but they just wriggled and bounced at me, hanging their heads and grinning nervously. “Shh, get away!”

  They didn’t bay or bark, but their whimpers were sharp, and they pressed close to me, snuffling into my hair. I tried to make myself smaller, certain that at any moment, Fisher’s grandma was going to hear the commotion and come out to find me crouching in the yard.

  Finally, whispering all the worst words I knew, I pushed them away and got to my feet, retreating over to one of the big oaks.

  I’d always been able to see in sharpened ways—hidden animals and dropped buttons and all the things that other people missed. My mother had called it second sight, but I thought now that maybe it was only first sight, but with better vision.

  Since the moment I’d gotten out of the cellar, though, there was no denying that it was getting stronger. Now the second face of the world was everywhere, in the nervous wriggling of Fisher’s dogs and the sap that ran like blood inside the trees. Leaves were moving in tiny shivers, rustling in the air, and for the first time, I had an inkling of what my mama must have always known. The power of the dirt was not in bewitching the world or forcing things to grow, but just in reading the truth of living things and being able to give them what they needed. Everything in the yard seemed to be calling for Fisher.

  I stood against the trunk of the oak with my arms wrapped around it. The very bark seemed to hum. Then I boosted myself up and began to climb.

  At the top of the tree, a branch ran along the edge of the roof and I stepped out over the rain gutter and onto the steep pitch of the shingles. I crawled across to the window and looked into a long attic room.

  Fisher’s bed was tucked under the slant of the ceiling. He lay on his side, on top of the bedclothes, with his face turned toward the wall.

  The state of his back was terrible in the lamplight. The yellow glow made his bruised skin look ten times worse, and for a second, I just sat on the roof in the shadow of the tree, staring at how the blood had soaked through the makeshift bandages and was dripping onto the blankets.

  “Hey.” I tapped the screen. “Fisher.”

  He didn’t move.

  I tried to pry the screen out of the frame but couldn’t get my fingers in the gap. He was lying so still that it scared me, and I fumbled in my pocket for the screwdriver. The end of it was dirty from everything
that had happened down in the hollow, and not sharp, but I stabbed it through the screen, ripping a jagged hole all the way down.

  Then I peeled back the edges and slid in headfirst, hitting the floor with a thunk. My foot got caught in the ruined screen and I landed hard on the rug, taking the lamp with me. It rolled wildly, so that the light danced over the walls and the peaked ceiling.

  On the bed, Fisher raised himself onto his elbows and stared dimly around the room. When he saw me sprawled on my stomach with my feet hanging out the window, his eyes cleared and he tried to stand, but only succeeded in falling out of bed. The thump he made was teeth rattling and he hit the rug with most of his weight on his elbows, rolling sideways. When his shoulder touched the floorboards, he made a short, painful noise.

  With a little cry, I yanked my feet in through the window, taking half the screen with me, and scrambled across the floor, waving him to stay still. “No, no, no, stay there, stay there.”

  But he was already trying to get up. He pushed himself onto his knees, then lost his balance and fell against the bed frame. With a mighty effort, I dragged him up, supporting his dead weight with my arms around his chest. As soon as I touched him, I could feel the heat coming off his body, burning through my shirt. The smell of the hell dogs was all over everything.

  I held my breath and wrestled him back into bed. He hit the mattress with a thump and a low, painful sound that caught in his throat. I knelt beside him and leaned over.

  He was sweating, his skin shining and waxy white. The fallen lamp threw oblong rings of light and shadow on the ceiling. His hair stuck to his forehead and the pillowcase was damp.

  He rolled his head to look at me and blinked like he was trying to focus. “Shit,” he said thickly. “Get out.”

  “You are not in charge of this anymore,” I said, and I meant every word. “You told me you were okay, and it’s not true, so now I’m in charge, because otherwise, I’m scared you might die.”

  Saying it seemed worse than thinking it. I had soaked up my mother’s deep abiding belief that if you said a thing, it might come true, and as soon as it was out, I wanted to take it back.