Twixt

by
Sarah Diemer

Copyright
2013 Sarah Diemer

All
rights reserved

Edited
by Jennifer Diemer

License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
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hard work of this author.

For Jenn, always.

And for Maddie

who loved and
believed in it from the very first moment.

You are a
cherished, ink-stained pillar of my life.

Chapter One:  Asleep

I open my eyes.

The sky is dirty red, like drying blood.  I sit up fast, heart pounding, fingers
curling into the brittle leaves beneath my palms, the mud sucking me under a
little more.  I’m dripping, shaking.  The whisper of the stream beside me, water
rushing under the hole in the ice, sounds like voices.

I lift up my hands,
stare down at them.  For a moment, I
marvel: are these my hands?
They’re bloody, my fingers.  And
blue.  My dress is black, with more
holes than fabric.  The laces on my
boots are frozen solid, and as I struggle to get up, turn over, kneel on the
bank of the stream, blood drips from my face, plunking hollowly upon the snowy mud beneath me.

A shadow—to my right.  I turn, but I’m not fast enough.
Something filthy and covered in furs is scrabbling away, leaving wet
footprints upon the stone of the escarpment that huddles over this little
valley and spit of stream.  Its dripping
bulk is familiar to me, but it crawls too quickly over the edge and is lost,
hidden amongst the skeletal trees beyond, branches scraping together.

I’m shaking so hard
my hands blur.

I reach up, brush a
knuckle over my lips, smearing my mouth with blood.  I creep forward and dunk my hands beneath the hole in the ice,
let the freezing water sweep over my skin, dragging at my fingers like it wants
to take me down and in, devour me.

“Hello?”

I scramble back from
the edge of the stream, turn so fast that the world spins, and there, behind
me, is a girl, a young woman.  Pale and
thin and stark, she stares down at me.
Her dirty blonde hair is hacked short, feathering around her ears like
bird down.  She’s wearing a shabby brown
coat, two sizes too big, tied around her middle with sawn rope.  Her face is grubby, but her brown eyes flash
as she squats beside me, and though fear runs through me like blood, I’m not
afraid of her.

“What are you doing here?” she whispers, looking me
over, reaching out a hand toward me.  I
flinch away, and she frowns, leans back.
“What are you doing here?” she repeats then, voice soft, gentle, curving
toward me like a beckoning finger.
“It’s almost sunset.”

“I don’t…”  I gasp, start.  That voice.  That was my
voice?  I stare down at my hands, white
and blue with streaks of red, still trembling.

“What’s your name?”
she whispers.

I close my eyes,
feel the press of mud beneath me, the pulsing ache in my hands, the blood
running over my face, dripping off my chin in a heated rhythm.

“I don’t know.”  My voice—not my voice—quivers in the air
between us.  I stare down at my hands
again, desperate, turning them over and over, scratching at my skirt, the
sleeves of my blouse, my boots with their frozen knots.  “I don’t know,” I say again,
desperate.  My words echo back to me
from the trees as if they shattered against their roots.

“It’s all
right.  I promise, it’s all right.”  Her voice is soft, smooth-edged, as she
reaches out to me, her hands against my arms.
There are holes in my sleeves, and her palms press against my bare skin,
warm.  It’s the warmth that makes me pause,
makes my thundering heart quiet for a moment.

She looks in my eyes, looks hard, staring deeper and
deeper.  “I’ll explain everything,” she
murmurs after a moment, and then she’s standing, helping me to my feet.  The mud squelches in protest, and I find
that I can hardly rise.  Everything
seems to be spinning.  Blood falls onto
the sleeves of the girl’s coat from my chin as I totter.  My eyes fixate on the blood, dark and ugly
spots that stain.

“We have to get
inside before sunset,” she whispers, glancing up at the sky.  “They come at sunset.”

Her words are so
breathy, so quiet, they almost don’t exist.

"They," I
whisper, and something moves through me, a shudder, a shake, and I stare at
her, open-mouthed, as she tilts back her head, watches me.

“Come on,” is all
she says, putting her arm around mine, all but dragging me over the half-frozen
ground, away from the whispering stream.
I glance over my shoulder at the bright-red blood surrounding the hole
in the ice.

“We’ve gotta be
fast.”  She leans toward me, shaking her
head.  “I know you must be stiff, but—”

“What’s wrong?” I
ask, breathless, as we mount the escarpment and enter the forest.  I trip on a frozen gouge in the earth, but
she catches my elbow, helps me up.
“What’s happening?”

The light seems to
lengthen between the trees, drawing toward us like thin, red bones.

“We’ll talk about it
when we’re inside.”  Her voice is still
warm, but sharper now.  Urgent.  And then, as she glances up at the fading light,
her eyes widen.  “Do you think you can
run?”

I can barely move,
boots clumping down at odd, awkward angles.
It’s as if I’ve never walked before, though I know I have.  I grit my teeth, take a running step and
sprawl on the ground, chin banging against another frozen rut of earth.  My teeth clatter together, and I shove
myself upward as she grabs at my elbow again, hoisting me to my feet gently,
steering me between the trees.

“What comes at
sunset?” I ask as she glances at the branches overhead again, cursing under her
breath.

She rakes a hand
through her hair, eyes flashing.  Her
words are heavy with regret:  “I guess
you’ll see.”

My heart is beating
so hard, it’s all I can hear.  The trees
sigh around us, shifting, as if they’re waiting.  We move faster, faster, and even though I have to watch my feet, I
keep taking in little glimpses of what’s in front of us—and far ahead, through
the huddled trunks, I think I see a long, dark shadow rising along the
ground.

A wall?

It’s as sudden as a
cut-off breath, the change from the deep, dripping red of sunset to the
absoluteness of gray.  The color is
gone—one blink to the next.  I trip
again, falter, as I whirl about me, staring at the absence of red, at the
heaviness of monochrome that seems to steal up the trunks of the trees like
wrinkled hands.

The girl drags at my
arm.  “Run,” she says, and then again,
voice cracking,  “Run.”

We move between the
trees, two shadows, breath coming out in jagged scratches as she helps me up
again and again.  My limbs move looser
now, as if they’re slowly thawing, but the ground is rough and ragged, and the darkness
is crawling toward us like the gray now.
I can’t move fast enough, but the girl’s patience is absolute, even as
she glances over her shoulder, panting, her brown eyes wide and anxious.

All I can hear is my
heartbeat, is our breathing, is the breaking twigs and the oof of my gasp
when I go down again.

But then I hear them.

A wail—long, thin,
piercing, like a flashing silver hook that arcs through the air and into me,
cutting bone deep.  I jerk around, as if
dragged, and I see it in the air between the trees…descending toward us.

It’s a human
skeleton, but it isn’t—the skull has a thin, wicked beak in place of a mouth,
and wide, black-feathered wings heave up and down upon the thing's back.

The creature is
huge, three times the size of a person.
The sharpness of its beak flashes in the dying light as it unhinges its
jaws again and screams.  The sound is
the world, is everything, as the creature pumps its black wings,
reaching toward us with bone hands that curve into claws.  The sockets where its eyes should be are as
hollow as heartbeats, and it comes after me, after us, faster than sound,
dragging its wailing behind it.

The girl yanks my
arm, and then somehow, impossibly, we’re running again, the screaming behind us
growing louder, larger, with more wails of thin, piercing sharpness.  I glance back and feel my heart stop within
me: there are four of them now.  No,
five.

Fear burns through
me, searing my bones and muscles, as ice moves beneath my skin like a wet,
crawling thing.  They are so close, I
can feel the chill of their wings, the gusts of air rushing forward, stealing
my balance.

A whistle, a tear in
the air, as one of the things drags its claws down and toward me.  It is going to catch me, hook its sharpness
through me, and I am all animal, all fear, as I cry out something wordless,
moving through the dark, hunted.

The long shadow
rises ahead, near enough now to make out silhouettes of stones.  It is a wall, and we’re aiming for it; we're
going to run into it, collide with it as it arcs higher and higher, huge
and solid.  We can’t stop.  We’re running too fast to stop, and the
things are too close.  If we stop…  I hear the slice in the air behind me as one
of the creatures extends its claws, nearly grazing our heads, and I close my
eyes as the wall looms before us, as we run, never slowing, because we can’t—

Darkness.

My arm jerks as I’m
halted, skidding to a stop, the girl gripping my elbow so hard that it
hurts.  I can hear her panting beside
me, feel the aching surge of my own breath, and there’s only darkness, darkness
everywhere.  No trees, no sky, nothing.

I gulp, cry out—

A flare of light,
thin and yellow, in the deep black space.

The girl lets go of
me, and I watch her move her hands through her hair as she leans forward,
staring at the light with narrowed eyes.

We’re in a small
room, I see now, with walls towering around us on three sides.  On the fourth side, there's a door.  A door that’s open, cracked, an eye and
wrinkled nose peering through, along with the light.

“Charlie,”
sighs the old woman, pulling the door open fully.  She’s layered in sweaters and shawls and skirts, her gray hair
sticking up at odd angles.  She peers at
us, squinting as she looks at me, raising the lantern higher.  Inside of the lantern, three golden orbs
bump lazily against the glass.

I stare,
swallow.

“Charlie, what have
we here?” The old woman moves closer, shoving the lantern beneath my nose.  “Who’s this?”

The
girl—Charlie—slumps against a wall, sliding down as she runs her hands through
her hair again, knuckles white.  “It’s
complicated, Abigail.  This is a new
Sleeper.”

The woman takes a
step back, draws the lantern away, clutching it to her chest as she stares me
up and down, shaking her head slowly.

“I found her by the
stream before sunset.  But she has no memories.  She must be a Sleeper.”

“That’s…not
possible.”  The woman turns from me to
glare at the girl, but Charlie shakes her head, too, and lifts an eyebrow.  “Before sunset, Charlie?”  She sniffs, stares down at my boots, at the
tattered edge of my skirt, and then rakes her shrewd gaze over the rest of
me—as if I’m a thing, an unusual object whose worth might be guessed at by a
glance.

I raise my chin, and
she sighs then, and softens a little, though she’s still frowning, thin lips
angling down over jagged, brown teeth.
“It gets stranger every day, don’t it, Charlie, my girl?  Why not before sunset?”  She steps toward me, head to the side,
cocked like a bird, as I crush back against the wall, flinching as she reaches
a hand up, as if to touch me.  She stops,
fingers poised in midair, and glances to Charlie, who shrugs.

Then the old woman
backs away, and I let out a shaky breath.

“My name is
Abigail,” she tells me, lowering the lantern and pressing a palm against her
chest.  Her eyes are wide and wild in
the circling light.  “Welcome to Mad
House.”

“Don’t,
Abigail,” Charlie hisses, rising, rubbing at her shoulder.  “Not yet.
She was nearly Snatched—”

"Rubbish."  Abigail sniffs, stares up at me with one eye
closed, one eye narrowed.  “She’s gotta
know where she’s found herself—”

“She’ll know soon
enough.”  Charlie sighs, glances at me,
shaking her head.  “Come on,” she says,
holding out her hand.  “It’s all right.  You’re safe here.”

“Safe?” I
whisper.  I’m shaking, and the word
shivers into the little room.

“Yes,” says Charlie,
nodding, smiling softly, encouraging.
“I promise, you’re safe.”

“For now.”  Abigail grins toothily up at me, drawing out
the word.

Charlie rolls her
eyes, takes my arm gently, tugs me out of the little room, a closet—how did we
get into a closet?—into a high-ceilinged hallway with peeling
wallpaper.  The thick, red carpet
swallows my boots to the ankles.
Glittering chandeliers loom above our heads, though no light sparkles
within them.  The windows are covered
with draping curtains, concealing the outdoors, but I still shy away from them
as we three pad down the hallway, the lantern in Abigail’s fist casting a
trembling bubble of light around us.
Here, the light is close and warm, but it does little to comfort me.

“What were those things?  The…monsters?” My voice is a panicked
whisper.  I grit my teeth together to
stop them from chattering.

Charlie sighs, bows
her head.  “We call them Snatchers.  They come out at night, take new Sleepers,
old Sleepers…  Whoever they can catch.  But don’t worry, because you’re safe now—”

“Safe?”  I say the word again: it tastes desperate,
sour.  “Where do they take the people
they…Snatch…to?”

Charlie glances
sidelong at me, eyes narrowed.  “We
don’t…  We don’t really know.  But it doesn’t matter.  They didn’t Snatch you.  We were faster.  Fast enough.”  I stare at
her until she breaks the gaze, biting her lip.
“You’re a new Sleeper, and Twixt is very confusing in the beginning, but
I promise that—”

“No promises,
Charlie,” says Abigail, waving her arm at me.
“You know how I’m always telling you—‘Charlie,’ I says, ‘you waste your
time on the new ones, trying to make 'em more comfortable,’ and you know it’s a
sweet thing, but you could be saving your energy for them that needs it,
not them that wants coddling.”

Charlie closes her
eyes, rubs at her nose.  “And you know
how I’m always telling you that you purposefully terrify the new
Sleepers with too much information?”

Abigail laughs, a
thin, piercing cackle that makes me shudder.
“Coddled Sleepers are Snatched Sleepers.  They gotta know what they’re facing, or it’s over.  I just tell 'em the truth.”

“And what’s that?” I
ask, breathing out the words.
"What's the truth?"

Abigail stares at
me, eyes narrowed. “The truth, girl?
The truth is that you’re in Twixt,” she says, holding up one,
sharp finger.  “And that you’re a
Sleeper.  And that Snatchers like
Sleepers mightily.  That daylight is
safe, and nighttime is not.  That you’ll
probably get Snatched long before you Fade, and most of what you have to look
forward to is fear.”  She’s
grinning as she growls out the last word, eyes wide in the skittering
half-light of the lantern.  “So you best
not need coddling, girl, because you’ll last five minutes here if
you don't toughen up, and fast.”

Charlie grips my arm a little tighter, shakes her
head.  “That’s not all true, Abigail…”

The old woman
sniffs, turns back, continues hobbling down the hall.  “Yes, it is, and you know it, Charlie, my girl.  And soon enough, she will, too.”

With a heavy sigh,
Charlie leans toward me, eyes lowered, mouth close to my ear.  “Ignore her.  It’s all right.  Tomorrow,
you’ll decide if you want to stay in Mad House.  You get to choose.  You
won’t have to put up with her if you don’t want to.”

“Twixt,” I murmur,
swallowing.  My mouth forms the word
easily.  “Twixt," I say again, and
shake my head.  "What’s Twixt?”

“Well,” says
Charlie, clearing her throat, “it’s where you are.  You’re in Mad House.  In
Abeo City.  In Twixt."  She shrugs her shoulders.  "It’s where Sleepers go,” she finishes,
as if that explains everything.

“Sleepers.” I bite
my lip, walking faster to catch up to the spheres of light Abigail carries in
her lantern.

“You’re Asleep right
now,” says Charlie, lengthening her stride, too.  She lets go of my arm, and I stumble a little, surprised.  But I do seem to be walking better now, more
smoothly.

“I'm Asleep,
too," Charlie says.  "We all
are.  We’re waiting to wake up.”

“This is a dream?” I
ask, glancing at the walls that look so solid (but weren't when we somehow
passed through them, moving from outdoors to in, through the wall, into the
closet), at the carpet that swallows my boots, at the frozen knots of laces
scratching my chapped knees, at the dark clothes that shift against my body,
the dried blood caked on my hands.

Charlie regards me
strangely, biting her lower lip.  “Not
exactly a dream…” she begins, but Abigail stops in a doorway, stops so abruptly
that I have to trip a little in order to avoid colliding with her small, sneering
bulk.

“In there,” she
says, jutting her chin toward the room before us.  Inside, there are lanterns and glass jars containing orbs on
every available surface, washing the furnishings and the faces of the people
with a trembling yellow glow.

And the people…  There must be twenty, at least.  They stand around the empty fireplace, sit
stiffly on plush couches and chairs, lie sprawled upon the floor.  Young and old, men and women, boys and
girls, wearing ragged clothes, their heads tufted with ruffled hair.  Their expressions are wary, their eyes
glassy and wide.  They speak in whispers
amongst themselves, but the room falls silent as they notice us, turn toward us
in the doorway.

“A new one,”
announces Abigail—loudly and without explanation.

Charlie ushers me
in, hand at the small of my back.  I
make a conscious effort not to stumble, feeling all of those eyes, hardly
blinking, trailing my every move.

A young woman rises
to her feet.  Her hair is black and
short and thin, curving upon her head softly.
She’s pretty as she shoves her hands into her hoodie's pockets, as she
cocks her head to the side and smiles shyly at me.  Others gather in small, tight bunches, staring, but none steps
forward or speaks except for this girl, who glances from me to Charlie and back
again.

“Charlie, a new
one?” she’s asking, and Charlie shrugs, shakes her head.

“Yes."

"But it just
got dark—"

"Don’t ask me,
Vi.  I don’t know how or why.”

“Things are getting
worse,” moans a woman then.  She has
tangled red hair that shifts over her shoulder as she looks toward us, her skin
pale as milk. “New Sleepers in the daytime?  What else will change?
Will walls grow solid, or fail to keep out the Snatchers?”

“New Sleepers in the
daytime is good, Ella,” says Charlie with a tired sigh, rocking back on
her heels.  “That would make Fetchers’
work easier, and Twixt safer.”

“But what else
will change, Charlie?” asks an older man, sucking on the ends of his
mustache.  He brings his cane, a ragged
stick, down upon the floor with a loud thump.  “That’s the thing: what else?
What will change not for the better?”

“Listen, we’ll worry
about all of this later.  This girl was
almost Snatched.  Try to make her feel
comfortable.”  Charlie falls onto an unoccupied
couch, leaving me standing alone in the center of the room.  I clasp my hands before me, uncertain.

“I’m Violet,” says
the girl in the hoodie, angling her chin up to grin at me again.  “Have you got a name yet?”

“I…don’t know my
name,” I whisper, panic threatening to eat me up, but the girl shakes her head,
still smiling.

“Oh, no, it’s all
right.  None of us had names when we
first got here.  Charlie, have you
thought of one for her yet?”

“No,” she says,
opening one eye to look at me.  “We’ll
think up a name for her tomorrow.  I’m
sorry.  I’m fried, and I still have to go
Fetching tonight.  I was just out for a
walk before night fell and—”

“Who knows if
there’ll even be new Sleepers tonight,” says the older man, throwing up his
arms.  “This is serious.  We need to hold someone accountable, is what
we need to do.  I've said it
before, but—”

“Robert, ease up,”
commands Abigail, setting her lantern down upon the dusty piano.  She hobbles over to Charlie's couch and
perches primly on its arm.  “Ain’t
nothin’ happening that we can stop, anyway, and you know it.”

Silence descends,
hazy as a shroud, and I shiver, rubbing at my arms.  Everyone watches me, the new Sleeper, the oddity.  My eyes flit over the pale gathering of
people with their wide, sunken eyes.
Beneath their many gazes, I’m strung as tight as a violin.  To shut them out, I close my eyes, but then
I see the shadows—white and black and winged—descending from the trees.

My eyes spring open,
wider than before.

I don’t want to be
here, amongst these people with their probing, accusatory stares.  I don’t know them.  I don't know any of them.

I want to feel
safe.

How can I feel safe?

I don’t know if I’ll
ever feel safe again.

Suddenly, the hairs
on the back of my neck prick up.  I
stand a little straighter and notice Violet straightening, too, peering behind
me with her large, bright eyes.

I turn, following
the line of her gaze.

There’s a shadow in
the doorway—small, slight, only a girl, not a monster, I realize, as she rocks
on her bare feet, swaying back and forth.
Not a monster.  Just a
girl.  She's nearly bald, with scraps of
hair tufted on her head, small, ragged knots of lanky blonde, and when she
looks up at me, still swaying, I see by the sharpness of her face that she’s
thinner than any creature ever should be, and bones poke out at odd angles
beneath her formless brown dress.

“Oh,” she whispers,
then, staring at me with wide, bloodshot eyes.
Animal eyes.  “Oh…” she
says again, stepping forward, faltering, a skeletal hand stretched out toward
me.

She hasn't glanced
away, hasn't even blinked.  She’s
staring so intensely at me that I cringe and step back as she moves
forward.  Her smile isn't right…  It's too wide, that smile, as she pauses,
trembling, before the doorway.  “Oh, she
has such pretty hair.”

And then I notice
something silver in her palm.  It flashes
in the half-light as she runs across the floor toward me, hands curled like
claws, mouth open, teeth bared: everything else but her too slow, tilting.

"She's got
shears!" Violet wails from somewhere far away.

I move as if through
water.  I try to deflect the girl, but
she’s on me too quickly, too ferociously, and I tumble to the ground as she
straddles my waist, my shoulders, pinning me with her knees to the floor.  She holds up a great fistful of my black
curls—I hadn't noticed my hair before this moment—and, in her other hand, she
brandishes a small pair of gleaming scissors, sharply glittering as she
unhinges them, still smiling.  Tears
stream over her face, falling warm upon my cheeks, as she closes the pointed
jaws around her handful of my hair.

I wince.

And then, just as
suddenly, I can breathe again, and I sit up, gasping, because Charlie knocked
the girl off of me.  Together they
tumble across the floor, the shears skidding, clattering toward the empty
fireplace.  Violet snatches them up as
Charlie pins the girl down, hands at her wrists, sitting upon her waist as the
girl sat upon mine.

“Violet, help,”
Charlie hisses when the girl begins to scream.
The sound is slight at first, almost pathetic, but after a moment it
rages, piercing, like the monsters’ shrieks.

“Florence,” Charlie
murmurs, over and over.  “Florence, it’s
all right.  Florence, look
at me.”

The girl spasms
beneath her, shaking violently, back arching, snapping.  Violet falls to her knees, smoothes her
palms over the girl’s cheeks and her bare, tufted head.

“Florence,
breathe.  Breathe, baby girl,” Violet
whispers, voice catching.  A single tear
falls from her eye, splashing against the girl’s nose, and then, suddenly, with
a wracking sigh, the girl just…stops.
Her eyes close, and she shudders once and slumps, like a boneless thing,
and all is still.

Charlie curves
forward, crawling off of the motionless body and falling to her back on the
floor, beside Florence, breathing out and then shutting her eyes, too.

“Well,” says Abigail,
with a quiver in her tone, “that might have gone much better.  Or much worse.”  Her sharp eyes pierce through me.

I sit up carefully
and then stand, bending away from the lot of them and folding my arms across my
middle.  I’m ready to run if I need to, to
flee into the hallway and just go.  I
don’t know where I'll go.  But I’ll
leave.  I'll find someplace else,
someplace…safe.

The hair that the
girl snipped off with her shears lies limp upon the floor, curled in upon
itself.

“I thought it was Nancy’s turn to watch her,”
says Charlie, rubbing at her eyes.
"Where'd she get those scissors?"  She sits up, leaning back on her hands as she stares down at the
unmoving girl.  Face falling, she rubs
her eyes again, and I see tears on her fingers.  She stands, sniffing.
“Violet, will you help me?”

Violet, pale and
wide-eyed, rises to her feet, nodding, as Charlie reaches down to lift up the
broken girl as if she were only a doll, cradling her length in her arms.

“Are you all right?”
asks Violet quietly, reaching out and touching my elbow.  Startled, I flinch away, and Violet stands
beside me awkwardly, biting her lip, before she straightens, tucking her hands
into her hoodie pockets.  “If you…if you
come with me, I’ll show you a room where you can stay tonight.”

Florence is out
cold, lying limp against Charlie's chest, and Charlie stays very still,
watching me, her eyes red-rimmed and shining.
“Sorry,” she mutters, noticing my gaze, and then ducking her head to
stare down at the girl.  “She’s been
getting worse, but I didn’t…  I thought
she was being taken care of.  I’m
just…so sorry.”  The words catch in her
throat, and I flush, suddenly ashamed for flinching away from Violet.  But I don’t know what to do or say.  I shift from heel to heel as the people
staring at us all around the room maintain their heavy silence.

“Let’s take her
upstairs,” Violet whispers, and I don’t know if she means the girl or me, but I
follow Charlie and Violet out of the room, away from the heat of those probing
eyes.  There’s movement behind me as I
leave, and I glance back over my shoulder to watch a small woman steal quietly
toward the lock of hair coiled on the floor and snatch it up, her thin hands
curling around it greedily before pocketing it in one jerky movement.

I look away and
shiver.

Violet takes up one
of the lanterns from the floor outside of the entryway, holding it in shaking
fingers, angling it overhead so that it casts flickering light on the dark red
carpet.

I notice Charlie
watching me carefully as she shifts Florence's weight in her arms.

“Upstairs, Violet,”
she says gently after a long moment, and Violet starts, nodding, leading the
way down the corridor with the lantern aloft in her hand.  Within the confines of the glass, the golden
orbs swing about in lazy circles, resting for a heartbeat on the bottom only to
rise and try to move through the glass again, bobbing in place.

“What are those?” I
gesture toward the lantern.

“Oh, Wisps,” Violet
murmurs distractedly, glancing over her shoulder at Charlie, who isn’t paying
any attention to either of us, only staring down at Florence with a grave
downturn of her mouth.

“I’m really sorry
about…you know.” Violet regards me with too-bright eyes, her voice pitched low,
as if to prevent Charlie from hearing her.
“I hope that doesn’t mean that we’ll lose you to another Safe
House.  I hope you won't be afraid to
stay.  It was only a fluke, I promise.”

“But why did she—”

Violet shakes her
head, puts a finger to her lips, leans closer.

“She wanted your
hair," she whispers.  "Florence
has been desperate for…"  She
frowns, her words trailing off.  Her
teeth worry at her lip.  "Anyway, I
guess seeing so much of it—hair, I mean—triggered her, flipped the switch.  She usually has better self-control.  Lately, at least.”  Violet studies the lantern in her hand for a long moment.

I glance at her own
short black hair, sticking up like the points of arrows around her ears.  “I don't understand.  Why would she want my hair?”

Violet swallows, her
eyes downcast.  “I'm not the one to tell
you this stuff.  Charlie’s the
Fetcher.  She has to talk to the new
Sleepers, because you have to be told things the right way.  Gently.”
Her eyes are wide as she turns toward me.  Wide and frightened.  “I
could tell you something the wrong way, and then you’d…"  She swallows again and shakes her head.  "It wouldn’t be good.”

I stare at her, but
she faces forward again and begins to ascend a broad staircase; the wood groans
in protest beneath her feet.  I follow,
but Charlie brushes past me, bumping against my hip.

“Sorry,” she
mutters, as she shifts Florence in her arms.

Two steps up the
stairs, and the darkness seems to swallow the lantern light.  It’s sudden and intense, how the panic
consumes me in the half-darkness.  I
lift my ruined skirts and take the steps two at a time until I stand beside
Charlie upon the landing.

“We’ll come for you
in the morning,” says Violet, and then looks to Charlie, who nods once.  “You can stay here, in this room.” She rests
a palm on the door to her right.  Inclining
her chin toward me, she turns the knob and steps inside, the lantern
illuminating a small, shabby room with sheets covering three large pieces of
furniture, turning them into dingy, hulking beasts.  Whisper-thin curtains blow over the single—and broken—window.

Violet crosses to
the window quickly, pulling the curtains closed and shoving one of the
sheet-covered pieces—a desk, I think—against them to hold them in place.

“Always keep the
windows covered,” she says, "just in case," and she glances past the curtains,
toward the sky.  My blood stills as I
follow her gaze, as I remember what flies and claws beyond these walls.

Snatchers.

“They…"  I swallow.
"They can’t get in, can they?”

Violet glances to
Charlie again before she shakes her head slowly.  “No,” she says, but hesitantly—as if she isn't certain.  “You’re safe here,” she whispers, holding
the lantern to her chest.  “And I’m just
next door.  If you need anything, come
right in, all right?”

“I…”  I shift from one foot to the other, look to
the window again.  "All
right."

“Morning will come
soon,” Violet promises, smiling softly at me.
“Morning is safe.”

And night is not.

“I’m two doors
down.”  Charlie clears her throat and
removes her gaze from Florence, catches my eye.  “Come see me, too, if you need to.  But the Snatchers aren’t coming in.  Don't worry about that.”
Her voice is clear, soft.  She
angles her head toward me and says, so quietly that I almost can't hear it,
“Again…I’m so sorry about what Florence did to you.”

I open my mouth but don't
know how to respond, so I just nod and look away.  Then Violet holds out the lantern to me.  I take it, peering at the orbs inside before
hugging it against my stomach.

"Good night,
then," Charlie says, her brown eyes still sad, regretful, as she backs
away, through the doorway, with Florence still in her arms.  Violet follows close behind, shutting the
door without a sound.

I’m alone with
countless shadows.

I sit stiffly on the
edge of the bed, the lantern on my lap, and watch the curtain waft in and out,
as if Mad House itself is breathing.

Chapter Two:  Wanting

When a dusting of
light appears at the edge of the curtains, brightening the wall, I blink at it,
shivering.  It’s so cold in this room
that I can see my breath, even though I’m huddled beneath the covers with my
strange lantern.

I feel as if I've
sat here for hours, forever.

The knock at the
door is so loud that it shatters the stillness into jagged shards.  I cough, sit up in bed, still clutching the
lantern close.

“Come in?” I whisper,
teeth chattering.

The door gapes, and
Violet peeks her head around the frame, then slips in, with Charlie behind
her.

I stare at them both
from the mattress, trying hard not to shake.

Charlie glances at
me, eyebrows up, but goes to the window, pushing the desk aside and peeling
back the curtains.  Cold air gusts in
past the broken, grimy glass, but there's daylight, too—enough daylight to see
by.

I set the lantern
down on the floor and slide my boots out from beneath the covers.

“You need good clothes,”
says Charlie, angling her mouth sideways, glancing at my tattered skirts.  “We’ll take you to the Wanting Market, get
some for you.”

Violet glances at
her quickly.  “But Charlie, how will she
pay—”

“She has to know
what everything means before she starts making decisions.  And it won’t cost much."

Violet’s mouth is
drawn in a thin, disapproving line.  She
looks away from Charlie, and she shoves her hands into her hoodie pockets.

I glance between the
two of them, and frustration begins to bubble up within me, scratching at my
insides, replacing the fear.  “I need to
know what everything means now.
Please.”

Charlie bites her
lip and puts her hands on her hips.
“It’s better if we show you,” she says, catching my gaze and holding
it.

“But how can we show
her the Nox—”  Charlie gives Violet a
warning glance, brow raised, and the girl falls silent.

“Nox?” I ask
weakly.

Charlie shakes her
head, offers me a hand, and I slide off the bed, helped up.  I’m so stiff, I feel like a piece of
clockwork that needs to be wound.

“All
right."  Charlie sighs, her hand
still in mine.  "Let’s start at the
beginning again.  It’s best to start
there.  Like I told you last night,
you're in Twixt.” She waves her free hand toward the open window.  I let go of her and cross the room slowly,
limping, dragging one of my booted feet behind me, and place my fingers upon
the splintered sill.

Beyond the window,
buildings and streets stretch toward a long, low wall that hugs the whole
city.  The buildings are just as shabby as
our clothes, the roofs falling in, the walls discolored and crumbling.  Most of the windows have no glass, and
bricks lie in piles along the cavity-filled streets.

I can see children
climbing on small hills of rubble, scrabbling toward tiny pinpoints of
light—yellow orbs like the ones in the lanterns, but these orbs are unconfined
and dancing in the air, floating above the rocks and moving away from the
kids.

There's no color,
really, besides those bits of light and the red sash on the dress of a little
girl who shrieks with delight as she catches one of the orbs in her hand.  It glows upon her palm like a tiny captured
sun.

I see, beyond the
wall, that tall trees curve toward the city, with branches sharp and
thorn-like, piercing the gray fold of clouds overhead that hangs close enough
to touch.

“You’re in Abeo
City,” Charlie says, coming up behind me and gazing over my shoulder, her hand
resting against the wall.  I feel her
warmth against my back.  “In Twixt.  Abeo City is full of Sleepers who live in
Safe Houses, of which Mad House is only one."

I look back at her,
and she gives me a little smile.

"I know it's a
lot to take in.  Come on.  We’ll talk as we walk along.”

“Safe Houses,” I
say, turning away from the window, moving after Charlie and Violet as they
leave the room.

“Safe Houses keep
you safe from Snatchers.” Charlie glances back at me as we descend the
stairs.  “There are six Safe Houses here
in Abeo, and each Safe House is run by a different person with different…"  She pauses.
"Well, beliefs is a good word for it, I guess.  Abigail, the woman you met last night, runs
Mad House.”

“And what are
Abigail’s beliefs?” I ask, as we reach the first floor and my boots sink into
the thick carpet.

Charlie shakes her
head, huffs out.  “You’ll see.”  She pauses at the door, fingers lightly
touching the knob.  “Are you ready?”

I close my hands
into fists.  “For what?”

Charlie laughs a
little, but it’s a humorless sound, even though her mouth is curved up at one
side.  “The wonder that is Abeo.”

She opens the door.

I take in a cool
breath, and then, moving over the porch, down the steps and onto the uneven
street behind Charlie and Violet, I twirl and take in the city.  The buildings, all leaning, are caving in:
landslides of stone sculpting dangerous geography.  Again, I see the children, moving in a little pack now, away from
us, their eyes wide and wild.  One
stooped man, wrinkled and grey, scuttles out of the mountain of rubble like a
beetle, takes one glance at us, and then scuttles back in again.

Mad House, behind
us, is perhaps the least dilapidated house on the street, though that says
little:  none of the windows in Mad
House, I see now, has unbroken glass, and, tilting my head back, I notice a
great gouge out of the roof, as if something large and heavy crashed against
it.

Something large
and heavy…

Charlie breathes
out, begins to walk down the street quickly.
“Come on.  Time’s kind of funny
here.  We need to get to the Wanting
Market and the Need Shop and back home before darkness falls.”

“The Need Shop,
Charlie?” asks Violet, scampering after her.

I try to keep pace
with them but don’t quite manage it, settling for a jerky stride that makes my
boots clomp loudly against the uneven stone beneath my feet.

“I want to take her
to see Edgar,” says Charlie, glancing over her shoulder at me.  She lowers her voice: “I didn’t find her at
midnight at a crossroads, Violet, and…that’s obviously unusual.  I want to find out if he’s Fetched anyone
like her recently, anyone during the daylight, or in a strange place.”

“I know, and I’d
like to see Edgar, but it’s just…the Need Shop.”  Violet’s tone is nervous.  She throws a glance back toward Mad House
and then steps forward, hooks a hand on Charlie’s arm.  “What if she finds out?”

Charlie shakes her
head.  “She won’t.  Don’t worry, Vi, seriously.  We need to figure out if the new Sleeper
patterns are shifting, and that’s much more important than whether Abigail disapproves
or not.”

“Still, she’s a
terrifying woman,” Violet mutters.  Then
she grins at me, but it’s half-meant, the curve of her lips quivering.  “I mean, she can be terrifying.  She’s…mighty, is all.”

Charlie laughs a
little, mouth in a wry twist.  “Aren’t
we all at Mad House?”

“I like to think
so,” Violet ventures, raising her chin in mock haughtiness before giggling
behind her hand.

We reach a
crossroads in the street.  Until this
moment, we’ve seen few other people, save for the old man and the skulking
children, who follow after us, scampering in and out of buildings and
alleyways, as if trying to stay out of sight.
The slide of rock against rock is sudden in the stillness as it shifts
out from beneath one of their feet, but when the stones clink together
with finality, another sound overtakes them.

Voices.

Charlie jerks her
chin ahead.  “The Wanting Market,” she
says, and we move out from a narrow road between two buildings into a large
city square.

It takes me a
heartbeat to realize that it is a city square, for it’s filled with
little shacks and tents, colorless pieces of cloth propped up on sticks and
metal rods, and piles of garbage that stretch away to the buildings on the far
side of the square.  There are people
here, people in the tents and people outside of them, digging through the piles
of trash, climbing over garbage on hands and knees.

The pack of children
trailing us wanders toward the outside edge of the square, drawn to the mounds
of stone rubble as if they are their natural habitat.  Only adults, I notice, move amongst the tents.

A woman is striding
slowly between two mountains of ruined things, a stuffed animal under one arm,
her robe trailing behind her, falling off of one bare shoulder.  A few grubby young people—around Charlie's
and Violet's ages, I think, and…maybe mine?—sit together on a sloping hill of
dirty clothes, bending their faces toward one another, and I can’t tell if
they’re boys or girls or both.  Every
person here is so filthy, their hair short or matted, their faces smeared with
grime.  And their clothing is worn,
though, I must admit, more intact than the black strips of lace dangling from
my waist in a poor imitation of a skirt.

“Come on,” says
Charlie with an indulgent smile, as I turn and gawk at the scenes surrounding
us.  She hooks her arm through mine,
tugging me along a row of towering scraps.
“Let’s get you some clothes.”

The closest mound of
junk is heaped up under a drooping awning made out of hole-ridden cloth.  A young woman peers up at Charlie, narrowing
her eyes shrewdly beneath her greasy hair as we duck under and into her tent of
grubby wares.

“Charlie, darlin’,
good to see ya,” says the woman, pointing toward a heap beneath the
awning.  “Some new stuff there.  Anything in particular you're lookin’ for?”

“A dress or pants
and sweater or something for our new friend here, Sandy.”  Charlie drops to her knees and begins
shoving junk aside: rusted bits of metal, chunks of stone, eyeless stuffed
animals…  Finally, she begins to pull
out tangled bundles that resemble clothing.

“Your new young
friend got a name?” asks the woman, Sandy, watching me with one wickedly blue
eye, while her other eye squints tightly.
She rubs her dirt-stained hands on the sides of her blue jeans before
chewing at a ragged nail.

I stand very still
before I shake my head, angle my chin up.

“No,” says Charlie
distractedly, tugging at something under a corroded sheet of metal.  “Not yet.”

“You ain’t got a
name, you got nothin’ around here,” says Sandy, winking at me.  “But you sure got a lovely head of hair,
darlin’—”

“Leave it, Sandy,’
Charlie snarls, standing abruptly.  In
her arms, she cradles a bundle of cloth, and after staring Sandy down, making
the other woman shrug and look away, she turns to me, sizing me up.  "All right, let's see what we
have…"  She shakes out the twisted
fabric in her hands.  It’s a dress.  Perhaps it was once cream colored, but it's
now rusty and brown.  Still, it isn't
tattered; there are only two holes in the bottom of the skirt, small and sad,
like frowning mouths or half moons.

“I think it’ll fit
you, if you like it,” says Charlie, holding it out to me.  “Or I could try to find you pants or—”

“This’ll do,” I say
quickly.

Sandy is standing
too close to me, fingering my knotted black curls in her dirty, long-nailed
hand.

“Sandy, leave her
alone.”  Charlie steps between us,
breathing hard through her nose.
"Back off."

Sandy smirks but
shrinks away, still staring at me.  No,
not at me.  At my hair…

“You gotta pay for
that,” she says, scowling and rocking back on her heels.  “Ha!
I’ll take a curl from that pretty head of hair.  I haven’t had a curl in ages!”

“No," Charlie
says.  "I’m paying.”  She tugs out a thin, grubby chain from
beneath her shirt, drawing up a tiny pair of scissors.  They’re smaller than the ones Florence
threatened me with last night, but I take an involuntary step backwards as
Charlie brings the shears up to her own head of hair.  A single snip, and a curving lock of blonde falls into her
outstretched palm.

“Take it,
Sandy.  The dress isn’t even worth
this.”

Sandy harrumphs but
snatches the strands out of Charlie’s hand.

I clutch the dress
against me, wondering what sort of place this is, where people buy old, dirty
clothes with cut-off hair.

“Let’s go,” says
Charlie, steering Violet and me away from the tent.

“Well, come back
soon, Charlie!” Sandy laughs.  I watch
over my shoulder as she pushes the lock of hair into a leather purse at her
belt.

“She’s
despicable.  She’d sell her best
friend's scalp for Nox,” Violet mutters, her hands drawn into fists at her
sides.

Charlie glances at
her with a weak smile, her hand poised lightly at the small of my back.

“Here, who wouldn’t,
Vi?” she whispers.  “We’re no better,
and you know it.”

“I wasn’t…”  Violet colors, and then her fists
tighten.  “Actually, yes, we are better.  You know it.”

“We aren’t,” says
Charlie with finality.  "We're all
Sleepers.  We're all in this—whatever it
is—together.  None better, none
worse."

She pauses in an
alley, glancing back and forth.  No one
stands nearby.  The narrow space is
dark, angled away from the Wanting Market.

“You can try the dress
on here, if you'd like,” Charlie says, turning her back on me.  Violet turns away, too, still huffing,
crossing her arms over her chest.

“You can’t let
Abigail’s stupidity get to you.  You
can’t,” mutters Charlie tiredly, rubbing at her face as I stare at her back,
Violet's back, for a moment, holding out the stiff dress before me.

"I'm not.  It's just…Nox, Charlie.  It isn't—"

"Not now,
Vi."

Gingerly, awkwardly,
I peel off my tattered dress, tearing the thin fabric at the shoulders, and let
it settle into a pile of gauzy black at my feet.  It takes my warmth along with it, so I shiver and quickly pull
the new dress over my head.  It slides
over my skin easily, the fabric soft and cool.
Reaching behind me, I zip up the back and tug the sleeves down to cover
the chilled skin of my arms.  The dress
is long and whole, but I’m shaking from the cold now.

I clear my throat,
and Charlie and Violet glance over their shoulders, then turn around.

