Troy stared at me for a minute, then gestured for me to follow him until Nea put one arm up to stop us both. “Where did you get hair from a hellion? How do we know that’s not just river water and food coloring?”
“You want a sample?” I gripped the stopper, like I was ready to pull it out. “Fine. But I gotta warn you, this shit sizzles like acid. Plastic is the only thing I’ve found that’ll hold it.”
Nea frowned, a sharp look of frustration on her angular features, but the others all seemed interested. I’d just dangled a very fat carrot—an exotic addition to their collection of...stuff—in front of several hungry rabbits. Rabbits with claws, and wings, and teeth that could strip flesh to the bone, no matter what they looked like on this side of the world barrier. I’d seen them on the other side, and without that mask of humanity, harpies were a very scary—and ugly—species.
I slid the vial carefully into my pocket and backed toward the corner of the convenience store, shooting a glance at Emma as I passed her car. “Are you going to take me to Syrie, or do I get to wander back there on my own?”
“That wouldn’t be very smart,” Nea warned.
“Yeah, well, I’m not known for my brains.” I stepped past the corner of the building and could see the house behind it, a hulking outline against the darker patch of woods beyond.
“What’s this you brought with you?” Troy asked, and I looked up to find him running the long, sharp nails of his left hand over the hood, eyeing Emma through her windshield while she stared boldly back at him. “Food or plaything? Or both?”
“Neither. She’s a friend.” For lack of a more accurate description. “And she’s human.” Which meant she was off limits for the harpies. At least, for those playing by the rules. They got to live on our side of the divide on the condition that they only hunt on the other side, to keep from decimating the local population. Or drawing the attention of the human authorities.
“You never let me have any fun,” Troy complained, trailing his fingers over the hood one more time on his way toward the edge of the building.
I shoved him around the corner ahead of me. “And I’m not gonna start now.”
* * *
“You get twenty minutes, whether she talks or not,” Nea said, one hand on the front doorknob of the house behind the Sac N Pac. “If you don’t come out on your own, I’ll let Troy drag you out.”
Troy grinned at me from the steps, a joyless note of anticipation stretched over long, harsh features.
“Come near me and I’ll rip your wings off and beat you with them.”
“I had a feeling you like it rough,” he taunted, as his sister pulled the door open.
The hinges creaked and the floorboards groaned beneath my feet, but the old house was a lot sturdier than it looked. It predated the gas station by several decades and was the oldest—and at one point the only—building in Niederwald.
“Try not to upset her this time.” Nea crossed the dim, empty foyer toward a closed door on the left. “Last time she wouldn’t eat for days.”
I reached for the doorknob, but Nea stuck out one bony hand, palm up. I gave her the test tube, then brushed past her into Syrie’s room, where the first part of my business in Niederwald would be conducted.
“Syrie?” I bent to unzip the top left pocket of my cargo pants as Nea closed the door behind me. “It’s Sabine. I have something for you.”
What most people don’t realize when they come to see the oracle is that what you pay Nea only covers access to her. If you want Syrie to talk to you, well...she doesn’t take payment in the traditional sense of the word, but a little kindness goes a long way.
A floor lamp stood in one corner, its dim, naked bulb shedding just enough light to outline shapes among the shadows. But as my eyes adjusted, I began to pick out more detail, in the room and on the walls.
“I brought you some pencils.” I saw no sign of her among the old, scarred furniture—a low twin bed, a dresser, and a three-legged table with two folding chairs. But as far as I knew, she’d rarely left the room, and her years of solitude were documented in the massive mural her walls had become. All of the walls.
Every inch of wall space she could reach was covered, charcoal sketches blending seamlessly into oil paintings so intricately detailed I was half convinced I could step right into them. But most of the images were done in plain old #2 graphite or black ballpoint ink. Because the harpies were cheap bastards, and they wouldn’t spend money if they didn’t have to.
