Croak

  Driggs’s spiky hair immediately poked into her view, right in front of an ostrich-shaped cloud. “Lex?” he said softly, crouching down. “Are you okay?”

  She sat up and blinked at the group of Senior Grims who were surrounding her. She gave her head a shake to quiet her racing thoughts. Cordy was dead. Zara had escaped. Everyone was in trouble. Cordy was dead. Jellyfish. Scars. Dead—

  “The Bank. I have to get to the Bank.”

  Without another word Lex jumped to her feet, pushed past the Senior Grims, and sprinted across the Field. Driggs took off after her as she pounded up the stairs to the porch and into the lobby, where Kilda sat nervously wringing her hands. Lex blew past her and ran straight up the staircase, bursting into the small office on the second floor.

  Elysia was waiting for her. “She’s okay,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “We got her, she’s okay.”

  Lex, wielding both scythes, panted heavily and gestured at the vault door. “I want to see her.”

  “Lex,” Elysia said gently, “it would be better not to. She’s confused, she’ll need a few days to understand. Give her some time.”

  Something in Lex collapsed. She remembered the befuddled dentist she had bothered, his look of disorientation mixed with a panicky fear. Accosting Cordy now would only make things worse. She couldn’t do that to her.

  “She’s with Edgar.” Elysia took Lex into her arms. “He’ll take care of her.”

  Lex choked out a sob into Elysia’s hair, which smelled like strawberries. Time seemed to dissolve as she clung to her friend. Hauntings of the ordeal blazed through her head in scattered fragments, ultimately settling on Zara’s final, lingering question: Why was Lex born with such evil inside her?

  And worse still, how could it possibly be worth the life of her sister?

  Driggs soon bounded up the stairs, followed closely by Uncle Mort. Lex parted from Elysia’s arms and glanced at Driggs’s tortured face. He avoided her gaze.

  “Uncle Mort,” Lex said, “it’s so much worse than we thought—”

  “I know,” he replied in a detached voice, peeling the scythes out of her hands. She had been holding them so tightly, even with the burns, that her knuckles had turned white. “You need to tell me everything.”

  She nodded, wiping her red, blotchy face with her red, blotchy hands. Uncle Mort, unable to tear his eyes away from the silver scythe, eventually put it into his pocket and turned to Driggs. “Gather everyone up at the fountain. Emergency meeting. Mandatory.”

  Driggs nodded and ducked out of the room. Uncle Mort threw an arm over his niece’s shoulder and began to lead her down the stairs. “Wait!” she cried, running back to Ferbus’s desk to retrieve her presents. The top of the Lifeglass now appeared considerably fuller. Catching a murky glimpse of Zara, Lex hurriedly tucked it under her arm.

  Uncle Mort brought her to the library, where he bandaged her hands as she recounted everything: what had happened in the dusty basement, what her flashes of rage had really meant, what she had just unleashed upon the world—

  “And then I scythed out,” she finished bitterly, “without attacking her, without doing a thing to stop her from being able to Damn anyone she meets.”

  “Which means that if you hadn’t stolen her scythe, we all would have been in a lot more trouble,” Uncle Mort said with a hint of pride. “Without a scythe, she can’t Crash. She’s limited to regular modes of transportation just like the rest of us.”

  “But she’s still out there. Can’t we look for a Loophole of our own and chase her down? She said she found the last one, but that’s gotta be a lie, right?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think Zara would have told you what it was if she didn’t absolutely, one hundred percent believe that there are none left to find.”

  “But how could she know that?”

  “From what I’ve read, a found Loophole somehow displays the number of Loopholes that are left once it’s opened.” He sighed. “I have no doubt that Zara saw a big fat zero on that scroll.”

  “So we’ve got nothing.”

  “Right.” He fidgeted apprehensively, biting his nails.

  Lex looked at her hands, then closed her eyes. “I tried to Damn her, Uncle Mort. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but I did know I wanted her dead. I must have broken dozens of laws.” She looked back up at him. “How much trouble am I in?”