“Good.  Better,” Violet nods, and without a second
glance, she begins walking back down the alley, toward the Wanting Market.  But Charlie watches me for a long moment,
arms folded, her brown eyes dark.

“Is it…is it all
right?” I ask her, tugging at the sleeves again.  I have no idea how I look, and Charlie's stare is unreadable,
shadowed.

But she nods—once,
twice—glances at my face again, right corner of her mouth angling up.

“Very pretty,” she
says, her voice light and low.

I laugh a
little.  I’m wearing a dirty dress
Charlie found in a garbage pile.  Pretty?  But I feel soft, somehow, as her words sink
deeper into me, filling me with warmth.

Pretty.

I blink at her in
the dark alleyway, wondering what she sees, truly, when she looks at me.

She waits for me to
move past her, then slips her arm through mine again.  I thought she was staying close by before because of my
stiffness, my uncooperative joints, and…I think she was.  But I’m not stiff anymore, not hobbling at
all.  I’m moving just as well as Charlie
and Violet, as anyone.  And still she
holds my arm.

In all this
strangeness, it’s comforting to feel her beside me.

“Why…why did you
give that woman a piece of your hair?” I ask, when we’re back amongst the noise
and bustle of the Wanting Market.
"Why did she want it?"

I watch a woman curl
her dirty hand toward a man wearing a bright yellow raincoat.  He draws out a small pair of scissors on a
chain from beneath his slicker and raggedly hacks off a bit of hair from his
scrappy beard.  He drops the wiry lock
into her palm, and she grins toothily.

Charlie pats her own
chest, fingers moving against the blades beneath her shirt.

“Hair is currency
here," she says simply.  "Hair
buys you what you need.  But you don't
need much.  So, mostly, hair buys you Nox.”  She glances sidelong at me.  “That’s why Florence came after you last
night.”  Her brown eyes fall, and she
clears her throat.  “I’m very sorry
about that.”

“Nox…” I prompt,
shying closer to Charlie as a fierce-looking man watches me from beneath his
tent flap.  His eyes flash wide under
his black baseball cap: he's staring at my hair, like Sandy was, with
starvation in his eyes.

“For many Sleepers,
Nox is the most important part of Twixt.”
Charlie closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose.  “If you take Nox, it makes you Mem.  When you’re Memming, you get a memory,
something you've forgotten.  From your
waking life.”

Memming.

A memory…

Violet pauses ahead
of us, turning back and watching me closely.

I have no memories.
None.  I’m hollow, full of
nothing, of emptiness.  I tried so hard
all night long to remember, but my earliest memory is of Charlie finding me at
the edge of the stream, of red blood upon the ice, of the Snatchers’ claws
gleaming in the darkness, of the golden light bobbing in Abigail’s lantern.

Before that, there’s
only a dark wall, impossible to climb over or break down.

There is such a
hunger in me, then, such a burning need, that I’m struck breathless by
its ferocity.

I break away from
Charlie, stumble a little, turn around to look at both Charlie and Violet with
my hands curled into fists.

“I could…  I could remember something?”  I whisper, unable to contain my excitement,
but Violet folds her arms, her gaze hard, and Charlie…

Charlie won’t look
at me.

“Well…yeah."  She sighs.
"But there's a cost to everything.”  Another sigh, and then her gaze lifts, intense, and claims my
eyes.  “Nox isn’t as lovely as it
sounds.  Think of Florence.”

Despite myself, I
shudder.

“Nox is
addictive.  Highly addictive.  You trade bits of yourself away for a
handful of memories, and then, when you’ve sold all of your hair, you
become…"  She bites her lip.  "You become nothing.  You Fade.”

“Fade,” I repeat,
voice dropped down to a whisper.

Charlie nods,
watching me.  “You Fade away when you’ve
sold all of your hair for Nox.
You…go.  Vanish."  Her shoulders rise and fall with a heavy
breath.  "You become nothing,” she
says again.

“But you can’t
become nothing—”

“You can,”
Violet says urgently, her eyes full of fear, stepping forward to place her hand
on my arm.  “It’s happened so many times
that…that some people, like Charlie and me and Abigail, started to think that
maybe you shouldn't take Nox.
Maybe Nox is…bad."

Charlie moves toward
us, resting a hand on Violet's shoulder.
"But there weren't many people who thought that way," she
says, "because nearly everyone was addicted.  So Mad House, our house, was formed by the people who took a
stand against Nox."

Violet shakes her
head and laughs.  "The reason it’s
called Mad House is a joke, you know?
People say we’re mad for refusing Nox.
But we think they're the mad ones—"

"Violet,"
Charlie sighs.

"Well, I think
they're mad.  Anyway, Nox isn’t allowed
past Abigail's doors.”

Charlie breathes
out.  “So that’s the thing," she
says, turning to face me and again pin me beneath her deep, soft gaze.  "If you decide that you want to stay
with us at Mad House, you can’t take Nox, not while you’re there.”

I blink, uncertain
as to how I should respond.  We hold our
silence for a long moment, and I feel Charlie's eyes on me, even as I stare
down at my boots.

A memory…  I could have a memory…

Finally, Charlie
clears her throat and slides her arm gently through mine.  “But you don’t have to make any of those
decisions right now.  I know it’s a lot
to take in.  And a lot to give up.  The need for memories, for something to hold
onto here…  It's powerful.  Believe me, I understand that.”

“I just…  I don’t know who I am…” I begin, but
Charlie smiles at me, and my words fall away.

“None of us knows who we are,” she whispers, voice
soft.  “And that’s the hardest part of
everything here, I think.  Beyond the
Snatchers, beyond the fear of night.
Beyond the Sixers, even.”

My lips part, and I
stand very still.  The ground seems to
stretch away from me, elongating, as the word—that word—cuts against my
insides, rends apart my thoughts, like shears snipping recklessly inside of
head.

Slowly, slowly,
everything in me breaks apart into tiny, frozen shards, even as, outwardly, I
remain motionless.  My heart pounds
against the cage of my ribs.

The ground seems to
move beneath me, then, or bend, or rock, because I trip on nothing at all.  Charlie catches me neatly, steadying me with
her strong hands, but I struggle away from her, lower myself to the ground and
kneel there, panting, because I know my legs can no longer hold me up.

“What’s the
matter?  What is it?” asks Violet,
dropping to her knees beside me.  “Are
you okay?”

“My head…”  I whisper, brushing fingers over my pulsing
temples.

Charlie squats at my
side, her forehead creased.

“What…what is that?”
I ask her, grabbing at her shirt, knuckles white.

Startled, she places
her hands over mine and whispers, "What is—"

“Sixers.”  The word slices my mouth as it razors past
my lips.  I drag cold air into my lungs
to chase the dizziness away.  “What,"
I breathe, "is that?”

“Oh."
Charlie smoothes her fingers over the backs of my hands.  "The Sixers…  They’re in charge here,” she offers quietly, glancing to Violet,
who nods, urging her on.    Charlie's
voice drops to a whisper:  “They
control…everything in Twixt.  Nox is
Snatcher feathers, and only the Sixers are strong enough, brave enough to pluck
Snatcher feathers.  So they control Nox,
and because of that—and maybe other reasons—they control Abeo City.  That's how it's always been.  The Sixers rule us all.”

When she says the
word again, Sixers, my chest heaves.
I’m so sick, so cold, but my skin is slick with sweat.  I rock back and forth, feel the grit of
broken stone beneath my knees.  But it's
good, this pain.  It brings me back to
myself, makes this moment feel real, or at least more real than everything else
about Twixt.

“I don’t like that
word,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

Violet frowns, her
eyebrows drawn low.  "Most people
don’t,” she murmurs soothingly.
"It's okay."

Charlie helps me to
my feet, holding me up when my legs wobble beneath me.  No one here in the Wanting Market seems to
have noticed my collapse, or maybe no one cared.  But I’m still self-conscious as I brush the dirt from the seat of
my dress and tremble in Charlie's arms.

“The Need Shop is
owned by the Sixers,” says Charlie softly, leaning close.

I shudder as the
word incises my ear, but my knees remain locked; I don't want to fall
again.

“All right?"
Charlie asks, her eyes dark with worry.

"Yes.  Sorry.
I don't know why…"  Why I'm
falling apart at the seams.  "I'm
fine, just…  Everything's so
strange."

Violet rests a cool
hand against my cheek.  "We all go
through it," she smiles.  "The
strangeness wears away, in time.  For
the most part."  Her eyes glaze
over as she stares past me, toward the people shuffling all around.

The three of us
begin to move through the market, Charlie guiding me along with her arm around
my waist.

"Edgar works at
the Need Shop during the day," she tells me.  "Fetchers—like Edgar and me—are usually the ones who sell
Nox to the Sleepers in the Safe Houses, and we get the Nox from the Need
Shop.  Because Mad House doesn’t allow
Nox, I don’t have that duty, so I don’t have to deal with the Six—um, them
on a regular basis.”

“What…what are
they?” I grip her arm tightly, my fingertips pressing hard into her skin.

Charlie breathes
out, stares down at her feet.  “They’re
just women…”

But Violet shakes
her head, almost too softly to notice, her eyes round and wide.  “They’re more than that,” she tells
me.

“What do you mean?”

“They’re monsters,”
Violet whispers, coming up behind Charlie and me and planting her head between
our shoulders.  “Just because they don’t
Snatch us up into the sky doesn’t mean they’re not monsters, too.”

“Violet,”
Charlie says.  “Keep your voice
down.  And don’t spread rumors.  You have no proof—”

“It’s not a
rumor.”  Her eyes are as large as bowls,
as blue as water.

Charlie rakes a hand
through her pale hair, then tightens her grip on my waist, urging me
forward.

“She’s going to learn
all of this soon enough, anyway, Charlie."  Petulant, Violet follows after us.

“The thing about
Twixt,” says Charlie over her shoulder, with finality, “is that there are as
many stories as truths.  And you have to
figure out which is which.  We’ll do our
best to help you, but even we don’t know everything, and even we—"
she adds pointedly, glaring at Violet, "—can get it wrong.”

Violet shrugs her
shoulders and points her gaze toward one of the tents as we pass by.

In the middle of the
square is a dried-up fountain.  The
statue at its center is that of a man, headless and armless, torso and legs
blackened by dead moss.  A real man
stands beside the statue, perched on the lip of the fountain's bowl, watching
us as we move past him.  He’s older,
with a tangled beard and little hair remaining on his head.  He exhales loudly as we walk by, stands up
straighter, and then he shouts so loudly that I start: “The Snatchers are
coming to get you!  They'll get us all!”

“Shut up, Carl,”
Charlie mutters, but he shakes his head at her, bellows, “Snatchers!” and “All
of us!" at the top of his lungs.  A
small crowd of thin, hairless people gathers at his feet, hands clasped
together, eyes closed, bodies shaking.

I remember Abigail's
words, then:  Most of what you have
to look forward to is fear.

Everything here, everything,
is so drab and gray and dirty and tattered and shabby and broken and
falling apart and fearful and terrible, and I stop for a moment, press my
fingers to my eyes, press so hard that purple circles spiral out, warping my
vision.  All I can see is spheres in
darkness…spheres that eat each other, devouring.  Devouring…

I feel a hand on my
shoulder, and I open my eyes, turn back, look at Charlie and Violet.  They watch me, both of them, with drawn,
sympathetic expressions.

“It’s hard in the
beginning,” says Violet, voice soft.
“It gets better if you try.”

“Try?” I ask, the
word breaking.  “Try what?”

She shrugs, bows her
head, looking very sad and very small.
“This.  Us.”

I rub my cold arms,
stare across the Wanting Market, at the piles of refuse, at the dirty,
scrounging people, scavenging after garbage.
It turns my stomach, how filthy and little and desperate it is.

“What’s beyond Abeo
City?" I ask, surprising myself.
"What’s in the woods out there, where I came from?”

"Where you came
from…"  Charlie breathes out, and
her eyes flit over my face.  “Just the
woods, the stream.  And the Red Line.  It’s a spot out in the woods to mark
time…  If you started toward the Red
Line at the earliest point in the morning, and you don’t turn back when you
reach it, you won’t make it back to Abeo City and the Safe Houses before
dark.  And the Snatchers will get you.”

“You can’t leave here?”  I hate how my voice cracks, how anxious it
sounds, betraying me.

"No."  Charlie looks away.

Violet stares down
at the ground, at her dusty sneakers on the broken street.

The enormity of this
revelation presses down upon me until I feel so trapped, so weighed down that I
can’t breathe, but instead of fear…anger rises within me, white and hot and
potent.

“Has anyone ever
tried to get past the Red Line?” I ask.
My words are sharp.  Violet’s
eyes—already wide as moons—widen further, and Charlie studies me for a long
moment before she answers.

“Yes," she says
finally, evenly.  "And they’ve
never come back.”

I look at the trees that
tower over the wall edging the city.
They’re almost twice the size of the wall, taller than all of the
buildings.  It feels as if we’re in a
bowl, a valley surrounded by woods, with gray clouds crouching over everything,
enclosing us, too close, reflecting Abeo City's colorless hues.

Charlie reaches forward,
takes my arm.

“Let’s go see
Edgar,” she says gently.  “Like I said,
time is hard to keep track of here, and darkness comes before you expect
it."  Her eyes stare before us,
hollow.  "We can’t be out after
dark.”

I stumble alongside
her, eyes scarcely seeing.

But I glance up,
curious, at the edge of the Wanting Market’s city square, because ahead is a
house that looks solid, low-roofed and built of dull-colored bricks.  It's not as dilapidated as the buildings
surrounding it, and a scrawled sign hung over the front door reads The Need
Shop:  Purveyors of Nox.  The x in Nox has more lines
through it than necessary, giving it the appearance of a rough black star.

Charlie ascends the
four crumbling stone steps to the door and pushes it open with her shoulder,
glancing back at us.  I follow with
Violet behind me, her hands stuffed in her hoodie pockets, a frown pinching her
pretty face.

The interior of the
shop is so dark that, even though it is an oppressively gray day outside, it
takes a few long moments for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.  There are lanterns full of Wisps lining the
walls, but their light seems to be swallowed up into the cubbyholed walls.  Tall, rickety shelves sway from floor to
ceiling, their surfaces covered with small, lidded boxes and baskets full of
shadows.

Charlie moves down
one of the aisles, ducking into a small back room and speaking with someone
there in an eager tone.  I begin to
follow her, but Violet rests a hand on my arm, pausing and removing the lid
from one of the boxes on the shelves.

“This is Nox,” she
says quietly, drawing out a long, thin bit of darkness.  She holds it up to me, and we both watch as
the translucent black feather moves in the gust of her shallow breath, arching
away from her, toward me.  I stare at
it, transfixed.  It’s small, dainty, and
lovely, really, as it shines—a deep, dulled shine, like stars in water—against
her fingers.

“Vi,” Charlie calls,
and Violet drops the feather to the floor, stooping to pick it up hastily, her
eyes brimming with guilt as she places it back in its box.

We walk the cramped
hall lined with shelves until we enter the little room in the back.  It holds a single wooden desk and chair,
along with crates piled on top of crates, all filled, I can see, with Nox.  The darkness is absolute in those crates,
like ink, like a mass of captured night.
It’s as if tatters of night sky have been gathered and stuffed into
boxes far too small to contain them.  I
can’t make out individual feathers; the black is too much, too deep.

In the center of the
room, a young man stands with his thumbs in his pockets.  He wears a stained waistcoat and a pair of
grubby pants, but his white collared shirt is spotless and stiff looking, as if
it’s been starched.  He sports a
wickedly sharp, thin black mustache over a mouth angling up, and his green eyes
flash brightly in the yellow glow from the lantern on his desk.

Charlie stands
beside him, her hands on her hips. They look so different, the pair of them,
but comfortable together, like a brother and sister, I imagine, might appear.

“This is Edgar,”
Charlie tells me, smiling a little and gesturing me further inside.  "Don't worry.  He's a friend."  And
then to him, in a lowered tone, she says, “Edgar, this is the Sleeper I was
telling you about.”  She points her chin
toward me.  “Have you ever found
a Sleeper outside of Abeo?  And before
midnight?”

Edgar clasps his
hands behind his back and circles me, shaking his head.  “No.
But I'm not surprised.  Stranger
things have happened.”

Violet snorts,
folding her arms and leaning against the wall.

"Once,"
Edgar tells me, his eyes aglow, "while I was Fetching, a Snatcher swooped
down and stole a Sleeper from my arms, and I swear it was trying to talk
to me.  I'd never heard a Snatcher
make sounds like that before, almost like…words."

I take a step back
from him, bending away.

“Lovely to meet
you,” Edgar says, then, performing a sweeping bow.  I swallow, working my jaw, then nod to him stiffly.  He laughs a little at that, at me, running
his slender fingers through his hair.

“It was likely a
hiccup, her showing up when and where she did,” he tells Charlie, turning to
face her and shrugging.  “Don’t worry your
pretty yellow head.”

Charlie sighs,
rolling her dark eyes to the ceiling.
“Don’t worry, he says.  Right.”

“Listen.  The important thing is that this
lovely lady wasn’t Snatched right from your grasp.”  Edgar winks at me.  “But
of course she wasn’t.  Has Charlie told
you that she’s the best Fetcher?  She’s terribly
humble and hasn’t brought it up, I'm sure, but if you’d been Fetched by me,
you wouldn’t be here right now, I can promise you that.  I don’t keep a good head under abnormal
circumstances.”  He hooks the chair out
from the desk and perches on it backwards, shrugging his shoulders in an
exaggerated way.

Charlie smiles down
at him, folding her arms and shaking her head a little, laughing to herself.

“So have you given
the pretty thing a name, Charlie?” he asks, steepling his fingers in front of
him and examining me.

Charlie sighs.  “Stop flirting,” she admonishes, though
she’s still grinning.  “You’d warm up to
a stump if you thought it might present a challenge.”

“I’m an equal
opportunity master of smoothness.”
Edgar winks at me again.  I
venture a small smile, glancing uncertainly to Charlie.

Then Violet rolls
her eyes, says, "Oh, Edgar," and the three of them laugh
together—freely, without restraint.  My
smile widens, though I can't force out a laugh, not yet.

“To tell you the
truth, I haven’t been able to think of any name that seems right for her.”  Charlie's eyes find mine and linger upon
them for a long heartbeat.  My lips
part, and I feel stilled, calmed, wrapped in the warmth of her clear, brown
gaze.

Then, with a furtive
glance at Edgar, she turns her eyes to the floor.

Edgar raises a
single eyebrow, watching Charlie for a moment before looking to me again.

“Ah,” he says
simply, cocking his head to the side.
“I see.”  This earns him a
toe-poke from Charlie, who, I realize, is blushing.  I watch her, brows furrowed, as warmth begins to creep over my
own face.

“Charlie, Charlie…”
murmurs Edgar, tapping his fingers on the back of the chair.  “I’ve always told you that the prettiest of
names is wasted on you.  Charlotte is
lovely, and you chose the boyish part of it, the common nickname.”

“It suits me,” says
Charlie, brow up.

“Definitely.  You’re no Charlotte.”  He grins at her, then glances to me.  “But what if she…is?”

“Charlotte,” I
whisper, tasting the word.  It’s light,
airy, like dust in my mouth.

Charlie gazes at me
for a little while, then clears her throat, tilting her head toward me.  “What about Lottie?  We’ll share the name, if you like.  You take half, and I'll have the other.”  She’s smiling softly at me, hopefully.

“Lottie.” My tongue
trips over the syllables.  The word is
sharp and soft at the same time, and I think…
I think that describes me well enough.
I stare down at my hands, at the healing wounds there.  “Lottie.
Yes.  Lottie.”

“Good!” Violet hooks
an arm through mine and squeezes tightly, grinning.  “I love it.  It fits you.”

I smile at Violet
and then glance at Charlie, and I feel warm again, all over.  She rakes a hand through her hair, pushing
it away from her eyes, and she watches the ground, mouth curving up.

“It’s a lovely
name,” she says softly, nodding.  “For a
lovely girl.”

Edgar snorts,
rolling his eyes.  “And now who’s
flirting?”

They laugh again,
and it's such a happy sound, and for a moment, I think I hear a sound like it
come from my own mouth.  Small and soft,
but still…a start.

I realize something,
then.  Something important that opens up
within me, unfurling, like a leaf or a wing:

There’s no fear
here, now.

Edgar cranks back
one of the small shutters over his desk, and daylight spills into the dark
little room.  “Well,” he declares,
drawing out the word.  “I’m almost done
for today.  Walk you back to that
Maddest of Houses?”

“Yes,” Charlie
agrees, and as Edgar pats his pockets and tidies the pile of papers on the
desk, she asks him, “Edgar?"

"Hmm?"

"Has
anything…strange happened to you in the past day or night?”  She bites her lip.  “You haven't found any Sleepers in odd places.  I know that.  But has there been anything else that seemed unusual?”

He pauses for a
moment, fingers lingering above the desktop before he shakes his head.  “No.
Matilda is her usual… Well."
He chuckles.  "She's a
fright.  High-and-mightiness all
around.  Thank the Snatchers
she’s not here today.”  He winks at me.  “She’s a horror, truly.  She runs the Need Shop for the Sixers.”

Again, that word…

I quell my
revulsion, curling my hands into fists.

“Don’t get on her
bad side."  Edgar whistles, shaking
his head.  "Well, Charlie, there
weren’t any new Sleepers at the crossroads last night.  But that’s nothing to remark about.  Things have been slowing down in my part of
Abeo, it seems.  And yours?”

“None last night,
either,” says Charlie, frowning.  “But
what if, like Lottie, they’re appearing in odd places and at odd times?  Maybe they don't show up at midnight
now.  Maybe they're arriving during some
other part of the night, or even the day?"  Charlie's eyes meet mine, and there's a desperate gleam in her
gaze.  "What if they’re not
appearing in Abeo anymore?  What if
they’re showing up out in the woods?”

“Well, now, I think
we need to wait awhile before we start worrying about all of that.”  Edgar shrugs into a long black coat.  He picks up a top hat from a peg on the wall
and plunks it atop his crown.  “Now to
escort the most charming of ladies—”

Charlie laughs, brow
raised.  “You know, I should
really be escorting you.”

“Too true.
You’re the only one I’d trust with my life around the Snatchers.”  He tips his hat at her, winks at me, and
shuts the door to the little room as the four of us walk down the hallway.  We move together through the darkness until
Violet opens the outer door and we step into the square of the Wanting
Market.

Edgar locks the Need Shop door with a long, spiraled
key and drops it into his waistcoat pocket.

“You locked
it.”  I glance back over my shoulder
toward the brick walls of the Need Shop, and then stare at Edgar,
confused.  “But couldn’t anyone go
through the walls?  Couldn't they glide
through the door, even if it's locked, and steal some Nox, if they truly wanted
it?"  I turn to Charlie,
confused.  "Didn’t we go through
the walls last night, when the Snatchers were chasing us?”

“We did."  Charlie nods, eyeing me softly.  "And it's true.  We can pass through walls, all of us, just
as easily as if they were made of fog.
But…"  She tilts her head,
lowering her voice, "No one would dare steal from the Sixers.”

“No, indeed.
That would be a mistake,” Edgar states a bit too brightly, tapping the
top of his hat and tossing me an unconvincing wink.

"Oh," I say, falling into step as Violet
leads us out into the street.

We walk along the
edge of the Wanting Market, and my eyes are drawn to its hulking piles of
trash, to the tents crowded with haggling Sleepers.

“Why would anyone
want all of that…garbage?” I watch a man, nearly bald, exchange a lock of hair
with a tent owner for a misshapen lump of teddy bear.  He turns quickly, holding the bear in front of him like a shield,
then crushing it to his chest.

“Comfort,” Edgar
replies simply, softly, following my gaze.
“We’ve very little of that here in Abeo, Lottie.  Nox—that's comfort.  Good company.  That’s comfort.  Safe
Houses.  And…"  He gestures widely with his hands.  "That's it.”

“Try a little
harder, Edgar,” Charlie groans, casting her brown eyes skyward.  “I swear, I'm surrounded by pessimists—”

“Reality is not pessimism, Charlie.  And I prefer to be real with our dear
new Sleepers.”  Edgar tips his hat to
me.  “Present company not excluded.  It’s difficult here, Charlie.  And if you tell them otherwise, if you lull
them to complacency, they won’t last long.”

“You sound like
Abigail,” Charlie grumbles, eyes flashing stubbornly, shoving her hands deeper
into her pockets.  “Okay, I don't deny
it: it can be awful here."

"Worse than
awful," Violet whispers, bowing her head.

"But it’s not all
awful."  Sighing, Charlie takes
up Violet's hand, squeezes it.  "We
have each other, after all.”

Edgar watches
Charlie with a curl to his lips.
“Okay.  So there’s that.  You see, she’s an optimist,” he whispers to
me, elbowing my ribs gently.  “There are
few of them here, so they’re quite precious, really.”

“I’m so precious,”
Charlie laughs—a bright, joyous sound that makes me feel bright, too,
light.  Like something different than I
am, than how I feel...

A movement, just
past Charlie's shoulder, catches my eye.
A bulky shape, covered in dark furs, bounds in the direction opposite to
the Wanting Market, toward the dilapidated houses down the street.  There are still children climbing all over
the mounds of rubble, but this person wasn’t a child.  It looked…familiar.  But
nothing looks familiar here.  How could
it…

My skin pricks, and
as I turn the corner with Edgar, Violet and Charlie, whoever it was has
vanished, having leapt down an alley and into the shadows there.

I feel strange,
suddenly, like my knees no longer want to obey me.  I put out my hand against a brick wall to steady myself, but my
fingers pass through the wall, and I nearly stumble but catch myself,
shaking my head.

“How did I do that?”
I ask weakly, leaning against the now-solid bricks.

With a little smile,
Charlie removes her hands from her pockets, holding them out in front of her as
she walks toward the wall—and right through it, disappearing.

“You just have to
think about it,” she tells me then, popping her head back out.

“But…how is
that possible?”

Charlie reemerges
fully and shrugs, and Edgar shifts his gaze to the sky, looking ill at ease.

“Well, Lottie, like
most things in Twixt, we don’t really know how it works,” he tells me finally,
after clearing his throat.  He breathes
out.  “We can just do it.”

I blink at him,
pushing hair out of my eyes.

We walk on, but my
questions torment me.  There must be a
reason for everything—even in Twixt.  I
slow, swallowing, because something gnaws at my heart just then, and I try to
listen to it, try to hear, but it escapes me as another sound draws my
attention, a near sound.  A slithering
sound.

Something slithers
down an alley just behind us, in the direction of the Wanting Market, and a heavy
hush presses down against the conversations there, stifling them to whispers,
and then silence.

Charlie pales,
turns, gripping Edgar’s arm.  “It’s
them,” she hisses, as they exchange a charged glance.

"Oh, no…"
Violet whimpers, clutching Charlie's sleeve.

A wave of dread
crests through my body.
"Who—"

Darkness pools at
our feet, swirls in the air all around us.
Despite my fear, I want to see, need to see, so I step forward, toward
the mouth of the alleyway, even as Charlie comes after me, pressing me, face to
face, against the wall, out of sight, though I still catch glimpses of the
Wanting Market over her shoulder.

“What—” I whisper,
but she shakes her head, breathing hard, eyes gazing deeply into mine.  I can feel her heartbeat all around me, the
warmth of her palms against my bare arms.

Safe, I
think.  Charlie makes me feel safe.

But I'm not
safe.  I sense it, as surely as I feel
Charlie's breath against my face.

I watch, peering past Charlie's shoulder, as the
shadow widens and lengthens until it eats up the square.

And through the
square walks a darkness.

Two tall shadows
prowl down the main drag of the Wanting Market.  They’re cloaked and hooded, the black fabric streaming away from
them like wings, the way they flow over the ground, moving like breath, like
feathers, like night itself.   Dragging
behind them, beneath the weightlessness of their cloaks, is hair.  Long black hair that extends behind them,
spread out over the rubble and refuse of the street, towing within it bits of
twigs, trash and debris, though the strands still shine, as only black hair
can.

When I see them,
when my eyes rest upon their cloaked faces, all other thoughts fade away to
nothingness.  I am nothingness.  I am feeling alone, and all I feel is
fear.

The two of them move in small, unnatural jerks,
animal-like, for there's a feral kind of rhythm as their feet prowl, as they
draw closer to us, their hoods drooping like too-wide, grinning mouths.

“Sixers,” Charlie
whispers against my ear, her breath fluttering my hair, though I already know
what they are, knew the moment I first glimpsed them.

I don't know how I
knew.

I gaze into
Charlie's eyes, basking in her warmth, her safeness, as my heart pounds
a different rhythm, merging with hers.

“But there are only
two,” I whisper back.

Charlie's gaze
widens, and then I feel her watching me as I watch them.

“How did you—” she
starts, but the pair of Sixers moves to the mouth of our alleyway now, and she
gasps, holds her breath.

I'm hidden.  They can’t see me, not here in the shadows,
not with Charlie's body pressed flat against mine.  Still, the cloaked figure nearest to us pauses for a heartbeat,
pauses as if suspended into stillness.
The hood turns, and I suffer a terrifying moment of wonder.  Maybe there’s nothing behind that hood,
nothing but a void of darkness.

I’m mesmerized, but
my eyes tear away, because there’s a sudden movement beyond the two dark shapes
beside us.

A Sleeper detaches
herself from the crowd that has gathered to watch the procession of the Sixers.  She's a young woman, almost hairless, as
smooth-headed as the old men who watch her.
With a pained whimper, she collapses to her knees and crawls across the
rubble, toward the Sixers.  They turn to
her, as one, waiting.

When she reaches
them, tugging at the edge of one black cloak, she pets the night-dark hair
that’s snagged over the rocks and rubble with a thin, trembling hand.

“Please…” I hear her
whisper, her wide eyes blue and sad.
“I’ve sold all of my hair, and I need Nox.  I need it.
Please…”

The Sixer turns its
hood—her hood.  I remember now that
Charlie called the Sixers women.  She
turns her hood and stares down at the girl who, within the Sixers’ line of
sight, sags against the ground, trembling.

“Poor child.”
It’s a harsh whisper, low enough that it seems to skip over the
ground.  I shudder, and the girl beneath
the Sixers’ gaze shudders, too.  The
Sixer leans forward, and I watch, speechless, astonished, as I see claw-like
hands extend out of the sleeves of the cloak, toward the girl.

The second Sixer
turns now, as the first drags the girl to her feet.  Whining, the girl angles away from the Sixer, and she’s crying,
tears tracing down her pale cheeks in thin double lines.

“She needs our help,
sister,” says the first Sixer to the second, drawing out the word sister with
a sibilant hiss.

The second Sixer
tilts her head, gazing down at the girl.
She's larger than the other cloaked figure, and there’s something more
imposing about her bulk, the way she remains silent, even as she and her sister
continue along their way, dragging the girl by her arm.

“No, please…  I just wanted Nox!”  The girl is babbling, kicking her legs, and
the first Sixer tightens her claws around the girl’s arm.  “No, please…”

"Hush.  Poor child.
We'll help you, won't we, sister?"

Without another
word, as the girl's wails echo through the square, the Sixers pass by, and the
blackness of their hair recedes, and then they are past the alley Charlie and I
occupy and, a moment later, gone.

I’m shaking so hard
that I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to still myself.  My palms are slick with sweat.

When I breathe out,
leaning fully against Charlie, I see Violet and Edgar crouched beside the wall
across from us.  Were they there all
along?  I was so frightened, so consumed
by fear and curiosity all at once, that I hadn't noticed them, hadn't,
honestly, given them a thought.

Violet trembles
worse than me, drawing in short breaths, nearly doubled over at her
middle.  Edgar, frowning, has his arm
wrapped about her shoulders, but after a moment, she shrugs him off, leaning
alone against the wall, head back, her face as pale as milk.

“What are they going
to do with her…to her?” Violet whispers, near hysterics, but no
one ventures an answer to her question.

After a tense
moment, I clear my throat.  “Where was
the third?” I look to Charlie, who watches me, eyes narrowed.  She hasn't moved away from me yet, though
the Sixers have gone, and her warmth against me, around me, is a comfort I'm
loathe to lose.  I go on, holding her
gaze: “And why are they called Sixers if there are only three…”  I stop, breathe out.  “There are three, aren’t they?”

“How did you know
that?” She rests her hand upon my shoulder, her face still, revealing
nothing.

“I don't know how I
know.  Is it true?"

"It's true."

Something seizes
within me.  I knew there were
three, knew it like I know how to walk, how to breathe.  But why?  How?  My skin
crawls.  "I just…know,” I tell her,
voice small.  "I don't know
how…" I trail off, watching her as she turns back and glances to Edgar,
one eyebrow raised.

“Why did you hide
me?” I ask, pushing off from the wall.
She leans back, looks away, straightening her coat collar.

“Because…” she
falters, looking down at the dirty snow beneath our feet, but Violet steps
forward, mouth drawn in a quivering line.

“Because they’re bad,”
she breathes out.  "I told you."

She did tell me, and
then Charlie told her not to make statements without proof.  This time, though, Charlie says
nothing.  I gaze down at her head of
soft blonde hair.

Beyond the alley, in
the Wanting Market, the people are, once again, moving about, speaking to one
another, but in softer, hushed tones, and pausing to glance over their
shoulders in the direction the Sixers disappeared.  Maybe they're afraid they'll return.

I'm afraid they'll
return.

No.

I'm just afraid.

*

Abigail is on the porch of Mad House, waiting for us
as the shadows lengthen, as the sky begins to bleed red.  She sits on a rickety wooden chair, front
two legs off the ground with her boots propped up against the railing.  As we climb the steps, she thumps the
chair down, her thin mouth twisted into a scowl.

“Edgar, you get off this porch, and you get off it
this instant.” With surprising quickness, she rises to her feet, hobbles over
to Edgar and starts jabbing him in the chest with a bony knuckle.  “Get off the porch, Edgar!”

“Now, Abigail…” he begins, tipping his hat and
smiling beneath his mustache.

“Don’t now, Abigail me!  Charlie, get him off the porch.” She turns
on her heel, moving to stand before the front door, arms crossed, eyes
squinting in an aggressive glare.

“All right.
I guess we've got to part ways," Charlie says, her voice placating,
even as she grins at Edgar with an apologetic gleam in her eyes.  "Well, thanks for walking us back.”

Edgar lifts off his top hat, bowing first to
Abigail, then to Charlie, Violet and me in turn, before giving us all a
rogueish grin and leaping over the railing, to the ground below.  "Farewell, lovelies!"

I stare in astonishment as he races down the street
at breakneck speed, finally hurling himself out of sight, around a corner.

“Fetcher,” says Charlie to me, by way of
explanation, her thumbs hooked into her coat belt loops.  “We’ve gotta be fast.”

I nod, lifting my gaze to the darkening sky.

“Charlie, you know what I’ve told you about bringing
Edgar by our place,” Abigail admonishes as she steps back from the door,
allowing us to pass through it.  She
follows close behind, brandishing a skinny finger at Charlie’s back.  “‘Charlie,’ I tells ya, over and over,
‘don’t be bringing that no-good, Nox-taking bastard back into this house,’ and
what do you do?  That no-good,
Nox-taking bastard ends up back at Mad House time and time again!”

“And yet he never gets through the front door,” says
Charlie soothingly, sliding her coat off her shoulders and hanging it on an
empty peg.  “How’s Florence today?”

“Don’t you go changing the subject with me, missy!”
Abigail huffs, drawing the topmost shawl closer around her shoulders.  Her mouth is set in a firm grimace.  “And Florence is fine, been watched
all day by Ella.”

“Good,” sighs Charlie, glancing up the
staircase.  “I’m just going to go say
hello to her…"  She pauses, hand on
the banister, foot on the first step.
Her eyes seek mine and soften.  I
feel myself soften, too, the tension of the day loosening within me.

"We named the new one today,” Charlie says,
smiling gently.  “Her name is Lottie.”

Abigail glances at me, sniffing.  “Respectable.  Good.  I like it.”

“I’m glad.”
Charlie’s mouth twitches up at the corners.  “Vi, Lottie…you want to come see Florence with me?  You don’t have to,” she adds quickly,
looking to me, then ducking her head.  “I
know she gave you a fright yesterday.
But I really want to show you…she’s not like that.”

I consider for a long moment, remembering the silver
gleam of the shears so near to my face.
But I trust Charlie.

She's watching me, waiting, and I nod once, only a
small nod, and we ascend the stairs together, with Violet behind us, leaving
Abigail to harrumph in the entryway before she scuttles back down the
hallway, skirts swishing, grumbling beneath her breath.

“Every time she sees Edgar, same reaction.”  Charlie shakes her head.  “He’s such a good sport about it.  He’s the Fetcher for Black House, another
Safe House,” she tells me, glancing sidelong, “and Black House and Mad House
have a habit of…not liking each other very much.”

“That’s an
understatement,” Violet mutters, rolling her eyes as we reach the landing.

“But why?” I ask.

“Well,” says Charlie, hand on the door to Florence's
room.  “Like I said, we don’t take Nox
here.  And Black House lives for
Nox.”  She pauses, lowering her voice,
smile slipping off her lips.  “We used
to live in Black House—Florence, Vi and me.
Before Florence got so addicted.
It wasn’t good for her.  It hurt
her.  Changed her.”  She turns away, opens the door.

Florence sits in the middle of the floor, facing
away from us, as if she's watching the window.
She looks so small in the dregs of daylight seeping through the
curtains, past the broken windowpanes.
Her almost-bald head nods back and forth as she rocks and rocks, her
thin arms clasped around her knees.

A woman, sitting nervously on the edge of the bed,
stands bolt upright when we enter, twisting her fingers together
nervously.

“Thanks, Ella,” says Charlie, nodding to her, and
the woman bows her head, with a furtive glance at me, before crossing in front
of us and exiting through the doorway.

Charlie looks after her, sighs, and then steps
forward.

“Hi, Florence,” she whispers, squatting down beside
the girl.  “Florence, it’s
Charlie…”  Her voice is warm, inviting,
and Florence stops rocking, turning her face slowly to take Charlie in.

I gaze down at the two of them from a safe distance,
positioned near the door, standing beside Violet.

Florence has been crying, or maybe has been angry,
because her face is flushed a blotchy crimson.
She gulps down air like an animal drinking water, and then she flings
her arms around Charlie’s shoulders.

“She wouldn’t let me out, Charlie.  I wanted to go outside so bad,” she whispers
into Charlie’s ear, but it’s a stage whisper, loud enough for us to hear
it.  “Why wouldn’t she let me go
outside?”

“It’s all right, baby girl,” says Charlie quietly,
wrapping her arms around Florence's frail shoulders, helping her up to her
feet.  “We’ll go outside tomorrow.  It’s not good to go outside without me,
because sometimes bad things happen…”

Violet sniffs, exchanging a pained glance with me
before she sits down on the edge of the bed, head sagging.

“Now, Florence, honey,” says Charlie, helping her
turn around so that she can see me.  But
she doesn’t look at me, looks everywhere but at me.  Finally, her darting gaze stills upon the
floor, and her hands begin to pick at one of the holes in her skirt, nervous
fingers shaking as she teases at the ends of the threads, twirling them around
and around and around her tiny fingers until they turn pink.

“Florence," Charlie says, "this is
Lottie.  She’s a new Sleeper here.  I’d love for you to meet her, say hello.”

Florence glances up at me, but only for a heartbeat,
moving her gaze down again, quickly, to the floor.  There was no rage, no feral wanting, when she looked at
me, but I sag a little with relief when her eyes are no longer pointed in my
direction.  Her glassy eyes, dull eyes,
doll’s eyes.

I realize, watching her, that she’s younger than the
rest of us, a child, really.  Florence
is a slight little girl with almost no hair, so flimsy, so breakable that if
she takes one misstep, I’m afraid she might shatter.

Charlie holds her as if the cage of her arms can
protect her from every wrong in this place, and I think that if it were
entirely up to Charlie’s strength and resolve alone, she could.  She gazes down at Florence's red face with a
mixture of deep pain and relief.

Florence is still here, after all.  And she’s not trying to cut my hair off of
my head.

“She just has these…these episodes,” Charlie
murmurs distractedly, picking Florence up as if she truly were a doll.  She carries the girl to the little bed, sets
her down upon it, and draws the covers up to her chin, then gazes upon her with
misty eyes.

“One day," Charlie whispers, "she’s like
this—docile.  Listless.  And the next, she’s desperate.  The way she was when she first saw
you."

Charlie watches me with a downturn to her
mouth.  Then she looks away,
sighing.  "I want to take her
outside, but I don’t know if that'll be the day that she runs after people with
scissors, trying to snip off their hair.”
She rubs her fingers over her face, setting her hands on her hips,
staring down at Florence, who blinks slowly before closing her eyes.  Her features smooth, and her breathing grows
slow, even—in and out, in and out.

“I do the best I can by her,” says Charlie.  “But I don’t think it’s ever enough.”

Violet rises from the mattress and puts a hand on
Charlie’s arm, shaking her head emphatically.
“You know that’s not true.  We
came here because of her.  We promised
her we’d take care of her—”

“That was before she got like this, back when she
was still Florence.  She doesn’t feel
like Florence anymore.”  Charlie’s eyes
are bright, and she blinks a few times, coughs a little, leaning away from the
bed, against the wall.  “Every day, bit
by bit, what was Florence slips away.
That’s how it always happens here."  Her eyes find mine.
"They just slip away, become less and less like themselves until
there’s nothing left of them at all.
And then they just…disappear.”

I swallow.

