“No,” a specter in a monocle interrupted. The monocle sat over an eye that was completely dangling out. May stiffened. “That’s not who you’re thinking of at all. She looks an awful lot like that Live One, that girl.” He paused, and May could feel her whole body flaming up. “You’re much prettier, obviously, but you know the one I’m thinking of”—he snapped his fingers in the air thoughtfully—“the one who’s supposed to … oh, what is she supposed to do?”
“Save the Ever After from certain doom?” May blurted out in frustration, before she could stop herself. The circle of painted faces blinked at her for a few moments. The dangling eye would have blinked if it had had eyelids. May could have kicked herself.
One woman, her head tilting unnaturally to one side from where she’d been hanged, opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and then went ahead anyway. “Have you ever tried doing something with your hair?”
The air went out of May like a balloon.
From there, the conversation circled like a restless bee: which royal was dating her executioner, which nonroyals had been seen skinny-dipping in the Bog of Misery, electromagnetic massage and whether it really worked …
Now that the danger had seemingly passed, it was dawning on May that her first ball was turning out to be stupendously … boring. And even a little depressing. Everyone in Portotown seemed to care more about the business of everyone else in Portotown than they did about the fate of their world.
She looked again for Lucius, who appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. With the usual mischievous twinkle in his eye, he was stuffing handfuls of Spiky Stabbies surreptitiously into spirits’ knickerbockers, biting his lip to keep from smiling too widely. She longed to join him. It would beat hearing about how Napolean had had exoskeletal surgery to make his soul taller, and who was prettier, the Maharaja or Helen of Troy.
May needed air. She waited for a lull in the conversation and then politely excused herself, hurrying to the glass doors at the back of the room before someone could accost her and slipping outside with a sigh of relief. Turning around as she closed the door behind her, she sighed again, forgetting the room behind her entirely, enchanted. She was in a lovely moonlit garden, as sweet and refreshing as the indoors had been stifling and stuffy. Across the finely clipped lawn, glistening silver in the moonlight, lay a labyrinth, lined with hedges. Its stony path invited her to disappear inside. May glanced back through the doors, then floated forward.
The path under her feet glowed like it had been sprinkled with fairy dust. The garden was a world away from the Cleevilvilles and all the ruin they had seen stretching across the Ever After. Soon, she knew, there would be no magic left like this. By now, there was probably no New Egypt, or Fiery Fork, or Stabby Eye. And soon there would be no house ghosts like Pumpkin, or colorful specters like Lady Howard, or even wild and woolly spirits like poltergeists. It would be like the colors of the Ever After had slipped off into the atmosphere.
And then Bo Cleevil would move on to Earth and ruin the beautiful things there, too.
May had reached the very center of the labyrinth, and here she stopped short. A man was sitting on a stone bench, pensively studying the moon. He wore a white dusted wig and a long blue jacket. He looked up just as May started to back away.
“Sorry,” May mumbled, retreating.
“No no … please don’t let me deter you from enjoying the garden.”
His face was powdered and smooth. He had very nice spectral features, all in the right place—straight lines making up his nose and his jaw, his eyes big and windowlike. He was, in fact, very handsome.
May stopped, hesitated, drifted forward.
“Please …” He gestured to the bench. May thought for a moment, then sat.
“You’re not enjoying the party?” he asked.
May looked over her shoulder. “No, it’s fine….”
The specter sighed, ennui settling over his fine features. “These parties are always a bore. Always spirits gabbing about nothing very important. I’ve always felt,” he said, tucking a hand into his coat, “very far away at parties.”
May nodded. She knew the feeling.
“Sometimes I think one is better off staying home,” he said.
“Sometimes you can’t go home,” May murmured, without really meaning to.
The spirit smiled, gently, as if he understood. “The problem with leaving home is that, even when you go back, you’re never really completely home again.”
May didn’t reply. The stranger studied her.
“If you’ll permit me to say it, I think that you look quite lost.”
May looked up at him, surprised, and then she plucked at her fingers. If she were honest, she’d have to say she’d always felt a little lost.