Most of the color had come from supplicants—a good deal of it from me. Crayon drawings near the floorboards showed an eye for perspective and proportion before she’d even been out of diapers—long before I’d discovered Syrie and her glimpses into the future. Eerie collages of faces, places, and events marked the maturation of her ability that had prompted the harpies to start charging for her time. But the occasional sketches of her own face were the most haunting. And the most puzzling.
To my knowledge, Syrie hadn’t seen her own face since she was a toddler. Her attached bathroom—also claimed by her art—held no mirrors. Yet there the self-portraits were, sprinkled among the other bits of genius at odd intervals. Some were achingly realistic, while others showed an understanding of cubism and surrealism she’d surely never been exposed to. But all of them—every last one—defined her scars in meticulous detail.
Left eyelid, slashed and left to heal crooked. Skin shrunken and puckered around the pale red tissue inside her empty eye socket. Troy said she’d tried to dig both eyes out of her face when she was little, to make the visions stop. That was her first and only trip to a human doctor, but even the doc couldn’t save her left eye. And the visions had only gotten stronger.
Sometimes I wondered what those self-portraits said about her self-awareness. Like maybe she actually had some. More likely, hers was just one of the many faces in her visions. She might not even know who it belonged to.
“Syrie.” I tried again, still staring at the art, which stopped about six feet from the floor—as high up as she could reach. “I brought paper, too.”
The sudden shuffle behind her dresser said I’d made contact, and I headed for the table, careful not to step on the images that had begun to trail across the floor since the last time I’d been there. The footpath was clear—she’d obviously learned that art couldn’t survive the traffic—and a second after I set the mini-notebook on the table, Syrie slid into her folding chair, without even glancing at me.
I sat across from her and put the twelve-pack of colored pencils next to the notebook. Syrie snatched them, setting the whole box on her lap with one hand while the other flipped the notebook open.
Her long, slim fingers were stained with ink and smudged with charcoal, but they were definitely bigger than the last time I’d seen them. She was bigger. Her hair was past her waist now, hanging over her face in hopeless tangles, in some dark color that might once have been auburn, but was now just...dirty. She was growing, in spite of the lack of sunlight, questionable diet, and minimalist hygiene philosophy.
“Syrie, I need to ask you something,” I said, and a rare pang of guilt clanged around in parts of my mind I seldom found use for. I felt bad using her like everyone else did, but not bad enough to leave without what I’d come for. I would absolve myself later with the understanding that if people stopped paying for Syrie’s time, the harpies would have no use for her, and I didn’t want to think about what would happen to her then.
She didn’t answer. I didn’t expect her to. But her plum-colored pencil flew over the inside cover of the notebook—she wasted no surface—sketching something that looked vaguely human in shape.
“Do you remember what you showed me last time?” I asked, and her hand never paused. “I asked you to show me what I’d lost.” The only person I’d ever loved, and the other half of my heart he’d taken with him, when his family moved away while I was in state custody at Holser House.
I had no idea if Syrie understood me, or if she’d
understood what she was doing the night she’d drawn Nash, sitting on the end of a pier in a letter jacket with a big green E on one side and the number nine on the other. It had taken me weeks to find him based on that jacket and months after that to get myself placed with a foster mom in his school zone. And on my first day at Eastlake, I’d discovered what hadn’t been obvious in Syrie’s sketch—Nash had stopped looking for me. He’d found Kaylee Cavanaugh instead.
But I knew what neither of them seemed to understand—Kaylee wasn’t right for him. She wanted to “fix” him—to drive out every dark impulse that didn’t fit into her romantic ideal. She was sterilizing him, bit by bit, excising the pieces she didn’t like, as if love were a buffet you could pick and choose from. She didn’t understand that those dark bits were an important part of him. Those were the bits of his soul that recognized its match in mine. The parts that let him see me as more than a born predator.
“I need to know one more thing, Syrie.” I took a deep breath, silently stamping down my own nerves. “I need to know if I’m ever going to get him back.”