Charlie rubs at her face again, stares up toward the
ceiling.  “Anyway…  Lottie, I’m sorry.  I just…  I just hate
this.”

I stare at her, wide-eyed, heart panging for
her.  I clear my throat, take a step
forward.  “I'm sorry,”  I whisper to her, and she glances at me in
surprise.  “It must be very hard…to see
your friend…” I sigh, watching Florence, lying so still upon the bed.  Her eyes are open now, but her gaze is
faraway, unseeing.  I look to
Charlie.  “It seems like you care for
her a great deal.”

“A great deal,” Charlie repeats, staring at the sad
little girl in the bed.

Florence looks barely there, as if she might sink
into the dirty mattress, into the floor.

As if she might just disappear.

*

Everyone in the room is quiet, still, when we three
enter.  Abigail sits propped up on the
edge of a couch, beady eyes staring toward the cold fireplace, flickering not
with fire but with a collection of Wisp jars, glowing golden.  The old woman breaks her gaze when Charlie
walks up to her, folds her arms, and kneels down beside her.

“It's nearly
twelve.  I’m going Fetching,” she says, voice
low, running a hand through her pale hair.

Abigail glances down
at Charlie, then raises her eyes to observe Violet and me standing just behind
her.

“You should take
someone with you tonight,” says Abigail, cocking her head in one quick
turn.  She watches the fireplace again,
the orbs bobbing against the glass of the jars.  Her voice is flat, devoid of spirit, as she says, “I got a bad
feeling in my bones.”

“Abigail.” Charlie
spreads her hands, sighing.  “I’m hampered
by another person, not helped, and you know that.  We’ve been through this a thousand times.  I’m the fastest.  That’s why I’m the Fetcher.”

“Violet, go with
Charlie,” says Abigail, ignoring Charlie's words, never removing her eyes from
the jars.

Violet shrinks back
from the staring Sleepers, from Abigail, shaking her head so that it
blurs.  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she
says, breathing in and out so quickly, her chest rises and falls in a too-fast
rhythm.  “They’ll catch me.  They’ll—”

“All right, all
right, hush,” groans Abigail, rolling her eyes.  “So help me, those new Sleepers out there
are done for if Charlie’s ever Snatched.
Not a one of you brave enough to go out and—”

“I’ll go.”

They turn and look
at me, all of them, hollow eyes wide, and it’s then that I realize that the voice
was mine, those two words—mine.

My heart is beating
so quickly, I feel it carving a tunnel beneath my ribs, but I don't back down,
don't want to take back what I said.
I nod, clench my hands.  “I’ll
go,” I repeat, eyes locking first with Abigail's, who scans me up and down, and
then with Charlie's, who watches me, her brown gaze glittering in the
half-dark.  I can’t tell what she’s
thinking, whether she wants me or not.

“Well, well,"
Abigail murmurs.  "Why not?  We’ve all got to start somewhere.  And it’ll put hair on your chest,” she
smirks, pushing off from the couch and stretching overhead, yawning so hugely
that I can see how many teeth are missing in her mouth.

Abigail shuffles
past the still-staring, wordless people, hooking a bony arm through mine and
pulling me out of the room and down the hall.
“Now, Charlie,” she says over her shoulder, as Charlie rises to follow
us out, “you know the drill.  If
anything happens, you come back first.
Leave the others.  Leave this
one behind if you must.  What’s your
name again, girl?”

“Lottie.”  I swallow, tasting the name, my half of the
name Charlie and I share.

I glance over my
shoulder at Charlie, whose jaw is set, her mouth a thin line as she takes in a
few deep breaths.

We reach the front
door, shut tight.  Outside…  Outside, I know, is the blackness, the
night…

And the Snatchers.

The terror of last
night rears up, and I cower reflexively.
What am I doing?  Why did I offer
to do this?  I barely survived the race
through the woods, and now I’m willingly going back out into that
blackness, with its shrieking and its claws?

But if I’m honest,
beneath the fear, there’s a thrill racing through me, just under my skin,
untouchable, electric.

We were fast
last night.  Together, Charlie and I—we
were fast.  Together we escaped the
groping, screeching creatures.  We could
do it again, couldn’t we?  I glance at
Charlie, but she’s not looking at me.
She's gazing back down the hall at Violet, who follows about ten steps
behind us, hugging herself.

“Vi, watch Florence,
all right?” Charlie murmurs, taking her coat from the peg.  Violet nods twice and then climbs the
stairs, mounting them two at a time.

With a sigh, Charlie
fingers the other coats on the wall until she settles on a long black one.  She takes it down, offers it to me, and
that’s when she finally looks into my eyes.
Her gaze is hesitant, but also hopeful.
It warms me, and I take the coat from her, shrugging into it.  It fits, won’t impede my running, I don't
think.

“Good luck!” cackles
Abigail, patting me roughly on the back.
Charlie puts her hand on the doorknob, turns back to me again.

“You don’t have to
do this, you know,” she whispers, brown eyes sparking, and I nod, bite my lip,
breathe in and out, curling my hands into fists.

“I know,” I
say.  "But I choose to."

Charlie walks
through the door.

Chapter Three:  Faster

The air is cold as ice water, drowning and
sucking at our breath as we pause on the porch, as Charlie jams her hands into
her pockets, scanning the dark street spread before Mad House.  My eyes skim over the wall that crouches
around Abeo City, the wall Charlie and I moved through when we evaded the
Snatchers last night.

“The Sleepers always appear at crossroads at
midnight," Charlie tells me, her shoulder brushing against mine.  "First one's over there, to the
left.”  She juts her chin toward the
place where two roads join, and draws a sawed rope from her pocket.  She ties the rope around her waist tightly,
bringing her buttonless coat closed.
“We wait here until I think I see something at the corner, and even if I
don’t think I see something, we’ll run out there and see what we can
find."

I nod, my throat too tight to speak.

Charlie watches me in the darkness and
exhales through her nose.  "We run
all the way there, and we grab any Sleepers that appear, and whether they
appear or not, we run all the way back.
You don’t stop running.
Okay?”  She leans nearer to me,
and I swallow, nod.

She steps forward, putting her fingers upon
my arm.  “You don’t have to come, Lottie.  Abigail always tries to bully someone
into…"  She rakes a hand through
her hair.  "I don't know why you
volunteered to come."

“To help you,” I breathe, trying to keep my
teeth from chattering—from the cold or from fear, I can’t tell.  “You’ve been kind to me, and…”  I trail off, mouth dry, bowing my head.  Despite the dark, the fear, the promise of Snatchers, my face flushes, warmed by Charlie's nearness.  Whenever I’m near her, even now, things feel
less bleak.  Less dangerous.  And, perhaps, a little more lovely.

I blush, glancing past her, looking over the
railing and toward the street.

“Well," she says, her voice husky and
low, "what I said back there, about hampering…  I didn't mean it.  You
won’t hamper me.  I know that.”

She’s watching me with shining eyes, and
when they lock with my own eyes, my heart skips a beat.

She seems…different when she looks
at me.  Am I imagining it?  Do I just want her to look at me
differently than she looks at everyone else?

Maybe I do.

I know I do.

I swallow, turning that awareness over and
over in my heart.

I’m daring monsters for her, aren’t I?  But if I fall, if I get Snatched, if the
monsters fly me away to…  Wherever.  Just away.
Then what?  Then I'll never see
Charlie again.

I wring my palms, breathing in and out,
putting forth my best impression of calmness, confidence.  Really, I'm just trying to avoid
hyperventilating.

“Are you ready?” Charlie asks, crossing to
the end of the porch, her toes edging out over the first step.  “We’ve got to be fast, okay, Lottie?”

“Yeah.” My voice is a gravelly whisper, dry
and breaking apart.  I steel myself,
moving to stand beside Charlie on the edge of the night.

After one heartbeat, two, she reaches across
the space between us, takes my hand in hers.
It’s a balm, her sudden warmth against my cold fingers, how she curls
and threads her own fingers, smoothly, through mine.

“Charlie…” I gasp out, but she’s already off
the porch, already down the steps, and my hand is cold again because she’s
gone.  I gulp down air, and I leap off
the porch, hitting the ground running, following her.

I feel everything: my beating heart because
she took my hand; my wonder if it meant what I hoped it might mean; and the
slow creeping fear that seems to run beneath the ground like lightning, beneath
my boots, following me no matter where I step.
I run into the night, behind Charlie, catching up to Charlie, the two of
us bolting quicksilver-fast down the street, avoiding the ruts and rubble as if
we’ve done this a thousand times together, as if our feet know the steps by
heart.

Suddenly, my feeling is replaced by reflex:
breathing in and out, the movement of my arms at my sides, my boots thumping
against the ground.  All I am is
quickness, is motion, as Charlie and I draw nearer to the crossroads.

I hear a scream behind us, a sound that
pierces the night.  The downdraft of
wind—from wings, black wings wide enough to smother Charlie and me both in one
bone-and-feather embrace—causes me to falter, to nearly trip, but I catch
myself, even though the sky is tearing apart, even though monsters fall from above in a rain of black, screaming hail.

“C’mon,” says Charlie, putting on a burst of
speed, and I surge forward alongside her, transforming my fear into stumbling
action.

We reach the crossroads, our feet skidding
over the broken stone of the street, because there, in the center of the
junction, lays a girl.  She's still upon
the rubble, unnaturally still, thin arms straight against her sides, eyes
closed as if she's sleeping.

I stare at her, fingers trembling at my
mouth, thinking, This is how
Sleepers arrive.  This is how the
Fetchers find them.  Not in the woods,
beside the stream…  Not bleeding beneath
an angry red sky.

Moving fast, Charlie falls to her knees
beside the girl, begins to shake her shoulders in her gentle, yet urgent,
way.

Swallowing, knees shaking, I dare a glance
behind us.  There is a darker shadow
against the sky, bearing down, and for a moment, I watch it in wonder: the
wings widespread and brilliant against the duller black sky.  But it’s the white bones, white as warm
breath against ice, that shatter the brittle lull in my terror.

Claws extend toward us, sharp beak open as
the Snatcher dives down.

Charlie picks up the girl—who won't move,
won't open her eyes—with a grunt, and hisses at me, "Run." We turn, the two of us, racing back to Mad House.  I gulp down air, cough as the coolness of it
fills my throat.  Despite the extra
weight of the girl in her arms, Charlie's right beside me, her hip grazing mine
as we run.

We’re running toward the Snatcher.

There’s this tiny slice of time, a
slowed-down moment, where I'm certain
it’s going to grab us, sink down
and rake its claws against our backs, enfold us in its wings.  It's going to Snatch us.  The Snatcher seems certain of this
conclusion, too, because it folds its wings behind its bony body, diving toward
us fast, too fast, like a stone flung from the sky.

But then Charlie and I, together, in the
same heartbeat, arch ahead, step faster, arrows aiming for the same target, my
breath burning through me like fire, and the Snatcher dives and misses us, and
we’re racing through the night as the monster hits the ground with a crunch and
a scream, rolling end over end before hunching its shoulders and righting
itself.  Over my shoulder, my panting
loud in my ears, I see the Snatcher crouched upon the ground, a heap of
feathers and bones.  It watches us for
only a moment before it pushes off, heaves its body up into the air, unhinging
its jaw and crying out.

It’s angry.

“C’mon, c’mon,” huffs Charlie, and we run
together, so close to Mad House I can make out the folds in the curtains past
the broken windows.  But I hear another
cry, then, and I skid, startled, because the girl’s woken up in Charlie’s arms,
and she's screaming, yelling, beating at Charlie's chest, kicking her legs up
and down, begging to be let go, even as she stares at the beast above, bearing
down on us again.

“No, no, please—we have to get inside, we’ll
be safe inside, it can’t get to us inside,” says Charlie, the words spilling
out of her mouth in a thin, trembling string.
She's panicked; she’s not watching her feet, and there’s a rut—

"Charlie!"

Charlie and the girl go down, tumbling until
they settle, groaning.  Without a
thought—there's no time for thinking—I drop to my knees beside
Charlie, help her up, her face white, pained, eyes wide as she stares past me,
at the Snatcher flying toward us.

“Please…” Charlie grits her teeth, standing,
limping, offering a hand to the girl who crawls backwards, whose eyes focus on
nothing but the Snatcher angling down, down, almost near enough to pet, to
kiss…

It lunges at the girl, sweeping past us, one
of its wings knocking against Charlie's head and my shoulder, sending us both
in a twisted heap to the ground.  We
scramble to rise, but we're not fast enough, because then it spreads its great
wings and pumps upward as the girl, Snatcher claws wrapped around her belly,
reaches out her hands to us now, screaming the scream of a horror beyond
description.  I feel dizzy from the might
of her terror; it becomes my terror, too.
But Charlie surges upward, leaps into the air, almost seems to, for a
moment, fly.  And when she extends her
arm, her hand, the girl's fingertips touch hers—a graze of skin…and then a
grappling of thin air.

Charlie falls down to earth, because she is
wingless, after all, and the Snatcher rises with the girl into the dark.

They rise and rise.  I watch them draw away from us until the
girl’s scream is cut off, as if a blade sliced the sound from her throat.

The Snatcher and the girl are gone.

More wingbeats, more white-and-black
monsters with widespread wings, claws bared, beaks unhinged as they scream
toward us, veering down.  Charlie grabs
my hand, yanking me from the ground, dragging me along until my feet find their
balance, catch up, and we run the last few steps up to the porch, tumbling
together straight through the door.

Charlie leans against the wall, still
clutching my hand, her knuckles white, her face whiter as she slumps down,
down, thunking against the floor.  I
kneel beside her, and she presses her other hand to her eyes, breathing in and
out too quickly, panting.

Abigail comes down the corridor with a jar
of Wisps, carrying it in front of her like something sacred.  She takes a single look at us, sniffing,
nose up.

“I take it that things went well,” she says dryly.  Charlie
stares up at her, her mouth twisting, but Abigail raises a finger.  “At least this new one didn’t get
Snatched.  Count your blessings,
girl."

Charlie doesn’t speak.  She closes her eyes, presses her forehead to
her drawn-up knees, breathes out.

She still has not let go of my hand.

*

Another day in Abeo
City.  Another day in Twixt.  I watch the light edge my curtains, and I
leave the room this morning of my own accord.

I walk down the
stairs, hand trailing lightly along the banister, letting my feet sink into the
deep carpet.

Below, in what I’m
beginning to think of as the Great Room, several of the Sleepers have
gathered.  One of the older gentlemen
glances up, twitching his mustache into a semblance of a smile when he sees
me.  “New girl!” he calls, crooking his
cane in my direction.  “Good
morning!  Charlie and Violet went
outside to catch some more Wisps.  These
ones have been looking a mite poorly,” he says, tapping one of the glass jars
with his cane.  “They’ll be out
front.  Told me to let you know.”

“Thank you.” I
return the smile, and traveling the hallway to the front door, I concentrate a
little, though I couldn’t really say what it is I’m concentrating on,
only concentrating, and then my hand is through the wood, and so am I,
standing on the porch.  It feels natural
to me, somehow, to pass through doors and walls as if they were made of air.

I inhale a deep,
chilly breath.

From the street, I
hear laughter.

“To the right!  To the right!  Oh, Vi…”

“You’re the one who
let it slip right out of the open jar!”

More laughter.

Charlie and Violet
are scrabbling over the rubble pile down the street from Mad House.  They both hold jars, pressing down on the
lids with their flat palms, and inside the jars glow yellow orbs, bouncing
against the glass.  Wisps.  There's one Wisp in Charlie’s jar, two in
Violet’s.

I cross the street,
standing at the foot of the pile, peering up.

“Don’t move!”
Charlie calls out, sliding down.  She
runs past me and dives a little, and then she holds up her jar triumphantly,
lid replaced.  Two Wisps now float
within the glass container.

Above the broken
stones and bricks and rusty metal and dust and dirt, the Wisps dance, glowing
softly in the daylight, but glowing all the same.  The worry lines that normally mar Violet’s face are gone,
replaced by smiling mouth and eyes.  She
looks so different when she smiles, as if all of her fears have gone.  She’s running now after a Wisp that zips and
darts—unlike the rest of the orbs, turning lazy circles, light and slow.

“You wanna try?”
Charlie asks, grinning, holding out her jar to me.  I shake my head but tap the glass gently; the Wisps swarm to my
side, bumping up against the jar, as if to get a good look at me.

“Another!” Violet
shrieks, clutching her jar tightly.  She
slides down the pile, skidding stones, and screws on the jar's lid.  “I think that’s enough, Charlie.  Do you think so?”

“We’ll see what
Abigail says.” Charlie groans, casting her eyes skyward.  “You know how she is.  There's no pleasing her.  Don’t say anything about going to
visit Edgar later on, because she’ll ask us to go out and catch more Wisps,
just to sabotage us.”

“We’re visiting
Edgar?” Violet's blue eyes shine, and Charlie glances at her, her mouth turned
up at one corner.

“Thought you’d like
that,” she says, raking her fingers through her hair, grinning at me
knowingly.

Violet flicks her
eyes to the ground, but she’s smiling, too, and her cheeks are pink.

“It’s just…the Need
Shop,” she says, after a long moment, and Charlie sighs.  The three of us walk back together toward
Mad House, Charlie's arm brushing against mine.

“It’s all right,
Vi.  We don’t take Nox.  That’s the only rule in Mad House.  Abigail can’t—”

“Abigail can’t what?”
Perched on the edge of the porch, Abigail peers down at us with narrowed
eyes.  “Are you planning an
insurrection, Charlie, my girl?”

“It would be a dull
day without one, wouldn’t it?” Charlie counters, brow raised.  She places her jar of Wisps upon the porch
step, and Violet does the same.

Abigail watches the
two of them, blue-veined hand pressed over her mouth.  It’s when she turns that I realize she’s positioned herself to
hide the indulgent smile teasing her lips, even as she shakes her head and huffs
out a longsuffering sigh.

“Watch Florence, all
right?” Charlie says, as she ascends two steps, taking one of Abigail’s hands
and squeezing it.

Dropping the stern
façade, Abigail squeezes Charlie's hand back and, stooping over a little,
winks.  “Don’t you worry your pretty
head.  Florence will be fine.  Now go have fun with the bastard.”

“That’s not even
nice.”  Charlie's tone is admonishing,
but she’s grinning, too.  Abigail
shuffles back into the house, muttering to herself, like always, as we turn around
to walk again down the street.

Though I’ve only
been to the Wanting Market and the Need Shop once, I remember the way this
time.  Walk down the one main street,
make those two turns, and then there it is, crumbling before us, the center of
Abeo City, with the Wanting Market and its piles of junk, its shuffling and
trading Sleepers.  And there, on the
edge of it all, is the Need Shop.

“Edgar told me that
Matilda wouldn’t be in again today,” says Charlie, glancing to Violet, “so we
won’t have to deal with her.”

“Thank
goodness.”  Violet shudders, and says in
a loud voice, “She’s as bad as the Sixers—”

Charlie presses a
finger to her lips, shaking her head, turning to glance toward the Wanting
Market.  “Vi, you can’t go on like
that.  No one can hear you talk like
that.  You don't want…”  She swallows, words trailing away.

Violet seems to
shrink into herself, nervously scanning the crowd, her Wisp-catching smile
gone.

You don't want…

I think about the
girl who was dragged away by the Sixers.

I think about the
girl who was dragged away by the Snatchers.

I wring my hands
together, breathe out.

It’s an impossible
situation.  We’re supposed to live,
carry on with daily activities, and yet there’s so much that's unknown, and so
much that might go wildly wrong at any moment…

Charlie, noticing my
mood, turns toward me, resting a hand against the small of my back.

“No dark thoughts,”
she whispers in my ear, her mouth a little upturned, a little hopeful.  “It’ll be a good day, Lottie.”

I look up at her; my
doubts melt as I gaze into her warm brown eyes.  And then, surprising myself, I reach behind my back, take
Charlie's hand.  Her eyes widen, and her
lips part, but then she ducks her head, smiling as the three of us travel the
narrow lane between piles of garbage, aiming for the Need Shop.

Edgar’s sitting
outside on the front steps, arms folded, watching the people in the Wanting
Market with his top hat tilted down over his eyes.  Charlie toes his leg with her shoe, and he startles, blinking,
gazing up at us.

“I thought you’d
never get here,” he says, grinning broadly, and then he’s standing, taking off
his hat, running a hand over his carefully styled hair and smoothing
nonexistent wrinkles from his too-clean shirt.
“Charlie, Lottie, lovely to see you."  He nods at us, and then his eyes linger on Violet.  "Sweet Violet, you’re looking
particularly fetching this morning.”

She blushes, looks
down at the ground, says nothing, and a long, silent moment passes by.  Edgar deflates a little, clutching his hat,
glancing away.

Someone snickers.

Ahead, down the
narrow lane, four people stride toward us.
Three teenage girls and a boy.
The young woman at the front of the group wears a blue dress, as
immaculate as Edgar’s shirt: no holes, no loose threads.  It's made of clean, shiny cloth that bells
around her hips, the lace-edged skirt grazing against her calves.  Her hair isn’t tangled, either, but curled
into brown ringlets that sweep over her shoulders as she turns her head.

I feel gray and
dingy in comparison.

But the pretty
picture is marred by the ugly sneer on the girl's face, directed, very
obviously, at Charlie.

“Edgar, you mustn't
be seen with…"  Her mouth curls, as
if in disgust.  "People from
Mad House.”  Stepping forward, she
crooks one long-nailed finger toward him.
“There might be talk.”

“As ever, Isabel,”
Edgar says, curving into a stiff bow, “I couldn't give a shit less.”

Charlie laughs and
rolls her eyes.

"Careful,
Edgar."  Isabel's mouth downturns
into a pout, and she folds her arms in front of her, raises her voice: “When I
am in charge of Black House, I won’t allow you to consort with riffraff
from Mad House—”

“You and what
flouncy army?” Edgar regards her coolly, one brow raised.  “Careful, Isabel.  You're making an unfortunate impression."  He gestures toward me.  "We wouldn’t want our newest Sleeper
here to get the wrong idea about you.”

She laughs as her
gaze rakes over me, lips drawn above her teeth, exposing their sharp tips.  “She looks like she belongs in Mad
House.”

I narrow my eyes,
and beside me, Charlie says nothing, but she stiffens, and her hands ball into
loose fists.

“Charlie,” Isabel
says, stepping forward like a dancer, all grace, her feet clad in black
slippers with white bows.  “Charlie,”
she whispers, drawing out the word, hooking her arm through Charlie’s as if
they're friends, familiar.  “Let’s
declare a truce.  Come by tonight,
Charlie.  Come to our Memming party.  I'm giving you a special invitation.  You know how Edgar would love to see you
there, and I would, too, and…"  She
squints at me, her mouth drawn tight.
"You can bring your drab little friend, if you'd like—”

Charlie shrugs out
of her grasp.  “Isabel…”  There's warning in her voice, a sharp tone
I've never heard Charlie use before.

Isabel glowers at
me, stepping nearer.  “Has she even
Memmed yet?” she snorts, looking me over again, head to toe.

My own hands are
curling into fists as she tosses her glossy curls over her shoulder.  “Why don't you give her a choice, instead of
shoving your mad shit down her throat?” Her eyes flash at Charlie.  “Who knows?
She might choose Black House over Mad House.  Who wouldn't?”

With a wave of her
hand, she turns on her heel, the others—spitting at Charlie's feet—following
close behind her, like shadows.

“Open invitation!”
Isabel calls, arcing her arm over her head, and then she’s moving toward the
Wanting Market, the blue of her dress lost in the grime-colored crowd.

Edgar steps behind
Charlie and begins to rub her shoulders, shaking his head gently, his eyes
unfocused, staring toward the ground.
After a moment, Charlie blinks, softens, though her fists are still
clenched.

“That—"  He shrugs.
"Forget that.  She enjoys
irritating you.  She likes to get under
your skin.”  Edgar, leaning close to
Charlie's ear, lowers his voice.
“You’ve got to ignore her.  Don't
give her what she wants—”

“But she’s right,
Edgar, and you know it.” Charlie moves away from him and seeks out my gaze,
exhaling a heavy sigh.  “Lottie should
get the choice.  Didn’t we all?  If she wants to stay in Mad House, she needs
to understand why we do what we do.  Why
we don't take Nox.”

“But why Black
House?  There are Memming parties at all
of the Safe Houses.” Edgar sighs.
“Don't misunderstand—I’d love to have you come tonight, but you wouldn't
love another run-in with Isabel.”

“She doesn’t bother me,” Charlie whispers,
voice hoarse.  A lie.  She turns to me.  “I want to give you choices, Lottie.  It's only fair.  Do you
think that you want to try to Mem?”

Mem.  The word births a shiver, a delight, a
fear.  “I don’t know,” I tell her
honestly.  “I think I’d like to
try.  But after all you've said…I don’t
know.”

“I
don’t want to go,” Violet whispers, then, her eyes dark with fear.  “Charlie, she’s probably going to do
something terrible, like last time.  You
know you’re not her favorite person anymore, and what if…”  Charlie looks at her with hooded eyes, and
Violet trails off, swallowing, fidgeting with the edge of her hoodie.

There’s
such sadness in Charlie's gaze that my breath catches in my throat.

“What happened?” I ask, placing my fingers
on Charlie's wrist.  She stares at my
hand for a moment, biting her lip.

Then she jams her own hands into her
pockets, leans against the wall of the Need Shop.  “Isabel and I were together," she begins, her tone begrudging.  "For a little while.  When I was the Fetcher—with Edgar—for Black
House.”

Edgar doesn't glance up at this, his gaze
pointed down the lane, toward the Wanting Market.

“She was only with me because I was the best
Fetcher."  Charlie shakes her head.  "You heard her.  She aims to own Black House when Miss Black
Fades or is Snatched.  So she was only
with me because she thought it might—I don't know—raise her status, because I
was the best, and don’t the best always own the houses?  When I began helping Florence…”  She breathes out.  “Isabel got angry.  She
wanted me to forget about Florence, said she was a lost cause."

When Charlie looks at me, her eyes are
shining.  "She never really cared
about me.  It was very shallow, all of
it.”  She bites her lip, and Violet
comes to her side, hugs Charlie's arm and rests her head on Charlie's shoulder.

“You loved her,” says Edgar then, plainly,
quietly.  “And she ripped up your heart
into neat little shreds, tidy monster that she is.  And she can't seem to stop picking at the scabs she left
behind.”  He casts a mournful glance at
me.  “Isabel is a dedicated asshole, and
has always been, and shall continue to be, an asshole.”

“She wasn't always,” says Charlie, voice
soft.  “Things happen to us here in
Twixt.  This place changes us.  You know that, Edgar.”

He raises one brow and slowly shakes his
head.  “You’ve always been more
forgiving than me.”

“I’m
sorry,” I breathe, because I'm desperate to ease Charlie's grief but feel
helpless, unequipped.  All I have are
words, and they're not enough.

Charlie shakes her head, rubs under her
nose, sniffing.  “It’s long past,” she
tells me, straightening.  She laughs a
little, though it’s a weak sound, halfhearted, and she glances to the sky.  “Soon this daylight will be past, too.  We’ve got to get inside.  We should probably start going—”

“Going where?” asks Edgar, then, watching
her closely.  “Mad House?  Or…"
He quirks a brow.  "Black
House?”

“Once we get where we’re going,
we'll have to stay there for the night.
Because of the Snatchers,” Violet explains to me, crossing her arms,
shivering.  “Charlie, I think—”

“Let’s leave this one up to Lottie,” Charlie
says, casting me a sidelong glance.
“Abigail promised to watch over Florence, so we don’t have to go back."  Her eyes
search mine, and I feel my cheeks warm, even though I'm cold and
shivering.  "Do you want to go to
the Memming party, Lottie?  Do you want
to try Nox?”

That word—Nox—so short and sharp, does something to me, licks up my spine, sets my whole body trembling.  I don’t know what to compare taking Nox to;
I’ve never tried it.  I know there are
consequences, but I don’t know what they are, exactly.  I know so little, really, hardly anything at
all.

But…

What if I truly could have a memory?  What if Nox could help me
make sense of who I am, where I am?  I’m
so hungry for knowing in that moment that it’s an ache in my
belly.  I feel starved for it.

I examine Charlie's face, but her expression
betrays nothing.  She wants me to try
Nox, doesn’t she?  Does she?  A war wages within me, and I surrender, say
the words that come naturally, unthinking, to my tongue: “Yes.  I’d like to try it.”

It.

Nox.

“You’re sure,” says Charlie, not a question,
and I’m nodding.  Edgar takes off his
top hat, runs his hands through his hair, mussing it.  And Violet carefully avoids my gaze.

“Then let’s go,” says Edgar, words
soft.

“I’ll go with you,” Violet pipes up, her
voice too high, her brows arched with surprise.  “I don’t…"  She
clasps her hands before her.  "I
don’t want to be alone in Mad House.”

She wouldn’t be alone, and I can see that
Charlie is going to say something, make that point, but she stops herself, nods
firmly, and pats Violet’s arm.  “It’ll
be all right, Vi.  One night.  And Edgar will be there with us.  And Lottie can decide for herself.  It’s the right thing, Vi.  We can’t make this decision for her.”

Violet searches my eyes, looking lost and
frightened.  She’s shaking a
little.

“Come on,” says Edgar, drawing the key to
the Need Shop out of his pocket.  “It’s
almost sunset.”

A chill shivers over my skin.

With a click, Edgar locks the shop's door,
and the four of us run down the alleyway as the light fades, seeping away.

*

Darkness
oozes out of the sky, thick as blood, coating Abeo City slick with shadows.  I watch this transformation from the open
doorway, until Edgar shuts the door with finality, shrugging out of his coat
and balancing his top hat on the wrought iron hook affixed to the wall.

“Welcome to Black House,” he says, mouth
sideways, gesturing toward the high-ceilinged hallway that seems to hold us
within a cage of smooth marble pillars.
He adjusts his collar, smoothes his hair.  “You’re sure about this, Lottie?”

“Yes,” I whisper, breathless, feeling the
certainty move through me.  Violet is
staring very hard at the floor, and Charlie is watching me but not really
watching me—she’s looking through me, hands lost in her pockets.

“We’ll go Fetching together tonight,
Charlie,” says Edgar, moving forward.
“It’ll be like old times, won’t it?”

She stares up at him, mouth twitching,
before settling on a feeble half-grin.

“Sure,” she whispers, coughing, clearing her
throat.  “Like old times.”

The front hall of Black House is wider and
cleaner than the one at Mad House: there is no dust upon the banister bordering
the spiral staircase, and the front windows have unbroken glass, with heavy
drapes drawn back.  We walk over the
gold carpeting toward a sprawling curve in the corridor, toward an archway and
glimmering lights and eager voices.

A ballroom, I think, when
we stand—Charlie, Violet, Edgar and me—beneath the arch.  The space glows with warmth: the chandeliers
dangling overhead are alive with Wisps, and there are stoppered jars of Wisps
lining the walls, set upon shelves carved with spirals.

Charlie takes my arm gently, walks beside me
as we step into the room, beneath the sparkling light.  Motionless beneath a chandelier, yellow
stars dance over Charlie's face, and her eyes seem to change color: from brown
to copper to shimmery gold.  I gaze at
her, smile at her, and, surprised, she blinks, smiles back.

"All right, Lottie?" she asks.

I nod, speechless, and move further across
the floor.

The people—some standing, some seated—seem
strange to me, and it takes me a moment to realize that it's because they are
all dressed well, cleanly and neatly, like Edgar, like Isabel.

Isabel…who sits on an overstuffed chair by
the fire, laughing behind her hand at something a slim, dark-haired boy just
whispered into her ear.

I remove my eyes from her, feeling Charlie's
comforting warmth at my side.

Unlike the many bald or nearly bald people I
glimpsed wandering the Wanting Market, the people here tonight all have hair on
their heads, though some have far less than others.  Still, it isn't hacked or sawed off but evenly cut.  Neat.

Everything here is neat.

And I dislike it, though I can't say why.

Violet and Edgar are talking quietly behind
us, and I hear snatches of conversation from the rest of the room, but the only
sound that begs my attention is Charlie's voice, speaking softly to me, only
me: "I should've asked you yesterday if you wanted to Mem, if you wanted
to try Nox.  I should've given you the
choice from the start.  I just… Well,
I'm sorry I didn't—"

"Just stay with me," I whisper
back to her, squeezing her arm and smiling weakly.  "Stay with me until it's over, the memory,
the…Mem—please?"

"I'll stay."  Her eyes gleam.  "I'll be there, and after, too."

A group of Sleepers brushes past us
rudely.

“Sorry,” laughs a woman, who bumps
particularly hard against my shoulder—intentionally—then glares back at me.

"Who—"

“They know we’re from Mad House,” Charlie
groans, rolling her eyes.  “The Sleepers
from Black House tend to dislike the Sleepers from Mad House, like I told
you.  It’s…stupid.” She shrugs, clearing
her throat.  “They think they’re better
than us.  But we think we’re better than
them—or some of us do.  So we're both to
blame.”

The woman, wearing a long black dress that
looks tailored to her figure and freshly pressed, is leaning close to one of
the men she strolled in with.  “Do you
think Alice will make it back from the Harming Tree?" she whispers,
tapping her fingers nervously against her throat.  “She should have been back by now.  It's after dark, and if—”

“You know Brown House is closer to the forest
than Black House.  She likely made it
there and back and is just waiting until morning to return here, because she’s
a sensible woman.
Don’t worry,” he mutters, caressing the small of her back.

The woman twirls a lock of her hair over her
shoulder and around her finger.  They
move away from us, and I lean toward Charlie, one eyebrow up, questioning.  She shakes her head once, quickly.

“The Harming Tree is just a
superstition.  They say that if you tie
a lock of someone’s hair to the tree, nothing terrible can ever happen to
them.  They can't get Snatched, or
Fade…  But it’s not true, only a
myth.  Still, people go out into the
woods, try to find the tree and make it to the Red Line.  And most of the time, they don’t make it
back.”

The Harming Tree.

I tuck the thought away in my heart.

Isabel rises, then, grinning smugly,
striding toward us across the cold marble floor.  Charlie stands her ground, feet hip-width apart, chin jutting out
toward the approaching girl, eyes slitted: a warning.

“So glad you came.”  Isabel’s grin grows smugger the nearer she
draws to Charlie.  “Will you all be Memming tonight?”

“I’ll show her how,” says Charlie, voice
gruff, stepping closer to me, putting her arm around my waist.

Isabel's eyes lock onto Charlie's hand upon
my hip.  She stares for a silent moment,
breathes out.

“Suit yourself.”  She lifts her gaze, lingering on Charlie's face, and Charlie
doesn't look away, doesn't even blink, until Isabel, at last, breaks her
stare.  She steps back and away from us
as a piercing voice makes us all start.

“Chaaaaarlie!”

Charlie's arm falls back to her side as she
spins around.

The woman who dances across the room to meet
us has dark hair piled atop her head, her shoulders bared and her chest almost bared, the V of her black dress's neckline plunging halfway down her
ribcage.  Her smile is wide and natural,
though her eyes are shrewd, missing nothing.

“Charlie, darling, I’ve missed you!” she squeals, throwing her gloved hands around Charlie’s neck and
squeezing so tightly that Charlie is forced to plant her face along the woman’s
shoulder.

“Miss Black,” she says, grinning when the
woman eases back, and Charlie takes another whoosh of breath,
staggering a few steps away from the woman, toward me.

“Charlie, we miss you so
much here.  Not that Edgar isn’t a good Fetcher, because of course, everyone knows he’s a good Fetcher.”  She pulls a black
lace fan from the crevice of her bosom and begins to fan herself, shaking her
head and frowning. “But I’ve said to myself all this good long while that we
need our best back, and if we had our best back, we’d save more new Sleepers than all the other Safe Houses
combined, and you know what I always say, more is more, so—”

“So glad you think so highly of me, Miss
Black,” Edgar smirks, sidling up, single brow raised, with Violet standing
stiffly by his side.  Miss Black snaps
her fan shut and smacks Edgar on the shoulder with it.

“Edgar, you know that I love you
truly, but Charlie’s the best, and Black House should always have the best.”  She turns to
Charlie, placing her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed.  “Promise me that you’ll think about coming
back, Charlie.”

“You know I can’t do that, Miss Black, but
thank you for the invitation.”  Charlie
is visibly uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other, leaning back
when Miss Black darts forward, placing her arms around Charlie’s neck again and
forcing her into another tight squeeze.

“You’ll always have a place here, darling,”
she promises, kissing Charlie’s left cheek and then her right, before dancing
off, snapping her fan open with a resounding clack.  Charlie breathes out, rubbing at her
shoulders stiffly, shaking her head as she watches Miss Black’s retreating
form.

“She always did love you best,” says Edgar,
teasing, until Isabel, pushed aside by Miss Black, regains her ground and
advances on him.  Edgar crosses his
arms, sighs, cocks his head.

“You owe me three,” says Isabel
sharply.  “Give them to me.”

“Always a
pleasure,” mutters Edgar, drawing a small pouch from his waistcoat pocket and
pulling out three quivering black feathers.
They seem to dance in his hand, bending toward Isabel.

Nox.

Isabel snatches them from him, crumpling
their fragile forms into her palm before she flounces back across the room,
away from us—though she tosses a glare back over her shoulder.

Charlie sighs, leans toward Edgar.  “Two for us, I guess.”  She tugs her little scissors up on their
chain, nudging them out from beneath her shirt.

“Wait.”
My heart is pounding so fiercely, it’s difficult to breathe.  “You don’t have to Mem, Charlie.  Not for me.
And I…I want to pay for mine.
Let me pay with—”

“No,” Charlie and Violet say at the same
time.

But Edgar watches me, frowning.  “Everything comes at a price, Charlie.  You always say that.  And it's true.”  His words are sympathetic, but fast.  “Let her buy her own Nox.”

Charlie grimaces, raking her hand through
her hair, but she takes the chain with the shears over her head and coils it
upon my palm.  The metal is still warm
from her skin, but the scissor blades are sharp.

"What should I—"

“A curl,” Edgar says, eyes downcast,
avoiding Charlie's gaze.  “A piece of
Nox will cost you one curl.”

I pull my tangled mane over my left
shoulder, staring down at it, trying to separate it with my fingers.  I draw out a black coil, glancing to
Edgar.  He nods, and I swing Charlie's
shears open with a gentle creak.
One snip, and the bit of black falls into my hand.  Something inside of me sinks, then shrivels,
as I hold my hair out, palm up.  Edgar
plucks it and, in its place, drops a small black feather.

“Here,” says
Charlie, taking my other hand gently.
She draws me toward the far edge of the room, sitting down with her back
to the wall, below a collection of Wisps in faceted glass decanters.  She pats the floor beside her, and I sit
down, too, clumsy as I try to fold my legs, tucking my skirts and my boots
beneath me.

I’m so nervous… I
feel clunky and graceless on the floor of Black House's ballroom, next to
Charlie, who looks edgy but comfortable enough leaning there, one knee up, the
other drawn beneath her.  Violet lowers
herself then, crouching beside me.  I
raise my eyes, scanning for Edgar, and find him striding amongst the gathered
people, making small talk and trading feather after feather, their dark translucence
ethereal in the softly lit room, for snips of hair.

“Okay.  All right.”
Charlie holds up the small scissors in one hand; they tremble a
little.  “I’m going to help you, okay?”

“Yeah,” I whisper,
leaning close.  Charlie takes my hand in
hers, long fingers curling around my wrist.

“It’s going to hurt
a little,” she whispers, and opens her own hand, showing me a thin, arcing line
of black that runs across her palm, curving to follow her hand's natural
line.  “That’s how you can tell I’ve
taken Nox.  Once you take it, your
lifeline blackens, like this.”

I stare down at my
own palm.  No blackness traces it
yet.

“I’m going to cut
now, okay?” Charlie whispers, and I grit my teeth, close my eyes as she places
the edge of one of the shears against the beginning of my lifeline.  The cut is quick, expert, following the
line.  I swallow as I open my eyes,
staring down at the wound, red bubbling up where the skin was gashed.

Charlie takes a
feather and sets it against the line of red, black covering the red, absorbing
it, until there’s nothing left but blackness.  I watched, transfixed, as the feather seems to melt, merging into
my skin, and I close my eyes tightly, ready…

Everything is
focused on the pain in my palm, the strange coolness of the feather as it shrinks,
vanishing.

I wait.

After a long moment,
Violet beside me breathes out, shifts, leans closer.

“Charlie…” she
whispers.

I open my eyes.

Charlie’s staring
down at my palm curled into hers.  My
skin now bears a single black line, and the wound is gone, healed, with no
blood remaining.

Charlie glances up
into my eyes, her own wide, her brow furrowed.

Across the room,
there's a gasp, and my head turns toward the source of the sound.  I watch a girl collapse upon the floor, body
shaking as her hands, black lined, lay open and flat beside her.  Her back arches, mouth distended and eyes
wide, unseeing.  She holds that posture
for a long time—too long—and then relaxes, lays perfectly still, chest rising
and falling in short breaths, head tilted back and mouth curving, as if she’s
in ecstasies.

“That’s
Memming,” murmurs Charlie, voice husky, fingers grazing the new black line upon
my hand.  “I don’t—”

“What’s the matter?”
asks Edgar, moving through the crowd to stand beside us.  “What was Lottie's memory like?”  Behind him, more people drop to the floor,
drop at random, all around the room, and my eyes dart from one to the next, my
heart skipping, because that—none of that—happened to me when Charlie put the
feather on my hand.  I feel a pang of
disappointment, but deeper, colder, there's only fear.