  “I don’t know. Given the circumstances . . .” He scratched his chin. “I’ll talk to Necropolis, see what they say. I probably would have done the same thing.”

  Lex looked at the heavy Terms of Execution book on the table. Its pages were filled with past Grims’ transgressions and punishments, the worst of the worst. And now she was one of them.

  “You said Grotton was the only one,” she said quietly.

  “I know. I was wrong.” He swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your—”

  “It is. My fault. You showed all the signs, I just never thought—” He shook his head and let out a long breath.

  Lex studied her uncle.

  “Uncle Mort, do you know why I can Damn?”

  He stared straight back at her, his eyes hard.

  “No.”

  Lex looked away. Apparently she wasn’t the only liar in the family.

  They sat in silence. The sound of people gathering began to grow louder, morsels of gossip floating in from the square.

  “What should I say to them?” Lex asked flatly.

  “You’re not going to say anything.” He got up. “They’ll have too many questions, and you’re not exactly—” He started to say something, but changed his mind. “Better for you to stay out of the public eye. At least for tonight.”

  Lex stood up and made for the door. “But—”

  He grabbed her shoulders, blocking the way. “Please, kiddo, just trust me on this and stay here. Mutual respect, remember?”

  Lex thought for a moment more, then nodded. She trudged back to her seat and collapsed into it, her energy depleted.

  Uncle Mort headed out the door, pausing only to glance back at his niece for a brief second. “Lex,” he said sadly, his hand on the knob, “you’re a good kid. You really are.”

  Lex sat alone at the wooden table and listened to the muffled sounds of her uncle’s announcements, as well as the ensuing laments from the crowd outside. She watched the fading sunlight crawl across the floor, then studied the numerous group photos of Grims on the walls, from the black-and-white olden days to a copy of the picture she had just received. For some reason, they calmed her down. She was one of them; she belonged here.

  So there she sat in a daze, just as she had when she learned for the first time what the Terms were and why she couldn’t just go around bumping off whoever she wanted to.

  But the thing was, she could.

  And if she had, maybe Cordy wouldn’t be—

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight. She couldn’t think about that right now.

  Restless, she walked over to a large shelf crammed with decaying books. Her bandaged fingers swept across their cracked spines, leaving a trail through the heavy dust, until a faint glimmer of gold caught her eye. She wiped off some more of the grime and read the gilded title: The Legend of Grotton: Deluded Myth, or An Outright Cock-and-Bull Lie?

  Lex realized she had stumbled into the Grotton section of the library. Why hadn’t she thought to look here before? Zara obviously had. Irritated, she took the book from the shelf and opened its cover.

  Scribbled messily across the title page in thick, heavy ink were the words, WRONG BOOK.

  Frowning, she placed it back on the shelf and picked up the next one—The Criminal Mastermind Hell-Bent on Worldwide Destruction Who Once Came Close to Obliterating All That We Hold Dear: A Pop-Up Book—and found the scrawl once again. But it didn’t look like it could be Zara’s. Who had written this?

  Anxious now, she tore through the rest of the volumes on the shelf, only to find that each one containe
d the exact same phrase—wrong book, wrong book. Lex scowled. Which one was the right book?

  The answer lay at the end of the row. A gaping, empty void loomed within the shelf, almost taunting her. Zara. Zara must have taken it.

  Defeated, Lex absent-mindedly paged through the book in her hand, an academic-looking tome simply titled Grotton: A Biography. As she flipped to the back, however, she stopped. Her eyes grew wider as she read to the bottom of the last page. Handwritten in very small lettering was a note.

  IF REDEMPTION IS THAT WHICH YOU PRIZE,

  DO NOT BELIEVE ALL OF THESE LIES.

  THE KEY TO THE DEAD AWAITS OVERHEAD—

  ALL YOU NEED DO IS OPEN YOUR EYES.