“Some souls don’t belong anywhere,” the specter next to her offered casually, as if reading her mind. “Are you one of those?”
May didn’t reply. She kicked her feet at the dusty path. “Do you know about the Bridge of Souls?” she finally asked.
The stranger nodded.
She sighed. She looked up at the moon. “Do you think if you cross it, you stop being afraid?”
The stranger turned toward her, intrigued. “What is it you’re afraid of?”
May shrugged. She wasn’t exactly sure. At home she had been afraid of not being like everyone else, and of never fitting. Now she was afraid of much bigger things. She was scared of what she was supposed to do, and afraid she didn’t know the right way to do it.
“You know, if you come with me, you’ll never have to be afraid.”
May felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It was an instinct.
“When you have everything, you always belong.”
The stranger gazed at her, and for the first time May let herself meet his eyes. They were clear and blue, but there was something else. They were empty.
“We will find each other,” the stranger said. “It’s inevitable.”
May went to stand up, but he put one cold hand on hers. It passed right through her fingers. “I’m not going anywhere.”
May looked over her shoulder, as if someone may come to help her, then back at him. He smiled.
“Who are you looking for? The Lady? I’m afraid she’s no longer here.”
May knew, with every fiber, that the hand reaching for her was the hand of Bo Cleevil, and that the empty eyes were his eyes.
“You haven’t even seen the beginning of how scary I can be,” he said.
“Hey,” a voice said behind her. “Who are you talking to?”
May turned. Lucius stood there, two plates of spidercake in his hands. May swiveled to look at the bench again. The man was gone.
Goosebumps raced up and down her arms. She still felt like someone was standing nearby, invisible, watching.
Even out of sight, it seemed he was all around her.
Chapter Eighteen
Escape from Portotown
He’ll be on his way now.”
They were gathered in the parlor of the Sleeping Specter, huddled up near the window that looked out on to the street. Every few minutes Fabbio pulled the curtains back to peek, then quickly closed them.
It was determined, as soon as May had told them what she had seen, that Bo Cleevil had simply bilocated—he had managed to be in two places at once. Spirits sometimes did this when they were looking for something or trying to communicate a message—one part of themselves would stay wherever they were, and the other part would go off and search, or deliver the message that the other half didn’t have time for. Now that Bo Cleevil had found her, he was sure to send the vampires for them, or worse, come himself.
“We should get out of here, move west. Find a place to hide out until we can contact the Lady,” Lucius said, his eyes darting from time to time to the windows.
“But he’ll find us before we can get anywhere fast enough,” Beatrice pointed out.
May considered. They were so close to the Platte
of Despair and Bo Cleevil’s castle beyond. And it seemed that to run away now would be to leave the possibility of doing something behind. She just didn’t know what that something would be. Without the Lady’s help, it was impossible to know.
She stood and looked out the windows. No sign of vampires yet. “There’s got to be a way to get out fast.”
“There’s only one way I can think of,” Bea said, her eyes alight. “But it’s not pleasant.”
After Beatrice had explained her idea, May pulled out her arrows. Lucius pulled out his slingshot. Somber Kitty ran to wake Pumpkin from his three o’clock nap. Fabbio pulled out his compass and cleared his throat, waiting for orders. May tugged back the curtain one more time to check that what they needed was still there.
Moments later they were racing across the street and surrounding Lady Howard’s bony carriage.
In one quiet, deft move May threw open the left-hand door and drew her bow. Lady Howard, to her surprise, only stared at her from her bench seat, a twisted smile playing about her pinched lips.
“Um, can you please get out?” May whispered to her (so much for being a wild bandit), but Lady Howard didn’t so much as blink. May leaned back to check that they were still in the clear, her stomach aching with fear. And then Pumpkin let out a whimper, and May’s eyes lit on what she most feared, floating down the alley toward them. The vampire was staring out at the sea, his long fangs gleaming under his pale lips. He hadn’t noticed them yet.