“She didn’t…”
Charlie’s staring up at Edgar, mouth open.
She breathes out.  “Edgar, it
didn’t work.”

He blinks, then
stares down at me, at the black line on my open palm.  “That’s impossible.”
Edgar kneels, removing a pair of shears from his pocket with practiced
ease.  The scissors, delicately
engraved, dangle from a long, thin chain buttoned to his breast lapel.

“May I?” he asks,
and I nod.  He takes my other hand, the
one not yet lined with black.  His shears
are wickedly sharp and slice along my palm so smoothly, I feel no pain for a
heartbeat—but then I gasp, suffering the burning sting of the wound.

Edgar has drawn a
single feather from his pouch, and he presses it now upon my sliced palm.  The feather, as before, seems to melt into
my skin, blackening the lifeline.  And
the wound seals, like a mouth closing, and then—

I should gasp and
flail and fall backwards, arching, moaning…

Nothing.

I feel nothing, not
even the pain of the cut inflicted by Edgar's shears.

I stare up at him,
heart beating fast.  “Is it supposed to
happen now?” I ask him, wetting my lips.
He watches me closely, carefully, then sits back on his heels, hands on
his knees.

“That’s…not
possible.” He turns from me, glancing to Charlie.  “I’ve never—”

“Me, either.  What does it mean?” she whispers.

Edgar flops down
onto the floor, hands behind him, propping him up.  “I, lovely ladies, have no idea.”

Violet, Edgar and Charlie's heads all turn toward
me, as one, watching me so closely that I blink at their wide eyes, staring
right back.  “What’s happening?  Why isn’t it working?” I ask them, examining
my hands, palms up, upon my legs.  They
both boast thin black lines now, curving away from each other in opposite
directions.

“Nox always works,
Lottie,” Edgar states finally, heavily.
“And it didn’t work on you.  You
haven't got a memory, have you?”

"No."  The anticlimax is bitter.  I try to swallow it, but my throat is too
dry.  “Maybe…  What if we—”

“We've tried twice.  It’s never not worked, and twice
it hasn’t worked.”  Edgar’s mustache
twitches sideways, bewildered.  “I doubt
it’ll work if we try again.”

The room feels too
loud all of the sudden, and warm, stuffy.
I watch the convulsing forms upon the floor—bodies arching at unnatural
angles and falling still, arms spread out wide, as if they’re waiting, as if
they're prepared to embrace an old acquaintance.

Isabel sits on the
edge of a plush chair, watching us above the writhing, shut-eyed mass.  Two of her friends from earlier, a boy and a
girl, stare toward us, too, standing on either side of the fire.  I don’t know why, but with their narrowed
eyes, the way that they lean toward us, sighting us, singling us out, I
feel…hunted.

Isabel stands, then,
begins to weave between the prostrate forms of Memming Sleepers.  Beside me, Charlie sits up straighter, and I
rise, too, pressing my back against the wall.

“Well?” Isabel asks,
hands on her hips.  “How was it?”  She’s talking to me, I know, but she’s
staring at Charlie, can't seem to remove her eyes from Charlie.

I open my mouth, but
Charlie gives me a warning glance, and I stare down at the floor, heart racing.

“Fine.  Don't tell me," Isabel mutters, cutting
the words short.  I look at her, then,
at the sharp lines of her face, wondering why she bothered to ask at all.

Charlie glances at
the tall grandfather clock beside the fireplace, at the hands moving too
quickly over its face.

“Almost
midnight," she says, frowning.
"Isabel, do you have a room that Violet and Lottie can stay in
while Edgar and I go out Fetching?  I
don’t think that Memming is something Lottie's much interested in now.  And Violet, as you know, doesn't enjoy it.”

“Oh, but the party
is such fun.” The brown-haired girl’s eyes flash as she folds her hands
prettily in front of her.  “If you
insist, though, of course.  Why,
they can stay in my room!”

Edgar and Charlie
exchange a glance.  “Surely you have
plenty of spare rooms for new Sleepers…” Charlie begins, but Isabel’s smile
stretches across her face, curving up wickedly.  It's not a real smile.
There's a bite behind it.

“I’ll find them a
room.  Don't worry.”  She looks to the clock.  “Now, you two hurry along.  You don’t want to be late.  The new Sleepers count on you, Charlie.”

The clock strikes
midnight with a harsh gong that startles me.

I narrow my
eyes.  Wasn’t it only just sunset?

Time’s kind of
funny here.

“Come,” says Edgar,
tugging on Charlie’s sleeve.  “We are
late already, and the Snatchers might beat us to the crossroads."

Charlie bites her
lip, eying Isabel.

"Miss Black
won’t let Isabel do anything foolish, Charlie."  Edgar pins Isabel down with a piercing glare.  "You know that, and so does she.”

Isabel’s jaw
tightens, and Charlie’s helpless gaze holds mine for a long moment after she
rises.  I nod at her, urging her to go,
remembering the girl we lost to the Snatchers only last night.

With a sigh, Charlie
turns and follows Edgar through the archway, down the hall.  The distant creak of the front door opening
and closing reverberates throughout the tall-ceilinged space.

They're gone.

I feel cold on the
side that Charlie had filled beside me.
I bring my knees up, wrapping my arms around them to stop my shivering,
and half-listen to the strange, shuffling sound of the Sleepers Memming, Miss
Black among them, eyes closed as her back arches upon the floor, curving a
question out of her spine.

“So, Lottie,
let me guess.  Charlie couldn’t be
bothered to come up with a name for you, so she just gave you the leftovers of
hers.”  Isabel’s head is cocked to the
side, and her fingers remain on her hips, splayed and pointy.  “Is that how it happened, Violet?”

“Shut up,” Violet
whispers beside me, shoulders up, face white.

“You know,
Lottie?" Isabel leans forward, bending at her beribboned waist.  "I think Charlie likes you.”

I stare up at her,
eyes wide.

“But Charlie’s a
strong girl.  She only likes
strong girls."  Straightening,
looming, she taps her chin, as if a thought just occurred to her.  "You know what I thought we could do to
pass the time, a fun little game?  Let’s
prove to Charlie how strong you are,” Isabel says, shifting her weight
forward.  “We do it every night here at
Black House.  Do you remember, Violet?  I'm sure you do.”

I hadn't thought it
possible, but Violet blanches, paling further, shrinking back as Isabel
snatches at her arm, pinching her fingers around the fleece.

Violet winces.  "No, I don't—"

"Hush,
baby."  Tightening her grasp,
Isabel tugs, pulling Violet to her feet.
“She used to live with us at Black House, you see," Isabel tells
me.  "And you do remember,
Vi.  You were very good at the game, as
I recall.”

“Leave her alone,” I
growl, standing up, balling my hands into fists.

Isabel ignores me,
so I step forward, shoving hard against her shoulders.  With an arched brow, she drops Violet’s arm,
staring at me with her perfect lips parted.
Then her eyes begin to flash, wild.

“You touched
me." Her teeth are bared, sharp as shears.  "No one from Mad House is allowed to touch me,”
she snarls, then blinks, smoothing her features, as if she just remembered her
manners.  “I think you’ll be adept at
our little game, Lottie.  I'm
very good at it.  That's what impressed
Charlie…in the beginning.”  Her eyes
darken, dangerous.

“Isabel, just leave us alone until Charlie
gets back.  We'll just stay here,” says
Violet, but Isabel ignores her, is still staring at me with bright, sparking
eyes.

“What kind of game?”
I ask, curiosity—and a streak of competitiveness I hadn't known I
possessed—getting the better of me.
Violet shakes her head emphatically, but Isabel’s mouth curls up into a
smile, and she folds her arms in one smooth gesture.

“It’s called
Faster,” she whispers.

“No, no, no,”
Violet wails, tugging at my sleeve.
“Lottie, please…”

I watch Isabel
carefully, my anger cooling into a rigid, unbending stubbornness that frosts my
limbs, making them stiff.

“Aren’t you
curious?” asks Isabel.

I shake my head,
lying.

“Ah,” she whispers,
rolling her eyes.  “You’re afraid.”

I am.  It’s the truth, and we both know it.  But fear doesn’t rest easy with me, the
holding of it in my bones, in my stomach.
I want to get rid of it, throw it away, push it off from me, and I feel
so strange, staring down at the palms of my hands that now bear black
lines from Nox.  Nox, that should have
given me memories…  That didn’t.

I stare down at my
hands, then back up at Isabel.  The
blood rushes through me, and as Violet pinches my skin, I say, clearly, “Tell
me about the game.”

“No…no…” Violet
whispers so softly as Isabel crooks her finger toward the boy and girl lounging
by the fireplace, urging them forward.

“This is Anthony and
Gerda,” she tells us.  “And these are
Lottie and Violet,” she tells them, her eyes slitted toward us, mouth
smirking.  “They’ve just agreed to play Faster!”

Anthony stares us up
and down.  He has wavy brown hair that’s
perfectly curled around his ears, is wearing jeans and a very tight black
jacket.  The girl, Gerda, has on a
slinky red dress, her blonde hair swept in one soft wave down her back.  She smiles at me, teeth flashing in the
half-light.

“Violet, I’m sure,
remembers the rules,” says Isabel as we move out of the ballroom, into the
hallway, and down another corridor.
"Tell Lottie how to play, Violet."

My heart is pounding
so loudly, it's hard to hear anything else.

“You just have to be
faster,” Violet breathes, her teeth chattering together as she pants beside
me.  “Isabel, when Charlie finds out
that you’ve goaded us into this—”

“Charlie loved this
game and would be disgusted by your sniveling.” Isabel tosses a sneer
over her shoulder.  The hallway is
narrow; her wide blue skirt brushes against the walls as she walks quickly
along.  “Did you forget that Charlie invented
Faster?”

Violet falls silent,
hugging herself and falling a little behind me.

My heart stills for
a moment.  Charlie invented this
game?  Then maybe it won't be as bad as
Violet makes it out to be.  I think of
Charlie's warm brown eyes, her gentle manner and her soft voice.  I think of the way she holds my hand, and
places her hand against my back, always letting me know she's there, beside
me.  I think of how fast she was, how
steady, when we ran from the Snatchers that first night…

You just have to be faster, Violet said.

Faster than what?

Surely not…

A sinking feeling
drowns my ribs in a wave of fear as we come to the end of the long, low hall,
dark save for the handful of Wisps knocking against glass bulbs affixed to the
walls.  Isabel’s hand is on the doorknob
as she turns back to look at us, her grin chilling in the yellow-hued light.

“We have a courtyard
at Black House, Lottie,” she whispers.
“That's where we play."  She
nods toward the door beside her.
"You run across the courtyard toward the other door, on the
opposite side, and pass through it.  You
win when you get inside.”

"And you lose
if you don't," Anthony snickers.

“This is so
stupid.  This is so stupid,” says
Violet through clenched teeth.  “We
don’t have to do this, Lottie!”

Gerda sneers at
Violet, then reaches behind her own back, undoing the buttons of her
dress.  She steps out of the smooth red
garment, leaving it upon the floor like a shed skin, and straightens the thin
white slip clinging to her body.

“I’ll go first,” she
says, smiling widely.  Anthony opens the
door, and Gerda steps forward.  We all
do, peering behind her out of the door into the blackness.  After a moment, my eyes adjust: I can see,
across the small courtyard, the door Isabel was talking about, rounded at the
top and built of dark wood, and clearly visible, even in the night.

We all seem to
glance up at the same time, heads tilting back on our necks, eyes wide.  My heart, knocking against my bones, doubles
its efforts, hammering hard enough to hurt.

There, perched upon
the roof, silhouetted against the absoluteness of night sky, is a
Snatcher.  That’s the only thing it could
be, with that wicked curve of beak, its hooded wings hunched around its
skeletal form, the white bones practically glowing in the darkness, like a
contorted grin of moon.

Violet’s breath
puffs out in quivering wheezes.
“Don’t—” she begins, but Gerda yells out something unintelligible,
something loud—perhaps a scream, or a battle cry—and then she darts out the
door, bare feet thrusting her across the courtyard.

She’s starkly
visible in her white shift, like a moving beacon of light, and instantly, the
sharp shadow detaches itself from the Black House roof, wings arching as it
dives toward her.

Until now, I've only
glimpsed the Snatchers in fits of panic, tearing over earth and pavement to
escape them, but here and now, sheltered by the doorway, I watch this creature,
several times the size of Gerda, drop like a stone toward her, impossibly fast,
certain to reach her before she flings herself through the opposite door.  Its individual claws are jagged and longer
than my hands, curving toward Gerda, poised to grasp.  The wings are massive, feathered night, absorbing the feeble
light, but it’s the skull that stills my roving eyes, that stops my heart's
hammer.

There is nothingness where the Snatcher's eyes
should be, and I wonder if it's to that sort of nothingness that they carry
Sleepers, a place of nonexistence, of oblivion.

The beak unhinges
like scissors snapping open, and the scream that arches out of the maw toward
Gerda is a sick, sickle thing, caught upon the air, hanging there.

But Gerda is
fast—faster than I thought—and, as the Snatcher lunges, she hurls herself
through the closed door on the other side of the courtyard, gone.

She made it.

She won.

The Snatcher pulls
up, pumping its wings so quickly that they churn up the thin dusting of snow,
twigs, and dead leaves.  It turns its
head toward us, empty eyes seeking us out, as if it might try to pluck us out
of the alcove, but before it changes course, Anthony slams the door shut.

There’s another
scream, a terrible scream that saws through the wood of the door, and then all
we can hear is a rush of wings buffeting the sky, rising, moving away.

“Oh, it’s angry
tonight!” Isabel squeals, bouncing in place.
Her eyes flash at me.  “Who’s
next?”

“I’m not going to do
it.”  Violet’s voice is shaking, but the
words themselves stand firm in the air.
Isabel turns toward her, mouth curved as she advances on the smaller,
trembling girl.

I take a single step
and stand between them, my hands fisted at my sides.

“She doesn’t have to
take a turn.  But I will,” I say, staring
Isabel down.  A strange, cool peace
descends upon me, then, draping over my shoulders like a cloak.  I uncurl my fingers, look down at my palms.  Nothing has changed; the two black lines are
there as before.

But something’s
different…  Clearer, sharper.

“I’ll go next,” says
Anthony, shoving me aside, and then he’s wrenching the door open, tearing
across the courtyard without a moment's pause.

Violet grips my arm,
breathing fast, and she drags me down to her ear as Anthony bellows something I
can’t quite make out, as the Snatcher takes off from its perch again, arcing
toward him.

“Why are you doing
this?  You don’t have to do
this,” Violet says, her voice rising up to a thin whine.

I shake my head once
as Anthony reaches the opposite door.
He has the nerve to yank it open, rather than just passing through.  But he made it, escaped the Snatcher.  He was fast enough.

Again, Isabel slams
our door shut as the Snatcher turns, watching us with intention, and without
eyes.

Violet's right.

I don’t have to do
this.

Fear races across my
skin, morphing and changing as Isabel begins to undo the zipper of her own
dress, letting the blue, luminous thing puff down from her shoulders, revealing
the pale blue slip beneath.  I tug at the
edges of my dress’s sleeves, my thin dress that clings to me, that I can still
be fast in.

I’m afraid.

Of course I’m
afraid.

But there's
something else stirring within me, too.

Isabel wrenches the
door open.

Outside, the
Snatcher wheels over the courtyard, pumping its wings and screaming with
poisonous sharpness into the Nox-black night.

“Are you coming?”
asks Isabel, turning, eyes wide and goading in the darkness.

Violet lets my arm
go, steps back, holding herself, and I move forward, my legs stiff beneath me,
everything pounding—my blood, my breath—as I stand beside Isabel in the open
doorway.

The Snatcher is
curving overhead now, its maw open, the sound firing from its throat a cross
between anger and pain.  I notice
something as it circles, as I stare: the top part of its right wing is crooked,
like the structure beneath it was broken once, and healed.

I swallow, still
staring.  Somehow the imperfection makes
the monster seem more real.

“Ready?” Isabel
whispers, and all that I am intensifies, pinpointing and shifting until I hear
her shriek, “Go!”

And I go.  We go.

The light disappears
as the darkness swallows me, gulping me down into the pitch-black night, my
feet stumbling over the earth and rubble beneath.  The sky tears overhead as a punch of wind pummels me, the thunderous
whoosh of gigantic wings turning toward me, so loud in the stillness,
loud like my heartbeat, like my breathing, like my boots connecting with little
stones.

I run, moving
through the thick blackness, pushing it away, refusing it—the dark and the fear—and
a great joy moves through me:  I’m
fast.  I’m going to be through the door
in two breaths.  I’m fast, faster than
Isabel, faster than Anthony was, or Gerda, and I’m evading the Snatcher, the
stupid, slow Snatcher, that could never dream of catching me, if Snatchers ever
dream.

And I trip.

And I fall,
sprawling, my chin banging against the ground in a great explosion of color and
searing pain as I tumble end over end until I land on my back, staring up at
the absoluteness of black and the slash of white that moves through the
darkness toward me.

I've lost.

Isabel's already
passed through the door, has opened it from the other side, is peeking out at
me.

It’s going to get
me.  I recognize that distantly, as if
from a place outside of myself.  I can’t
move, pushed flat to the ground by the force of the wings.  I hear, far away, Violet screaming:  “Lottie!
Lottie, get up!” But I can't get up, so I simply stare up
and up and up at the Snatcher, at the holes in its skull, its eyeless gaze
pinning me.  I want to shut out its
searing whiteness, its crushing blackness, but I can’t…  I can only watch, breathing in and out, as
it spreads its wings and alights upon the tattered awning that arches above the
door in the courtyard, causing Isabel to gasp and close the door further, so
it's only open a crack, her large eye peering out.

I sit up, panting.

The Snatcher…landed.

It spreads its
wings, stretching them overhead, shaking them out.  Black feathers glisten in the halfhearted light filtering out
from the hallway where Violet stands, gaping.

The Snatcher stares
down at me, still, claws gripping the awning ribs.

It stays there,
unmoving.  It does nothing.

It doesn't come for
me.

I hear footsteps
pounding against the ground as I rise to my feet, keeping the Snatcher in front
of me.  Violet collides with my
shoulder, gripping my arm so tightly that the pain jolts me awake, out of my
trance.  She tugs on me with a strangled
sob, and I back away slowly, dragged every step by Violet.  The Snatcher watches me, head and beak
tilted to the side, the hollows of its eyes empty and black and pure nothingness,
but watching me all the same, until it turns its head toward Violet, and it
rises on its haunches, as if it's about to leap, to dive again.

Violet heaves me
back through the door I ran out of, banging its solid weight shut behind us,
making it rattle on its loose hinges.

She presses her head
to my shoulder, squeezing me tight, sobbing.

Three forms move
down the hallway toward us, and even in the blur of silent hysteria, I
recognize them: Gerda, Anthony and Isabel, having come around Black House from
the other side of the courtyard.

I stand, waiting for
them, strangely still, as Violet weeps against me.

Isabel, looking thin
but fierce in her short blue slip, marches up to me, whispers, “What are
you?”

Fear brightens her
eyes as she watches me carefully, back against the wall, her friends gaping
beside her.

I don't speak, look
away, patting Violet’s shoulder gingerly.

Outside in the
night, beyond the door, the Snatcher screams, and I listen to it, my body and
my heart numb.

Chapter Four:  Harming

Isabel won’t even
look at me.

I huddle in a corner
of the ballroom in Black House, arms clasped around my knees.  I watch the Sleepers mingle, hands on
shoulders, lips on cheeks, on lips, touching one another, laughing as they
bring out small pairs of shears that gleam in the light of the Wisps.  I watch as they cut their hands, as they
press delicate black feathers against the oozing wounds, as—instantly—the
Sleepers become writhing creatures, bizarre creatures, arching upon the floor
until they still, slumped and unconscious, their mouths fixed with eerie
smiles.

Then, after a few
moments, they shake themselves, come back into themselves, get up, eyes
tear-filled, murmuring about how beautiful, how altering, how important
it was, that Mem.

How worth
it.

And how they must
have another.

Isabel is on the
other side of the room, speaking with Miss Black, whose mouth cuts a small,
still line across her face.  Her dark
eyes narrow as they settle upon me, measuring me up.

Beside me, in a
quivering heap, Violet pillows her head in her arms.  She's staying near me, her hip pressed against mine.  But she won’t look at me, either.

I wish Charlie were
here.

How long will it
take her and Edgar to Fetch for two houses?
Have they been gone too long?
Should we be worried about them?
Should someone go search for them?

I start to ask
Violet, but the words catch in my throat at the sight of tears slipping from
the corners of her eyes.

My insides turn and
twist; it's sickening, uncomfortable, and I can’t find any comfort, anything
good to think about, anything else to think about besides the fact that
the Snatcher refused me.

It refused me.

That’s what I heard
Isabel say when she went running back into the ballroom, straight to Miss
Black.

I was refused.  By a monster.

My thoughts spin in
tight, dull circles, rehashing every detail I remember, from the beginning,
from the stream and the woods.  And
Charlie.

She found me in an
odd time and place.

Nox doesn’t work on
me, doesn't do anything for me.

I can’t Mem.

And the Snatcher
didn’t even want me, though I lay defenseless and immobile, the perfect
prey.

What does that make me?  What am I?

Isn’t that what Isabel asked me, back to the wall,
her eyes—normally slitted, scornful—wide with fear?

What are you?

I don’t know.  I don't know, I don't know, I don't know…

My forehead against
my sleeve, eyes tightly closed, I’m so lost in my downward spiraling thoughts
that I don’t hear the front door creak open, don't feel her, Charlie, come back
into Black House, back into the sanctuary of Snatcher-proof walls and doors.

But the Sleepers in
the ballroom—those who aren’t Memming, anyway—welcome the returning Fetchers
with a congratulatory shout.

I open my eyes.

Edgar and Charlie
stand together beneath the archway, a frightened man held between them, his
eyes wider and darker than the hollows in a Snatcher’s skull.  He struggles in their grasp, and Charlie
drops his arm, moving into the room to lean against the wall, panting.  But Edgar grins, letting the man go, too,
and whispering something near Charlie's ear, patting her on the shoulder.  She returns his smile, though hers is tired,
fleeting.

I gaze at the man,
the new Sleeper, as he staggers on stiff legs, taking in the sights before him
with haunted eyes.  I wonder if he'll
ever stop shaking.

I have stopped
shaking, though I feel so numb inside, I can't feel much of anything, besides a
cold, deep-lodged dread.  Still, I'm
glad for Charlie, relieved that she's back safe and that the Fetching, this
time, was a success.

Violet is on her
feet in a heartbeat, practically vibrating in place as she reaches down, taking
me by my hands and dragging me up to my feet, too.

“We’ve got to get
out of here,” she murmurs, dropping my hands, crossing over to Charlie, leaving
me behind, leaning against the wall.
I’m too tired to argue with her, though I know Charlie will tell her
no.  We can't leave, not now.

Charlie and
Violet…they’re normal Sleepers, and normal Sleepers have to fear the
Snatchers.  Normal Sleepers don’t go out
at night, ever, except to Fetch.

Because that's just
how things work in Twixt.

For everyone, it
seems, except me.

That first Snatcher,
when I woke up beside the stream… Was it after Charlie, then, never me?  And last night, the Snatcher only took the
new Sleeper, only her.

Too many questions
scrape at the edges of my heart.  I want
to test it.  I want to walk out the
front door right now, challenge the Snatchers that must circle above Black
House in the darkness, waiting, watching.
Patient.  Hungry for Sleepers.

Violet whispers
something in Charlie’s ear, whispering fast and forcefully, and Charlie's brown
eyes, hooded with exhaustion, go wide.
She straightens her back, her wondering gaze finding me across the room,
and I can’t bear it, the way her forehead is wrinkling now, the way her mouth
opens, though no words pass her lips.

I need to tell her
myself, need to talk to her myself.  So
I push off from the wall, move across the floor, taking small steps, biting my
lip, twisting my fingers together, trying to hide the black lines in my palms
from my—and her—sight.

“You played Faster?”
Charlie asks, her gaze skipping over me as she runs a hand through her hair
when I step closer, as if she's nervous.
“Lottie, you could have been—What were you thinking?”

It comes out, all in
a rush, before I can stop or second-guess myself.  “I tripped, and the Snatcher came after me.  It didn’t want me, Charlie, didn’t take me,”
I whisper as Violet grips Charlie’s arm, nodding her head, insistent.

Charlie stares.  At me.
She’s surprised, at first, but then it's unmistakable.  What was written so plainly on Isabel’s face
is spelled out on Charlie's features now.
Except Charlie tries to hide it, to spare my feelings.

But I see it.  It’s there.

Fear.

For a split second,
Charlie is afraid of me.

“Don’t—” Charlie
whispers, grasping at my wrist as I push past her and Violet and Edgar, angling
for the front door.  “Lottie, listen to
me.”

I do listen, pausing
as she tightens her fingers on my wrist.
My heart pounds.

“It’s all right,”
she tells me, though she doesn’t sound as if she believes anything's all
right, and it's not.  I know it's
not.  I breathe out, clenching my jaw,
staring down at the ground.  The single
tear that escapes my right eye traces down my cheek, and in that heartbeat,
Charlie steps forward, drawing me to her, squeezing tightly.

I choke back a sob.

Maybe I’m afraid,
too.

“What’s wrong with
me?” I whisper, so that only she can hear.
“What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head,
holds me tighter.  “I promise, we’ll get
to the bottom of this.  We’ll figure it
out together.”

I close my eyes,
bury my nose in her shoulder.  She
smells of metal, of cold night air.  I
inhale, sigh.

“Trouble…” Edgar mutters,
and I straighten, stepping back from Charlie, wiping the tear from my chin as
Miss Black and Isabel approach.  Miss
Black’s jaw is set, but Isabel’s eyes still betray her fear, and she curves
away from me, leaning toward the wall.

“Charlie,” says Miss
Black, clipping the word, “what is she?”  Right to the point.  I
stare at the black lace fan angled toward me, now shut tightly, as if it might
be used as a weapon.

“She’s a Sleeper,
Miss Black,” says Charlie, slipping her hand into mine.

“The Snatcher refused
her.  That does not happen.  You know that does not happen.”  The words are spoken with finality, as Miss
Black shakes her head.  “She cannot stay
in my Safe House.  Whenever
anything…changes in Twixt, terrible, terrible things follow behind.  You know that as well as I do, my dear.  She must leave.  Presently.”

Charlie squeezes my
hand, her fingers warm against my cold ones.
“You can’t send a Sleeper out into the night,” she tells Miss Black
calmly.  “It’s against the code of a
Safe House.”

"Well…"  Miss Black shuts her mouth, tapping her fan
against the palm of her black-lined hand.
Her shrewd eyes narrow.  “If she
is not out of my house at first light, I will send for the Sixers.”

Charlie pales but
nods, mouth drawn into a thin, downward curve.
“She’ll be gone by morning.
We’ll all be gone, back to Mad House.”

“See that you
are.”  She turns without another word,
black skirts whirling, and weaves into the silent crowd of Sleepers watching
us—staring, listening.

“A Snatcher refused
her?” I hear the whisper.  And then
there are more whispers, as Sleepers speak behind cupped hands, pointing to me,
staring, eyes wide and fear-filled, mimicking Isabel's eyes.  Isabel still watches me, though she's moved
across the room with Miss Black and taken up her chair by the fireplace.

“Come on,” says
Edgar, breathing out, stepping back.
“I’ll take you all up to my room.
It's more…private.”

“Great,” mutters
Charlie, putting her arm around my waist and steering me away from the gaping,
gossiping mass.  Violet follows behind
us, her eyes on the floor.

“This just keeps
getting more and more interesting,” Edgar grins, wolfish, as we ascend the
staircase.  There are little faces
carved into the railing, baby faces with sharp teeth and wide, wooden eyes.  I look away from them, shudder.

“Hey,” says Charlie,
pressing her fingers against my side, drawing me back to the here and now of
the wide, plush staircase and her warmth beside me.  We’re at the top of the steps, and Edgar is leading us down the many-doored
hall, eventually opening a nondescript door on the right and tilting his head
to usher us inside.

In the center of the
room, there's a large, soft-looking bed covered in rumpled covers and a simple
washing table holding a slouching, cracked bowl.  Edgar sits down on the edge of the bed, patting either side of
himself with a wide smile.

“So many pretty
ladies…  I’m a lucky guy today,” he
says, but he quickly sobers when Charlie gives him a hard glance.  He leans back on his hands, almost pouting.  “So the Snatcher didn’t want her.”  He glances at me.  “That doesn’t…necessarily mean that—”

“Don’t, Edgar,”
sighs Charlie, sitting next to him, rubbing her face and looking up at me with
her brows furrowed.  She takes my hands
in hers and squeezes, half-smiling.
“It’ll be all right,” she tells me in her soothing, husky voice.  “I promise you, Lottie.  We’re going to get to the bottom of all of
this, and then…”

"Then?"  Violet sinks down to the floor, rubs her
face.  “What if we can't figure
it out?  Things have gone strange here
before—but never like this.  Not with a
Sleeper.  What does it mean,
Charlie?”

Charlie shakes her
head, glancing to Edgar.  “I don’t
know.  But just because we don’t know
doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out.  We
will.”

“You know who
could figure it out,” says Edgar mildly, staring down at his fingernails as if
they’re a source of sudden fascination.

“No,” says Charlie,
standing.  The word is unyielding, but
Edgar’s eyes flash when he turns and looks at her.

“Lottie
should be the one making that decision, shouldn’t she?”

“What
decision?”  I’m so tired, I feel like
I’m wilting.  I slide down the wall to
rest upon the cold, wooden boards, crumple there.  My mind tumbles a single thought, over and over and over:  The Snatcher refused me.  The Snatcher refused me.

Edgar crosses his left leg over his right and
regards me evenly.  “The Sixers know
everything about Twixt—or at least more than we lowly Sleepers do.”

A chill creeps along
my spine, and my head is shaking long before I will it to do so.  “No.
I mean, I don’t know…” I begin, and breathe out.  “I’ll…have to think about it.”  I slur the words together so quickly, they
sound like one word, like nonsense.

Violet, standing
next to the door, is watching me, picking at the edge of her hoodie’s sleeves.  “The thing about the Sixers,” whispers
Violet slowly, “is that once you’ve been seen by them, you can’t be
unseen.  If something intrigues them
about you, they’ll keep you."
She pauses, her blue eyes distant, glazed.  "The Sixers take what they want.  They always have.”  She
slumps against the wall, her head bowed to her chest.

I glance down at my
palms again and, scowling, curl my hands into fists, hiding the failed shadows
of Nox from my sight.

“It’s not so bad,”
says Charlie gently, leaning forward, lowering herself to the floor beside
me.  She takes one of my hands in hers
and slowly uncurls my fingers.  “You get
used to the lines.  I can’t remember a
time, really, when I didn’t have them on my palms.”

I glance up at
her.  She’s not watching me, is still
staring down at my hand, unseeing.

“What was one of
your Mems like, Charlie?” I ask her, voice soft.  She looks up, locks eyes with me and glances away, breathing out.

“Um..."  She sits back, filling the space beside me,
resting her head against the wall.
"Very few of my memories were good ones, to be honest."  She glances at me quickly.  "It’s not like that for most
people.  Usually, they experience good
memories,” she says, shrugging slightly.

Edgar draws up his
feet, curls up on the bed with his chin in his hand, and Violet crosses her
arms over her stomach, watching us.

Charlie clears her
throat, turns her head back to stare at the wall above the bed.  "My mother and father fought all the
time.  I got a lot of Mems of their
fights."  Her mouth twists.  "Screaming.  Doors slamming.  My Waking
life…  It doesn't have monsters, I
guess, but it’s not all that much better than here.  I don’t think I have a lot of friends…”  She gazes down at my palm, threading her fingers through mine.  “Here I do.
So that’s different.  Nice.”

“There’s this boy,”
says Violet so quietly, I wonder if I imagined it.  I gaze at her, see her eyes bright with tears.  She rubs at her face, sniffles, sighs.  “His name’s Billy.  He was my first kiss.  I
was fourteen, and he said I was fucking beautiful.  He said it just like that.  He didn’t make fun of my worrying like
everyone else did.  We stayed together
for a couple of months.  Most of my
memories are about him.  I think I loved
him.”  Her voice catches.  “I…can’t be certain.  But I think I did.”

Edgar watches her
quietly, frowning, and then casts his gaze away, to the floor, staring at it as
if it might open up, or show him a lost scene from his Waking life.  As if it’s a door to another time and place.

After a long moment
of silence, he takes a deep breath, says, “Mother was a nurse.  She used to sing me lullabies.  I remembered them, all of them…  Most of my Mems were of her singing, rocking
me to sleep her in lap.  She had a
starched cap, kept it very neat.  She
contracted a coughing sickness from her ward, and she was…gone before I was
fifteen.”

I sit up
straighter.  The walls had seemed to
stretch around us when he whispered, struggling, the word gone.  There’s another word, a word he wanted to
use, a stronger word, but he couldn't think of it.  I can’t think of it.
Edgar seems to concentrate for a moment, eyes closed, but then he looks
around the room, claps his hands, and everything’s, seemingly, back to
normal.

“There were many
girls,” he laughs, voice catching.  “But
there was one I loved more than all the others.  Lucy.  But she didn’t love
me.  Heartbreaking, isn’t it?”  He snorts, runs his fingers over his
moustache, glancing at Violet again.
“She said I was one of those types.  Not certain what that means.
I’m still trying, in my Waking life, to win her, I think.  That was my last Mem…”

Violet, very
pointedly, doesn’t look at Edgar, though he seeks her eyes for a long while,
finally giving up and contemplating the floor again.

Charlie’s fingers
are twined around my hands, holding me softly but securely, somehow
fiercely.  “I loved a girl…” she
whispers, her eyes closed, her eyelids trembling.

I gaze at her,
swallow.  She's so lovely, with her pale
lashes grazing her cheeks, with that shock of unruly blonde hair falling over
her forehead.  But she's lovelier still
because of the way she's touching my hands, because…she hasn't abandoned me,
the Sleeper that Snatchers won't even touch.

Bowing my head, I
squeeze her hands, listening.

“The girl didn’t love me," Charlie goes on, her
mouth fixed in a straight line.
"She was…disgusted by me when I told her how I felt about her.  And that was the last Mem I ever had.  Her staring at me as if I were a
monster.  I gave up Nox after
that.”

She opens her eyes,
brimming with tears, and they spill over her cheeks, glistening in the light of
the Wisp-filled lanterns.

I breathe out,
squeeze her hands again.  “Oh, I’m so
sorry…” I whisper.  One of her warm
tears falls upon the back of my hand, tracing over my skin.  “I don’t know how anyone could say that to
you, how they could ever…”  I
shake my head, dark hair shifting over my shoulders.  My heart hurts, and I’m breathing too quickly, as if I've just
run too far, or fallen from a great height.
I watch the sadness move over Charlie's face, tearing at all of my sharp
edges.

“You’re wonderful,
Charlie,” I say quickly, words tumbling out of my mouth, tasting golden and
true.  “And anyone who doesn’t see that
isn’t worth the pain of knowing.  Isn't
worthy of you.”

Charlie looks at me,
then, for a long, still moment, and we share the same air, both of us breathing
fast, hard, our eyes locked on one another.

Edgar clears his throat, stands smoothly.  “Violet, dear…” he murmurs, holding out a
hand to her.  “Will you come, uh…help me
situate the new Sleeper?  Bless my
garters, but I forgot about the poor man.”

“But—” Violet
resists, even as Edgar places a hand at the small of her back and more or less
pushes her through the door.

Charlie laughs a
little, wipes away her tears, sighing.
“He’s ridiculous.”

I watch her in the
half-light, breathless.

Even when she cries,
she’s beautiful.  The realization of
that is warm as it fills me from the inside out.

“You…you must have a good memory,” I murmur,
watching her.  “At least one?”

She runs her fingers
through her hair, sighing, thinking, eyes up to the ceiling, head tilted back
against the wall.  “I did once.”  She grins then, a private grin, and glances
down at the floor again.  “It was a
short Mem.  It was cruel, how short it
was."  She shrugs her shoulders,
still smiling.  "But I’m at a
school dance with a girl.  And I put my
arms around her, because I don’t care who sees us—and everyone sees
us—and I kiss her."  Her eyes skip
over me.  "I felt so happy in that
moment.  I don't know what happened
after…  But that moment, short as it
was, was good.  So…I have that.”  She pats the pocket over her heart, smiling.

I’m suddenly so hot,
I feel flushed, as if I’m sitting before a fire.  I lean toward Charlie a little, trembling.  “What was it like?” I whisper.  “A kiss?”

Charlie’s eyes go
wide, brows up, wondering.  She watches
me for a long moment, licks her lips.
Then she says, “Lottie…?”  The
word is weak.  It questions everything.

I close my eyes,
breathe out, lean forward just a little more…

“Oh!”  Violet’s voice.  I open my eyes, inhaling deeply.

Violet stands in the
doorway, hand on the knob, mouth open a little.  “I’m sorry!  I’m so
sorry.  I wanted to ask—”

“Don’t worry, don’t
worry,” says Charlie, shaking her head.
She looks my way for a heartbeat, and I feel that rush of warmth again.

She’d leaned
forward, too.

*

Light streams through the open doorway as we slip
out of Black House, into Abeo City.

Morning.  Finally.

I don’t think I
could have endured another heartbeat in Black House—all of those suspicious,
fear-filled eyes trained on me, on Charlie's hand in mine, as we came down the
staircase.  Judging, expelling...

We pause together on
the porch outside, and I breathe out the stale, musty air of Black House,
breathe in the cool air of Twixt.

“The Bone Feast is
coming up in a few days,” says Edgar, falling into a chaise lounge on the
porch.  He stretches his long legs in
front of him, his arms drawn up overhead.
“So that’ll be something different.
Matilda’s coming into the Need Shop this morning to take inventory on
the Nox we have left for it.”

“The Bone Feast?” I
ask.

Someone twitches a
curtain inside the house, peering out at us.
I try to ignore that, stand still, though I know all of the residents of
Black House want me gone, are likely quivering with the need to
see my back from a safe distance.  And I
want to go, but I wait as Charlie stretches her arms above her head,
then places her hands on her hips, while Violet, beside her, is hugging
herself, shivering a little, looking uncomfortable and cold.

“Oh, it’s great
fun,” says Edgar dryly, brow up.  “The
Sixers come out to Abeo City, and they pluck a few Snatchers and hand out free
Nox."  He rolls his eyes, smoothes
his mustache.  "And then they
parade a Snatcher around in a cage, and everyone feels wonderful for a night,
or pretends to—or is too busy writhing under a Mem to notice their
surroundings.”

“All of the Houses
must be represented,” says Charlie, folding her arms, breathing out through her
nose, “so even though Mad House doesn’t allow Nox past its doors, Abigail must
go, and I must go, and Abigail complains the entire time about being around so
many hooligans.  So like Edgar said,
it's great fun.”  She grins a little,
sighing, pushing her fingers through her hair.
“Speaking of Abigail, we’d better get going.  There's going to be hell to pay, and I’ll have to explain
about…"  Her eyes find mine, regard
me uncertainly, almost shyly.
"About what happened in the courtyard," she finishes, biting
her lip.

I take a deep
breath, remembering the Snatcher on the awning, the tilt of its bony head as it
watched me, only watched…

“I’ll see you
later,” says Edgar, waving at us from his chair.  His eyes linger on Violet, I notice—though she doesn't
notice—before he rises and slips back into Black House, where he'll likely be
bombarded with a thousand questions about me.
He shuts the door as we troop down the steps.

We walk close
together, quickly, Charlie’s hands deep in her pockets, shoulders slouched,
Violet's arms swinging loose, though she blows on her fingers to warm
them.  After awhile, lost in dark
thoughts, I slow my steps, follow after them rather than beside them, two paces
behind.

“We’re going to get
to the bottom of all of this,” says Charlie over her shoulder, shoving the hair
out of her eyes.  “We’re going to figure
it out, Lottie, even if I have to talk to every Fetcher in Abeo.  Even if I have to talk to the Sixers.”  She whispers Sixers like it's a
forbidden word, a curse.

“You wouldn’t,”
Violet hisses out.

But Charlie shrugs,
shakes her head.  “What choice do I
have?  Edgar’s right.  They would have a better idea than the
Fetchers as to what might be going on.
It makes the most sense, Violet.”

"I
just…"  Violet turns her head to
stare at Charlie, and her eyes are round as she breathes out, slumping a
little.  “I just think the Sixers should
be the last resort.”

I shiver, skin
crawling, and I peer over my shoulder, back the way we’ve come, back toward the
Wanting Market.  My eyes alight on a
shadow that moves beneath the overhang of a building’s slanted roof, a shape
swaddled in furs.

When I blink, the
shadow is gone.

“The last resort,” Charlie promises,
quickening her step.  The road blurs
around us, and then I recognize the pile of bricks and rubble, the turn of the
street, and ahead of us, like a beacon, like a home—home, I mouth,
recognizing the word with a pang I can't place—lies Mad House.

Abigail is bent in
the doorway, drawing her many shawls closer around her, wrinkled fingers paling
in the growing light.  When she sees us,
she waves us toward her.  Hurry,
faster.  Charlie breaks into a trot
as my heart, already a rock in my chest, grows heavier.

Even from this
distance, I can see that Abigail’s mouth is puckered, as if she’s bitten into a
sour fruit.

Something’s wrong.

“Florence,” she
spits out, when we pull even with the porch.

“What’s happened?”
asks Charlie, her tone frantic, her words crackling into the stillness.