  —BONE, THE SICK SCYTHE BANDIT

  Lex mouthed the signature. For reasons unclear even to her, the white figure from the woods popped into her mind.

  She looked up at the ceiling but saw nothing more than a few cobwebs. Unfortunately, she had no time to contemplate this any further, for the door to the library had begun to creak open. She hastily tore the page out of the book, stuffed it into her pocket, and turned to face Driggs.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  She shrugged. Tears stung at her eyes, but she turned around and smeared them away.

  He walked over to her. “Mort just told us what happened,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine—”

  “Driggs,” she choked out over the softball-size lump in her throat, “I don’t want to talk about it. Really.”

  “When you disappeared, I scythed back here as fast as I could, I handed off her Vessel, I called for help—”

  “It’s over, okay?” Anger overtook sorrow. “My sister’s dead, I’m not, and Zara is—I don’t know—on the lam, or something.”

  Driggs exhaled in disbelief. “How can you joke about this? Don’t you realize what this means for the town, for the whole Grimsphere? Zara’s—”

  “—going to be lying low for a while. She didn’t exactly plan on me escaping and leaking her plan. Uncle Mort’ll report it to The Obituary, and tomorrow every Grim in the country will get a good look at her face. We’ll find her.”

  Driggs frowned, disheartened at the obvious front she was putting up. He tried to catch her gaze. “Lex—”

  “I should have stopped her,” she chanted in a manic tone. “This is all my fault. I had her. I had her, and I let her go.”

  He gave her a sideways glance. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

  “Driggs, stop it.”

  “What?”

  “You’re trying to get me to talk about my feelings.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re not Oprah. Leave me alone.”

  “Come on, talk to me. Cordy’s gone, but I’m still—”

  “But I left her first!” she finally exploded at the sound of her sister’s name. She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. “We’d never been apart for more than a few hours, and I just left. Like it was nothing!” She was yelling now. “You want to know why I’m doing this to myself? Because half of my existence was just torn away and it was my fault! Because it feels like someone lopped off my arm or heart or guts or some other vital piece of me with a rusty hacksaw!”

  “I know,” he said, touching her shoulder.

  “You don’t know!” She batted his hand away. “You got a twin?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you have no idea!”

  The room sank into a pained stillness. Lex and Driggs stared at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at every other object in the room, until finally there was nothing left to look at but each other.

  “I’m sorry,” Driggs said. “I guess I’m no better at this consolation thing than you are.”

  Lex felt drained. “Guess not.”

  “I’m just glad you’re alive.” He wrapped his arms around her. “You really scared the shit out of me.”

  She sniffled into his shoulder. “What else is new?”

  A forced smile came to his face, then faded. They stood in an awkward silence yet again. But this soon led to where most awkward silences lead, and their lips remained locked for several minutes until Lex finally pushed him away.

  “I’m not so sure about this,” she said reluctantly, wiping her mouth.

  Driggs gave her a look. “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “That lame thing that superheroes do, where you push me away because you think you’re putting me in danger. I can make my own decisions, thanks.”

  “But she’ll come after you first. Then Uncle Mort, then Elysia—I’m like a plague now.”

  “I’ll try to suppress the bile,” he said with a smirk.

  “Yeah, but . . . what about your girlfriend?”

  “My what?”

  “That picture you’re always carrying around. Who is she?”

  He thought for a moment. Then his face broke out into a shy grin.

  “What?” Lex asked. “What?”

  Some secrets, owing to their potential for tremendous embarrassment, should receive a great deal of consideration before they are divulged. Driggs at least had the good sense to stall. His strategy of choice was to rummage around in the pocket of his hoodie, as if Lex could possibly be duped into thinking that it hadn’t slipped into his hand the moment he reached for it.

  Finally, he sighed, pulled out the photo, and handed it over.

  Lex stared. And stared.

  And staring back at her were the two Bartleby sisters covered in finger paint, the very same photo proudly displayed in her bedroom at home, next to the Sparks.