The only indication that she’d even heard me was the smooth slide of her pencil from the inside cover of the notebook to the first page, where her fingers moved almost too fast for me to follow. Syrie was talking to me the only way she knew how—by showing me what she saw.
My heart pounded as the drawing took shape, beautifully detailed, yet frustratingly incomplete. Syrie wasn’t sketching now, content to fill in the details later. She started on the image and drew her way across the surface so that what she’d finished was unmistakable, but the rest of the page was blank.
The wait was agonizing, but the payoff was...unreal.
When she’d finished and moved back to the inside cover, I stared at the image on the first page, rendered all in plum, but expertly shaded, with particular attention to depth and a set of eyes that would be bright blue in life. Kaylee.
I couldn’t see the face of the boy holding her—his embrace too intimate to mean friendship or comfort—but I could see his short curls and the outline of his shoulders. It wasn’t Nash.
For nearly a minute, I couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I’d tried and failed to drive a wedge between Nash and Kaylee, when—if I’d been willing to wait—someone else would have done the work for me.
Sure, Nash would be heartbroken for a while, but then he’d get over her. And I would get a second chance. He would finally truly see me again.
“Thank you, Syrie.” I leaned over the table and slowly reached for the notebook, afraid with every second that she’d snatch it away. But her pencil never paused, the exposed tip flattened now, almost flush with the wood around it. She kept sketching as I carefully tore the first page from the notebook and folded it, then slid it into my back pocket, eager to go. I only had minutes left before the harpies would come back, and I’d only gotten half of what I needed from Neiderwald.
When I stood, Syrie looked up, as if surprised to realize she wasn’t alone. Her right eye—her only eye—was still bright green and shiny, and she was as alert as I’d ever seen her. But when she blinked, her disfigured left eyelid didn’t completely close, and I had the sudden eerie certainty that the empty eye socket still watched me, and that it somehow saw more than her remaining eye ever could.
Uncomfortable, I glanced down at the table—and gasped at what she’d drawn on the inside cover of the notebook. Emma, in perfect detail from the terror in her eyes to the dark freckle high on one cheek. And behind her, holding her, if the suggestion of an arm around her waist was accurate, was Troy, broad, dark wings spread and ready. All around them stood mounds of stuff—junk, mostly—collected by the harpies over a lifetime.
“Oh, shit! When is this? Is this now?” I asked, not really expecting an answer, yet hoping for one anyway. Em could be a pain, but that didn’t mean she deserved to be eaten alive. Besides, if I started feeding the harpies, they’d expect a meal every time I came.... But Syrie just turned to her drawing again and began detailing Troy’s arm.
I ran for the door, hardly noticing the art I stepped on, then raced through the living room and into the grimy kitchen, where I threw open the basement door. The stairwell was dark but a weak glow lit the bottom step and a rare glimpse of the concrete floor. I heard nothing and sensed no movement from below.
Emma was fine. Troy didn’t have her yet. And if I got back in the car and drove off now, I could probably prevent whatever Syrie had seen the start of.
Or...I could get what else I’d come for. But could I manage both?
I started down the stairs slowly at first, to make sure I was really alone, but once I was sure, I pounded down the rest of the steps and skidded to a stop in the lone patch of uncluttered floor. For one long moment, I could only gape at the huge basement, lit by one bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. I’d seen it once before, but my memory of their stash didn’t do it justice. Or maybe their collection had grown.
There was stuff everywhere. Stacks of it, spilling over and under tables, burying chairs. Drifts of it, piled against the walls. There were clothes, books, toys, dishes, patches of carpet, parts from cars, and even a tower of roof shingles, obviously never used. They had coins, jewelry, polished stones, and glittering hunks of glass in all colors. There were photos, and pillows, and a table piled high with pill bottles, an entire tribute to the pharmaceutical industry, the contents of which they’d probably never even sampled—a tragic waste.