Abigail shakes her
head, points back the way we’ve come.
“I couldn’t stop her.  I
tried.  At daybreak, she slipped out
right past me, pushed past me on the stairs and flew out the door.  I think she’s gone to the Need Shop,
Charlie.  You’ve got to get her before
she’s Memmed herself away.”  Abigail
works her mouth.  “She’ll Fade…”

Charlie says nothing
as she turns, but I can see the line of her jaw, tightly clenched, and the
wild, worried look in her brown eyes.
She breaks into a run, long legs eating up the broken road.  Violet and I follow after, though we're not
nearly as fast.  We double our pace,
taking in great lungfuls of air, retracing our walk and drawing closer to the
Wanting Market.

Charlie slices
through the lanes of rubble and garbage, and onlookers watch her move through
the rows of stalls in silence.  Though
it’s early, the Wanting Market is filled with people blithely snipping off
locks of hair in exchange for stupid, useless junk.  The man who stood at the fountain before is there again, yelling
something about Snatchers, but I tune him out, pull my gaze away, as we run
after Charlie, as we near the steps of the Need Shop.

Edgar walks along
the street, top hat cocked on his head, aiming toward the shop, as Charlie
climbs the steps two at a time, hurling open the door and moving quickly
inside.

“What…?” Edgar turns
to Violet, but he makes a guess based on her pale expression—unmasked fear—and
bolts up the steps after Charlie.  I’m
beside him as he opens the door, and we three enter together.

An older woman stands behind the counter,
hands folded before her against her impeccable black skirts.  Her graying black hair is swept up in an
old-fashioned twist, and her features are severe, sharp, like a buzzard.  Her eyes narrow as she peers past Charlie to
Edgar.

“First off, you’re
late,” she tells him, clipping out the words as she lifts a quill and piece of
paper, holding them out to him.  “And
second, what’s the meaning of this, barging in here with a gang from Mad
House and…”  Her eyes find me, then, and
her words fall away.  She’s staring, her
jaw hanging open, her gaze still and wide.

It’s as if, for a
heartbeat, time stands still, because she looks almost like…like she knows
me, recognizes me.  The tension is
palpable, the air charged.  Her eyes
grow too large, then narrow and shrink until she’s regarding me distantly,
shrewdly, lips clasped together, chin poked high, as if nothing’s happened, as
if she didn't just greet the sight of my face with open shock.

“Where’s Florence?”
Charlie demands, sprinting right past the counter toward Edgar’s back
room.  The older woman splutters,
chasing after Charlie, though her steps are slow, and then Charlie is throwing
open the door, staring down, shoulders shaking.

Violet and I walk
together down the hall, with Edgar behind us.

And there’s Florence
on the floor, stiff and cold, back arched, stilled.  A scattering of black feathers litters the boards around her,
gleaming like dark snow, and there's a pair of large shears spread out in her
hands.  Her eyes are rolled back in her
head.

She's Memming.

Charlie crouches
down beside her, raking her hands through her hair in frustration, tugging, and
then she gathers up the feathers, one by one, snatching them and stuffing them
into the crates.  Florence’s breath
comes in short, shallow pants, and she shakes as she lays there, arms spread to
the world, back flat against the wooden floor.
I notice, then, that she’s terribly thin, thinner than she was even the
day before; it's as if she’s shrinking inward, as if her physicality is being
stolen away from her with each pained breath.

“Fuck,”
Charlie whispers in a small, broken voice, the word cracking as she breathes
out, leaning down gently, scooping Florence up in her arms.  She hugs the girl to her chest tightly, bows
her head over her.  Then, in one turn,
she’s out of the room, pushing past us all, aiming for the front door, her
movements jerky but purposeful, jaw set.

“You can’t just take
a paying customer, one who paid good hair for—”

"Matilda."  Edgar steps forward, between the old woman
and Charlie, shaking his head.  He glowers
over her, wetting his lips. “Don’t.”

Undeterred, she
snarls in his face.  “I’ll tell the
Sixers about this.  See if I don’t,” she
hisses, but she’s not watching him now; she’s staring at me.  I stare right back, hands balled into fists
at my sides as she sneers, scratching her too-long fingernails over her cheeks,
raising red welts.  It makes me shudder,
the way she’s staring at me, the way she can’t take her eyes off me as she cuts
herself with her nails like claws.

I'll tell the Sixers…

I swallow and turn
on my heel, and then Violet and I are following after Charlie, running down the
steps, through the Wanting Market, over the street, leaving Edgar and Matilda
and the Need Shop with its shelves full of Nox behind us.

We return to Mad
House, stopping just beside the porch, where Charlie has brought Florence.  Charlie’s tears course down her cheeks, plinking
gently against Florence’s upturned face.
The girl hasn’t woken from the Mem yet.
Still and panting, she remains tangled in the Mem, cradled in Charlie’s
arms, eyelids quivering, as if she’s searching the depths of her own darkness
for something just out of reach, out of sight.

Abigail hobbles back
onto the porch, peering out at us beneath a shading hand and grimacing.  She totters down the steps toward us and
places a hand alongside Florence’s sunken cheek as Charlie lifts her gaze
toward the old woman.

They say nothing for
a long moment, but when Abigail looks up, locking eyes with Charlie, her
expression is grim.  “Too late,” she
says, her naturally sharp voice gentle now, soft.  “She’ll likely Fade today, Charlie.”

A strangled sound
escapes Charlie’s throat, and then she’s collapsing down on the porch steps,
holding Florence across her lap tightly, eyes squeezed shut.  She breathes out raggedly, breathes in
again, out again, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

“I knew it was
coming,” Charlie whispers, as Violet and I and Abigail stand around her,
watching her with red faces and trembling chins.  “I just didn’t think it’d be so soon.  I thought…  I thought I
could help her.  I thought I was helping
her.”  She bites her lip, stares up at
the sky, blinking away her tears.  “I
was so wrong,” she says, and then she repeats the words over and over:  “I was so wrong.”

Abigail folds her
arms in front of her, shakes her head.
“Charlie, my girl, you did the best you could by her.  That’s all anyone could have ever asked
for—”

“It was all useless."  Charlie chokes on a sob.  "You don’t understand.” She stares down
at the fragile girl in her arms.  “Florence
wanted Nox too much, was addicted, and maybe I did her a disservice by trying
to keep her from it.  If this was always
going to happen, if it was inevitable…”
She staggers to her feet again, holding Florence before her, a doll with
tightly shut eyes, breathing too fast, jagged ribs rising and falling beneath
her thin dress.

Charlie looks past
us without really seeing, turns on her heel, and walks up the porch steps
slowly, carrying Florence with her.
Head bowed, she moves into Mad House through the open door.

Violet scrubs at her
eyes, stares heavenward as Abigail sighs heavily, shaking her head.

“She cares too
much.  She’s always cared too much,”
Violet’s saying, and then she heaves out a single breath, curling her small
hands into fists.  “I’ve got to help
them.”

“How,” says Abigail,
not a question, her mouth drawn flat, an unamused line.  “The only way you can help Charlie is
if you’re there for her when Florence Fades away, which might happen any moment
now.  I've seen Sleepers like this before…  Too many of them."  The line of her mouth trembles.  "I doubt she’ll last until sundown.”

Violet weeps into
her cupped hands as Abigail glances up at the sky, squinting.  “Charlie loved that poor, troubled girl like
a little sister.  Always took care of
her, she did.  You’d have never come to
Mad House, Violet, if Charlie hadn’t been so worried about Florence taking
Nox."  She nods, blinking fast.  "So no matter what, it was a good thing
Charlie did,” says Abigail, still nodding, folding her arms and waddling back
up the steps toward the door.  “You all needed
to come to Mad House.  And now here you
are.”

She goes in, the
door creaking shut behind her, and Violet flops down on the porch steps,
running her fingers through her dark hair.
“It wasn't supposed to be like this,” she whispers, staring up at me,
eyes bright.  “Charlie brought Florence
here so that we could save her.  She
wasn’t supposed to…Fade, not ever.”

Violet looks down
for a long while at her hands, at the black lines slashed across her palms, and
then she stills, and then she’s standing, straightening her hoodie, clearing
her throat.  "Lottie…"

"What is
it?" I ask her, resting a hand on her arm.

“I’m going to go to
the Harming Tree,” she tells me—firmly, clearly, her voice only shaking at the
end, and then only a very little.  “I
could help Florence, save her, if I run there and back.”

“The Harming Tree?”
I repeat, remembering Charlie's disdain for it.  “Charlie said that's just a superstition.”

"No,"
Violet insists.  “It’s a tree, at the
edge of the Red Line.” She's breathless, stepping forward, cheeks flushed.  “If I run all the way, I'll be able to reach
it in time, I think.”  She slides her
hands into her hoodie pocket and brings out a tiny lock of hair.  “I stole it from Matilda’s counter,” she
whispers then, swallowing, pocketing the lock of hair once more.  “If I can get to the tree and tie the hair
on, Florence won’t Fade.  She'll be
fine, good as new.  It'll work,
Lottie.  Everyone says so.”  She’s searching my eyes now with her own,
pleading, as if she's begging me to agree, to support her plan.

I glance up at Mad
House, black curtains drawn over the windows, and I remember Charlie’s hand at
my elbow, at my back—strong and firm, safe.
I remember the fear in her eyes when she found out about the courtyard
game…and I remember how she swallowed that fear, stepped forward and embraced
me, anyway, even though the Snatcher refused me.  Even though I'm...

I don't know.

I don't know what I
am.

I glance down at
Violet, small, cowering Violet, who’s shaking now as she glances toward the
wall that surrounds Abeo, holding back the clawing, bony forest.

Violet, who would
risk her life for Florence, dare the night and the Snatchers…

“If you give me the
lock of hair,” I whisper, swallowing, “I’ll go.  Let me do it.”

Violet jerks her
head around, staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes.  “You?” she murmurs, and I know before the
word is out of her mouth that she’s relieved, though it hadn't occurred to her
to ask me.  She was going to go, she
truly was, despite her deep and rational fear.

"Lottie, are
you sure?  You hardly know
Florence—"

“It makes the most
sense.  You know it does.  The Snatcher didn’t want me,” I grimace,
reminding her of something she’s surely not forgotten.  “I can run all the way.  You just have to tell me where to go.”

What I don’t speak
aloud is the compulsive thought that twists in my heart, lodged there like a
splinter in skin:  I need to get out
of Abeo City.  I need to see if there’s
something more.

“Ye-yes,” says Violet quickly, tripping over the
word.  “Look…” She points over the wall
to the towering trees.  “If you keep
Abeo at your back—Do you see that tall tree, way out there?”

A single tree
scrapes the sky above the others, though it's far away, farther away than I can
imagine.

“That’s the Harming
Tree,” Violet whispers, and then she’s taking my hand, pressing the warmed lock
of hair into my palm.  “Lottie, why are
you doing this?” she asks, the question I hoped she wouldn’t voice.

I stare down at my
palm, curled in her small, shaking hands, with the wisp of fair hair nestled
against my blackened lifeline.

“For Charlie,"
I breathe, feeling tears spring to my eyes.
"Because Charlie was kind to me, has been kind from the beginning,
and even after, when…"  I bite my
lip, holding back tears, and shake my head.
"She deserves kindness in return,” I whisper, curling my fingers
over the hair.  I swallow, blink,
breathe out.  “And because of
Florence,” I add, not because it's expected but because it's true.  If I can help that poor, suffering
girl…  If I am the only person
who might walk through the night unassaulted by Snatchers, it's my duty to try.

Maybe it's why I'm
here.

Violet’s brow is
still furrowed, worried, but she nods, squeezing my hand.

“Please hurry,” she whispers,
and then I’m tucking the bit of hair into my pocket, leaving Violet by the
porch.

Just concentrate.  I close my eyes as I approach the wall, move
forward, holding my breath, holding out my hands.

And then I open my eyes, and
I’m on the other side, Mad House obscured from sight by the stony wall that
surrounds Abeo City.

Everyone I know is behind me
now.  I’m alone in the woods, and I
stand there and breathe, my legs shaking.
It's all so sharp: the trees, the metal stink of the snow in my nose,
the curve of my fingernails against my palms.
The branches outlined against the sickly gray of the sky look like
jagged bits of broken wood, and snow lies over the fallen branches on the
ground like a shroud.

I shiver as I step forward, a twig
breaking beneath my boot.

No.  I can’t walk.  I have to run.  I gulp in a great lungful of air, ball my
fists, and then take off, weaving between the trees.

I risk a glance over my shoulder,
can hardly make out the shadow of the city behind me now, above the wall, but
it’s still there.  And even though I’m
so small, so low in the forest, I can still glimpse the hulking of the largest
tree, the Harming Tree, ahead.  It's
far, but it's there, a lure pulling me forward.

I keep running.

My skin pricks like I’m being
watched.  I try not to waste energy by
glancing up at the trees, where the Snatchers had been perched that first
night, when they came for Charlie and me.

Or…maybe just for Charlie.  Maybe not for me.

Recklessness tugs at the corners of
my heart as I sprint through the woods, the wind blowing my thick mane of black
curls behind me, the branches tugging at my boots and my skirts and my arms and
my face, but I ignore it all, keeping the towering tree in my line of sight.

The Snatcher did not want me.  It only watched me from the awning, wings
clasped about it like a great black cloak, watching me with its hollows for
eyes but seeing me, I believe, all the same.
Its right wing was misshapen, as if something had broken it long ago,
and that visual is so crisp within me.
Even through the horror of that moment, it surprised me, fascinated
me.

The Snatcher was different from the
others, and it had not taken me.

Maybe the others won’t take me,
too.

I run, and I breathe in and out,
and I don’t grow tired.  The trees move
and shift around me, slowly, softly, and the snow crunches beneath my boots,
and I feel the false heaviness of the slight wisp of hair in my dress
pocket.  I keep the tree before me, and
the shrinking shadow of Abeo behind me, and I dash through the forest, and I
don't stop, no matter how my chest and legs begin to ache.

As the gray light around me
darkens, as the shadows of the trees reach sharp fingers toward me, as if to
grasp me, snatch me up, I reach the tree and stand before it, panting.

It towers, endless, a stark, dark
sentinel that points upward to the sky, as if in warning.  On the lowest branches, tied with strips of
cloth and ribbon and lace, are snips of hair, waving in the wind like leaves.  There is red hair and brown hair, black and
blonde and gray and white hair, and the locks flutter in the soft, cool
exhalations of air that sweep through the surrounding woods.

I pause, breathing out, watching
the closest branch to me quiver, the countless scraps of hair and cloth tied to
it causing it to bend gently beneath the weight, arching toward the ground as
if bowing to begin a dance.

I palm the wisp of hair in my
pocket and bring it out, staring down at its smallness, a pale curl against the
black line of my palm.

I can’t linger, can't delay.

I gulp down air, and I step
forward, toward the trunk of this tree, the trunk that’s black, that should not
be black but is, like a shadow, and I crouch down, tugging at the edge of my
dress’s hem, worrying a small tear, pulling.
The tearing sound is loud in the stillness as I rip a bit of the fabric
free, and then I’m closer to the trunk, staring up at it.

There's so much hair flicking back
and forth along the branches, but the majority of the snipped-off strands are
tied to the trunk.

How much hair is there?  How many Sleepers does this represent?  Did the ritual work for any of them?  Did it save any of them from
Fading?  I stare up and up, at all of
the little flutterings, and I think of the people I’ve seen in Abeo City.  There are always crowds in the Wanting
Market, but the people number far fewer than the wisps of hair present
here.  How many Sleepers have journeyed
out to this Harming Tree to keep themselves or someone they loved safe?  How many?

How many failed?

My heart begins to knock against my
ribs with a heavy, pulsing hand as I tie the wisp of hair to a bit of bark that
juts out along the trunk, feeling suddenly not as if I'm saving Florence's life
but, perhaps, marking a memorial for her.
My fingers are shaking, and it takes me two tries to complete the
knot.  I back away from my handiwork,
and three steps back, the wisp of Florence’s hair blends into the trunk, as if
it’s always been there, companion to the nameless others.

A movement beyond the tree catches
my attention, then, because it’s a band of bright color in this shadowed world,
the black of trees and the white of snow.
I catch my breath, step past the great trunk.

A red ribbon is tied around a
little sapling.  It twirls and spins in
the breeze as I reach out and touch it.
It’s as red as blood and as soft as hair.  I pull my hand back and watch it twist back to its original shape
against the little branch.

Could this be the Red Line?

If you started toward the
Red Line at the earliest point in the morning, and you don’t turn back when you
reach it, you won’t make it back to Abeo City and the Safe Houses before
dark.  And the Snatchers will get you.

I can hear
Charlie’s words as if she’s right here beside me, and a shudder moves through
me, remembering her soft eyes, our almost-kiss...

I know she wouldn’t
agree with my coming here alone.  She
called the Harming Tree a superstition, but if there's a chance, if it might work, and the Snatchers don't want me,
anyway…

I had to come.

Despite my grim
thoughts, why couldn’t the Harming Tree
work?  Aren’t there stranger things in
Twixt every day?

I turn to go.  You have to head back when you reach the Red
Line, Charlie said, and I didn’t even start out at the earliest point in the
morning.  I breathe in and out, trying to
still the hammering of my heart, but I pause in my turning, my back still to
the tree, eyes fixed.

My gaze clung to the bright red of
the ribbon before; all I could see was the Red Line.

But beyond the Red Line…

I stare, breath frozen in my lungs.

The trees there look…strange.

A line of gray stretches beyond the
small sapling decorated with the red ribbon.
It’s an actual line, for the snow beyond it simply…stops.  And then, beyond that, the earth is gray,
like charcoal, like soot.  And the trees
look like half-trees, half-imagined, half-real, scribbles in pencil on
paper.  I rub at my eyes, but the trees
don't change, still look drawn, one-dimensional, so I step forward,
putting a single boot past the sapling, a single boot still on the snow and
just touching that gray line.

I’m compelled as if by gravity, a
tugging at the center of my ribs—where my heart is, I suppose.  Something from within pulls me on, and I
take another step.  Another.

I’m still half on the snow and half
on the gray.  I stare down at my boots
but stop, gasp, breath coming faster as I stare down, disbelieving, at my
hands.

They’re not my hands.

I lift them up, heart beating, beating,
because my hands aren’t pale skin and thin, shaking fingers.  Not anymore.

I step back so quickly that I fall
into the snow, catching myself with hands that are mine again, the nightmare
disappearing as quickly as a breath is lost to the air.

I pull my hands into my lap, watch
them as if I'm afraid they might change again, right before my eyes.

Because over that gray line, they
looked like…  They were…

Claws.

I scrabble to my feet, turn around,
and I run.  Past the Red Line, past the
Harming Tree.  I’m afraid, and I don’t
know why I’m afraid, but there’s something deeper and darker coursing through
me.

I’m angry.

Past that gray line, my hands
became claws, became ugly, curving, sharpened things that did not resemble my
hands—anyone's hands—at all.  It
makes no sense.  None of this makes any sense.  Those weren’t my hands.  Why can’t I Mem, and why did I
appear in the wrong time and place, and why didn’t the Snatcher Snatch
me?

Why am I here?

A sob catches in my throat,
and I swallow it, gritting my teeth as I run through the trees, glancing over
my shoulder at the towering tree that draws farther and farther back behind me,
growing smaller as I move faster through the darkening woods.

The darkening woods.

My breath catches as I watch
the shadows lengthen in front of me—too fast, in a heartbeat; no, less—as the
sky turns a brilliant crimson, like blood.
Like that first time, when Charlie found me lost by the stream.  And I see the stream as I'm running, but I
can't stop, can't stop for anything, because the sun is setting, and I’m not
going to make it back to Abeo in time.

Which I always knew would be
the outcome of this undertaking, deep down.

I knew I wouldn’t make it
back.

The Snatchers are going to
come, and I’m going to find out, once and for all, if they’ll take me.  Maybe the Snatcher in the courtyard was only
tired.  Maybe it had grown bored of our
game.

But I don't think that was
it, and no one else who was there seemed to think it was as simple as that,
either.

I need to know the truth.

There’s a resolution in that,
though terror slips through my belly like a fish, dark and shining and
small.  A Snatcher didn’t want me last
night.  Here, in the open woods, will
the Snatchers want me now?

I breathe in and out steadily
as I run, as the shadows stretch to their longest lengths, as the red begins to
disappear from the world, replaced with inky black and gray.

And darkness.

Darkness covers the sky and
swallows the woods and me in a single gulp.
I falter, the steady rhythm of my boots missing a beat, and I trip and
tumble to the ground, snow grinding into my palms as I propel myself upward,
looking back over my shoulder.

There are white shadows up
high, high in the trees.  Crouched.  Poised.
Watching me.

A host of Snatchers.

I gulp down air, blood
coursing through me, my whole body a heartbeat, as I run toward the city.

I hear the sound of their
wings clicking open, unfurling, beautiful black feathers shielding their
monstrous forms.  They launch as
one.  How many are there?  Ten, twenty?  They open their mouths, and they scream, a thin, hot wail that
buries itself beneath my skin, turning and turning like a screw.  I cover my ears with my black-lined palms,
gritting my teeth as I’m surrounded by that intolerable sound.

I run through the woods as
they chase me.

The Snatchers chase me.

They’re after me.  I don’t know what this means.  Will they catch me?  Will they Snatch me up?

I run, gulping breath, and
they fly behind me, shredding the air with their great black wings.  After the first chorus of screams, they fall
silent.  I turn to look behind me and
almost trip again.

A Snatcher has pulled up on my
right.

I veer to the left.

I run, and they follow, run
and they follow.  Perhaps I’ve moved
beyond fear to that still, small space inside of it, because the terror that
licked through my bones, over my skin, is numbed now.  I am running, and they are flying with me.  It’s a strange sensation, these monsters all
around me, above and on either side…

It feels, after a thousand
heartbeats, a thousand footsteps, as if my life has always been this way: the
running, the chasing…

But then a Snatcher moves, and
it’s not on my right anymore but on my left, swooping near.  I veer right, gasping.

And that’s when I begin to
realize something.

If they had wanted to Snatch
me, they could have done it a hundred times over.

I don't think they want to
Snatch me.

I think they’re herding
me, pushing me toward a specific location.

The understanding hits me
hard.  Maybe I'm wrong, though.  How can I guess at the motivations of
monsters?

I decide to test it.  I dart back to my left, and the Snatcher
swoops down, dangerously close to me, and opens its great bird jaws and
screams.  The sound slices through the
air, cutting my inner ears, and I run back to the right.

They are.  They’re directing me.

But why?

In the darkness, I’ve lost
all sense of space.  I don't know which
way Abeo lies, which way I’ve come from.
I can’t see the Harming Tree, can’t see the wall surrounding Abeo
City.  Perhaps I’ll run all night with
the Snatchers just a hairsbreadth behind me.
The fear is waking up again, beginning to prick at my neck, stinging,
but then, out of the nothingness of darkness up ahead, there appears between
the blackened, dead trunks of the trees…a building.

It’s tall, pointing upward
like the Harming Tree, with a roof that upholds a small tower ending in narrow
sharpness, like a needle's point.  Even
in the dark, the bright, vivid colors of its high, arching windows are visible,
because within the building is light.

A word comes to my mind,
though I didn’t know it, never thought it before this heartbeat.

A church.

That’s what the building
is.  A church.

Suddenly, everything feels
strange, like a dream—though I can't dream, can't sleep.  Or…Charlie said I'm asleep now, a Sleeper.

Have I ever dreamed?

I grit my teeth, and I make
the decision in an instant.  I slow
down.  I stop running.  I slow to a trot, and then a walk.  And then I stop, completely, abrupt.

The Snatchers land in the
trees around me, pumping their wings open, screaming at one another, and then
peering down at me with their hollows for eyes.

Silence descends as the trees
still, as the Snatchers settle and stare.

Watching me.

It’s eerie, how they turn
their heads as one.  The flashing
sharpness of their beaks—all of their beaks, dozens of them—point toward the
church.

And then one Snatcher spreads
its wings with a snap of finality.  And
it leaps from the tree, down to the ground.
The earth shakes beneath my feet, and I almost fall as the Snatcher
begins to crawl over the snow, toward me, its claws crunching against the
ice.  It’s unnatural, how this
human-like skeleton moves on all fours, the wings arched overhead, but that’s
when I notice it…

The right wing is a little
crooked.

"I know you," I
whisper, frightening myself.

This is the Snatcher from
last night.

Though my heart feels as if
it will beat out of the cage of my ribs, though my breath comes too fast,
though I feel like my legs will buckle at any moment, I stand my ground.  I don’t know why or how, but I don't run,
don't even step back as the Snatcher moves toward me, pausing close enough for
me to reach out and touch a finger to a cold, slick bone.

But I don’t.

We stare at one another, the
monster towering over me, a giant hewn of sharpness, all angles and white and
black.  The feathers on its wings stand
up, at attention, pointing in all different directions, and, this close, I am
astonished to see that there’s a luminousness to the spaces where the
creature’s eyes should be.  If I stare
into those cavities, if it’s almost as if, far below, in the void, there’s something—someone—staring
back.

The Snatcher clacks open its
beak, and then it unhinges its jaws, and right into my face, it roars.

My resolve melts, and I turn,
and I walk.  I do not run.  I walk slowly, stiffly, toward the church,
the place the Snatchers want me to go.

But why would they want
anything?  Don’t they take people,
Sleepers, instinctively?  Isn't their
purpose for existing terror and nothing more?

I feel the hollows of their
eyes against my back, watching me, as the angled church rises ahead, closer,
closer.

I trip, sprawling again, but
not on a tree root or a branch this time.
My foot is stuck in a hole—an oddly shaped one, like a long, thin
rectangle.  I struggle to my feet,
wrenching my boot out of the hole, and I see, then, that there are many holes
just like this one, each about a body’s length apart.  Many of the holes are flanked by urns full of wilted flowers, or
only dirt.

I walk on.

Colored glass fills the
arching church windows—more color than I have seen anywhere else in Twixt.  My heart aches a little at the sight.

And then my hand is on the
doorknob of the great entrance, and I take a deep breath, and I turn and look
back.

The Snatchers are gone.

Gone.

And without a sound.

I exhale, close my eyes,
listen to my heartbeat pulsing.

And I hear, inside…a voice?

I shove my shoulder against
the door, and I push.

Chapter Five:  Bird

“Momma sold my soul for a
penny…” comes a singsong voice, a girl’s voice, lilting somewhere nearby.  “My soul was bought and sold!”

I shut the door behind me,
leaning against it, panting, eyes closed.

There’s a scrabbling sound,
and the pile of debris along the wall, sloping down toward the benches—pews, I
remember they're called—slides a little further as the girl trots down the hill
of books and splintered wood, crouching at the bottom and considering me.

She has long black hair and
is draped in layers of clothes: cloaks and skirts and pants and furs, and her
hair is all matted, sticking up around her head in spikes, making her pale skin
look whiter, unnaturally white.  Her
eyes are bottomless, the kind of blue that makes me think of gray, and they’re
wide and wild as she stares at me and back to the door and then at me again,
her mouth drawn into a lopsided frown.

“You’ve come,” she says then,
with no introduction.  She scurries
forward on all fours, and she rises next to me, poking at my shoulder with one
dirty finger.  “I thought you’d be here
before now, long before the holiday,” she’s saying, frown
deepening.  “You’ve kept the uglies
waiting.”

“I’m sorry.  I…” I begin, but she’s shaking her head too
fast, stamping her foot.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she
says then, covering her ears with her hands, pressing down and crouching down,
rocking back onto her heels as she squats in the rubble.

There’s no place for me to go
but back out into the woods, back to the Snatchers, so I stare at the girl,
breathing in and out as I consider my choices.

I kneel down beside her,
biting my lip.

“Are you all right?” I murmur
softly.

She shakes her head, staring
at me, eyes wide.  “It’s all wrong,” she
says miserably, holding her hands out.
I stare down at them, at the dirty palms, palms that bear no black
lines.  She's never taken Nox.

I hold out my own hands, and
she snatches them up, turning them over and over as she shakes her head
violently again.  “It’s all wrong,” she
repeats and huffs out, dropping my hands, almost throwing them down.

“I’m Lottie…” I begin, but
she’s shaking her head again, tapping her chest, eyes growing wider.

“You’re not,” she
tells me, covering her ears with her hands as she breathes out in a
whimper.  “Oh, it’s not working…” she
says after a long, tense moment, as I kneel, confused, beside her.  She takes a hand tentatively from her ear
and then leans close, plucking at my shoulders with her long fingers.

“We’re too close to the bad
house,” she breathes into my face.
Around her eyes are red rings, as if she’s wept for days.  “They can hear us if I talk, so I
can’t.  They’ll find us.”

“I don’t understand,” I
begin, but she rises quickly, drawing the back of her hand over her mouth.

“You don’t,” she says
shortly, a statement, not a question.
And then she points up to the rafters.

I stare up.

Birds.  Crows.
Perched in the rafters, staring down at us a little too like the
Snatchers, shifting their small, slight bodies and ruffling their wings with
softly clicking beaks.

I stand, gazing at them,
mouth open.

Birds.  Animals.

I haven't seen any animals in
Twixt, not any, until now.

The realization is bright and
hot as it burns its way through me.  I
don't know what it means, what anything means.

I stare at the girl before
me, who’s sitting back on the pile of garbage, elbows on her knees, watching
me, head tilted, just like a bird.

“Who are you?” I ask her, and
she shakes her head, pointing up.

“I’m feathered and foul with
a blackened heart.” She leans back on the garbage, her smile too wide and
disjointed to be genuine.  “It’s from a
poem,” she continues, bending forward.
“The humans write poems.  We
thought it was one of the most beautiful things about them.”

I stare at her as she gets
up, begins to pace across the confines of the once lovely floor.  It was blue, but now it’s dirty and smeared
with dust, only the suggestion of blue.

"What’s your name?” I
ask, considering, for a moment, the closed door behind me.  I could leave, take my chances with the
Snatchers…  But I watch the girl turn
quickly, muttering to herself under her breath, and there’s something so
familiar about her movements…  I feel
like I’ve seen her before.  But I
haven’t.  I would have remembered her.

I watch her turn again, come
back to me, reach out and grip my arms tightly.

“I’m Bird,” she says then, as
if she’s decided to trust me with the word.
She searches my eyes.  “You don’t
remember?”

I shake my head slowly.  “I don’t remember anything.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be
like this,” she whispers, voice dropping down to a breathless sort of cry.  “They’ll know.  They know everything.  So
you’ve got to find out yourself.”

“I don’t understand,” I
repeat, but she shakes her head, puts a finger to her mouth.

“They’re so close,” she
whispers, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Who?  Who’s close?” I whisper back.  Her eyes are wide, unblinking as she leans
closer, lips to my ear.

“Sixers,” she breathes, and
shudders against me.  I shudder, too, my
body, for a heartbeat, not my own as it responds to that word.

“What about them?” I try, but
she’s shaking her head, dropping her forehead to my shoulder, an intimate
gesture but one I don’t mind, almost expected.
So strange...

“The bad house, their house,
is too close to here.  I didn’t know
that when I came here.  I wish I’d
known.  But I knew you’d be coming, so I
couldn’t leave.  I had to stay until you
came,” she says, locking eyes with me.

“The Sixers…they live near
here?”  Saying the word makes my mouth
hurt; my tongue cuts against it.  But I
feel a bizarre fascination with it, too.
As if the syllables themselves are tugging at the strings of my heart.

The girl, Bird, watches me,
pulls her fingers through her hair, worrying at a thick, ink-black knot.  “The uglies will get you, if you’re not
careful,” she breathes out, tugging hard at the knot.  “They always get you.”

I stare at her as she pulls
on her hair, pulls and pulls until the knot comes out in her hand, her face
slick with pain.  She throws the hair
into the garbage pile, sinking back on her heels, head in her hands.  “It’s not working like it should…” she
whispers, rocking back on her heels.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Like what?  What wasn’t supposed to be like this?” I ask
her, frustration sharpening my words, but she’s standing, shaking her head, as
she takes my wrist, plucking it.

And then she’s dragging me
toward the door.  The night.  The Snatchers.

“What are you doing?”
I cry as she yanks the door open, the misshapen thing groaning beneath her hand
as it swings to the side.  Out we
go.  I dig my heels, but she's too
strong for me.  She’s just a wisp
herself…  How can she possibly have so
much strength?

And then we’re standing at
the foot of the stone steps, the light from the jars of the Wisps inside the
church illuminating the ground around us, but not that much.  Bird holds my wrist tightly, watching me,
eyes wide, and then she looks out to the woods.

I follow her gaze, my heart
pounding.  Are there Snatchers there?

But no.  There’s…light.

As we watch, tiny glowing
spheres begin to peek out from the trunks of trees, beneath fallen twigs,
descending from clawing branches overhead.
The forest floor begins to pulse with tiny embers of light, glowing orange
and golden in the darkness.

“When the relations aren’t
around, they come out,” whispers Bird.
“Do you remember now?”

I stare at the glowing orbs,
and back to Bird, shaking my head.

She lets go of my wrist,
dropping it softly, quietly, so that it falls against my thigh.  Then she steps forward, crouching, like a
predator searching for prey.  She
straightens after a heartbeat, an orb floating closer to her.

Bird reaches out with a long
first finger and touches it gently.

There’s a flare of light.

Now, against her finger, a
butterfly opens and closes its wings, thrumming with light, with life.  I gasp, suddenly so weak, I can’t breathe,
can’t see.  I sink to my knees in the
snow as this dizzying crescendo of light pulses around us.

Bird drops her hand, and—as
suddenly as it came—the light disappears.
The butterfly is gone.  Lazy and
slow, the Wisp bumbles over a fallen branch and disappears behind a crowd of
trees.

“What just happened?” I
whisper, clutching Bird’s wrist.  She
crouches beside me, searching my face.

“You don’t remember,” she
murmurs then, eyes downcast after a long moment.  I want to shake her, I’m so frustrated.  What just happened?  A
butterfly?  She takes my hand, uncurls
my fingers and presses her palm to mine.
There’s a slight tingle, and she holds up our hands, her right and my
left together.  Our hands look the same
in the darkness, and she stares at me, breathing out, eyes wide, hopeful.

“I’m sorry…  I can’t…” I begin, but she shakes her head,
rising, pointing to the horizon that’s brightening as I watch it.

Daylight.  Already.
I stand, too, rubbing at my shoulders, skin pricking, strangeness
sliding over my bones.

I turn, looking through the
brightening woods.  There is a shadow
beyond the trees.

The bad house.

Bird’s eyes look haunted as
she watches me.

“You’re going,” she says, and
it’s not a question.  How could she
know?  I take a step back as she
scrabbles closer to me, closer and closer still until her nose is against mine,
and she’s closing her eyes, pressing her forehead to mine.

“Why won’t you remember?” she
breathes out, and when she steps back, there are tears in her eyes.  She wraps her arms around her middle,
rocking back on her heels.  “You were
supposed to remember.”

“Why can’t you tell me…” I
begin, but she shakes her head, looks over my shoulder at the door, eyes wide.

“If they find out, everything
we did, everything we went through is for nothing,” she whispers
to me, breathing out.  “You’ll do what
you’ll do,” she says then, voice soft.
“I just hope it’s the right thing.”
She kisses my cheek, her lips chapped and worn and warm against my
skin.  “I’ll see you,” she says, and
ascends the steps, shutting the church door behind her.

The woods, the quiet, silent
woods, draw away from me like a map.  As
I step past the church, I look to the left, and I can see the house through the
trees, its dark shadow.  It’s beckoning
me on.  I should resist that
beckon…

The Snatchers wanted me to
come here.  They wanted me to find
Bird.  Bird acted as if she knew me.

What does any of it mean?

Frustration mounting within
me, I turn back, look at the door of the church, rub at my wrist, in the place
where Bird pinched.

It slides over me, warm and
strange as it coats my insides: that spellbound feeling, as if I wandered
through a wall of spider webs and they’re dangling in sticky grey tendrils from
my fingers.  I brush my hands together
but feel nothing but skin.

I know I must return to Abeo
City.  Charlie will be worried.  And Violet and Edgar…my new friends.  There’s warmth in my stomach when I think of
them.  More warmth, in a different space
in my heart, when I think of Charlie.

I don’t want her—them—to
worry about me.

But…

I look up at the shadow.

I need answers.

I won’t be long.  I’ll be back in Abeo before sunset.

I set off through the forest,
through this new day and daylight, angling toward the shadow ahead.  As I walk, the church fades behind me, and
the house begins to take shape between the trees.  There’s a moment, a half-time and half-place, when I turn to look
back at the church and can only make out its shadow, and ahead—there is a
house, I know, but I can only make out its shadow, too.

Right now, one step in either
direction would bring the church or house into focus, no longer a shadow but
something real.

It’s a knowledge that’s deep in
me, now, turning:

I have a choice.

I stand very still in the
quiet of the wood.  But I pause for only
a heartbeat.

Something tugs at my heart,
pulling me along.

I take a step forward, and
the house sharpens into view.

Chapter Six:  Sixers

I breathe in and out,
stilled, as I stare at the house, its sprawling, piercing towers angling toward
the sky; a misshapen, tangled nightmare of loose shingles and creaking shutters
and windows boarded shut.

On the porch, as if they’ve
been expecting me, two hooded forms sit on ramshackle chairs, as still and
colorless as rubble, their hair tangled around the chair legs, tumbling over
the ground.

I can't see their eyes, but I
know they're watching me.

I have made my choice, and I
will see it to its end.  Fear stirs in
my belly, clawing at my sides as I step forward, and then forward again,
closing the distance between us until I’m at the porch steps, fingers on the
worn wood of the banister.

“I’m Lottie,” I whisper into
the stillness.  “I was wondering…if you
could help me…”

As one, the two Sixers—for
that’s what they are, the unmistakable cloaked figures from the Wanting
Market—cock their heads, but in opposite directions, like mirror reflections of
each other.

“Help you,” they
whisper, a slithering shush of sound that crawls over the broken
floorboards of the porch towards me.

The battered door opens
slowly, and there is the woman from the Need Shop, Matilda, arms folded,
watching me with a superior smirk on her face.

In the back of my heart, as
my world falls away, I know now:  it’s
begun.

The two Sixers on the porch
seem to blur along their edges, their cloaks of misting black elongating,
contorting, and then there are not two Sixers but four.  Four cloaked figures that watch me like
hooded birds from the porch, staring down at me behind faceless voids.

My heart hammers against my
bones, but I still stand strong, feet apart, hands curled into fists.  I am afraid of them, so afraid, so afraid,
the fear licking along my skin with a long, cold tongue.

But there is anger within me,
too, tangled with my fear.  Anger so hot
that it burns away the terror, replacing it with a fire that fills my belly,
burns me up.

“Two,” I say then, say the
word loudly, with a strength I wasn’t sure I had.  “Two turns into four.  But
where’s your third?”

As one, the four stand, melt
back into two so suddenly, as if they’re pulled into one another, slippery,
gliding like feet over ice.  As one, the
two Sixers take off their hoods, peeling them back from their skulls with
fingers that bear claws—ugly, curving, sharpened things...  And beneath their hoods, I see no faces:
there is only more hair, tumbling down, black and endless.

I breathe out, take a step
back.

Falter.

My entire world shatters as
they stare down at me with eyes I cannot see, the Sixers.

The Sixers…

As one, they shriek, claws
extended, descending off the porch, snaking their hands around me, fingers
pinching my arms, a maelstrom of black hair and dark cloaks and clicking claws
that seize me, take me.

The Sixers.

My sisters.

The black lines in my palms
pulse, pulse, everything shifting, changing, as the memories flood back, the
gate, at last, creaking open—wide.

You’ll do what you’ll do,
Bird said.  I just hope it’s the
right thing.

Darkness.

*

I crawl in a vast red land
with my sisters.

There are the three of
us—three with ugly, tattered wings, with sharp claws, our faces shaped like
ill-formed masks, and we are crawling over the scorched rocks in search of
something.

There, ahead of us.  A pulse of light.  We descend, screeching, and snatch it up.  I am the youngest.  The eldest always gets the first one.  She takes the sphere of light and pulls it and twists it this way
and that in her hands, until it’s a string of light, a thread of light, that
she loops over and over her sharp fingers.
She gobbles it up, swallowing the light down, licking her lips and claws
with a rotting tongue.

In one bite, she devoured a
soul.

The red land, red as blood,
stretches away from us.  We aren't alone
here.  There are many more monsters like
us: crawling beasts that roam over the shapeless hills and valleys, searching
for the pulses of light that appear and disappear, wink in and out.

We are, all of us, hunting
the light.

We scrape claws over the red
ground, red like blood, like fire, an engorged, bloody sky dripping overhead to
hang low, close to us, smothering.  I
watch the souls appear—and then disappear, as they’re eaten…  Flickering, moving orbs of light that roam
slowly over the rocky ground.  They are
the tormented souls, and this is the in-between place for tormented souls,
those not yet decided between the above or the below.

The new souls usually come
all at once, and once a day, and we wait for them, hungry, starved.  Their arrival prompts a frenzy of scrabbling
and devouring…

But since we—my sisters and
I—are not the strongest or the fastest, we pick at the remains, the leftovers,
like buzzards.

The eldest is in a rare mood
today as we begin to hunt a second soul for my second sister.

“The mortals call it
Purgatory here,” she hisses, gesturing with a clawed hand to the dry landscape
ahead, devoid of light, of souls.  “And
it is a purgatory to us.  Just
because we know better, call it Twixt, doesn’t change what it is.  We are trapped here, as surely as the souls
we eat.”