  “Um, I’ve kind of been in love with you since the day I got here,” Driggs murmured, ruffling his hair. “Or your smile, at least. I was fourteen, and . . . uh, Mort always had pictures of you two all over the house, you know? And the minute I saw the one from your twelfth birthday, where you’re throwing cake at each other, I thought you were really . . . yeah.” He glanced, humiliated, at the picture in her hand. “I mean, I know that carrying around this particular photo makes me seem like a pedophile, but I guess it was just always my favorite. The grin on your face, your eyes, the paint—it looks like you’re having so much fun.” His eyes got dark. “My childhood wasn’t very fun. And we definitely didn’t have any photos of laughing people around the house.”

  “I guess this explains all the empty frames in the living room.”

  “Creepy, right? I know.” His eyes darted nervously. “I know it sounds weird and stalkery. But it was just a crush, honestly. I had no idea you’d ever actually come here. I practically melted into the floor when Mort told me.”

  “But you’d never even met me, how could you—”

  “I don’t know, all right?” he snapped. “All I know is that I had never seen anyone like you, and your stupid smile was infectious, and I fell in love with it, and ever since you got here I’ve been falling in love with the rest of you, and now I’m so far gone there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Okay?” He yanked the photo out of her hands. “Happy now?”

  Lex let out a throaty, rusty laugh. “Marginally.”

  Driggs shook his head in defeat, but his eyes were kind as he hooked his fingers into hers.

  They were interrupted by a soft knock on the library door. “Lex?” Uncle Mort poked his head in. “You doing okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then let’s head home.”

  Driggs squeezed her elbow before they stepped out onto the street. “Hey, put your hood up.”

  “Why?”

  He pulled it over her head. “Just do it.”

  And as the three of them made their way past the crowd, Lex began to understand. Though her face was barely visible, she could hear the whispers. She could feel the stares. And she knew that tomorrow—or whenever it was that she could finally go back out in public—they would have a lot of questions for her, the girl who started it all.

  26

  Funerals are depressing even under the best of cir
cumstances, if such things exist, and Cordy’s service was no different. Lex took solace in the fact that the casket remained closed, but otherwise she felt as if she had fallen into a giant blender full of salt and lemon juice.

  The whole family had shown up, including aunts and uncles who Lex had forgotten existed, cousins she had never even met, and Captain Wiggles, Cordy’s beloved octopus, who grimly surveyed the scene from atop a large flower arrangement. A sizable portion of her classmates were in attendance (including Michael Thorley), none of whom could seem to stop shooting quizzical glances at Lex. Many teachers also dropped by, as well as a handful of people who were only tangentially involved in the lives of the Bartleby family—the local grocer, the mailman, their plumber, and even the reviled next-door neighbors. Lex couldn’t help but muse that if it had been her inside the coffin instead of her sister, the turnout wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive.

  Her parents, naturally, were inconsolable. Their relatives believed they needed kind words, and so dispensed an endless string of condolences throughout the day. Their friends thought that they needed some space, to be alone with their grief. And the rest of the community decided they needed casseroles, which were delivered to the house by the truckload.

  But the Bartlebys didn’t need any of those things. They couldn’t begin to comprehend why their daughter had been taken from them so unexpectedly, and there wasn’t a single explanation to be had. The coroner was stumped. The police chief had watched and rewatched the security tapes of the nursing home where Cordy worked until he passed out into his nightly bowl of oatmeal, but he hadn’t been able to figure it out. It was ultimately concluded that Cordy’s demise had been yet another one of those unexplained deaths that had been sweeping the nation—the last one, in fact, for several days.

  What Mr. and Mrs. Bartleby really needed was closure. Unfortunately, that was the one thing that neither their family nor friends nor neighbors could provide. And as Lex watched them stand next to their own daughter’s casket, weeping silently and holding on to each other for dear life, she realized what she had to do.