“I think it’s impossible for her to leave the carriage,” Bea whispered, eyeing the vampire sideways, her eyes full of alarm. “I think they’re stuck together for eternity.”
Flustered, May looked at Lady Howard, bit her lip, and then leaned back to peer at the vampire again, who was still floating in their general direction, but coolly, slowly. Her mind spun frantically. Finally she looked at the others and then motioned with her bow. “Get in!” she whispered.
For a moment they all looked at her like she’d lost her mind. And then they were piling in on top of the Lady, amid ows and oohs and whispered mama mias. By the time May swooped Kitty from the street and climbed inside, Fabbio was sitting on Lady Howard’s lap and Beatrice was stuck against the door so tight she looked to be shrinking. May squeezed in next to Lucius, at which time Pumpkin cleared his throat loudly, stood up, and squeezed between them, wrapping his arms around hers tightly and giving Lucius a superior look. Kitty leaped out of May’s arms to get some air at the opposite window.
May had to lean around Pumpkin’s big head to get close to the window where the invisible driver sat; again she pointed her silver arrows. Bea grabbed her arm.
“Give instructions wisely,” she whispered. “This carriage won’t stop once it starts.”
May gazed at her and nodded. There was a good chance that the place they were headed had been destroyed, like almost everything else in the Ever After. But what else could they do? May took a deep breath, deciding. “The Scrap Mountains,” she commanded. The carriage lurched into motion at breathtaking speed.
“Reeoow,” Kitty howled. In a moment of rare gracelessness, he tumbled forward and then, before anyone knew what was happening, straight out the window.
“Kitty!” May lunged forward. “Stop!”
But the carriage didn’t stop. May leaped for the doors, one after the other, but both were locked tight. She tried to push her way out of her window, but her shoulders wouldn’t fit. All the occupants of the carriage could do was press up against the window to see the scene unfolding behind them: Somber Kitty landing right in the middle of the street and right at the feet of the vampire.
It all happened so quickly it almost seemed like a dream. Kitty looked up at the vampire and let out an innocent “Meow?” The next moment he was swept under the black cape. Smoothly, as if nothing had happened, the vampire turned back from whence he’d come and disappeared into the fog. It was as if neither he nor Kitty had ever been there at all.
“Stop!” May yelled, feeling the world tumble apart inside. “Stop!”
But the carriage kept going, its pace only quickening, until they seemed to be flying down the cobblestone streets.
Lucius took her elbow gently and rested his head against her shoulder.
May stretched her arms out the window in a gesture of helplessness.
But it didn’t make any difference. Portotown fell away behind them, engulfed in moonlight and fog.
Chapter Nineteen
A Wild Ride
They rode for hours, at times coming within throwing distance of the north end of the Dead Sea, oozing out in front of them slickly, and then they turned north, and for a long time they saw nothing but flat land. May sat staring out the back window, devastated. Beatrice had linked her arm gently through hers, comfortingly, and from time to time May squeezed her hand. After a long bout of hysterical tears, Pumpkin had fallen asleep and was lounging like a rag doll across both of their laps, snoring.
“Ow,” Fabbio squealed, jumping up into a crouch. “Madame, I a beg you.”
He looked around at the others’ bewildered faces, then thrust one finger defensively in the Lady’s direction. “She keeps to pincha my behind.”
Everyone looked at Lady Howard, who only stared at him mutely, her eyes murderous, her blue lips pursed.
Fabbio twirled his mustache thoughtfully, then reluctantly sat back down on her lap, only to leap up again a few minutes later. “Lady Howard, you should be ashamed.” But he was blushing a little, and a tiny smile was tucked under his mustache.
Finally they could be seen out the left-hand window—great piles of junk towering out of the emptiness of the Platte in chaotic, grungy lumps. Everyone fell silent.
Beatrice pressed her face against the window, her hands clenched tightly in her lap as she stared. The mountains’ inhabitants, the Colony of the Undead, had once helped May and her friends when they needed it most. But there was no telling if they, like so much of the Ever After, had been taken away, Bea’s mother among them.
