Book of Lies

  I reach the landing.

  Gran’s door is closed. I stay low and reach up for the handle, open the door.

  More smoke billows out.

  I crawl into the room.

  By feel, I find her body on the floor in front of the window. I grab her. Some cloth is wrapped around her face. She might still live.

  I rip it off and slap her. “Where is the book?” I try to yell, but it’s more of a croak.

  She stirs and coughs. “Somewhere you’ll never find it.”

  I feel around her on the floor. My hand connects with something hard. My fingers close around it.

  I laugh. “The book! The book is mine!”

  Quinn

  I crawl to Zak, shake him. He murmurs, but doesn’t wake up.

  “You have to help me, Zak. Come on.”

  I start trying to drag him toward the door. “Ness, come!” I say, and she follows us. Zak comes to, crawls along next to me. Out into the night.

  We’re both coughing in the cold fresh air. The rain has stopped. We crawl in the mud farther away from the house, to the stone fence, and lean against it together. Zak sags against my shoulder, unconscious again.

  “Please, Zak, please come back to me,” I beg, but he doesn’t open his eyes. Ness licks my hands as if to say sorry, but it wasn’t really her that bit me, was it? It’s this strange hold Piper has on all dogs—​even Wisht Hounds.

  Arooo-ooooo! Howling fills the night, as if to answer my thoughts. Howls of hunger, despair, and death ring inside me, vibrate into my bones, so terrifying I want to scream, to curl into a ball and will my heart to stop beating. Die now so they can’t have me. Ness whimpers, shaking at my side.

  The fox is here. It stares steadily into my eyes. Rage, Aggie’s rage, pushes against me and tries to get in. The Wisht Hounds could be mine to control, not Piper’s. I could run with them in the hunt; I could taste blood and survive. But how many others would die?

  And what about Zak and Ness? I can’t leave them to the hounds. I wrap my arms around Zak.

  There must be something I can do to stop the hounds without controlling them myself. And all at once I know what it is.

  I ease Zak gently to the ground, then get up and run along the fence toward the gate. I feel along the bottom of the fence until I find the thorns. I stand and grab a twig off the tree above, twist it, and break it off. Then I kneel down on the ground and brush the leaves aside.

  The howls of the hounds are close now.

  Frantic, I scratch a form in the dirt, and another, and another, as fast as I can.

  I pluck the red berries, stab my finger with a thorn, and smear a mix of blood, dirt, and berries into the eyes of my monsters.

  Like that time before, the shapes I’ve drawn shimmer. They move, grow, and begin to pull away from the earth.

  Arooooo! Arooooo! Wisht Hounds are all around us now. I can feel their hunger. My protectors are nearly ready. I’m about to spring up and run to Zak . . .

  But I’m too late.

  There are hounds between Zak and me. I’m cut off from him.

  Ness stands between Zak’s unconscious form and an approaching ring of hounds, a growl deep in her throat even as she shakes. Another ring of hounds is forming around me, but farther away, their eyes on my creations.

  The monsters I made shake off the earth and stand: they are many times taller than the hounds, as I wished, with the long claws and teeth I drew. They’re a frightening sight, even to Wisht Hounds. But there aren’t enough of them to protect all of us. I feel limp, cold, as if the life is draining out of me even now.

  They look to me, and I command them.

  “Protect Zak and Ness!” I say. In a flash, they are there, between Zak and Ness and the hounds. The hounds move away from them, uncertain; I don’t know how long that will last.

  Longer than I will. Hounds now edge close enough for me to smell death on their rank breath. They’re huge, black. Red eyes gleam; black tongues drip over yellow fangs.

  Above us, flames shoot higher. Will Piper emerge from the door with the book in her hands—​gloat, and then feast on my blood with her hounds? Maybe my monsters can delay the hounds long enough for Piper to see and repent—​to save Zak and Ness.

  The hounds around me are poised to attack. What are they waiting for?

  Their eyes shimmer, and inside each I can see a trapped soul—​tortured, captive, forced to hunt.