I want to whisper, want to
tell her, "But it wasn’t always this way."  I close my cracking eyes now, remember for a heartbeat what we
used to be, what we gave up.  What
we sacrificed.

We were beautiful once,
radiant…with streaming white wings and glowing countenance.

Once.  Long ago.

I open my eyes, stare at my
sisters, and I bark out a snare of bitter laughter, and the eldest raises a
misshapen brow; I duck my head, silenced, and I follow behind as we prowl over
the landscape.

We are hideous, deformed
externally to reflect our thoughts and actions.  We hunt mortal souls and devour them because they satiate our
hunger for something…better.

“There!  Ahead of us!” hisses the eldest, and we
crouch, peering over a craggy grouping of blood-red rocks.  There is a soul, the dancing orb of light,
out ahead in a little crimson valley.  I
glance at the sky, foreboding dragging over my skin, but the eldest snatches at
my wrist, pulls me down and into the valley, the three of us tumbling after the
soul that now floats still, as if it is waiting for us.

We race toward it, crawling
and running over the ground in turns, but I hear the sound of the sky tearing
before we’re there, before we reach the soul.

“No!” screeches the eldest,
staring upward.

This, I think, raising
my gaze to the shape descending through the red toward us.  This is what we once were.  I gape—we all gape—as one of our
relations, with her gleaming wings and luminous shape, descends into Twixt,
diving toward us.

“Grab it!  Must I do everything myself?” the eldest
snarls, leaping on top of the soul, taking it up in her claws, positioning it
to enter her great maw.  But our
relation is too fast for my sister, extending her wings, crashing against her
and rolling end over end.

Our relation stands, the orb
in her hands, but I don't look at the orb.
I look at her…

She is more beautiful than I
can understand, her white wings sweeping against the ground, her skin glowing
like a hundred thousand stars, her eyes bright and blue and all-seeing.  Her right wing is a bit ragged, and I
remember her now…  I have seen this
relation before.  I don't know
when.  Perhaps when we three were not
yet fallen, or perhaps after.  Time is
meaningless in Twixt, and memories are slippery, hard to grasp and keep.

All I know for certain is
that she is so lovely, she makes my heart ache (despite everything, I think I
still have a heart), and I fall to my knees before her as she gazes on us
three, beatific face expressionless as she holds the orb of the soul against
her body.

The eldest launches to her
feet, begins to barrel across the ground, and with one dramatic upsurge, the
relation takes to the sky, pumping her glorious wings with effortless power
until the redness swallows her whole, and she and the soul are gone, above.  I know that she takes the soul now to
someplace better, that soul that was snatched out of the eldest's hands, even
as she was about to devour it into nothingness.

Angered, my sister screams, a
bellow that echoes, and claws at the sky.

“I will destroy her,” she
hisses, curling her claws into fists, gouging out her palms until they bleed,
the blood dripping into the red ground, disappearing entirely.  “They can hurt us still, even
here.  This must change,” she says,
lowering her face to our level.

I am afraid when I look into
her eyes.

She plans something.

The memory changes,
lengthens, contorts…

I gather with my two sisters
around a green roaring fire built in a red-washed cave, far in the back where
we are hidden from our relations, and my eldest sister paces back and forth,
back and forth, in front of the flames.

“We need the souls for
energy, for sustenance,” she says through cracked lips, pausing in front of the
fire, pointing her claws to it.  She
speaks shrewdly, biting off the words as she watches us.  “But what if we took a bit of that power and
spun it into something more than a meal for a belly?”

I shrink away from her as the
second sister asks, “What can you mean?”

The eldest watches me, eyes
narrowed, as she steps closer, into the green fire that hisses, burning up her
broken and then rehealed legs, sizzling up and over her body as she snarls out,
letting the fire scald her, scorch her, and doing nothing to stop it.  Enjoying it.  She shows us that she is the strongest, that we must listen to
her, and I cower back in fear as she moves out of the fire now, stalking toward
us.

“You do not seem interested,
sister,” she says to me, head to the side, staring down into my eyes.  I do my best to hold her gaze, but I waver,
and she sees this.  She takes me up, her
claws around my neck, suspending me high in the darkness.

“We Sixers must remain
together,” she hisses.  “Always
together, of one mind.  Do not forget
this.”

I fall, crumpling, as she
dashes me to the ground, upon the rocks, and she turns back to our second
sister, the simpering sister who paws at the eldest’s elbow, cooing quietly.

I rise to my knees, press my
hand against the curve of shoulder and neck, loathing rising within me with
such intensity, it devours me whole, as surely as we devour souls.  For too long, the eldest has bullied me and
broken me and told me over and over again how she is powerful and I am
dust.

I am not dust.

“Here…” says the eldest,
hissing, as she waves her hands over the green fire in sharp, bright
patterns.  Suddenly, there is a
construct in the flames, an image that flickers with the heart of the
fire.  It’s small and simple, hard to
make out, but then I peer closer, and I see it: the construct is a city
surrounded by a wall, surrounded by a forest, the trees badly sketched into the
image before us, like half-formed, malformed twigs.

“The souls would appear here
every day,” she hisses, pointing to the center of the city.  “The city would house them, and we could
leech their souls from them slowly, store the ones we didn’t want to devour for
later.  We need not even hunt them!  We milk them for every bit of life they
have, bleed them of their energy, use them up.
With such time and leisure, we might invent new ways to devour
them.  We could make them beg us
to take their souls.  I have thought of
ways…”  She curls her fingers together
with a snarl.  “And our relations, the
ones with white wings…”  Her misshapen
mouth scowls.  “We could twist
their countenances.  Make them hideous
to these souls.  Make the souls run from
them, as if for their very salvation!”
She laughs so hard, spittle bubbles up from her lips.

And, inside of me, something
shifts and pinches and hurts.

No, I think, but do
not say.

No.

I do not want to do this
thing.  I do not want to build this
illusion city.  I do not want to torture
the souls that come to this halfway place, already lost, already tortured.

It is new and strange, this
want, but it’s born here:  I remember
the time before I fell.  I remember love
and kindness, those curse words that my sisters now spit out of their mouths,
marking them ugly, foul.

Though I cannot ever have it
again, still…I want it back.

And, suddenly, I find my
voice.

“I do not want to do this
thing,” I whisper, the words coming out as rough and ugly as I am.  I shiver and shake under my sisters' baleful
eyes as they watch me, unmoving, unspeaking.

I have spoken my truth.

Now will come my punishment.

They stare at me as if I’ve
told them something absurd, as if I've told them we are not truly devils, after
all.  Of course we're devils.  We made our choices.

The eldest hobbles toward me,
and I raise my arms, my claws against her, waiting for the blow…but it does not
come.

“You are our sister,”
says the eldest, pinching my elbow, dragging me to her, staring at me with her
flashing red gaze.  “And you will
do this.”

I shudder.

Many of our kind possess
oddities of body or ability.  We three
sisters are the Sixers, for we three can become six.  And, as I watch, cowering, my elder sisters now become four.  And they gather about me.  Me.
Only me.  One against three or
two against six, I will lose this battle.

I am afraid of them.  I have always been afraid of them.  As the eldest twists my elbow, twisting it
tighter and tighter beneath her curving, clawed fingers, I cry out in pain, but
she doesn’t stop twisting.  She loves
pain, relishes it, eating it up as she devours part of my spirit.

And my second sister simply
watches while the eldest towers over me, eating up a part of my soul that I
will never get back.

She drops me to the floor
with my broken arm, and I cower beneath her as she turns, licking her long
fingers thoughtfully.

My sister is not powerful
enough to do what she wishes alone.  She
needs the energy of souls in order to build this city, what she will call, she
tells us, Abeo City.  She laughs as she
speaks these words, as she snatches up the orbs of souls, lengthening them into
glowing threads and spinning a city out of their somethingness.

How many souls does she use
to build the city?  I don't dare count.  She sends us, our second sister and me, out
gathering, soul after soul, and if we do not find them—and often, we don't—she
breaks new bones in our bodies thoughtfully, very slowly.

I don't want to do this, but
I do it still.  I find her souls.  I snatch them up in my monstrous hands, and
I take them to her, too many, so many…
Because I am no better than her.
I do not stop her.

She spins the city, woven
from spirited light, for seven days and seven nights.  In the end, at last, she stands before her construct, this bubble
of a city and forest that looks misplaced, comical in the red barren lands of
Twixt.

"Come," the eldest
says.

And we three step inside.

“Look at us,” she breathes,
turning and twirling.  Now the eldest
has long black hair, wears a black dress and cloak, and she looks—more or
less—like a human.  Or the suggestion of
a human.  I glance down at my human
hands (that are still claw-like), feel back for my hood and draw it over my
head, dropping my eyes.

The illusion is well
formed.  There is the forest that slopes
away from us, and ahead a wall that I know surrounds the city, as the eldest
imagined it.

Darkness begins to fall, and
red lines stretch away in the illusion: bits of Twixt showing through.

“What’s happening, sister?”
asks the second sister, gripping the eldest’s black-sleeved arm.  “Why is it becoming dark now?”

The eldest purses her lips,
staring up at the counterfeit sky.
“I…do not know.  Perhaps I
misjudged time and—”

Darkness falls instantly,
absolutely, like a black cloak cast off, covering the forest and the city with
its shadows.

There is a great tearing
sound in the air.  We three look up, and
through the night descends a monster.
It’s an atrocity built of bone and beak and wing, a truly ugly beast that
frightens me, even though I know what it is, its true nature.  Even though I know it is we who have made it
appear this way.

It descends, flapping its
wings, confused, turning its bone claws over and over again.  It falls against the earth, rising, pushing
off again.  It crouches near us,
watching us with deep black hollows for eyes.

“Do you see yourself,
you ugly perversion?”  The eldest
whispers, advancing on our relation.
“You are hideous, and every soul that comes to this place will
run from you, screaming.”  She
grabs its clavicle, heaving it up, though this thing is three times her
size.  “You will be run from.  You will be cursed.  People will fear you as they have feared us.  Now you will know exile.  The tables have turned,” she says, smiling,
and then she breaks off the bone she’s holding.  The creature howls, tilting its head back, but she is too
quick.  She clamps a hand around the
creature’s neck, and she squeezes.

It screams and screams as she
devours its soul, and it crumbles to dust in her hands that she licks off her
fingers, turning to stare at us, eyes red and glowing beneath her black hair,
triumphant.

“Come, queens,” she whispers,
holding out her dusty hands to us.
“Come see our city.  Our kingdom.”

As we pass through the walls
of the city together, we see shadows up ahead.
A boy and a girl who wander toward us, eyes wide, clothing as ragged and
dirty as the dismal city sprawling before us.

“Please…” the girl
whispers.  She has long brown hair and
has been weeping.  The boy grips her
hand, won’t speak, eyes wide and dark in the stillness.  “We can’t remember anything.  Please help us…”

The eldest steps forward, a
hungry look flitting over her face for a heartbeat before she lifts her chin,
swallowing.  She reaches into her pocket
then, drawing out something dark that shifts in the small breezes here.  She holds it up, and I stare at it as the
boy and girl stare at it, too.

It is one of the feathers
from our relations, blackened to fit their illusion in this place now.  It is hideous in comparison to what the
feathers look like truly: glowing, lovely things that shine with their own
light.

You can place an illusion
upon an object, but it retains, at its heart, its true essence.  Even as she holds it, the feather is
luminous in the dark.

“I will give this to
you.  It will give you a single memory
back…” says the eldest, leaning toward the boy and girl with bright eyes, “but
you must give me something in return…”

“What?” they whisper, staring
at the feather, hands clasped together.
They salivate as they stare at it, and my heart pinches again as the
eldest leans toward them.

“I’ll take a snip of your
hair,” she whispers, threading a hand through the girl’s long mane.  The girl shudders, leaning away from her,
but she nods, and, quick as death, the eldest curls her fingers in the girl’s
hair, yanking down so hard, the girl drops to her knees, screams.

The eldest holds up the hank
of hair, turning it over and over in her hands with shining eyes.  “Here…” she whispers, letting the feather
drop to the ground.  And then slowly,
almost reverently, she feeds the hair into her mouth, long tongue licking it
up.

She swallows it down in a
single gulp.

The boy and girl stare up at
her, eyes wide, shaking.  She stares
down at them, holding up a single sharp claw.

“Let me show you how to use
it…” she whispers, licking her lips again with a smile.

Again, the memory
shifts.

I am pacing in my own small
room in the house outside of the city.

The plan has followed as the
eldest hoped it would: flawlessly, perfectly.
Our relations have appeared to save the souls, and because the illusion
paints them as hideous, monstrous, the souls run and hide from them.  Though there have been a few souls that were
not fast enough, were Snatched, as we are now calling it, for the most part, we
retain the souls with no work at all.

And we devour these souls
slowly, savoring the flavor of their spirits, and their pain.

And I grow sicker, angrier,
wearier.

And the eldest knows.

I become two again, merging
back to one as I nervously pace.  Over
and over, I become two and then one, two and then one.  When I am two, we pace together.  We do not look alike, but we are the same
creature, she and I.

The eldest is at the door of
my room, glancing at me.  There is
suspicion in her red eyes.

I stop pacing, sit, but I
have already given myself away.

That night, when we return
from the city and I enter my room, I pause, hand on the knob, still, the
metallic scent of blood all around me.
I glance up and up, up at the bodies of birds nailed to the wall, their
drying blood too bright, their smell too sickening.

Eight clawed hands at the
small of my back push me into the room, and the door is shut fast behind
me.  A key turns in the lock, and I know
now that I am caught.  That it is all
over for me.

My favorite pastime is
restricted: I can take only three steps across the room before I must turn
now—because of the birds.  I become two
for comfort, for company, and we pace back and forth, moving like clockwork over
the creaking boards.

The night is long and still
and full of terror.  At first light, my
other glances at me, and we pause in the center of the floor.  She holds up her hand, brow up, questioning,
and I press my palm against her palm.

They are coming for us.

My eyes widen as I stare at
her, at this knowledge she’s given me that I did not possess.  She cocks her head, shakes it softly,
slowly.

Too late.

The door opens.

The eldest stands there,
cloak tied about her chin.  They have
grown as grotesque as the Snatchers now, my sisters, with hair too long,
dragging behind them, always tangled with trash and twigs.  Because I have not devoured as many souls as
they, my hair is more manageable, but still long enough to graze the ground.

I have not eaten a soul in
days, days and days and days.  I don't
know how many days.

And now, finally, my sisters
will reprimand me for it.

“Let us go for a walk,”
whispers the eldest, holding out her hand.
I shake my head, we shake our heads, take a step back, but the
eldest is in the doorway, becoming two, and they advance on us, hands out,
smiling beneath the endless, shining hair.

“Come,” she hisses to us, and
then I am one again, and her hands are around my shoulders.  The second sister is in the doorway, and she
will not look at me, will only stare down at the floor.

“No,” I whisper, clawing at
the edge of the bed.

At the front of the house,
there is a knock at the door.

The eldest drops me, and I
bruise against the ground.  She snarls,
turns, and slams the door shut behind her, turning the key in the lock.

Matilda is here, come to give
the Sixers their morning report: how much Nox was consumed, how much more is
required, even though we Sixers know this already, know everything.  Matilda wants to be important.  Here, now, I crawl over the floor, beneath
the bed, clawing…

The memory jerks me to the
side, and it’s over.  I don’t know what
happened between then and now, but I am beside the stream, and the eldest grips
my hair with her hand, arching my head back, staring down at me with a too-wide
smile.

Can you kill an
immortal?

Of course you can.

Just like flying, you can
fall.

Just like living, you can
die.

She reaches down to me,
tracing a hand over my throat almost lovingly before her claws are back, and in
one smooth, slight motion, she slits my throat.

Somewhere outside of myself,
I see her throw my body into the ice.
It breaks the ice, forming a hole, tumbling beneath the water.

The second sister takes the
eldest’s arm as they walk away from the stream.  They don’t look back once.

But a Sixer was not meant to
be murdered.  Not in her own construct,
the city she helped create.

So it didn’t work.

But something…changed.

And when I awoke, my two
halves were scattered, separated into two different bodies, and the lines of
the illusion shifted to accommodate this mistake.

As the Sixers bore the
illusion of youth, of humanity in their own city, the illusion stuck to me, as
well, clung to me, but began to shape something different.  I was the youngest, so I was a young woman
still.  But now there were two of me,
the two halves to me, divided and apart.

Lottie.

And Bird.

As the memory begins to fade
away, I see the girl appear at the edge of the hole in the ice.  She’s on her back, wearing a tattered black
lace dress.  Beside her, laying in the
opposite direction, is a girl covered all over in furs.  They both have black hair, these girls.  They both have shocking blue eyes, which
they open at the very same moment.

And as the first girl sits
up, the second one bolts towards the valley.

And everything begins again.

*

My back arches beneath me,
and I choke on air, trying to breathe, scrabbling as my bones contort, no
longer my own.

I breathe in, and I breathe
out.

The memory races beneath my
skin, and it remains, though the rushing has subsided, though the raging pulse
in my wrists has stilled.  I hold up my
hands, stare at my palms, at the black lines there.

I contain multitudes.

I close my eyes, press my
fingers against my face, rub them over my skin that I know is not my skin, not
really.  I open my eyes again, stare at
my fingers as if they’ll change before my eyes, but of course they can’t.  They won’t.
The eldest has woven the construct too soundly for me to unmake it simply
by thought, by remembering my hands as the claws they truly are.

I am nothing more than a
monster.  Less.  I am less than a monster.  Only half…

And now it all makes sense.

I woke up in the wrong place
because everything was wrong from the beginning.  I was not supposed to die here, was not supposed to die, and
because I did, my soul bounced back in a strange, complicated way.  I am separated from my other half, not
whole.  The Snatchers—our relations—did
not want me because I am not a real soul or spirit, a human spirit, in
need of saving.  I am a monster, and a
helpless one at that.

I breathe in and out,
everything I hold inside of me breaking, like ice.  I wanted out of this; I wanted to destroy Abeo City, our false,
fatal playground.  And my sisters murdered
me because I was no longer theirs to control, and I—we, Bird and I—returned,
because everything, all of this…was a mistake.

I stare at my hands as if
seeing them for the first time: pale skin, blackened lines across their
palms.  They are soft and fair, like a
young woman’s hands...

All I am is a lie.

A sob escapes my throat, and
I turn over onto my side.  I’m on a
bed.  It crinkles beneath me, and I lift
my gaze, knowing what I will see, dreading the sight.

There are small bodies
nailed to the walls.

I sit up quickly, my
heart hammering against my ribs.

Hundreds of birds are
nailed to the walls, and even covering the door, in a tidy pattern—like
wallpaper.  A single rusty nail sticks
out of the center of each of their feathered chests.  Along the top of the wall, there is a border of crows, and
everywhere else, there are songbirds, their beaks open, tiny tongues shriveled,
their eyes dull in death.

Every inch of the walls
is covered in small, broken bodies.  I
cower in the center of the bed.  They
did this before they murdered me so that I would not go through the walls.  I cannot walk through death, will not.  It holds me here, trapped.  My sisters know this.

Rage pulses through me
like blood, like the blood dripped down the walls, solidified and
staining.

I draw up my knees and
hug them to me, pressing my forehead against them.

I breathe in and out.

And I listen.

“She has been
separated.”

I open my eyes.  I can hear them through the door.  Do they know I listen?  Maybe they think I’m still Memming—a delayed
reaction triggered, I think, by the nearness of my sisters, to the Nox I took
at Black House...

I keep breathing evenly,
still my racing heart.

“It won’t be hard.  Where in Abeo could she be hiding?  We’ll ransack all of the Safe Houses, no
stone unturned.  We will kill
this one again, and then the other.  Easy.”

“I don’t like it.  It didn’t work before.”

“Perhaps we should kill
them together?” ponders the eldest.  I
know her voice.  It makes my whole being
recoil.

“Yes, yes.  Perhaps.
Matilda, you will remain here.
You will watch.  You will see
that she does not leave.  And if she
does, you will make her Mem so that you can contain her.”

“Yes, ma’ams,” comes her
sniveling, groveling voice.

And then they are all
gone.

Bird.

They’re after Bird.

I know her now.  Know why I recognized her, why I felt her so
close to me, why she made sense.
Because she is part of me, as I am of her.  We are divided, but we are the same, she and I, but so different.  I chew at my thumbnail, feeling the tears
squeeze at the corners of my eyes again, but I won’t let them fall.  I won’t.

I have to get out.  I take a deep breath, stilling my heart.

I have to.

I close my eyes.

It’s a compulsion, the
strongest one I’ve felt yet, stronger than when the Snatchers chased me.

Wait.

The Snatchers.

Our relations.

They wanted me to find
Bird…led me to her.

I rake my fingers into my
hair, tug.  What does it all mean?  I’ve remembered everything now, but I don’t
know how to put it together yet, and I must.
Does Bird remember?  Is that why
she couldn’t tell me, because the Sixers built this city, and they might hear
her speak of it aloud?

I breathe in and out,
shaking.

And the Sleepers.

Charlie and Violet and
Edgar, all of them…

They’re not Asleep.  They'll never Wake.

They’re dead.

I press the heels of my
hands to my eyes until all I see are rich, changing colors.  All I am inside is empty, is aching, is
pain.  Charlie thinks she’s going to
wake up.  That she can try again, make
her life better.  But she’s dead.  Violet’s dead.  Edgar’s dead.

And the Sixers are sucking
them dry until there's nothing left.
Until they Fade.

They won’t exist, not a
hair of them, once the Sixers finish with them.

I sit up again so quickly
that my head whirls and spins.  No.  They won’t have them.  They won’t.  I think of Charlie’s kindness to me.  Of her soft smile, the way she threads her fingers through
mine.  She doesn’t know what I am, and
now that I know...  I swallow,
the tears falling from my eyes.

What was happening
between us is over.  I’m a monster, only
a monster.  But I can still tell Charlie
the truth.

Perhaps, I…I…

I gulp down air, gulp
down a sob.

Could I help them
escape?  Could I guide them out of Abeo
City, beyond the Gray Line, into Twixt?
And then the Snatchers—not Snatchers at all, not really—could
save them, carry them away from here.

Outside of the Gray Line,
the illusion fades away.  The Sixers
only constructed the illusion up to the Gray Line, and after that, the truth is
as plain as sight.

I rise from the bed,
stand in the center of the macabre room, dead bird eyes staring at me.

My hands curl into fists.

The Sixers are
powerful.  They killed me before.  They’ll do it again, and this time…probably
for good.  Fragmented as I am now, I
won’t come back, not a second time.  My
sisters will take my half-soul, freshly vacated from its body, and they’ll eat
it up.  And I will become
nothingness.

…everything we did is for nothing.

That can't be.  I have to find Bird.  I have to find Charlie and Edgar and
Violet.  I have to tell them, tell them
the truth.  I close my eyes, bite my
lip, swallowing tears as I imagine what Charlie will say, the look on her face,
the betrayal in her eyes as she finds out that she is not sleeping, as she
finds out that I am a monster.  Hideous.  Ugly beyond understanding.

My friends are so afraid of
the Sixers, and I am a Sixer.  I
frightened them all, before…

But it doesn’t matter, none
of it, not if they can be saved.  If
they can get past the Gray Line.

Whatever happens to me, I
will get them past the Gray Line.

I remember the Snatchers
refusing me, herding me to Bird.  Do
they know?

Were they…trying to help me?

Too many questions.  Too many missing answers.  I pace the tight confines of the room,
turning well before I reach the walls of birds.  Three steps.  All I’m
allowed is three steps.

As I stare up at the walls,
at the stiff wings and the open beaks, I pause for a moment, for a
heartbeat.  I stare harder at the flock
of bodies, unfocus my eyes.

I still my breathing, still
my thundering heart.  This was my
room.  They kept me in here before they
decided to murder me.  I remember
pacing; I remember that I could take only three steps.  I remember what it felt like to contain
myself and how my two halves were not really so separate, merging and unmerging
at will.

I remember something else…

There are loose boards
beneath the bed.

I gasp, turn, drop to my
knees without a sound, crawling beneath the rickety bed frame—a bed I never
slept upon, never needed.

Is this how I got out before,
before they killed me?  Didn't they
know?  Didn't they board it up?  But even if they boarded it up, I could move
through the boards, through the floor itself, as I've moved through
doors, through walls…

Careless of them, not to nail
dead birds to the floor, as well.

There’s a basement.  I remember a basement.

I’m too panicked to slip
through the floor now, to concentrate, to calm.  I pry at the boards until my fingertips begin to bleed.  But there—one pops up, and I push it aside,
reaching under to take up the other two.

Footsteps.

I still my breathing, peer
out under the edge of the door, see Matilda’s pointy-toed boots there, pausing
before the locked door.  But she pauses
for only a heartbeat before she turns, begins to pace back in the small hall
outside the room.

I edge back the third board,
and there’s enough space for my body.  A
trail of musty air wafts up from below, and I shove my feet and legs through,
and I drop into the darkness.

It takes a moment for my eyes
to adjust.  Overhead, light filters down
on me, but here, below, everything else is black as ink.

Now that I know what I am, my
memories are coming back in small, uncontrolled glimpses.  I knew about the boards, triggered by the
birds’ bodies, and I knew about the basement, triggered by the boards.

And now that I’m in the
basement, I remember what we Sixers used it for.

A shifting sound, feet
against dirt.  A grinding sort of hiss.  And then they stagger into view, into the
light.

They are Sleepers.  I repeat this to myself over and over, to
displace the rising fear:  They are
only Sleepers.  Their bodies are
decayed, and some are almost transparent, these Sleepers gaunt and gray, their
skin like thick dead flesh.  But they
are not dead, not physically alive or dead, because they are only
spirits—as we all are, trapped in a perfect illusion that makes us appear a
certain way, a way we are not.

In truth, these souls are not
grotesque and emaciated.  Beyond Abeo
City, they are spheres of light, golden, glowing.

I am the one who’s hideous
through and through.

These Sleepers are on the
verge of vanishing… They look unwell, failing, because they are almost all used
up.

The girl standing before me
has no hair.  She reminds me of
Florence: the brittle way she moves, stepping forward, hobbling because she
doesn’t have the strength to walk in a straight line.  Her tattered dress hangs off of her like ribbons, and when she
gazes at me, she has only one eye.

I can feel all that she is,
the very essence of her—her energy—leeching away into the earth beneath her
feet.

Feeding the Sixers, my
sisters, Bird and me.

She will become nothingness
before nightfall.  I know that the
moment I look upon her, and I know other things, too.  I know that she lived in Black House.  I know that she sold her hair for Nox until she had none left;
she Memmed every memory of her life...
And then she Faded away.

But she didn't, not
really.  Like the Harming Tree, Fading
is a myth.

When everything she was had
been sold, exhausted, she became the property of the Sixers.  And the Sleepers saw her Fade, but only
because she disappeared to reappear here, to be used and devoured completely.

She is so afraid.  She trembles, as the others crawl up or
stand up or kneel beside her, watching me in the darkness, their eyes dimly
shining.

I gulp down my tears, curl my
hands into fists.

“You are one of them,” says
the Sleeper before me, the girl who is almost gone.  I can’t deny it, so I don’t.
I stand very still, and then I nod stiffly.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“You are the youngest,” says
an older man, skeletal and wilting like a dead plant, his eyes milky.  "The youngest Sixer.”

“Yes,” I whisper again.  The truth is a blade, slicing open my
heart.  I can’t deny what I am, now that
I know.

The girl holds out a hand to
me, lips trembling.  “You were kind to
me.”

"W—what?"  I stare at her.

“Don’t you remember?” she
whispers.  “When you escaped?  You opened the door for us, to the
outside.  Before they killed you,” she
says, voice soft.  “We know they killed
you.  They laughed about it when they
came back home…  We heard their voices
through the floorboards."

I shake my head.  "If I opened the door, then why—"

"We are too weak, not
fast enough, you see.  We couldn't even
climb the stairs.  But it was a kind
gesture, all the same.”

I don’t know what to
say.  I breathe out, press my
fingernails into my palms.

“Will you save us now?” the
girl whispers.

I stare at her, at her
decayed body, at the illusion that looks so real.

She can’t be saved.  She will become nothingness too soon; I
can't stop that.  But there is such
faith and trust in her face, in her voice.

“I’m one of them…” I say,
voice cracking, but she steps forward, head shaking so hard, I can hear the creak
of the bones in her neck.

“Don’t talk to her, Estella,”
croaks one of the older women, curving away from me.  “She’s right.  She's one of
them.  You’re wasting your breath.”

“I’m not,” says the girl, her
fingers curled toward me.  “She’s
different.”

“Do you know how many people
have come through here?” asks the old woman, leering at me.  The others watch me with glinting eyes,
unseeing or seeing, it’s impossible to tell.
“Do you know how many souls you’ve eaten?  How many your sisters have?”

I run my fingers through my
hair, press my fingers against my face.

“And yet…” says the girl,
inching forward again, “you tried to help us.
Will you try again?”

I watch her carefully, my
hands shaking.  I curl my fingers into
fists again so that I don't betray my fear.

“I’ll try,” I tell them,
then, forcing strength into my voice.
“I’m so sorry.  Please…  You can’t forgive me.  You can’t possibly.  But I’m going to try.”

The girl breathes out, closes
her eye, sags a little.  “Through
there…” She points.

There’s a door above a
staircase, cut into the earthen wall.

“The Sixers can go through
the doors,” whispers the girl.  “We
cannot.  Not anymore.”

“I’ll come back for you.” I
gulp down air, spread my hands.  “I’ll
be back, I promise.  I’ll get you out of
this.”

I follow the rough stone
staircase and push through the door with my hands, step through the splintered
wood as if it’s made of air.

I find myself in a long, dark
corridor illuminated with jars of Wisps along the bottom edges of the
walls.  I crouch down beside a jar for a
moment, reach my hand out to touch it.
The Wisps are souls, too, but they’re worthless souls to the Sixers,
animal souls, I remember.  Hardly a
morsel, a bite.

I touch the glass with a long
finger, feel the Wisps bump up lazily against it, sharing their warmth.

I think of Bird's butterfly,
and I rise, shaking.

At the other end of the room,
there’s a sharp scraping, a rustle of metal against metal.  Chains?

I walk forward, breathing in
and out, almost panting.

There are cages.  Cages three times my size, scuffing the
ceiling of the hallway.  And there are
boxes.  Wooden boxes and crates, filled to
bursting with feathered darkness.

At the end of a row of empty
cages, I pause, gaping in horror.

The last cage is occupied.

There are chains looped
around its skeleton legs and around its skeleton wrists.  There is a chain about its neck, and an iron
band that’s clamped around its beak.
And its wings, once monstrously huge and shimmering black, are only
bones now, for the Snatcher—the Snatcher trapped in the iron cage—has been
plucked clean, its feathers filling the crates and boxes that surround it.

It watches me out of skull hollows,
pinioned to the bottom of the cage, plucked and trapped and imprisoned.

I crouch beside the cage, can
barely breathe as I kneel next to this being that looks like a monster,
but isn't.  It is my perfect opposite.

It watches me, and I feel
such pity for it, such sadness.  I press
a hand to the floor, feel the earth below siphoning off energy, and I know then
that my sisters are feeding off of our relation, this not-Snatcher.  They will feed off of it until it is
nothingness, like the poor souls in the basement.

It watches me, unable even to
crack its beak.  Might it speak, if it
could open its mouth?  Edgar said he
encountered a Snatcher once that seemed as if it were trying to speak to him…

I remember them, the
not-Snatchers, gliding across the sky, so beautiful that sight of them stole
your breath.  Their broad white wings
streamed with light, their glowing faces so lovely, they looked like gods.

"Once," I whisper
to the soul in the cage, "I was beautiful, too."

Tears seep from my closed
eyes.  Nothing I say can make up for
this creature's pain, for its torture.
For the great blasphemy its imprisonment has been.  I tap the place over my heart, and I hold
out my hand, through the bars.

The Snatcher gently, so
gently, touches a sickle-claw to my outstretched palm.

I'm weeping.

There's no time for weeping.

I stand, wipe my tears away,
touch the bars again, shaking my head.

Beyond the cage are steep,
creaking steps.  I run up them without
looking back, pressing my shoulder against the doors at the end, pushing
through them.

I burst through a back door
out into the forest, awash in light from the setting sun.

I don’t look back.  I don’t look back at the house that I
built, that I was imprisoned within, that has imprisoned countless others.  I don’t look back when the bloody sunset
slips away, when the gray lines and jagged edges of the trees become shadows
that house a multitude of Snatchers.

I don’t look back when I hear
beaks click open, when I hear the shrieks and screams, when the air is filled
with the slicing rush of black-feathered wings.

I know that they will not
touch me.  Though my skin crawls, though
the ghost of fear moves beneath my bones, I am not afraid as I run
through the darkness of this manufactured night.  Of course time moves wrongly here.  How does a devil measure time?
It doesn't.  The
artificial sun, the artificial sunset and sunrise and night and day.  All of it, lies.

Somewhere, the Sixers stalk
through this night.  They are looking
for Bird, and so to Bird I run, to her church beneath the trees.  There are lights on in the church, lights
from the Wisps that Bird has gathered.
And the door is open, when I reach it, when I vault up the steps.

But Bird is not there.

I gulp down air, lean against
the solidity of the church walls.  Have
the Sixers taken her?  Did she know they
were coming?  She must have known.  She must have left, must have run.

Please, I hope you ran.

If they have her, if they
kill her, will I feel it?  Will I die,
too?

I press my fingers against my
wrist, in the place where Bird gripped me.
Though it isn't, my skin feels solid, real.  I’m still here, now.  I
still have time.

Bird is quick and
clever.  They might be chasing her,
hunting her.  But she could hide from
them, as she's hidden all this time.

I stare back into the deep
darkness of the forest.  Up above me,
the Snatchers are roosting in the trees.

They are watching me.

And they watch me run to
Abeo, their bones ghost-white lanterns in the dark.

Chapter Seven:  Meant

The streets of Abeo lie as
dark as my thoughts as I run, boots beating against the rocks and rubble.  I fly through the wall, angling towards Mad
House.

On the porch, I stop, pause,
picking twigs and leaves out of my hair, before I step forward and pass through
the door.

The jars of Wisps are smaller
here than at the Sixers' house.  It’s a
strange thing to notice as I make my way along the hall, headed toward the
great room where the Sleepers gather.

But there’s Charlie, sitting
on the stairs, still as stone, staring at me with her eyes red and round and
her mouth open.

And Charlie runs down the
last steps, and she puts her arms around my neck, and her shoulders move in a
single, wracking sob.  “I thought you
were gone,” she whispers, holding me so tightly that I don’t know where
she ends and I begin.  “I thought they’d
taken you, Snatched you.  I thought
you were gone…”

My head is against her
shoulder, and I can feel the sob that moves through her body, can feel her
warmth against me, her hands at my waist now, pulling me close, holding me
tightly, as if they’ll never let go again.
And a breath escapes me, and a single tear slides down my cheek, hot as
scorched earth, because she thought I was gone forever, Snatched, and
she’d mourned for me.

The truth is far worse.

She steps back, then, holds
me out at arm’s length; our eyes lock, both of us breathing hard, both of us
crying.

Can she see the change in
me?  Can she see the monster in
me?

But her gaze is soft, soft
and brown.  Affectionate.  Warm.

She doesn’t know what I
am.  She doesn’t know what I’ve done,
the pain I’ve caused or the souls I’ve ended.
I have brought souls to nothingness.
I have destroyed—for the sake of satiating my selfish hunger.

I should tell her now.  I should pull away, cut these threads
between us…

But when she curls her
fingers around my hips, when she draws me forward, I put my arms about her neck
as if I’ve done it a thousand times before.
It’s Charlie who dips her head down to meet mine, pressing her lips
against my lips.

It’s Charlie who kisses me.

And I kiss her back, because
she is beautiful and good and kind and the best soul that I've ever known, that
I could ever know.  In all of my
life.  In all of my existence.  I take this kiss because she gives it
freely.  And what comes after will be
pain, all of it sharp, deep pain…

But I will keep this
loveliness: the taste of her lips, how soft they are, how gentle but hungry; we
are, the two of us, melded, connected, for these stolen heartbeats.

I will keep this memory for
as long as my forever lasts.

She takes a step back, mouth
closed, her eyes searching mine, her face radiant, joyful.  “Oh, Lottie,” she says, and her words crack,
and there are tears in her eyes, and I can’t bear that joy, the love in
her face, her smile—no, it's wrong—and I falter, move away, eyes
downcast.

“Lottie?” she asks, voice
trembling, but I take another step back, and then Violet is on the stairs,
coming down, but Charlie doesn’t care.
She comes forward, clasps her hands with mine.  “Lottie, what is it?
What’s the matter?” she whispers, lips parted with so many words left
unsaid.

“I have something to tell
you,” I whisper, looking up at Violet, avoiding Charlie’s searching gaze.  “Can we go somewhere quiet?”

Violet glances meaningfully
at the empty hall, but Charlie angles her chin toward the stairs, squeezing my
fingers, and we walk up them and toward the room they gave me my first night
here.

How long ago and far away
that night seems.

My limbs are heavy, weighted
by the burden of truth.  I swallow down
my tears, my regret, my deep ache, and I climb the steps with Charlie holding
my hand, my fingers limp in hers.  We
reach the top of the stairs, and Abigail scuttles down the hall below, holding
a lantern of Wisps aloft.

“Charlie, the Sixers are
here,” she says, voice soft, low.  “They
came in through the kitchen entrance.
They’re looking for…"  Her
eyes flick to me.  "For Lottie.”

Charlie’s gaze is sharp, eyes
wide, mouth open, but she whispers down to Abigail, “They can’t find her.  Tell them she’s not here.”

“They’re saying they must
search the Safe House, Charlie,” says Abigail, eyes dark and haunted.  She shakes her head woefully.  “They’ll find her.”

“Why are they after you?  What did you do?” Violet hisses at
me, but I’m shaking my head, fear crawling up my spine with clicking
claws.  It can’t be over before it’s
begun.  It can’t be.  How did they find out so quickly?

“There’s a balcony, off of my
room,” says Charlie, voice soft, putting her finger over her lips and motioning
to Abigail to return to the Sixers.
“Stall them,” she hisses after her, and then places her hand at the
small of my back, pushing.  “You can
climb out, down a drainpipe to the ground.”

“Charlie, the Snatchers—”
begins Violet, but I shake my head.

“They won’t bother with me,”
I whisper.  Violet’s eyes are wide, and
she stares at me as Charlie and I run past her, through Charlie’s door and into
her room.

Florence is in the corner,
squatting there, rocking back and forth, back and forth; she looks up when we
enter.  “Florence, honey, you’ve got to
be quiet, okay?” Charlie breathes, putting her finger over her lips again.  “Can you be quiet for me, honey?”

Florence’s head is cocked,
watching us.  She makes no indication
that she heard Charlie’s question, that she even understood it.  She’s more gaunt than she was before, if
that’s even possible.  She looks as bad
off as the girl in the basement, the last scrap of hair on her head sticking up
at a wilting angle, the tatters of her dress doing little to cover the bones
that stick out from under her skin.

I know now that Charlie was
right; the Harming Tree is only a superstition, after all.  An invention of the Sleepers, a desperate
scrabbling for hope, and for some measure of control over their sad existences.

“Stay here,” Charlie
whispers, pointing to the floor where Florence crouches.  “Stay here.”  Then Charlie takes my hand, pulling me through the room and to
the window draped in black.

“If the Snatchers come,” she
whispers, peeling back the dark curtains, peering into the night, “run as fast
as you can toward Black House and—”

“They won’t take me,
Charlie,” I say, my words catching, folding in upon themselves.  I swallow, steel myself.  “Charlie, I have to tell you—”

I can hear the stairs
creaking, bodies moving over them as quietly as they can.  My eyes widen; Charlie opens and shuts her
mouth, then shakes her head.

“They won’t take you,” she
murmurs, as if to comfort herself, and opens the window soundlessly.  “Here…” she breathes, taking my hand, and I
crawl over the windowsill, out onto the balcony beneath.

The night air is still,
quiet.  Above me, on the arch of the
roof, a Snatcher watches my progression, wings arched, claws hooked into the
roof tiles.  Waiting.

Charlie crawls out after me.

“What are you doing?”
I hiss, but she shakes her head, moves past me, peering down at the
ground.

“The drainpipe’s here.  Come on, Lottie,” she whispers,
ushering me over.  “We’ve got to move
quickly.”

She hooks her hands around
the drainpipe, easing her body off of the roof.  The pipe creaks dangerously but holds as she begins to creep down
its length.  I wait until she’s on the
ground, peering over my shoulder at the window every thunderous heartbeat, but
when she touches the rubble with her shoes, I’m out on the drainpipe after her,
climbing hand under hand.

Halfway down the pipe, I hear
the window creak again.  I can’t see it
from my angle, and I wait, heart in my throat, until I see a skull peer over
the edge of the balcony, eyes searching out Charlie and me.

Florence has crawled out
after us.

I scrabble down to the
ground.

“Florence, get back inside,”
Charlie’s whisper roars around us, but Florence does not listen, instead peers
at the drainpipe, as if she's trying to figure out how to climb over the
balcony railing to get to it.

And then, as if the Snatcher
had been waiting for this moment, this Sleeper, Florence…it opens its wings,
unfurling them like black flags, unhooking its claws from the roof.

Charlie gazes up and up, face
stricken, mouth open.  “Florence, get
back inside,” she repeats, voice breaking, but Florence only gazes up at
the Snatcher stalking over the roof toward her.