And though no one said it, there was no telling that, if they were there, they would welcome May back. The last time she had seen them, they’d been under the impression she was going to save the realm. And that time, she had only run away.
The carriage lurched to a sudden halt. The doors flew open and everyone tumbled out, landing on the sand. Gathering themselves, they helped one another up, dazed.
Here, all was quiet and still. There was no more moon, only a clear sky with zipping stars, the likes of which May hadn’t seen since she’d returned to the Ever After. She gazed up, amazed, and then turned in the direction of Portotown.
“Kitty will find his way back to us,” Lucius said. “He will.”
May stared into the distance. Kitty was probably more capable of taking care of himself than any of them, that much was true. But still, May’s heart was dark with fear for him. If they turned right around and went back to Portotown …
“Heeeeeaaaahhhh!”
The yell had issued from Lady Howard’s twisted mouth. In a moment the carriage was off again, throwing up a cloud of dust behind it, racing on toward the edge of the realm. They watched it go, then looked at one another. The best thing they could do for Kitty now was to move forward.
“We’d better be quiet,” May whispered. If the inhabitants of the Scrap Mountains were here, they might take them for ghouls and …
“Wow, you look awful,” Pumpkin said, swiping at a few stray tears and taking May in for the first time. Her black velvet dress had ripped in the scuffle at the carriage. Her hair, dirty and moppy from the desert dust, scraggled down her back in crusty lumps, parted only by her arrows.
“Pumpkin, keep your voice down,” Bea whispered.
But Pumpkin only shook his head at May in wonder. “Like some kind of … nightmare … prom queen….”
“Shhh.”
They drifted toward the mountain nearest to them. As they got closer, they saw that it was piled with old cars, coffins, and refrigerators
. May took in the vast array of junk—including hundreds of hearses, which littered the sand, half-buried—and was disheartened. “I didn’t remember there were so many.” One of them held an entrance to the Colony, but she had no idea which one.
She looked at Lucius, who glowed like a firefly in the dim emptiness of the desert. He looked back at her and shrugged, as if to say, Your guess is as good as mine. Bea, who was trembling, reached for her hand. May held it tight.
“Ooh, shiny,” Pumpkin said, reaching out to the pile and grabbing a shiny silver toaster. A tower of hubcaps came cascading down on top of him.
At that moment, just in front of them, there was a crack, and a shimmying sound, and a slant of warm light shot out across the sand and bathed them in its yellow glow. It wasn’t a dim, ghostly glow, but real, living candlelight. The crack widened into a rectangular doorway. The figure that stood within it didn’t glow, or float. It was full, solid, colorful, and alive.
Her silhouette was slim and lithe; she wore a black cancan skirt and a red bustier, and her hair was coiffed in a silky brown bob. She held a dagger—pulled from the holster at her thigh—high in the air, threateningly.
Lawless Lexy looked May up and down once, and May wondered if she’d recognize her. And then Lexy sank on one hip, dropping her dagger to her side, and leaned against the doorway.
“Well, well, well, as I live and breathe.” Her sharp stare, which never missed a trick, made May squirm.
“We need your help.”
Lexy only stood there expectantly.
“We need to send out a message to every group of spirits still left in the Ever After, and to the Lady of North Farm,” May said. “We need to get ready to go after Bo Cleevil. Can you help us?”
And then, to May’s surprise, Lexy stepped forward and wrapped her in a deep, tight hug, pulling her in through the doorway that led to the Colony of the Undead. “I love your hair.”
There are many things cats resent. Water, for one. Being scratched in the wrong place, for another. But the one thing cats resent most of all is being held when they don’t wish to be. That is why a group of phantoms floating home from Crawl-Mart one evening, their arms full of new daisy-patterned pillow shams, saw a curious thing. A vampire zipping to and fro along the edges of the Platte of Despair, screaming pitifully, a ball of fuzz wrapped around his head like a pair of earmuffs, hanging on for dear life by the teeth.