  And one of them is my father.

  Many are Hamleys, but not all—​some of them are my ancestors, too. Gran said that the ones who called the hunt when they lived were trapped within it when they died. Did they know that when they called it, but the tortured hunger of the hounds was too much for them to resist? Like it was to Piper. She wouldn’t have known the consequences. If she had, would that have stopped her?

  If I’d never brought her to Dartmoor—​never taken her to the wood—​it wouldn’t have happened.

  A movement above draws my eyes.

  Piper stands in the window, holding the book above her head in triumph.

  There is a rumble; she turns to look behind her.

  The roof of the house collapses. A fountain of sparks and flames shoots into the sky.

  Pain. Smoke. Flames.

  Death is close.

  The tie between us pulls my spirit to Piper. The same way the tie between us pulled me to her in the hunt—​a passenger, not a participant. I know that now.

  The fire has taken the shadow from both of us. Despite all she’s done, she is still my sister: the other half that makes me whole. And she’s afraid.

  “Piper! It isn’t too late, it can’t be. Get out of here. Crawl to the door.”

  “I can’t.” Piper is crying, scared. Her body was broken by the fall of the roof. Even if she could move, the door is blocked by burning timber.

  The Wisht Hounds are with her now, here, in the fire. Ready to take her to join them forever.

  With me tied to Piper—​they will take both of us.

  I’m crying, too. “Twins are cursed. Tied together. We live or die together.”

  “Unless you cut the tie.”

  “No. I can’t. I won’t leave you.”

  “After everything I’ve done, you still tried to save me. And now you won’t leave?” Piper is full of wonder. “Why?”

  “You taught me that. That’s what sisters are. We forgive each other, no matter what.”

  “Listen to me, Quinn.” She’s weakening, struggling for words. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want Mum to die. Or Zak’s mum, either. It was my fault, my anger did it, but I didn’t mean for it to happen. And I’m sorry.”

  “I believe you,” I say, and I do: I know she speaks the truth . . . as she sees it now.

  “I’m sorry about fighting over the book. I needed it. I needed to write in it that Zak loves me. That you love me, and . . .” She pauses; she’s fading, fighting to go on. “And that you don’t love Zak. I wanted us all to be happy, together. But everything started to go wrong when I summoned the hunt.”

  “That isn’t all lies. I do love you, Piper. I tried not to, but I do.” How can I not love my shadow, my reflection, the images I don’t want to see and do see, both at once? The good and the bad halves of me are both part of me.

  Then, on the moment of death, Piper tells her last lies:

  “I never loved you. I don’t want you. I want you to leave me, forever.”

  The lies that set me free.

  I gasp as cold air rushes into my lungs. Back outside, on a cold night—​not burning, not any longer.

  The tie is broken. I’m back in my body. It’s whole.

  I’m alive.

  The Wisht Hounds are gone, and they’ve taken Piper.

  I get up and stagger toward Zak. The hounds are gone. But my monsters are still here. They rear up in front of me, blocking my way to Zak.

  I commanded them to protect Zak and Ness: do they think I’m dangerous to those I love? I flick dirt in their eyes to return
them to dust, and they vanish.

  I sink next to Zak and watch as the rest of the house is consumed by fire. And while I might doubt my eyes or fear some trick, I can feel it—​the surge of rage and power in my veins. It says that no matter what happened to that book in Piper’s hands, I have inherited.

  Power settles uncomfortably, a weight on my soul. It is now mine.

  And mine alone. Piper and Gran are no more.

  Zak moans. Ness presses against him, and I cradle his head in my arms. His color isn’t good, not at all. With all there has been to be scared of, I’m scared for him, most of all.

  But I can lie. Piper taught me that, too.

  “Tomorrow, Zak, you’ll have a headache, and your memory of what happened will be muddled up, but you’ll be all right.”

  I kiss his forehead and know it will come true. Even without the book, my lies are strong.