She doesn’t move.

Charlie races past me, begins
to climb the drainpipe again, but she’s not fast enough, and the Snatcher is
too quick.  It glides off the roof, onto
the balcony, and smoothly, with practiced skill, it hooks its claws around
Florence’s waist, takes one leap, and flies into the night.  Disappears, black against black.

The world falls hideously
still.

Charlie drops down, hitting
the ground and falling against it, rolling as she lands on her knees, pressing
her head against the earth and sucking in a fractured sob.  I stare back up toward the balcony, at the
shadows moving in Charlie's room.  The
Sixers?  I can't tell, don't even want
to know…

I take Charlie's arm, help
her up, squeeze her hand, and together—Charlie crying, me trembling—we run
across the street, hiding in the shadows of a tired building as the Sixers
finally peer out of Charlie’s window at the empty balcony…and move back inside
the room.

“Florence,” Charlie whispers
over and over and over again, unable to breathe, her body wracked with quiet
sobs.  I hold her, lean her head against
my shoulder, and feel her pain piercing me through.

“Charlie, please listen,” I
try to tell her, but she shakes her head, rocks back and forth.

“She trusted me to help
her.  She trusted me to save her…” She
says it over and over again, a litany, a prayer.

“You did,” I say, but she
doesn't hear me, or doesn't understand, so I whisper it again, into the night,
into her ear, “Charlie, you did save her.  Please believe me.  You did.”

“I saved her?” she
spits out, laughing a little through her tears, rubbing at her face, pressing
her mouth against her hand.  “She was
just Snatched, Lottie.”

I gulp down air, breathe
out.  “Charlie, I know this sounds
wrong.  I know it does.  But Florence will be okay now.  It's…good that this happened, that she
was…Snatched.”

She stills, quiet as she
watches me in the darkness, brown eyes wide with horror.  “What did you just say?”  The words cut deep, are too sharp coming
from her mouth, but I shake my head, keep going.

“It’s…it’s good to be
Snatched.”  I falter as she stares.  “I…
There's too much to explain.  I
have to go.  You should—"  My voice breaks, and I wonder if this will
be the last time I'll ever see Charlie's face.
If the Sixers find me…  But I
can't pity myself; I chose to become a monster, and I must accept the
consequences of that choice.

"You should go back into
Mad House," I say hoarsely, pushing her forward a little.  "It’s not safe out here for you.”

“And it is for you?  Lottie, why are the Sixers after you?  Do you know?”

Yes, I know.

We stare at one another
helplessly in the darkness.  She takes
my hands, a soothing, familiar gesture, and threads her fingers through mine.

“Don’t,” I whisper, taking my
hands from hers, the warmth torn from my palms too quickly.  I shiver, stare down at the rubble beneath
us, scrub away the tears from my cheeks.

“Why?” she asks, breathes
out.  She sounds so lost, so
broken.  “Do you regret the kiss—”

“No.  No,” I repeat, wracked with
sorrow.  Still, I don't tell her.  How can I tell her?  I can’t bear the thought of the look on her
face, the change that will come over her when she knows, when she knows
everything.  I can’t.  Not yet.
Not now.

"You have to go—"

"I'm not leaving you,
Lottie."

"You have to—"

"No."  Tears shine on her face, but her expression
is set, stubborn, and she wraps her arm around my waist, standing so near to
me, so warm, so soft....

I move my eyes away,
trembling with every breath.  “We have
to get somewhere safe,” I manage, too weak to insist again that she leave me,
too ashamed to look in her eyes.  “Where
can we go that’s safe?  That the…the
Sixers can’t find us?”

“Black House,” she says,
doesn’t even pause, doesn’t even think.
“Edgar will keep us safe.”

“Please, let’s go.”  I move, tug at her fingers, and risk a
glance at her, then: she’s watching me carefully, eyes hooded and dark.

“Lottie,” she begins, but I
shake my head, swallow.

“Not yet.  Let’s get to Black House, to safety,
first.”

She nods, twice, and then
we’re running down the street, running away from Mad House, through Abeo City.

Fetchers are fast, and
Charlie’s the fastest, but I keep up well enough as our feet skid over the
rubble of the broken streets, as our bodies blur past the houses, past the
garbage piles, where Wisps move quietly, softly, illuminating the night.

There are no sounds above us
or behind us—no voices, no footsteps, no wings.  I chance a glance at Charlie beside me, at her hair streaked back
in the wind, at her red-rimmed eyes so fixed on what’s ahead of her.

I swallow, look forward
again.

Sooner or later, I have to
tell her.  Sooner or later, she’ll know
what I am.  But for this moment, this
heartbeat, she doesn’t.  Still, she
bears pain, because she thinks that what’s happened to Florence is
terrible.  Unthinkable.  Unimaginable.  In that, at least, I can offer her some comfort…  Once she knows the truth about the
Snatchers, her grief over Florence might ease.

We dash around the side of
Black House, panting as we stand near the back door.  Charlie jerks her thumb up to the window on the right, picks up a
bit of broken brick and throws it at the window.  “He’ll not like that,” she mutters, and it’s true: when the
curtain is inched back, when Edgar’s wide eyes peer out into the air, and then
down at us, his expression transforms from worry to anger in an instant.

He opens the window, glances
up at the sky again, then at us.  “What
are you doing out there?”

“The Sixers are after Lottie,”
says Charlie, words quick.

Edgar’s face changes again,
softening.  “Come up, come up,” he says,
gesturing, and tosses out a rope ladder.

“You kept it.  I knew you’d keep it,” says Charlie, when
she reaches the top, when she embraces him.
They help me in, then shut the window and draw the curtains back into
place.

“They’re after you?” says
Edgar, brows up, smile making his moustache arch.  He’s impressed.  I shake
my head.

“It’s not like that…” I
mutter.

“Like what?” he asks, cocking
his head.  But Charlie’s seated herself
on the edge of the bed, is staring down at her hands.  “What’s wrong?” he asks, glancing from me to her.  “What happened?”

“Florence,” says Charlie,
voice heavy.  “Snatched.”

“Oh,” he whispers,
paling.  “Charlie…”  He crosses over to her, sits down on the bed
beside her, puts an arm around her shoulders.
She takes a staggering breath, leans against him.

I chew on a fingernail,
glance at the doorway as someone moves through the hall beyond it quietly.  “Are we safe here?” I whisper, voice so soft
I mouth the words more than speak them.
Edgar nods, staring up at me.

“What did you do?” he asks
mildly.  I shake my head, begin to pace
the room.

“I…  It’s not what you think,” I repeat, but Charlie rubs her hand
under her nose, sniffling, and glances up at me.

“Then what should we think,
Lottie?” she asks.

I reach up, touch my lips
with cold fingers.  I remember what she
tasted like, her softness, her nearness.
I close my eyes, lean away from the both of them.  It’ll shatter, all of it, if I speak the
truth.

“Did the Sixers come here,
before Mad House?” I ask Edgar, and he nods, mouth drawn in a small line.

“They searched it.  For you,” he adds helpfully.  “I was more or less expecting the both of
you here after that, Snatchers or not.
They said they were going to search all of the Safe Houses.  There’s a reward for you, by the way.  So you know,” he mutters, grimacing.  “An entire crate of Nox.”

“A reward…”  I breathe out, stare down at the blackened
lines in my palms.  They've made me into
a fugitive.  No one must see me
now.  “Look…”  I glance up, bite my lip.
“Thank you so much for helping me.
Both of you.  But I have to
go.  I have to…”  I don’t know, honestly, what I have to
do.  I haven’t figured it out yet.  I have to find Bird.  I have to get the Sleepers past the Gray
Line, but how?  I lean against the wall,
slide down it until I clasp my knees with my arms, breathe out in a shudder.

I don’t know what to do.

“Lottie.”  Charlie crosses the space between us, kneels
down beside me.  “No matter what’s
happened, we’re still here for you.  I
still…” she breathes out, breathes in.
“I still love you.  No matter
what.”

I stare at her, eyes wide,
tears filling them quickly.  “No.  You…”
I swallow, shake my head.  “You can't
love me, Charlie.”

“What?”  There’s anger, now, in her voice, as she
sinks back on her heels.  “I can't?  What does that even mean?”

I sag, spent and numb.  “You can’t, because…”

"Because why?"
Edgar prompts.

"Okay," I breathe,
resolved.  "I'll tell
you."  The words spill out softly,
slowly.  “I’m…I’m a Sixer.”

I open my eyes, watch
Charlie, watch Edgar.  They stare at me
for a long moment before they, as one, shake their heads.  Edgar is actually smiling, but I draw in a
deep breath, lean forward.  “It’s the truth,”
I tell them, dragging out the words.  “I
am one of the three.  The third.  I am a Sixer.”

“How can you be…”  Charlie splutters, spreads her hands.  “You look nothing like them—”

“Looks can be
deceiving.”  I grit my teeth.  “I know how bizarre this must sound to you,
but I am the youngest Sixer.  My
sisters…they killed me—"

"What?"
Edgar gasps.  "What did you
say?"

"They killed me," I
repeat, biting my lip.  "But I came
back.  Listen…  That’s…that’s not even the most important part.”  I clench and unclench my fists.  “Twixt is… It’s what your kind call
Purgatory,” I tell them quickly.  “It’s
where souls go when they pass on, the…tortured souls.”

They stare at me, lips
parted, uncomprehending.

“Dead souls," I breathe
out, holding back tears.  "Charlie,
Edgar,” I say softly, quietly.  “You’re
both dead.”

Charlie sits back on the
floorboards, elbows on her knees, watching me with unblinking eyes,
swallowing.  Edgar stands, then sits
down again, then stands once more, taking a step forward.

“Say the word,” he whispers,
eyes wide, bright.  “Say it again.”

“Dead,” I repeat, and when he
opens his mouth, tries to say it, nothing comes out but a hiss of air.  “It’s part of the illusion,”  I tell him, trying to keep my voice calm, steady.  “Sleepers can’t talk about anything related
to death.  It’s…to keep them calm,” I
spit out, pressing my fingernails into my palms.  “To keep them from discovering the truth.”

“I don’t understand,” says
Charlie then, voice small, and I risk a glance at her, and my heart breaks into
slivers, each piece stabbing a little deeper.
She’s watching me with guarded eyes, hurting eyes.

Fearful eyes.

“The Sixers built…"  I exhale heavily.  "We built Abeo City, in Twixt,” I say, cradling my
head, “to trap souls, so that we could devour them.  Because that's what Sixers do."  I look up at them, trembling.
"Eat souls.  Your
souls.  You sell bits of hair to the
Sixers for Nox, and the more hair you sell, the more of your soul you give over
to them, until you Fade away.  And then
you belong solely to the Sixers, as if by contract, and they devour the last of
you, and you become nothingness."

"Nothingness,"
Edgar repeats, his face pale.

I nod, breathing in.  "It’s a finely made trap.  An illusion.  Nothing more.  All of this
is,” I say, holding up my hands, not my hands, palms up.  “And I… I wanted to stop.  I didn’t want to be part of it anymore.  Sixers…"  I swallow.  "We’re
demons.  But we weren’t always demons,”
I whisper.

Charlie shifts, drawing her
legs up to her chin.

I go on, because silence now
would be worse than anything I might say.
“The Snatchers?  They’re made to
look ugly, monstrous, but they’re not really, not at all.  They're lovely.  They're rescuers.
Snatchers save you, take you away from here.  They’re good…” I finish, faltering, as Charlie’s eyes fill with
tears.

“Florence…” whispers Charlie,
and I nod.

“Florence being taken was a
good thing,” I tell her, breathing the words.
“If she hadn't been taken, she would have Faded, and then…"

Charlie rests her head
against her knees.

"I know it’s hard to
believe.  Everything in Abeo City was
constructed to make you fear the Snatchers.
But it’s all a lie.  Everything
here is a lie,” I say hoarsely, with a sort of wild finality, falling back
against the wall, closing my eyes.

“Lottie,” says Edgar slowly,
carefully.  “I know there have been
strange things about you.  And it’s
true—I haven’t seen the third Sixer in a long time.  But…”  He trails off,
searching for the words.  “How long have
you known this?”

“I remembered only today,” I
tell him, gazing up at him, unwavering.
“I didn’t know until today.”

“Why should we believe you?”
he asks then.

I stare at him, open my
mouth, whisper, "I don't know."
Why should they believe me?
All I have is the truth, no evidence.
Only words.  I don’t know what
else to say, or do, but Charlie gets up, breathes out, glances at Edgar.

“I believe her,” she says,
words soft.

Edgar licks his lips, sits
back down on the edge of the bed.

"Lottie," Charlie
says, and her voice sends a shiver through me—of fear, of hope, of want…

I look up at her.

Charlie offers me a hand, but
she won’t look at me as I take it, and the hope that had swelled in my heart
deflates as I stand, as we both stand there awkwardly, leaning away from one
another, together and apart.

“Look,” says Edgar, voice
tired, “I have a lot to think about right now.
You two need some privacy, I’m sure…
After Florence, I mean.”  He
unfolds himself and stands, edging toward the door.

Charlie watches him go.  “Edgar—”

“It’s a lot to think
about.”  He pauses before the door,
considering me.  Doubt darkens his
gaze.  “See you in the morning,” he says
brusquely, and then he’s gone.

We're alone, Charlie and me.

Perhaps Edgar has gone to
fetch the Sixers.  I wonder if I should
follow him, beg him not to tell, not before I can convince the Sleepers to go
to the Gray Line…

“He won't tell," Charlie says then, heavily, reading my
thoughts.  "I think…I think he was
just afraid of you,” she finishes, sighing.
Still, she won’t look at me; she's staring at her hands.

I curl my own hands into weak
fists as a blunt ache presses between my ribs.
“Charlie,” I start, but I don’t know what else to say.  I just needed to whisper her name while it's
still mine to whisper, while she's still here with me.

“I believe you,” she says,
staring down at the floor.  “I just lost
Florence.  I know what you said…  I know you said the Snatchers were…good.  But as a Fetcher, I'm wired to run from
Snatchers, to keep people safe from them.  And now you’re telling me that they're the safety.  It’s just…just overwhelming, you know?  Like everything you’ve ever known,
changing.  And not all for the better.”  She glances up, then, and she stares at me
with wet, brown eyes.  She looks at me,
truly looks at me, searching deeply, and I feel so naked beneath her gaze, as
if she can see into my marrow, see under my skin to the monster that lies
beneath.

I take a step back.  I can’t stand for her to look at me like
this: detached, considering.  It’s not
the disgusted look I expected, the revulsion.
I thought she would run.  I
thought—

"Lottie…"

I hold my breath, brace
myself.  The moment hovers: I don’t know
what her next words will be.

I close my eyes, breathe
out.  Wait.

“Lottie.”

I open my eyes.

She steps forward slowly, as
if she’s not really moving at all.
Charlie reaches up her hand, and then the warmth of her palm is against
my arm, my shoulder as she traces it up and over the skin of my neck, cupping
my cheek with her hand.  I stay very
still, breathing in and out as I feel the warmth of her against me, her
black-lined palm against my face.

It’s all too much, the
stillness, the warmth, her softness.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, closing my eyes, biting back tears,
swallowing raggedly.  "I told
you—"

“I remember,” she says,
breathing out, “the first time I saw the third Sixer.  She walked behind the others on their way to the Need Shop.  I was in the Wanting Market, with Edgar.  He’s the one who Fetched me, you know.  He was telling me that the Sixers couldn’t
be trusted, and she looked up at us, then, across the Market.  That third one, the youngest.  She saw us.
I guess she heard us.  Her hood
fell back, and she didn’t look like the other Sixers, not exactly.  Her eyes were red, and there were
tears…  Lottie, she was weeping.”

I feel as if all the air has
gone from me.  I sag, crouch down, sit
on the cold, wooden boards of the floor.
I feel horrified that Charlie saw me like that; I don't remember it,
don't want to remember anything more from that part of my existence.  I bow my head, flushed and sad.

Charlie squats down in front
of me, tilts up my chin, and searches my eyes.

“The thing about Twixt,” she
says, voice cracking.  She swallows,
continues, “Is that everyone is obsessed with the past, right?  Everyone.
But in Twixt, we can’t touch the past anymore.  All we can do is watch it.  And we have no future.
Everything in Twixt points to this moment.  Right here.  Right now.  Because it’s all we have.”

She’s holding my hand.  I don’t remember her reaching across the space
between us; I don’t remember her threading her fingers through mine.  Cold tears falls down my face, and all I am
is empty, is pain.  “Charlie…”

“No,” she whispers, shaking
her head.  “We’ve come to this
place.  We’re together.  You, me.
How do you explain that?”

I breathe out.  “Sometimes things just happen—”

“This?”  She looks down at our hands, presses her
other hand to her heart.  “This didn’t
just happen.”

I can’t stand to see her hand
with my hand, try to disentangle them.
“I’m a monster,” I breathe.
“I’m not what you see.
It’s an illusion, Charlie.
I told you.  I’m hideous—don’t
you understand?  Worse than what you've
seen of the Snatchers, far worse.  I’m a
fallen creature.  I’ve devoured souls;
I’ve lived to devour souls—”

“They killed you,” she says softly, leaning forward, “because you
stopped.”

“Oh, Charlie.”  I press my face
against her shoulder, feel her warmth as she wraps her arms around me, holding
me close.  I am so ashamed, disgrace
slick on my skin, eating through to my insides.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow," Charlie says,
smoothing her hand over my hair.
"I have nothing left, except for you.  And you are the most lovely—”

“Don't.”  I’m shaking my head,
trying to push away from her, but she stills me, arms firm, hands along my
arms, eyes locked on mine.

“Whatever you are, Lottie, I love you,” she whispers.

“I don’t deserve it,” I’m telling her, but she’s shaking her head,
tracing her fingers up my arm to my cheek, pressing a long finger against my
lips.

“It’s not about deserving.  None
of us has a past here, Lottie.  And
now…"  She gazes at me, a faint
smile curving her lips.  "Now is ours.  Let's not let it slip
away."

My heart aches—with pain and love, twined together, inseparable.

"I love you, Lottie.”

I reach across the space between us, curve my fingers through her hair,
draw her to me, my lips against her lips, kissing her like she contains the air
I need to breathe, like she is my air, my sky, the only thing that's
real inside an artificial world.

I kiss her, and I don’t know what’s going to happen now.  I am so afraid, and I am so tired
of being afraid.  The Sixers, my
sisters...  They’re not afraid of
anything, have never been afraid.  They
are, after all, monsters, and what does a monster need to fear?

Charlie is warm and soft and lovely.
She tastes of cinnamon, of fire, and when she drifts her fingers down my
neck and shoulders again, taking the collar of my dress with them, her skin
against mine is like cinnamon, too, a dusting of spice, of warmth, as she
shrugs out of her coat and shirt, as I shrug out of my dress, the cloth
crumpling against the floor like a textured shadow.

In the darkness of the room, with the gentle, constant plinking of the Wisps against their glass jars, there’s just enough light to
make out features, just enough light to be ashamed beneath her gaze.  I feel the heat rising in me, and I cover
myself, trying to hide even as I gaze up at her, at her strength as she stands
before me, beautiful, perfect, her curves swelling with her shadows in the soft
yellow light.

“Stop,” she says, and she takes my hands.  “Stop,” she murmurs, her mouth against my skin.  “You’re beautiful,” she says, and
she whispers it over and over as my tears come, as we lay down on Edgar’s bed,
as I move beneath her fingers, her lips, all I am a heartbeat.

She presses her palms against my palms, our black lines merging
together as I close my eyes, feeling her length over mine, like stars over
earth.  I remember stars as she captures
my mouth with hers.

I’ve never loved.  There was
nothing to pin that feeling to, that intensity of growing heart, that rush of
blood through veins.  Love was the
luxury of beings who could die, because then life was precious, not a
commodity.  Not something to be
devoured.

But I died, didn’t I?  I was
killed, and I know what things are precious, and maybe I knew before, when I
was sickened by our gluttony, by our greed.
As she touches me, her fingers moving over my skin like light, like
shadow, I know a new hunger.  I know
what things are precious.  And they can
merge together, these two concepts...

They have.

I love her, I know.  And with
the acknowledgment of that, I am no longer afraid as she tastes me, touches me,
as I taste and touch her.  The fear
falls away like a husk, like a metamorphosis, as she tears away the layers of
ugliness to what I am beneath.

In her eyes, something lovely.

She whispers my name in the dark.
The name she gave me.

“Lottie…”

And her love devours me whole, shaping me.  Changing me.  Making me
over, new.

I am not afraid.

Chapter Eight:  Hunt

“Well.”

I sit up, breath coming fast, Charlie opening an eye beside me
blearily, not making a single motion to cover up.  We’re both sprawled on the bed, limbs tangled together like
string that you’ll never unravel.

“It’s not like I haven’t caught you in the act a thousand times,” is
what Charlie tells Edgar, who stands at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, smug
smile curving his lips up beneath his mustache.

“True, true.  But it is
my bed.”

“Oh.  Yeah.”  Charlie sits up then, runs her fingers
through her hair, grinning at me.  Edgar
picks up her pants gingerly, tossing them to her from the floor, and she swings
her legs over the side of the bed, sliding the pants on one leg at a time.  I watch her distractedly, thinking over last
night…and yesterday.

“The Sixers are moving up the Bone Feast,” says Edgar then, smile
falling away from his face.  “I just
heard the news.  I think they’re using
it to try to flush Lottie out of hiding.
They’re doing it tomorrow.”

“Shit,” Charlie murmurs, glancing at me.

“They won’t find me.  I know
what I have to do,” I tell both of them.
“It’s just…”  I trail off, pick
at a thread disentangling itself from the blanket, wrap it around my
fingers.  “It just seems impossible.”

“I love impossible things,” says Edgar, folding his arms.  “For example:  a Sleeper and a Sixer falling in love!  Nothing is as impossible as it seems, ever.”  He seems so resolute when he says that, and
tips his hat cheerfully.

So he believes me now.  And…I
don't think he's afraid of me anymore.

I take a deep breath, glance to Charlie.  She's still grinning at me.
I smile back.

“Well,” I say slowly, carefully, sobering.  “It seems impossible, because I need to convince the
Sleepers to give in to their worst fear—to get Snatched.”

Edgar and Charlie, Fetchers who have been trained to avoid the
Snatchers at all costs, lean forward, though I can't help noticing how their
faces pale, how Charlie's grin vanishes.

I stare at the floor, swallow, but Charlie moves against me and covers
my hands with hers.

“We’re listening,” she promises, bending down to brush her lips over my
fingers.

*

I remain in Edgar’s room, because I can’t be seen.  If I’m seen, the Sixers will hear about it,
fast.  Anyone besides Charlie, besides
Edgar and Violet, would rather have the reward of Nox than protect me and risk
the Sixers' wrath.  And I can't blame
them.

Charlie’s left, and Edgar, too.
I watched them walk away from Black House without looking back as I
peeked around the edge of the curtains, wishing I were with them.  This place, being trapped in this place,
with no way out, makes my heart race.
But at nightfall, I’ll be free again, and tomorrow, everything will
begin.

I pace the room quietly, counting my footsteps.  I lean against the wall, think about last
night, my body aching for her, for Charlie.
It feels so much, this body.  I
stare down at my hands, touch my fingers to my palms.  When she left today, right in front of Edgar, she put her arms
around my waist, drew me forward and kissed me deeply.  It made my heart leap up against my ribs,
that kiss, and when she stepped back, she was grinning, eyes downcast, hair
feathered and floating around her head like light.  I loved her so much in that moment, it was this fierceness of
knowing that flooded through me, so warm it made me breathe out, breathless.

I promised Charlie that I would to try to stay in the present.  Now, here.
In the only moment I have.  But
it’s impossible, really…  I have to
think about tomorrow.  I have to think
about all of the people who need to know the truth—about Twixt, about
themselves.  The people I hope to
save.  The people I might fail utterly.

This, all of this, could crumble at any moment for any number of
reasons.  If the Sixers find me—if they
kill me again, devour my soul…  I’d be
lying to say that I don’t fear it.  Of
course I do.  I can’t imagine
nothingness, though I’ve brought it about myself so many times.

But I fear more what will happen to these people if I don’t act, if I
don’t try to shift things.  And now
Charlie and Edgar know.  If the Sixers
find me, eat me up, Charlie and Edgar could lead the Sleepers.  They could start a revolution.  I know they would.  They would change things, and that’s enough.  That has to be enough for me.

But still, I pace.

Edgar and Charlie went to find Violet, and though I’m no judge of
daylight, I think it’s halfway through the day when I hear footsteps outside
Edgar’s door.  Though I’ve been peeking
out of the curtains at intervals, I might have missed their return.

A creak of boards, feet against wood.
And the door does not open.

There’s a knock against it.

Not Charlie, then.  Not
Edgar.  I stare at the door, heart
pounding.  I glance at the bed that’s so
far away, that’s too close to the ground, anyway, to hide me, and then I look
to the curtains.

When the door opens, when Isabel steps in, I have my body pressed as
close to the wall as I can, breathing in and out softly.  The curtain is likely still gusting from my
movements, when I twitched them aside and inserted my body into a natural
fold.  I can see Isabel only
peripherally; she steps into the room, casting her eyes about, hands on her
hips.

She pauses for far too long, and then she turns, angling her body
towards the curtains.

She locks eyes with me, peering through the curtain’s crack against the
wall.

“Isabel?” calls Miss Black from the hall.  “Anything?”

“No, Miss Black,” she says sweetly, stepping forward, kicking the door
shut behind her.  “I see you,” she
whispers then, in a chilling, singsong voice.

I push the heavy curtains aside, watching her, panting.  I consider the window, leaping from it, but
it’s daylight outside, and this close to the Wanting Market, there are Sleepers
out there.  They’ll see me.  And if I injure myself, I won't be able to
run fast enough to escape, hide…

I could run past Isabel, out the door, down into Black House.  But are there Sixers in here?  Did they demand another search?  Is that why Isabel’s here, looking in
Edgar's room?

We stare at one another for a long moment, Isabel and I.

I lick my lips.  I open my
mouth.  “Isabel—”

“I’ll scream,” she whispers.

We stay still, standing, staring at one another.

“What do you want?” I ask then, heavily.

She watches me for a long moment, nose up, lips in a sneer.  But it falters—for a heartbeat, the bitter
curve slips from her mouth, and in its place, there's
something…pain-filled.  Longing.

“Is Charlie going to get into trouble because of you?” she hisses then,
startling me.

I blink, silent for so long that she gets angry, takes a step forward,
hands balled into fists.

“Why would you care?”  The words
whip from my tongue, shocking her motionless.

She opens and shuts her mouth.
There are tears in her eyes, and she dashes them away with the backs of
her wrists, turns, puts her hand on the doorknob.

“I don’t know,” I answer her, then.
“I don’t know if she will suffer because of me.  It’s all…
All of this is wrong, Isabel.  If
you’d just let me tell you the truth—”

“I won’t say I found you,” she whispers and, pasting a smile on her
face, lets herself out into the hall, shutting the door with a click behind her.

I stare at the door, slumping, kneeling down upon the floorboards, my
whole body shaking.

I don’t know if she’ll keep her word; she might trot off to Miss Black
right now, or to the Sixers themselves.
But there was something in the way she spoke…

I think I believe her.

Charlie did love her once, after all.

I itch at my skin, lean against the wall, close my eyes, try not to
think too much about Charlie embracing Isabel, kissing her, whispering into her
ear, tracing her fingers over her pale skin.

I scrub at my eyes, stare down at my palms, my hands.

All that time, Isabel was using Charlie…wasn’t she?

Is Charlie going to get into trouble because of you?

I don't know how much time passes, but the next time the door opens,
Edgar and Violet are there.  And
Charlie…  Oh, Charlie.  I rise stiffly from the floor, race across
the space between us and put my arms around her shoulders.  I kiss her once, then back up, breathing out
as she smiles at me worriedly, squeezing my hands with her reassuring fingers.

“Hi,” says Violet, shoving her hands into her pockets, mouth sideways,
pushing past us to get into the room.
“Are you…okay?”

“Yeah,” I manage, glancing to Edgar, who leans against the now-shut
door.  I don’t want to talk about
Isabel, not with Charlie—and, after all, Isabel promised not to say
anything.

And the Sixers haven't come for me yet.

“What’s going on outside?” I ask.

“They’re preparing for the Bone Feast and ripping Abeo apart looking
for you,” says Edgar softly, studying his nails again.  “But it seems they’ve stopped searching the
Safe Houses.  And I really do think they’re
assuming you’ll come out of hiding for the Bone Feast.  Or that you’ll be much easier to find
then.  Who can guess how a Sixer
thinks?”

There's a moment of tension, as I draw my mouth closed and stare
intently at the wall.  No one speaks,
the answer to Edgar's question quivering in the air.

Who can guess how a Sixer thinks…but a Sixer herself?

I run my hands through my hair, separate from Charlie, go back to
pacing the small room.  “The Sixers
built Abeo.  They can find anyone or
anything, but I don’t think they can find themselves.  Me.  I
think I’m hidden from them.  I must be,
or they would have found me already, wouldn’t they have?”  I bite my lip.

“We’ve a night.  Tomorrow
morning, the Bone Feast begins, and that’s when we’ve got to start
moving.”  Edgar smoothes his mustache,
sighs, pausing.  “You know, I’ve been
giving this a lot of thought, and I must say, Lottie—it would be so much easier
to sell this story to the Sleeping mob if it wasn’t all leading up to getting Snatched.”

“The Sixers set it up that way on purpose.”  My voice is so small.
“The Snatchers needed to be as terrifying as possible so that no one
would figure out that they were the way to escape Abeo City.”

“It’s just hard to swallow, is all,” says Violet, then, leaning against
the wall.  She hasn’t smiled at me,
hasn’t really looked at me since coming in.
“All of this.”

“Violet,” says Charlie, watching her, but she shakes her head, pushes
off and crosses her arms.

“I know you both explained it to me.
I got it all.  It's just…”  Violet shrugs her shoulders, eyes on the
floor.

I glance to Edgar, who raises his eyebrows.  “We can’t say the ‘d’ word, but we can sure as hell say ‘not
living,’ apparently.”  He winks at me.

“But, Lottie…”  Violet lets her
arms fall and gazes at me now.  There’s
fear in her eyes, a trembling in the blue.
“A Sixer?”

“I’m sorry," I say, and bow my head.

I am sorry.  I'm responsible, in
part, for all of this.  Perhaps I'm even
worse than my sisters, because I always felt it was wrong, and I let it happen,
anyway.  My hands knot together, and I
stand before the window, the curtains drawn tight.

“No,” mutters Charlie, then, standing a little straighter.  “We are what we are, Vi.  You know that.  And we do what we can with what we are and
what we’ve been given.  We can’t help where we come from, but we can sure as Snatchers help where we’re
going.”

I turn from the window, look to Violet.  She watches Charlie for a long moment, shifts her gaze back to
me.  My feet are planted firmly beneath
my hips, and I stand there, fingernails dug into my palms but locking eyes with
her.

“It’s just hard,” Violet begins, and falters when she sees my face.

“Tell me about it,” I say quietly, simply.

We stare at one another, and she relents, stepping forward, putting her
arms around me.  “Lottie, I’m afraid.”

“Of me?”  I close my eyes,
returning the embrace, my arms loose around her shoulders.

“No,” she says, then, shaking her head against my shoulder, and I
believe her.  “Of all of this.  Of the other Sixers.  Of the Snatchers.  Of Abeo.  Of Twixt.  To imagine that there could be an ending to
this…not a terrible ending, like I always thought I’d get, but
something all right…  And it is
all right, what comes after.  Right,
Lottie?”

I squeeze her tightly, work my jaw.
“Yes.  That I remember, for the
people flown away from Twixt, it was…all right.”

“To imagine that…” she huffs out, pressing her nose to my
shoulder.  “It’s hard to imagine that, because all I’ve been doing is running from
everything since I got here, just like everyone else.  But to imagine something better is…  It’s hard to find a word for it.”  She falters, presses away from me, searching my face.

I breathe out, nodding.

I can't find the word, either.

*

Night.  Darkness drags along the
ground as Charlie and I move from shadow to shadow in the street, making our
way through Abeo City.  I’ve got to get
back to Mad House, because Mad House is closest to the wall, and outside the
wall is the Sixers’ house, and that’s where I need to be tomorrow.

Tomorrow, during the Bone Feast.

That’s when it ends.

Charlie got me a coat with a hood, and I have it pulled tight about my
face, though it’s not as if there are many people traversing the streets at
night in Abeo City, with the Snatchers watching, sentinel, perching along every
rooftop, crouching on the skeletons of broken buildings.  They make no move to stir, don’t lift a wing
as we race past them, but they watch us, pale skulls turning as we pass.

“It’s bizarre,” says Charlie, raking her fingers through her hair.  Her hands are shaking.  “I’ve never seen them act like this before.”

“They know something’s happening.
Something's about to change.
They know…”  I whisper, glancing
up.  I nod, once, to the nearest
Snatcher, the one on the ridgepole of a dilapidated building, more rubble than
wall.

The Snatcher has a ragged right wing, and it tilts its skull toward me
as it watches us pass.

We’re almost to Mad House—just one more corner—when the bulky shadow
moves out from beneath the cover of a shredded awning.  We stop, cold, as it shuffles forward,
peeling back a hood, revealing the white face beneath.

And then I relax, almost collapsing with relief, as I take the final
two steps and embrace Bird so tightly, I have to pull back, worried that she
isn't able to breathe.

Charlie watches us for a moment, working her jaw.

"This is Bird, Charlie," I tell her, and understanding dawns
on her face.

After Charlie and Edgar came back to Black House with Violet, I told
them all about Bird, explaining as best as I could manage that Bird was part of
me, that she and I had been the third Sixer together.

"It’s you…” Charlie murmurs now, stepping forward, looking from
me, to Bird, back to me again.  “You
don’t…  I was thinking you’d look
alike.”

“What’s done is done.  Wasn’t
meant to look pretty,” says Bird, hands on her hips.  She cocks her head, birdlike, as she watches me.  “They’re after you, lovely,” she says,
clucking her tongue.

I feel better with Bird here, near me.
Stronger.  I wonder…

“Bird, now that we’re together—can we join up again?  I don’t think this separation is
natural.  We're not supposed to be…”  I trail off as her gaze narrows, dark eyes
flashing.

“What’s done is done,” she says, taking my hand, squeezing it.  “We're apart for a reason.  Tomorrow…”

“Tomorrow,” I repeat, nodding.
Somehow, she knows.

“I’ll see you when the bodies need saving,” she whispers, darting
forward, pressing her chapped lips against my cheek.  “Somehow, this will come to rights.  It must, mustn’t it?  How
can the play end on a sour note?”  She
shakes her head, turns to go.  “Best get
inside.  You don’t want to see the hunt that’s
beginning.”  And, just like that, she’s
merged with the shadows, disappearing like ink into the ground.

“The hunt…”  Charlie
whispers.  “Why does she talk like
that?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her, the truth.
I turn to her, reach out, touch her arm, realize my fingers are shaking,
and shiver.

“We need to get to Mad House, is what she meant,” Charlie growls, and
then we’re running down the street, and there’s only one corner, really,
between us and the house, but I pause—we both do—because there are voices ahead
that seem to originate near Mad House.

Voices I recognize.

I stare at Charlie, eyes wide with fear.

“Sixers,” I breathe out, and she takes my wrist, tugging me into the
skeleton of a broken building, crouching behind a pile of rubble.

“Why have they come out again?”
Charlie’s voice hisses, and her eyes are angry, but her mouth is
trembling.  “They’ve searched the stupid
house three times now…”

I press a finger to her lips and listen, breathing out quietly.

The Snatchers lining the rooftops flutter their wings, a whoosh like a sigh.  I can hear the
Sixers’ boots on the rubble outside our hiding place, can hear them coo softly
to one another, a sound that makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.  I remember, half-remember, like a memory
from a dream, them making that same cooing sound when they locked me into the
room the first time, after the key slid into the lock of the bird-covered
door.

“What are they doing?”  Charlie
mouths to me, eyes wide in the dark.  I
shake my head, and we crouch, muscles straining, barely breathing, until we
hear the scream.

It’s a piercing shriek that the Snatcher makes, far different from the
creatures' characteristic wails.  This
scream is extended, a scream of pain.
There’s a sound of meat against meat, a dull thud, and then
silence.

And the Sixers laugh—their voices cold, drawn out and stabbing, like
barbs.  I risk a look, rising from my
hiding place, peering over the mound of rubble out to the street.

There, my sisters hold up their hands, claws extended, and between them
on the ground, curled up in a bony heap on top of and entangled in their hair,
is a Snatcher.

I stare as the creature curls in upon itself, using its wings as a
shield against my sisters, cowering beneath their gaze.  I watch, breathing out, breath catching, as
the hair seems to move, seems to crawl up and over the Snatcher,
pinioning its bones to the rubble-strewn streets.

The Snatcher writhes, screams, tries to rise, but the hair is like a
net, pinning it there.

One of the Sixers glances at the Snatchers upon the roof, hooks a
curling finger in their direction, and the nearest Snatcher falls, as if it
suddenly lost its balance, tumbling to the ground with a heavy thud.  The Sixer that felled it stalks forward,
hooking her fingers toward her slowly, her hair dragging behind her but also
moving with her, like a shadow.  The
fallen Snatcher scrapes along the ground, rolling in front of her, toward her,
pausing at her feet.  And her hair, like
a predator, spiderwebs over the rubble and over the Snatcher, tangling itself
with the white bones.

I stare, heart racing, breath coming too fast—they’ll hear!  I try to calm down, hold my
breath, gripping Charlie's arm and shutting my eyes.

The Snatchers are hideous, terrifying; they were made to appear that way, fear built into their feathers and bones like the
spun nightmare Abeo is.  But I know what
they are now, truly, beneath their dreadfulness.  And even if I didn’t know…
These are creatures wracked with pain, helpless, struggling, and ensnared
by a pair of pitiless oppressors.  My
sisters.

The second Sixer laughs again, plucks something out from beneath her
arm, unfurls it.  A sack of shadow
lowers over the Snatchers, growing to accommodate the creatures' scale, pooling
across the ground.  Then the sack opens,
dark maw gaping, and swallows both of the Snatchers in a quick, silent
moment.

The eldest Sixer ties the bag closed with one vicious movement, and
then she and my other sister drag the sack down the street, away from Mad
House.  The contents within the sack of
darkness squirm, a claw pressing against the cloth, reaching back toward us,
almost pleading.

Even after they turn the corner, the Sixers’ hair snakes over the
ground.  I stare at it in morbid
fascination.  It seems…alive.  Could it see us, snare us, if we shot out
into the road now?

I feel Charlie's gaze, turn to look at her.  She stares at me with wide eyes, still seated beside me, leaning
against the pile of rubble.  “What just
happened?” she asks, voice soft.

I stare up at the Snatchers whose heads are tilted toward us, every
last one—waiting.

“I think the Bone Feast has begun,” I whisper.

Chapter Nine:  Bone

The Bone Feast starts, in earnest, at first light.

I rest against Charlie's chest, her hand woven through my hair, as the
darkness ebbs and light bleeds through the edges of the curtains in her room.

There's an outcry outside; the shouting seems to go on forever, and
it's accompanied by voices, so many voices, outside of Mad House as the
Sleepers stream into the streets, gathering together.

Charlie presses a kiss to the top of my head and rises, tugging at the
sleeves of her coat, combing her fingers through her hair.  “How do I look?” she laughs wryly, smiling
at me, but her mouth twitches sideways, like it doesn’t wish to hold a grin but
a frown.

“Beautiful,” I tell her, putting my arms about her neck, pulling her
down to meet my mouth.  My insides
squeeze, tighten, as her lips touch mine, because it’s the beginning of the
end, and I’m doing my best to hold myself together.  I’m not afraid, not for myself.
But as I feel Charlie’s warmth against me, her body a perfect fit for my
mine, feel the gentleness of her hands at my waist, holding me, I’m afraid for
what we’ve become.  And what we're going
to lose.

“Lottie?” asks Charlie, then, breathing my name into my ear.  I sigh, look up at her, force a smile.  As if she knows what I’m thinking, she
shakes her head.  “Lottie, it’s worth
it, all of this.  We can free them all.”

We, she said.  Not you.

I’m not alone.  She said we.

I nod, swallow the melancholy, put my hands at the small of her
back.  “I’ll watch from the window,” I
tell her, and she nods, too, reaching back and squeezing my hand, and then
diving in for one last kiss.

I feel dizzy when we part; she leaves the room too quickly, and an ache
unfurls in my heart.

Charlie has to go to the Bone Feast, has to represent Mad House with
Abigail.  If she doesn't go, the Sixers
will be suspicious of her, and I can't let myself think of how they would hurt
her, what they would do…

She had to go.

But I feel her absence like a hole within me.

Now I’m alone.  I press my
black-lined palm against my cheek, and I still feel Charlie's warmth against my
skin, her lips...

Down below, in the streets, Violet and Edgar will already be moving
amongst the other Sleepers.  And Bird is
probably all right, for now.

We are all still connected, even though we're apart: strands drawn taut
from one heart to the next.  The
sharpest pair of scissors could not sever us.

I pace, and my skin itches.  I
want to be out there.  I want to begin
this.  But I have to wait for
tonight.

Just a few hours more.

I step to the curtain, draw it back a sliver, and peek at the street
below.