But the worst—or the best, depending on your viewpoint—was a series of human bones displayed on long shelves in descending size order, from femurs all the way past phalanges to bones too small for me to identify, crowned by a macabre display of naked skulls on the top shelf.
There were even four complete skeletons, wired together and hanging from the ceiling, adorned in jewelry no doubt plucked from the sea of junk.
The whole thing was overwhelming. It was disgusting. It was...a lot to have to sort through. And I only had minutes.
I scanned the basement quickly, and when none of the skeletons turned out to be wearing what I wanted, my gaze snagged on a low table covered in boxes full of shiny things, so I picked my way through the ocean of junk toward it.
Normally, I’m not into jewelry—piercings don’t count; they’re body art—but I’d worn the necklace Nash gave me every single day. Until the night Nea had demanded it as payment for a chance to find him. I’d handed it over, but promised myself that I’d get it back, first chance I got.
But the table held dozens of jewelry boxes, most full of tarnished junk, and I had no way of knowing if there was another stash just like it buried beneath a pile of clothes or a stack of books. So I took them one at a time, tossing rings, earrings, necklaces, and brooches over my shoulder, then shoving the empty boxes onto the pile. I’d gone through eight of them before I finally found my necklace, buried in a pile of silver-plated rings and charms. Holding it again was like holding it for the first time, the night Nash had given it to me.
The silver horse shone in the light from above, wavy suggestion of a mane blowing back in some unseen wind as she raced toward something I was sure I’d been chasing all my life. Her stylized rider was golden and willowy, riding bareback and naked, long hair trailing behind her. Nash said it reminded him of me. Of the old stories about maras riding people in their sleep, feeding from their bad dreams, and the archaic association of the word Nightmare with a female horse.
I would only have given the necklace up for a chance to find Nash, and now that I’d found him, I wanted it back, so I could hold at least that piece of him, while Kaylee claimed the rest.
I slid the chain over my neck and tucked the horse and rider into my shirt—then froze at the familiar dry whisper of wings folding and unfolding behind me, a habit comparable to fidgeting in humans and a sure sign that the harpy who’d snuck up on me was either excited or pissed off. Or both.
Shit, shit, shit! I turned slowly to find Troy watching me from the bottom step,
his leathery black bat-like wings half extended behind him. “You broke the rules.”
I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to carve that on my headstone.” But not for a while, hopefully.
“That means I get to break one, too,” he said, and before I could argue, he glanced over his shoulder and shouted. “Nea! Come look what I found!”
A second later, Nea jogged down the steps, followed by Desi and the third female harpy, all missing their jackets. They’d dropped the human disguises in their own home.
“Sabine wants her bauble back, and I think we should let her keep it. But she’s gonna have to leave us something else instead.” Troy stalked toward me, and I looked past him to the stairs. But Nea stood at the base of them, and I’d never get past her.
“Hold her,” Nea ordered, and the two other girl harpies rushed me.
I punched the first one in the gut, but before she even hit the ground, Desi grabbed my other arm and nearly dislocated my shoulder. I can hold my own in a fair fight, but two on one? While the other two had harpy speed and strength, claws instead of nails, and jaws that could bite through a human tibia? I should have brought a weapon.
The downed harpy stood and Troy grabbed my right hand. “I think this little piggy is a fair trade, don’t you?”
“Piggies are toes, dumbass,” I snapped.
Troy only shrugged. “Want something to squeeze, for the pain?”
I glanced pointedly at his groin, my heart racing so fast my vision was starting to blur. “How ’bout something to break off?”
He shook his head slowly and squeezed my fingers until I had to bend them or let him snap them. Then he pulled my index finger back up, preparing to rip it off. “Should I count to three?”
But before I could answer, a loud thud came from the kitchen. Something heavy crashed down the stairs, tumbling end over end. Nea jumped out of the way in time to avoid the rolling wooden cart, but the microwave hit her leg when it flew off the top. She went down, stunned, but not out.