  Early the next morning, I hold Zak’s hand as he sleeps, and stare at Isobel’s bracelet on his wrist. I hesitate, then undo it and slip it back onto my own wrist. All at once the rage that kept trying to take over subsides. It is still there, but held away.

  Piper had no shield, nothing to protect her. First I had Gran, then I had the bracelet. For whatever reason, Gran chose me to save. She shielded me in every way she could. Did the self-hatred and rage from being half Blackwood and half Hamley twist and change Piper all her life? She didn’t seem to understand the things she did, or even remember them most of the time—​she even lied to herself. Only at the very end did she acknowledge the pain she’d caused to those she loved.

  Zak stirs, groans. His eyelids flutter partway, then snap the rest of the way open. He stares at the still-smoking house.

  “Piper?”

  Half startled, I stare at Zak. He thinks I’m Piper? Of course he does.

  If I’m Piper, I can leave this place. I can go home to the dad who raised her and step into her life.

  “Yes. I’m here.” I say the lie and know he will believe me.

  “I thought it was a bad dream,” he says. He reaches a hand to his head, and winces. “But my thoughts are all mixed up. Tell me what happened.”

  I tell him there was a lightning strike; the house burned down. He tried to save Quinn and Gran, but a beam fell and hit him on the head. All the rest was a fevered dream in the night.

  And as I tell him, the tears come. I cry for Gran. I cry for the sister I so desperately wanted to love me. She did, but by the time I knew it, she was gone. I cry for Aggie, my father, and all those who died and became Wisht Hounds. Piper released them, but they are back in their prisons in the woods now, tormented and trapped. And Piper is trapped with them. The only way they can be free is if I summon them to hunt, something I will never do. If I lose myself in the darkness, I risk losing myself altogether—​like Piper did.

  And I cry for me: for Quinn. The girl who is no more.

  Zak holds me, soothes me. Does he deal with my pain to avoid his own shock at what has happened? Either my lies made him forget, or he doesn’t want to believe what he remembers. He kisses away my tears as though they were Piper’s tears—​tears of the one he thought he loved. But she deceived him, and now I’m doing the same.

  We walk to the car. The storm has gone; the world is fresh and new.

  Our packs go into the boot. I was confused when we found them against the fence near the gate. How did they get there?

  I convince Zak we have to leave, go home, not go to the police. If it came out now that I had a secret twin and she died, it would destroy Dad. There’s nothing useful we can do here.

  Zak believes me. But he always did believe Piper, didn’t he? Except when he wore Isobel’s bracelet.

  I feel guilty, but not enough to tell him the truth. His girlfriend—​my sister—​killed his mother and then ours. He doesn’t want or need to know this.

  And I want her life. First it was Gran and Isobel who kept me hidden from the world. Later, it was Piper who took pains to make sure we weren’t seen together. Piper may have kept my existence a secret for her own ends, but now the secret suits mine.

  When we get back to Winchester, I don’t go home. Not yet. I stay at Zak’s the first night, not ready to face anyone else.

  I open my pack late at night in his mother’s room, still mystified by how our packs came to be where we found them. Inside, carefully folded, are clothes—​Piper’s clothes, not mine. And in their midst?

  A cold, hard shape, wrapped in a sweater. I unwrap it and hold it up by the window in the moonlight.

  Faded red leather, hand sewn. The symbols on the front are as I remember them from when I held the book as a child, the same as on the pendant on my bracelet.

  The Book of Lies.

  Movement draws my eyes to the garden through the window. There, by the fence—​the black brush fox.

  So the book didn’t burn in the fire. The one Gran held in the window must have been a fake. Piper didn’t know what the true one looked like, and it was too far away for me to see the deception.

  Gran: she did this. She must have planned it all, hidden the book and the packs. She sent me to the ruins, knowing that I’d put it all together. That Piper and I would fight.

  And she set the house on fire and held the fake book in the window.

  But how could she know what would happen? We could all have died along with her—​me, Piper, Zak, even Ness.

  Did she trust me to work out what was most important, or did she gamble with all of us? She sacrificed her life to pass this book along to me.

