how many times had she patched that sock
. . . to the dark hole in V’s chest . . .
a thing
she is just a thing now
. . . to an open mouth pooling with rain . . .
there’s no place like home
Noor was crying. Her head was bent forward, hair covering her face, but I could see her chest heaving. I tried to put my arms around her but she wrenched away suddenly.
“I did this,” she whispered, “it’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault.”
“It’s not,” I said. I tried again to wrap my arms around her and this time she let me. “It isn’t.”
“Yes, yes, it is,” she whispered. I held her tighter, tighter. Her body shook. “She was safe in that loop for so many years. And then I led that man to her. Let him in, led him right past all her defenses.”
“You didn’t know. There’s no way you could’ve known.”
“And now she’s dead. Because of me she’s dead.”
Because of us, I thought, though I would never have said it. I had to kill this poisonous idea before it took root, or it would destroy her. I knew it from experience; a similar poison had infected me.
“You can’t think that way. It’s not true.” I tried to sound calm, reasonable. But it was hard when V’s body lay a few feet away in the grass.
“I only just found her. God. I only just found her again.” Her voice was cracking.
“It wasn’t your fault!”
“STOP SAYING THAT.” She pushed away suddenly, shoved me back to an arm’s length. Then, softer: “It makes me want to die.”
Suddenly bereft of words, I nodded. Okay.
Rain stung our faces, dripped off our chins. The house had started to groan.
“I need a minute,” she said.
“We should get her inside.”
“I need a minute,” she said again.
I gave it to her. Got up and walked to the edge of the trees, bent forward against the gale, trying not to think about how stupid it was to be standing outside in a hurricane. Thought instead of my grandfather, of how he had died and where—just through these woods. The strange mirroring of his body and his protégé’s. I had only seen my grandfather cry once, but I knew this would have made him weep. Heat flared through my chest, my bones. I could almost see his ghost now, gleaming through the black and shuddering trees, could almost hear him moaning, Velya, Velya, not you, too.
I turned back to look. Noor was kneeling beside the body, wiping mud from V’s face, straightening her twisted limbs. Noor, who had found V only to lose her again. Who would surely and forever blame herself, no matter how I reasoned with her. But if it was her fault, it was equally mine. We had been fooled, had let ourselves be tricked. V had surely missed her adopted daughter, but she had never, for the sake of Noor’s own safety, tried to see her again. I remembered her greeting when we found her. What the hell are you doing here?
Our mistake had cost V her life. And I feared it had resurrected a demon. We had much to atone for, and little time to grieve.
A gust of wind nearly knocked me over. There was a screech and then a sharp crack from the next yard, and I swung my head around to see part of the neighbor’s roof peel away.
When I looked back at Noor she was still kneeling, head tilted as if in prayer.
Just one minute, I told myself. Just give her one minute more. It might be her only chance to say goodbye. Or I’m sorry. I didn’t know what the future held. Whether we’d have a chance to bury V, to hold a funeral. Just one minute more, and maybe Noor would be able to make some measure of peace with this, or at least keep herself from drowning in poison. And then we’d be able to—what? I had been so consumed with the terrors and tragedies of the present moment that I had not yet thought beyond them. We had to cover V’s body. Bring her inside. Had to warn our friends and allies, had to reach them—if Caul had not already. There were a thousand terrors clawing at the edge of my mind, but I couldn’t afford to let them in yet.
Noor had gone still. The storm was worsening. I couldn’t wait any longer.
I’d only taken a few steps toward her when it felt like something punched me in the stomach, and I staggered and fell to my knees. Struggling to draw breath, I searched the grass for the object that had struck me, but there was nothing. And then I gasped as fresh pain bloomed in my midsection and raced down both legs.
I know this pain.
“What happened? Are you hurt?” Noor was bending over me, tilting my head up. I tried to speak, but it came out as a mumble. My mind was on the thing that had hit me, which wasn’t a thing at all, I realized, but a feeling. And now some dynamo in my gut that had been still was spinning again, and it compelled me to turn and look into the woods.
“What is it?” Noor said.
I got a sudden flash: rotting, black-eyed, built like a monstrous spider, crashing through the bracken toward us.
“The man in yellow,” I said hoarsely, my heart thudding as my eyes searched the trees.
“What about him?”
It had felt him go. Felt its master die.
“He wasn’t alone.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
My mind went to the gun safe in the garage, but it was locked, chained tight, just as useless to us now as it had been to my grandfather on the night he died. There was only one option left, other than running, which was useless, or facing it here in the yard with no weapons, which was idiotic.
“My grandfather had a bunker,” I said, already on my feet and pulling Noor toward the porch. “In the office, under the floor.”
Halfway to the porch she planted her feet and pulled us to a stop.
“Not without her.”
She meant V.
“There’s a hollowgast in the woods.” I realized I hadn’t actually said the word, named the threat. I tried to pull her onward, but she would not be moved.
“I’ve seen what they do to people like us, especially dead ones. They already took her heart. I won’t let them take her eyes, too.”
She wasn’t shaking, wasn’t manic. I could see there would be no arguing.
Noor took V’s arms and I took her legs. V was not a large woman, but her sodden body felt weighted down with stones. We struggled to the porch and hefted her past the unmoving wight into the house, leaving a drip-trail of mud behind us. We set her down by the pulled-back rug in the office. I could feel my inner compass ticking back and forth, trying hard to pinpoint the location of a hollow I hadn’t yet seen with my eyes. All I knew for certain was that it was coming, and it was angry. I could feel that anger like pricks from a hot knife.