  Or maybe she just left it there for the winner.

  I open the book and read it through the night. It starts with simple things, in old handwriting and funny misspellings; wishes for love, good crops, a healthy child.

  Things changed the night of the first burning—​Aggie changed us all. Her fate made us stronger, yes, but cursed us to hunt the Hamleys all these years.

  And now everything has changed again, on the night of the second burning. Gran’s handwriting slopes strong across the page, written in a dusky red brown. A small knife and a feather are tucked in the back cover of the book, the quill of the feather darkened. That cut I saw on her hand—​is this written in her own blood?

  She who is selfless at the end will prevail and inherit.

  But was I selfless?

  I turned away from Piper and the Book of Lies to save Zak and Ness. That is true. But I did it for very selfish reasons—​I wanted them for myself.

  I did try to save Piper at the very end, but it was she who cut our tie to save me. She could have held me close, had me as company in her Wistman’s Wood prison. With no one left from our line to call the hunt, it would have been forever.

  I can go around in circles about why: why I survived, why I was the one. Was it because I was prepared to sacrifice myself to save Zak and Ness, or because I wouldn’t leave Piper?

  Gran’s dying words—​written in her blood, in the Book of Lies—​must have come true with her death. They are all I have to cling to at the end.

  And Gran’s vision, all those years ago, came true. She saw that to possess this book, I’d destroy my family and steal my sister’s life. And I did it. Not on purpose maybe, but I did it.

  She was right.

  Epilogue

  Five years ago, Gran said she hoped I had the courage to do what she didn’t.

  I didn’t have it—​not at first. But the cost of living with lies is too high, now more than ever. It’s time for truth to prevail.

  It took me a while to fully understand that Piper and I were cursed. Once by Aggie of-the-Black-Woods, our ancestor: cursed by power and the spite that went with it. And once by Isobel, our mother.

  Izzy wore the bracelet she stole from Gran to escape Gran’s control, to keep Gran from quelling Izzy’s fun and teenage rebellions, but it had another effect. It stopped Isobel from seeing the shadow that marked Will Hamley as her sworn enemy, just as it stopped me from seeing the shadow on Piper and her se
eing it on me. That all changed when I took off the bracelet. When Isobel realized what she’d done, she sent Will away. But it was too late for her daughters.

  With a Hamley for a father and a Blackwood for a mother, there was never any other possible result for Piper and me. We would try to destroy each other.

  Gran and Isobel separated us, hoping to keep that from happening.

  Gran said we were half good and half bad. I’d thought I was the bad half and Piper the good. But Gran said she always knew that Piper was the dangerous one, and she kept this from Isobel. Does that mean I was really the good half?

  I can be honest, at least with myself. Both of us were half good, half bad. It was half a truth, half a lie—​the worst lie of all—​that had one of us painted good, and one painted bad.

  Maybe the real reason Gran kept me with her was because she thought I’d win.

  It’s hard even now to accept how Isobel treated me. Pregnant by a Hamley, she was in an impossible situation. She segmented Piper and me in her mind, as if we were one good child and one bad, not grasping that we were a mix of each.

  I refuse to believe our paths were always set. Why Piper chose the path she did is a question that haunts me. She caused the deaths of Zak’s mother and our own mother. Could I have done the things Piper did if I’d been with Isobel instead of with Gran? Once I met Piper, was there anything I could have done to change her? Could loving her enough have kept her from summoning the Wisht Hounds?

  At the very end, Piper chose to save me. She let me go. She let me live.

  Gran had her own kind of courage. I understand now how much pain I caused her. How every time she looked at me, she saw her enemy. How she both loved me and hated me. It was much, much harder for her than it was for Isobel. Isobel had the bracelet.

  Gran tried as hard as she could to teach me never to lie—​did she think if I never lied, I’d be safe from it all? She must have foreseen that the Wisht Hounds would be running the moors when Piper and I were both there in the future, so she made sure I was afraid of all dogs, as if that could somehow stop me from joining the hunt.