There are strings of jars and lanterns laced across the tops of the
buildings, along the ridge of the piles of rubble.  Inside the glass confines, Wisps dance, adding a warm glow to the
already brightening streets.  There are
so many Sleepers, I lose my breath.  So
many…  I hadn't seen, hadn't known there
were so many.

And it’s strange: watching them, I almost remember…

I remain still for a long moment, curtain pinched between my fingers,
thinking back, trying to dislodge a memory teasing at my thoughts.  Ever since the Sixers spoke to me, small
memories return, unbidden, often catching me unawares.

I don’t remember the Sleepers gathering here for the Bone Feast
before, in front of Mad House.  I stare
down at the throngs of people, unseeing.
Yes.  They used to gather in the
Wanting Market, would move the tents aside so that the center of the square was
open enough to contain all of the Sleepers in Abeo.  It's rare, for the Sleepers to linger outdoors for hours
together.  Normally, they stay within
the Safe Houses, where they're protected from Snatchers.  Sleepers never gather like this, only during
the Bone Feast.  The Wanting Market is
the only space large enough to hold all of them.

So why are they having this Bone Feast in the street before Mad
House?  It makes no sense, but even as I
think the question, I already know the answer, and my heart sinks.

They know.

Down below, the Sixers stride between the Sleepers, two hooded figures
that the crowd parts for, the Sleepers edging back from their black cloaks and
writhing black hair.  As one, the Sixers
glance up at Charlie’s window, my window, their hoods hiding their faces, and I
let the curtain fall.

I step back, heart thundering against my ribs, then press my eye to a
tiny pinprick hole in the fabric.  They
still watch the window, the two of them as unmoving as the broken fountain
statue in the square.  The hair on the
back of my neck rises, and I hold my breath, and my heart hardly dares to
beat…  But after a long, pointed moment,
they glide along, walking slowly down the street, seeming to flow over the
ground like spilled black water.

My eyes drift to faces I recognize in the crowd: Violet and Edgar,
standing close together, near Mad House.
And, as I watch, Edgar moves his hand slowly until it’s following the
bow of Violet’s side.  She doesn’t move
away from him; she leans into him, glancing up at him, the corners of her
mouth, so often pulled down, curving up.
He cocks his hat, grins back, and they stroll through the crowd, away
from my window, linked together.

A bright starburst flares in my belly—for Edgar, who wanted this; for
Violet, who finally let it happen, after holding Edgar off for so long…because
she was afraid to care that much about someone else.

I think of Charlie and something crumples inside of me.  I clutch a handful of curtain and rake in a
deep breath.

Time is drawing close.  Everyone
feels it.  I step back from the window,
sitting down on the edge of Charlie’s bed for a long moment, pressing my hand
against my thrumming heart, the other gripping the soft covers.  I can feel time moving all around me, like
air, like breath, a breeze of minutes tugging at the encroaching night.

And then, like a sigh, the murmur of voices fades to nothingness
outside.

I get up, cross to the curtain once more, peer through the tiny
hole.  All of the people are facing one
direction.  I move to the edge of the
curtain, twitch it aside to gain a better view of the street.

Below, the lanterns and jars burn bright.  The amassed Sleepers turn, as one, toward the edge of the street,
where the two Sixers stand on a pile of rubble, still and silent as shadows,
their hair dripping away from them like a bizarre, blackened waterfall.  The eldest Sixer raises her hand, crooking a
long, bony claw of a finger.

A cage is drawn into view from around the edge of the dilapidated
building.  And then the purity of
silence crumbles as the Sleepers shout, moving, jostling to see, to witness.

A huge and rusty iron cage turns, suspended upon nothing, though it
swings as if on an invisible chain over the pile of rubble.  And crumpled upon the floor of the cage are
the two Snatchers from last night, the ones the Sixers caught while Charlie and
I hid in the darkness.  They crouch,
monstrously huge—though, in the daylight, they seem diminished.  Misplaced and, somehow, less.

The people begin to laugh, because the Snatchers' great wings are
plucked clean, now only sharp dull bone, like the rest of their bodies.  They curve these bone wings around their
shoulders, trying to shield themselves from the people pointing, jeering, but
the smaller one stands, staring at the crowd, hollow eyes unseeing but seeing
all the same.

“Look!” say the Sixers together, as one.  My throat scratches as they do this, and I lean against the wall
for support.  “Look at the monsters now!  The great Snatchers, fallen to us!  You will feast upon their Nox, but look at
what hunts you.  Pathetic,” they hiss, the word rising into the sky, burrowing into every ear,
snakelike and writhing.

Pathetic.

The Snatchers cower in the center of the cage, their great bulk of
bones pressing up against one another, entwining, as the Sleepers surge forward
on a wave of anger.  One Sleeper, a man,
hefts a rock from the rubble and throws it at the cage.  It glances harmlessly off the bars, the
metallic ring of the iron echoing, but then others follow his example, grasp
rocks, rubble, bricks, and begin to pelt the Snatchers with them.  Their fear of being Snatched has been
transformed into fury, fury directed at these two featherless Snatchers.   A rock cracks against bone, and a brick
smashes a dome of ribs, but the Snatchers don't shriek, don't plead, hardly
even move.  They only watch the crowd
with beaks bent low.

I remember what they are.  I
remember who they are, who's held captive within the
illusion that warps them, and I claw at the wall and swallow my tears.  I am weak with revulsion, so sickened that I
sink to my knees.  Our relations, pelted
with rocks, broken apart into sharp white pieces.

With wet eyes, I kneel forward, peer through the bottom of the window,
search out the crowd for Charlie, for Edgar, for Violet, for some comfort and
restraint in the violent scene that rages outside, amidst the screams of anger,
of hatred and derision, spotting the air like a spray of blood.

And there…

Below, gazing up at my window, is Charlie.  Her eyes are bright and brown and tear-filled, and she sees me,
dares the flicker of a sad, sad smile.
She glances meaningfully toward the lengthening shadows, at the darkness
that begins to creep—too soon, far too soon—along the street, pointing black fingers
toward her.

The night is descending.

I press my fingers to my lips and then to the glass, and Charlie bows
her head.

I rub at my eyes, stand, let the curtain shift back into place, hiding
the hideous scene from view.

It’s almost over.

At the thought, I'm half afraid, half relieved.

It’s almost over.

Charlie meets me at the foot of the stairs, Mad House empty now, the
only sound my echoing footsteps on the landing below, and then Charlie's
footsteps as she leans forward, as she embraces me, drawing her arms around my
form so tightly, it seems like she’ll never let go.

And I don’t want her to.  When
she lets me go, it’s over.

Why can't we stay here?  Why
can't we stay in this house, together—always?

“Are you ready?” she whispers into my ear.  I pause for a heartbeat, feel her warmth and nearness and
strength and love all around me and within me.

No.

“Yes.” My voice breaks on the word, and she hugs me harder, but I step
away from her, squeezing her hands, brushing my lips over her cheek, against
her sweet mouth.  She kisses me
deeply.  Cinnamon.  No matter what happens, I’ll remember the
taste of her: warmth and cinnamon.  I'll
remember that until I stop remembering.
Until there is no memory, no...me.

“Lottie, I…” She steps back from me, watching me with luminous eyes,
wide in the darkness, in the soft light of the Wisps.  “Whatever happens tonight…”
She falters, shaking her head, raking a hand through her hair, head ducked,
before she looks up at me again, fingers holding my hips, a gravity and force
so strong and gentle, it makes my breath catch.

“Whatever happens tonight,” she repeats, licking her lips, leaning
close, everything she is a warmth, a pulse, a mirror to my heartbeat, “I have
loved you fiercely.”

I breathe out, heart surging within me.  And then I put my arms around her neck and kiss her once
more.  Once more.  Only once more.  And I step away from her, my fingers still entwined with hers,
and I bend my head, touching my lips to her palm, to her black lines, feel the
heat of my breath unfurl in her hand.

“And I, you,” I whisper to the Nox beneath her skin, to the artificial
pulse there, to all that is Charlie, and ever was.

And then, moving together, we run to the back of Mad House, past the
countless jars of Wisps, past the Great Room that’s silent, vacant, like a
haunted place, back into the hidden closet where this all began, that first
night, the walls leaning far away from us, dark and unknowable.

We erupt through the walls into the forest.

It’s night, the shadows and darkness absolute, stretching away from us
in sharp, black contours.  The glow from
the Bone Feast can still be seen over the imposing wall as I glance back, the
voices of the Sleepers loud, even here.

“Come on,” Charlie whispers, taking up my hand, and we begin to run in
the woods.

As we make our way through the darkness, past the bony trees, the hair
on the back of my neck stands on end, and I glance over my shoulder.  I can feel eyes on me.  Or…perhaps not eyes but hollows where eyes
should be—and are, beneath the Sixers' illusion.  The Snatchers are here, even if I can’t see
them.  They're watching us, still
waiting to find out what the rebel Sixer will do to set things right.

We run, angling through the forest, stretching always to our left.

There, up ahead of us, is a shadow darker than the smudges of dead
trees, reaching upward, pointing to the sky: Bird’s church.  Tonight, the windows are lightless, and as
we reach the front steps, I glance inside the open maw of doors.  The jars of Wisps are empty.

Bird set the Wisps free.

I stumble again, foot caught in one of the holes dug into the ground of
the churchyard.  Charlie catches me, and
we leap over another hole together, and then I pause for a moment, snared in an
abrupt memory.

I recognize them now—those holes.
The Sixers built the illusion of Abeo City, shaping it to resemble, in
all ways, a city, but a broken city, because that’s the only image a broken
being can conjure.  But they sewed
together the illusion too well.  In
front of the weathered church, gravestones appeared of their own accord, the
ultimate reminder of death to dead things.
So they plucked out the gravestones and obliterated them, smashed them
to bits in their clawed hands, but the silent holes the stones once filled
remain, dark wounds in the earth that never healed.

I squeeze Charlie’s hand tighter, move quickly past the church, running
fast as breath, as blood, as we move together beneath the clawing trees.

The shadow looms near, the hulking darkness of the Sixers' house.  We reach the half-place: the church behind
us blurring, the house ahead almost sharp enough to see.  I do not hesitate this time.  I know where my future lies, and I know what
I must do.

And the house comes into focus, a hulking shadow of boarded-up windows
and doors, a ragged porch that seems to fall forward toward us, as if drawn by
our awaited presence.

Like the church, the house is dark, too, an unnatural darkness that
seems to breathe as we race toward it.  I try not to raise my eyes, try not to
examine this house that we Sixers, we sisters, built together, this house that
imprisoned me.  I shudder as we draw
close.

“The basement,” I tell Charlie, though I don't need to.  She knows the plan; we've gone through it at
least a dozen times.  We run around the
side of the house, and we’re at the basement door, a different door than the
one I escaped from when I last left the Sixers' house.  This door is made of cobbled-together
boards, bound with a length of rusting iron chain.  A chain that could keep no one out, and nothing in—save for the
sapped Sleepers below, who lack the energy to walk up the steps and through the
walls.

Without a thought, I curl my fingers beneath the links and yank at the
metal.  In my hands, because the chain
was built by Sixers, because it is one of our illusions, it obeys me, snapping
in two.  I thread the length of it
through the handles as the iron chain clinks to rest upon the
earth.

Beside me, Charlie nods once, panting, eyes hooded in the dark.  I throw open the doors, the grim creak of them
loud in the stillness, and hand in hand, we descend.

Though it was dark in the woods, that darkness can’t compare to the
creeping black of the basement.  We
stumble down the rough-hewn steps, and it takes a heartbeat or two for my eyes
to adjust, even though there is a single jar of Wisps in the center of the
earthen room.  After a moment, I can see
pale mounds clustered around the jar.
The emaciated, shimmering forms of the almost-gone Sleepers take shape
as they raise their heads slowly, as they glance up at us in surprise.  Charlie stares with wide eyes at them as
they stare back at us.

“Arthur?” Charlie whispers, after a long moment, moving forward.  She approaches an old man huddled on the far
side of the space, his mustache drooping, his face caving in slowly.  He raises milky eyes to her, and they’re
suddenly tear-filled as he totters forward on rotting legs, gripping the
earthen wall with a curving hand of bone.

“Charlie,” he whispers, and she gingerly gathers him up into an
embrace.  The others Sleepers begin to
hobble forward, pressing gently up against one another to get nearer to the two
of us, expectant, breathless and silent.

“We’re leaving,” I whisper, leaning forward, pressing a
finger against my lips.  “But you must
be quiet, or the Sixers will sense you.
We’re going to go to Abeo City together, because the other Sleepers,
when they see you, when they see what the Sixers have done to
you...  They'll believe me when I tell
them the truth about the Sixers and the Snatchers, and that we must all get
Snatched in order to escape Abeo City.
And then…"  I swallow.  "Then we’re all going to get Snatched…”  I trail off as the Sleepers watch me, as my
own plan passes over my lips again, unspoken except to Charlie and Edgar and
Violet, now voiced to Sleepers that the Sixers have tortured, Sleepers so weak
they could fade into nothingness at any moment, Sleepers taught for far longer
than most of the Sleepers in Abeo City that you must avoid the Snatchers, the monsters, at all costs.

To expect them to make the journey to Abeo City, even though it’s not
so very far, when they can hardly move, have hardly moved in who knows how
long, seems an impossible request.  As I
stand there, as I watch them, curled up around the edges of the floor, hardly
standing, leaning against the wooden beams in the basement, I wonder if the
Sleepers would take my word alone as proof enough.  If I ran back, leaving Charlie here with them, so that she could
help them out of the basement, have them all wait for me here, maybe I could—

“I’ll come with you,” says the old man that Charlie called Arthur.  He steps forward, wobbling, as Charlie hooks
his bony arm around her shoulder.

“Well, we can’t stay here,” says another Sleeper, a shriveled woman
who glances up at me with brightly flashing eyes, though the rest of her has
nearly worn away to nothingness.  “We’ll
come with you."  She frowns.  "As best as we can.”

The others chorus agreement, though some eye me with trepidation, some
with fear.  I am a Sixer, after
all.  To follow me, to put faith in me, is a tremendous show of bravery on their part.  I flush, feeling a rush of shame.

But I shake it off, rub my hands together, my cool palms pressing
against one another, creating a spark.
“Thank you,” I murmur, backing away.
Charlie gives me a meaningful glance, then helps Arthur toward the steps
leading to the forest.  I leave the
Sleepers and Charlie for a moment, edging back toward the other door at the end
of the earthen room.  I venture through
it, holding my breath.  I don’t know
what I’ll see on the other side, in the hall that used to contain the Nox and
the Snatcher.

I didn’t realize how large the room was before, probably because it was
filled floor to ceiling with crates of Nox.
The crates are gone now, taken to the Bone Feast, most likely.  But there, in the far corner of the room,
like before, is the cage, and lying broken at the bottom of it is the Snatcher.

It watches me with hollow eyes, resting on its side, curled up like a
dead body, but I know its heart beats still.
It shifts its bones, reaches a claw toward me, but then, as if its
strength is gone, its arm falls limp.  I
cross the wide, echoing space between us, and the Snatcher shudders as I near
it, quaking in a tremor and then resuming its stillness.  I know, standing beyond the iron bars,
touching their cold, rough metal with my fingers, why the Sixers captured two
new Snatchers to parade around at the Bone Feast, and why they left this one
behind.  He looks pathetic, sad, so
broken, and the Sixers need to keep up the illusion that the Snatchers are
fearsome beasts to be terrified of, that they vanquished monsters in order to bring Nox to the Sleepers, that the Sixers should be
revered and feared because of this favor.

If they’d brought this Snatcher before the assembled Sleepers at the
Bone Feast, I wonder if they would have thrown stones, still.  I wonder if the Sleepers would have laughed
and jeered, or if they would have paused for a moment, looking over its broken,
misshapen form, crumpled in the center of the cage like a shattered doll, and
dropped the stones and bricks at their feet, pity putting out the fire of their
fury.

I don't know, can't guess.

But pity moves through my own heart now.  I try to swallow it down.
I don’t want to pity this Snatcher, this relation.  It wouldn’t want my pity.  Especially not mine.  I feel the solidity of the iron beneath my
black-lined palms, and I curl my fingers around the bars and pull with all my
might.

Like the chain outside, this cage was built by Sixers, and it bends
beneath my hands.  The metal groans, and
the door swings open, creaking like a half-choked scream.

The Snatcher raises its head, half of its upper beak broken off, the
hollows sunken into its skull, and it angles its empty gaze toward me.

“You…  You’re free."  My voice sounds dull, flat.  I swallow.
"It’s happening tonight,” I breathe, but then I step forward,
because I wonder if it can even move, and I kneel down beside its white,
clattering bulk.  Even broken apart as
it is, the Snatcher, like all Snatchers, is monstrously huge, bone wings devoid
of feathers taking up the entire span of the large cage, coiling around me as
it twitches them, trying to shift before falling back against the bottom bars
of the floor.

I know I can’t lift the weight of this Snatcher, but I try to, anyway,
moving one of its wickedly sharp-edged arms around my neck, its claws dragging
on the ground as I help it to its feet, heaving with all of my might, pushing
off from the ground.

The Snatcher tries to push off the ground, too, but after a tortured
collection of heartbeats, it sags again, slumping down like a marionette with
cut strings.  I sprawl beside it,
swallow, panting, running my fingers through my hair, heart aching.

“Please get up,” I beg it, reaching my hands out to it, propping up its
broken skull.  I drag it into my lap,
and it lets me as I run a palm over its smooth bone head, warm to the touch,
not cold like I’d imagined.  This close,
it’s not so very monstrous.  As I watch
it, as I watch its head trembling against me, I feel a surge of pain move
through me, a great aching sadness.

“Please…” I whisper again, stroking its head. “You need to escape.  You can get out of here, and
then you can pass the Gray Line, and the other Snatchers—they’ll help you, I’m
sure of it.”

It watches me, silent, and after a long, weighted pause, it shakes its
great head against me, almost imperceptibly.
Weakly.

No.

“Please,” I try again, but a knock sounds from the other side of the
wooden door, startling me.

“Lottie, we have to go.  There’s
not enough time.” Charlie’s voice is muffled as she speaks through the
door.  I know she’s right—the
unpredictable span of night might not be long enough, anyway, and we need the Snatchers, and the Snatchers only come out at
night.  I glance over my shoulder at the
door and kneel once more, try once more.

“Please,” I repeat, but the Snatcher lets its skull roll to the side,
against the iron bars, and it won’t look at me.

Before my eyes, it seems to grow smaller, spindlier.  The iron of the bars seems to grow darker,
and I feel the energy shifting beneath me, feel the Sixers drawing upon its
energy from elsewhere, though I could never say how I feel it.  It’s like water over the skin, or under it,
that sensation.  But then the Snatcher
fades away to nothingness before my eyes: there one moment, and then absolutely
not the next.

Devoured.  Lost.

Somewhere, I feel the Sixers grow stronger.  Here and now, the breath is knocked out of me as I fall against
the bars, staring at the spot the Snatcher used to fill.

And yet, even as I stare, a cold little voice asks me, Why are you so shocked, Lottie?  You have seen this countless times before,
participated in the destruction of souls countless times—willingly,
hungrily.

The bitter taste in my mouth makes me spit out, and I rub at my eyes
with the heels of my hands.

I am no better than my sisters.

Despair begins to click slowly up my spine, bone by bone, aiming for my
heart.

“Lottie, please,” murmurs Charlie through the door again,
and I shudder, shake myself, push off from the iron bars.  And I rise, for the Sleepers and the
Snatchers.

This—all of this—stops tonight.

“Coming,” I whisper, pacing down the hall quickly.  I pause only once, hand on the door,
glancing back at the empty iron cage, the room taking my panting breath away
and echoing through the space until it’s gone.

I move back through the door soundlessly and descend the steps into the
room of Sleepers, heart aching, hands pressed against a wall at my back, as if
it can hold me up.

“Come on,” says Charlie quietly, taking up one of my hands, threading
her fingers through mine.  She squeezes
once, eyes searching my face, but I can’t look at her, won't be able to look at
her for a while yet.

I cross to the center of the room with Charlie, pluck up the jar of
Wisps with my other hand.

I clear my throat, raise my head.
“Follow me, if you choose,” I tell the Sleepers quietly, and together,
we begin to move out of the basement.
Charlie and I must carry most of the Sleepers up the stone stairs, and
our progress is achingly slow.  But
finally, everyone stands together upon the forest floor, in the shadow of the
house of the Sixers, the house that imprisoned Sleepers and a Snatcher and a
Sixer and a hundred thousand secrets.

The gathering of thin faces watches me, eyes bright and milky or hollow
in the darkness.

I open the jar of Wisps, twisting off the creaking lid with shaking
fingers.  I drop the lid to the forest
floor, hold up the jar.

The Wisps bump against the glass for a moment, for a heartbeat.  But then, suddenly, triumphantly, they rise,
floating out of the jar, their prison, upwards and upwards, up into the sky,
bright orbs that burn in the coal black night like stars.

I drop the jar, breathe out.
The Sleepers still watch me, but they breathe deeper now, more
evenly.  Some tilt their heads back to
gaze at the Wisps so high.  Free.

“We have to move quickly,” I tell the Sleepers, voice soft, “if we’re
going to get to Abeo City and back out here, to the woods, before morning
comes.  And we must get to the woods before morning comes, because we might have to run
all the way to the Gray Line to escape.
There are so many Sleepers, and only so many Snatchers,” I whisper.  “And if the Snatchers don’t get us, the
Sixers will.  And then…it’ll all be for
nothing.”

All for nothing.  I breathe out,
glance around us, at Charlie beside me, at the Sleepers looking uncertain and
wide-eyed.

Still no sign of Bird.

My stomach twists.  Has
something happened to her?  I try not to
think about it as we turn and begin moving through the woods, everyone
shuffling along as quickly as they’re able, Charlie and I helping some of the
weaker ones step over fallen trees and the jagged underbrush.

My skin pricks as we move closer to the long, low wall of Abeo City.

Chapter Ten:  Truth

As we move through the trees, limping, half-running, Charlie and I
helping the Sleepers along, I keep glancing up at the broken branches over our
heads, clawing at the sky.  There are
still no Snatchers in the trees, and it drives a bolt of fear through my
heart.  Without Snatchers, this plan
falls to dust.

The Sixers promise that, during the Bone Feast, no Snatcher will come
to Abeo City—and after witnessing the torture of the Snatchers in the cage,
it's obvious why that happens.  The
Sixers make it “safe” for the Sleepers to stay out after dark: hence, the
atmosphere of revelry.

But the forest is a different matter.
The Sixers never promised that there would be no Snatchers in the woods on Bone Feast night.

I think something’s wrong, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.  Something is off; something feels strange,
making my skin crawl as we angle closer and closer to the wall of Abeo City,
its monstrous shadow, and the light drifting over it, a yellow glow.

Charlie leads the way, keeps glancing up at the buildings and wall as
we edge closer and closer.  She changes
direction only once, and then, only a little.
When we reach the wall, we pause.
Even through the stone, or over it, we can hear voices and laughter
still, the Bone Feast in full swing.  I
glance at Charlie, who nods once, Arthur’s arm looped around her shoulder.  I look over the faces of the Sleepers around
me.

"Are you up for this?" I ask them.  "I know you're weak, but there's no other way…"

One by one, they nod their heads.

"Okay.  Together,” I
whisper, and turn back to the wall.  I
press my hand against it, weakening the illusion for a moment, so that the
thin, shimmering Sleepers can pass through the stone (not stone at all, not anything) more easily.

We move into Abeo City.

Charlie placed us perfectly.  We
are at the end of the street that runs past Mad House, and before us spreads
the Bone Feast.  The lanterns and jars,
dangling in long lines, dazzle, brightening the night.  The Sleepers beneath them move as if
dancing, but I know they’re not dancing.
Nox flutters from hand to hand, the black feathers trembling beneath
Wisp light.  A Sleeper drops, even as we
watch, little scissors flashing, as more people place Nox along the palms of
their hands.

There are Sleepers Memming everywhere—it’s hard to walk without
stepping on someone.  The people who are
not Memming seem to shift as we watch.
They move restlessly amongst themselves, and gradually, one after the
other, they turn to gaze down toward the end of the street, sensing something
amiss.

And when they look, they see us, and they stop.

I walk forward, Charlie beside me, the Sleepers behind, straggling
along, breathing hard, limping, but standing strong as I stop, watching the
Sleepers watching us.

“They’ve been lying to you,” I say, but my voice isn't loud enough; it
shakes.  I clear my throat and repeat,
growling the words into the night, “The
Sixers have been lying to you.”

They turn from me, the Sleepers, glance up to the top of the rubble
heap, and there next to the cage of Snatchers the Sixers loom.  Their hoods are back, and through the thick
manes of black, I know they’re staring down at me, scowling at me as if I’m a
troublesome insect they wish to grind into dust under their palms.

“The Sixers are not who you think they are,” I say then, stepping
forward, pulling my gaze from my sisters' shadows.  “They built Abeo City so that they could devour souls.  You.
Your souls.  They built this city
to devour you.
You’re not Sleepers.  You’re not sleeping."  I glance to Charlie, and
she squeezes my hand.  With a deep
breath, I say, "You’re dead.”

The words echo around me, whirled away, moving through the Sleepers,
from one pair of ears to the next, their eyes widening, looking from me to the
Sixers, back to me again.  My hands are
curled into fists, my fingernails pressing along my black lines, and I can feel
them pulsing, surging, those lines that hold within them the feathers of my
relations.

There’s no going back now.

“Behind me,” I say, gesturing back to include all of the broken
Sleepers, “are some Sleepers who Faded.
But they didn't Fade, really.
Fading's a myth.  When you Fade,
you appear in the Sixers’ house, and then the Sixers bleed you dry.  These are the only ones who remain of all of the people who have Faded since Abeo City was created.  All of the others’ souls were
devoured."  I curl my hands into
fists.  "They no longer exist.
They are nothingness.  Gone.”

There is a quiet murmur beginning to build, whispers that sound like
wind between stones, a hush, but a hush with great power behind it.  I stand firm, feet apart, watching the
Sixers carefully out of the corner of my eye.
They have not moved.

“These Sleepers are my proof that all the Sixers have done is lie.  They sell you Nox for hair, but every bit of
hair you give them is a part of yourself, your soul, that you
sell."  I lick my lips.  "You're selling your souls to the
Sixers,” I say, breathing out, raising up my hand as the murmuring reaches a
crescendo pitch.  “But there’s a way to
get out of this, all of this,” I tell them, taking one step forward.  “The Snatchers have been—”

But when I say the word Snatcher, the murmur builds to a roar, an angry hiss
of sound, and my words are swallowed whole.

And then the eldest Sixer, my sister, laughs.  She tilts back her head, and she breathes a wickedly sharp,
clawed sound into being, and the crowd grows quiet again, intimidated to
silence.

“Why don’t you tell them, Lottie, how you know all of this?  Why don’t you tell them what you are?” she asks, voice stabbing through my ears like a threaded
needle.  I breathe out, feel my heart
beating, knocking against my ribs, begging to be released from its cage of
bones.  But I breathe in and out again,
cherishing Charlie's steady warmth beside me.

“I know this,” I tell the crowd, the deathly silent crowd who watches
only me now, “because I am the third Sixer.”

“She is one of us!” crows the eldest, throwing back her head
again.  “She is not innocent…” She draws out the word, picking at its syllables with her angry
tongue.  “How can you believe her if she’s exactly what she cries out against?”  She takes one step over the rubble, and then
another, back arched like an angry animal, claws curving as she advances slowly
toward me.

“You murdered me!” I scream at her, taking another step forward.  The Sleepers fall silent, standing still as
stone as they watch my two sisters and me.
“You murdered me because I would no longer do what you did.  Because I threatened to tell everyone the
truth!”

“Our youngest is addled in the head,” says the eldest, hissing out the
words as she covers the rubble, moving faster now, her hair dragged out behind
her like a last dying breath.  “You are
ruining our beloved Bone Feast, my dear,” she says, voice wheedling.

“To get out of Abeo City, you must be Snatched,” I shout to the
Sleepers, voice wavering but still strong.
“If you want to be free, follow us into the forest!  You’ll see!”  Charlie and I turn to go, Edgar and Violet detaching from the
crowd, moving along the edge of the buildings like shadows, following us.  They approach quickly, hand in hand.

I see Isabel at the edge of the crowd then.  She stands unmoving, watching, her hands curled into fists at the
sides of her too-clean dress.  As I walk
past her, I see her eyes fill with tears as Charlie takes my hand, threading
her fingers through mine, squeezing tightly.

Please come with us, I
think, but I’m moving too fast to speak, already past her, though I turn and
glance over my shoulder, my eyes catching Isabel's.  I can't stop; the Sixers are almost to the bottom of the rubble
pile, picking up speed as they follow us, hissing, drawing out air in a
slicing, severed sound.

We are nearly before the wall when I look over my shoulder again.  The crowd has drawn apart as if it were cut
down the middle—sliced by a shining pair of shears.  Half of the assembled Sleepers have begun to follow us down the
street, toward the wall and the woods and what comes after that.  They move slowly, cautiously, still watching
the Sixers out of the corners of their eyes, the Sixers who have stopped at the
edge of the rubble, watching the Sleepers move without a single sound.

But half of the Sleepers remain behind, clustered around the people
Memming, the people that I can’t reach, no matter how much I shout, not until
they come out of their trance.  The
other lagging Sleepers hold Nox in their hands, hold the shears over their
hearts, as if considering.  But then,
one by one, they slice their palms; they lay in the Nox, their heads bowed,
turning away.

Too many, I think.  Too
many left behind.  Half!  Mourning,
I hit the wall running and move through it into darkness.  My last sight of the streets of Abeo City is
of the people whispering amongst each other, Sleepers Memming in the streets,
and Isabel: in a fleeting glimpse, I see her slit her palm open, dropping a
black feather into the open wound with a grimace.

I pause on the other side of the wall, watching the Sleepers come
through, Charlie beside me, and Edgar and Violet hovering nearby.  We begin to run, trotting as slowly as we
can, glancing over our shoulders as more and more Sleepers appear through the
stone, as Abeo City looms behind us, glowing dimly.

The Sixers are nowhere in sight.
Fear drags at my belly as Arthur’s arm pulls at my neck.  I try to help him over the frozen, rutted
ground.  All around me, the Sleepers are
working together, the Sleepers from Abeo helping the ones from the Sixers’
house, carrying the ones who can't walk any farther.

But we’re not moving fast enough.
I know this deeply, and the knowledge cuts me, burning, souring my
stomach.  “They’ll be after us,” I
whisper, my voice rising in the dark, but the Sleepers don't need me to urge
them on.

They know fear intimately.

It’s at that exact moment that I glance back again, toward Abeo City,
and I see movement at the wall.  Through
the stone, the blackened shadows of the Sixers crawl on all fours like spiders,
dragging their hair behind them, but even as I watch, they dissolve into the
darkness of the woods, like a stolen breath.
I knew them on sight like I know my own shadow, knew how they moved,
crawling after us.  Hunting us.

They’ve merged with the black of the woods, and I can no longer see
them, but I feel them there, following, and fear is slick on
my tongue as I help Arthur over a tree trunk, look over my shoulder at the
straggling Sleepers behind us.

Charlie looks to me, glancing up, biting her lip.  Her hands are shaking.

Above us, there is not a Snatcher in the sky.

“We’ll…we’ll just have to get past the Gray Line,” I whisper to
Charlie.  If we get past the Gray Line,
we’re beyond the power of the Sixers, and though they can still hunt and devour
us, surely the Snatchers will be there, past the Gray Line, will swoop and save
as many of us as they can.  Surely we
will be Snatched there.

Charlie nods at me, agreeing as she helps a waif of a girl over a
rut.  She's so small in Charlie’s hands,
small as Florence was.

Florence, who was Snatched.

Where are the Snatchers?

We run through the woods, the Sleepers straggling out behind us in a
wavering line of desperation.  They’re
moving as quickly as they can, hobbling and hurrying along.

I feel eyes on me, then, and I glance up at the trees, heart surging with
hope.  If it’s the Snatchers, we are
safe and saved, and, yes, I see movement, and for one single
heartbeat, though the shadows are wrong, all wrong, I still wonder and hope
that it’s the Snatchers descending through the dark toward us.

But it's not.  And the constant,
sickening fear roars up, a devouring of terror that swells
over me, swallowing me whole as I watch the Sixers darkening the trees.  They blur in my sight as they leap from one
trunk to the other, clinging to the bark with claw hands and moving on to the
next so quickly, I can hardly follow their movements with my eyes.  They are as fast as thought, as breath,
their hair streaming out behind them, and they’re angling closer to us,
descending down toward us, claws aimed at us with such fury.  And I know, then, they are so angry that I will
not live to tell tales again.

There is so much hopelessness in me as I pause, gaping up at the trees,
up at the stalking Sixers who descend, their prey scented and sighted, who will
reach us and devour us, all of us, plucking us up from the forest floor
as easily as acorns.  I think of what
they’ll do to me, their sister who betrayed them, their sister that they killed
once before.  They'll make certain I
stay dead this time.

Soon, I'll be gone.

I won't exist.

I think of the Sleepers we’ve left behind, who didn’t believe me or
didn’t want to believe me or didn’t want to take the chance.  I think of all the broken Sleepers around us
who went all the way to Abeo City, and then pushed themselves to venture toward
the Gray Line.  I think of all the Sleepers
who believed me, despite everything, who came with
us.  I think of Edgar and Violet, who I
can barely see out of the corner of my eye, running through the woods with us,
arms linked.  I think of Isabel, Memming
back in Abeo because she did love Charlie, truly did, no matter what she’d said
or done.

And I think of Charlie beside me, who glances over at me with wide,
fearless eyes.  She's afraid, I
know—must be afraid—but she's swallowed it down; she's determined to be strong
for me, so that I can feel that strength in her, even when I cannot feel it in
myself, as it leeches into the earth beneath me, flowing away and almost gone,
as my hopelessness takes root.

Charlie squeezes my hand again, swallowing, nose toward the Gray Line
as she continues to run.

And I move with her.

As if the night has parted, a door opening in the darkness, there is
another shadow that moves through the darkness then, beside me.  Bird.
She smiles at me, mouth tipping up at the corners, eyes shining, and she
says nothing, but points ahead of us.

I know how close we are, then.
I can taste it, freedom, possibility, an end to Twixt and Abeo and all
the lies and darkness.  I don’t know
what will happen to me once I’m past the Gray Line.  I don’t know if the Sixers will take me as the other Sleepers get
Snatched.  If they’ll kill me
again.  But as I race quietly, quickly,
through the last stretch of Abeo’s forest, Charlie’s hand in mine, I breathe in
and out, and I feel strong, and I feel courageous, and I glance sideways at
Charlie, whose eyes glitter in the darkness.

And I am not afraid.

We move past the Gray Line, the Sleepers, the Sixers who screech, who
dive for me and Charlie and Bird and all the Sleepers, claws extended.  But as we race past the Gray Line, there’s a
flare of light, and light and light and light everywhere.

Charlie presses her lips to my hand, and there is light and white wings
and the powerful wind beneath wingbeats as I see the Snatchers, not the
Snatchers, but our relations, beautiful and glowing as they angle through a red
sky, descending toward us.

The Sleepers ascend, borne on white wings.  Charlie is lifted, floating, flying...  With a choking sob, I watch her go, grateful and mournful all at
once, my hands reaching up.

I feel a swelling as Bird soars above my head, laughing, waving down at
me.

And I turn and watch my sisters scream, claws outstretched as they
reach me, hooking into the front of a dress that was bought for me with a bit
of soul.

But then I—I—am lifted, too, by a relation with a
beautiful ragged right wing.

Everything is light is ascending is magnificent as Twixt falls away
beneath me, devoured by the darkness at my feet and the endlessness of light
overhead.

And I am not afraid.

*

I open my eyes.

Fin

The following is an excerpt from Sarah Diemer’s novel The Dark Wife, the YA, lesbian retelling of the Persephone myth.  The
Dark Wife is available wherever
you purchase your eBooks, and in print format.

It was not
sudden, how the room behind me grew dark, throwing long shadows from the
torchlight upon the balcony floor. It was a gradual thing, and I almost failed
to notice it, but for the silence. No one laughed or spoke; there was no clink
of goblet or twang of lyre. Everything, everything fell to a silence that
crawled into my ears and roared.

I shook my head, straightened,
peered again around the column at the great room. All throughout the palace, a
deep quiet crept, cold as a chill. I saw the gods and goddesses shudder, and
then the darkness fell like a curtain, became complete. The stars themselves
were blotted out for three terrible heartbeats.

There was the sound of footsteps
upon the marble, and the light returned.

“Hades has come.” I heard the
whisper—Athena’s whisper—and I started. Hades? I stood on the tips of my toes,
trying to catch a glimpse.

All of us there had been touched by
Zeus’ cruelty, in some form or another. We were meaningless to him, toys to be
played with and tossed. But the story of Zeus’s ultimate betrayal was well
known.

Zeus and Poseidon and Hades were
created from the earth in the time before time—the time of the Titans. They
cast lots to determine which of them would rule the kingdom of the sea, the
kingdom of the dead, and the kingdom of the sky. Poseidon and Zeus chose the
longest straws, so Hades was left with no choice but to reign over the kingdom
of the dead, the Underworld.

It did not come to light until
later that Zeus had fixed the proceedings to make certain he would get his
way—to become ruler of the greatest kingdom, as well as all of the gods. He
would never have risked a fair game of chance. Could never have hidden away his
splendor in that world of endless darkness.

I shivered, wrapping my arms about
my middle. Hades rarely appeared at Olympus, choosing to spend his time,
instead, sequestered away in that place of shadows, alone.

My eyes searched the murmuring
crowd. Though I was uncertain as to Hades’ appearance, I assumed I would
recognize the god of the Underworld when I saw him.

But where was he? Over there were
Poseidon and Athena, whispering behind their hands. I saw Artemis and Apollo
break apart as Zeus moved between them, climbed several high steps and
staggered into his towering throne, hefting his goblet of ambrosia aloft.

“Persephone.” I jumped, heart
racing, and Hermes grinned down at me, his face a handbreadth from my own.

“You have a habit of startling me,”
I whispered to him, but he shook his head, pressed a finger to his lips. My
brow furrowed as he took my hand and led me out onto the floor of the great
room, to linger again amidst the gods. I felt naked, misplaced, but Hermes
stood behind me and elbowed me forward. I yielded and stumbled a step, two
steps. Finally, my frustration rising, I turned to admonish him but paused
mid-motion because—I had run into someone.

Life slowed, slowed, slowed. I
muttered, “Excuse me,” looked up at the woman I did not recognize, had never
before seen, my heart slack until it thundered in one gigantic leap against my
bones.

Everything stopped.

Her eyes were black, every part of
them, her skin pale, like milk. Her hair dropped to the small of her back,
night-colored curls that shone, smooth and liquid, as she cocked her head, as
she gazed down at me without a change of expression. She wasn’t beautiful—the
lines of her jaw, her nose, were too proud, too sharp and straight. But she was
mesmerizing, like a whirlpool of dark water, where secrets lurked.

I looked up at her, and I was lost
in the black of her eyes, and I did not see her take my hand, but I felt her
hold it, as if it were meant to be in the cage of her fingers, gently cradled.

“Hello,” she said, her voice softer than a whisper. I blinked
once, twice, trying to shake the feeling I had heard her speak before—perhaps
in a dream.

And then, “I am Hades,” she said.

My world fell away.

Hades…Hades, the lord of the
underworld…was a woman.

“But, but…” I spluttered, and she
watched me with catlike curiosity, head tilted to the sound of my voice as I
attempted to regain my senses. “They call you the lord of the Underworld.  I thought—”

“It is a slur,” she breathed. I had
to lean forward to hear her words. Her face remained still, placid, as if she
were wearing a mask.

I didn’t know what to say—that I
was sheltered? Should I apologize that I hadn’t known? She still held my hand,
fingers curled into my palm like a vine. “I’m sorry,” I managed. There was
nothing else within me, and the moment stretched on into an eternity as my
heart beat against the door of my chest.

I’d forgotten Hermes was there, and
he cleared his throat now, stepping alongside us, staring down at our hands,
together.

“Hades,” he murmured, chin
inclined, smile twisting up and up. “It’s begun, now that you’ve met her.”

“What?” My head spun; everything was happening too
fast. Her eyes had never once left mine, two dark stars pulling me in. My blood
pounded fast and hot, and I didn’t understand what was happening, but my body
did. No, she was not beautiful, but she didn’t need to be. I was drawn to her,
bewitched by her, a plant angling up to drink in her sun. Still, still, she had
not let go of my hand.

“Hermes, may I have a moment with
her?” she asked, turning toward him. When her eyes moved away, I felt an
emptiness, a hollow, a great, dark ache.

Hermes frowned, shook his head
once, twice, and shimmered into nothingness.

She raised my hand, then, so slowly
that I held my breath until her lips pressed against my skin, warmer than I’d
imagined, and soft. Something within me shattered as she swallowed me up again
with her dark eyes, said: “You are lovely, Persephone.”

I stared down at her bent head,
spellbound.

“Thank you,” I whispered.  She rose.

Where Zeus’s lips had been wet,
rough, pushing hard enough against my hand to leave a bruise…she was the
opposite—gentle. Yet I felt her everywhere. I shivered, closed my eyes. She did
not let go of my hand but turned it over, tracing the line of my palm with her
thumb.

“It has been a deep honor, meeting
you, seeing you. You defy my imaginings.” A small smile played over her mouth
as she shook her head, traced her fingers against the hollow of my hand. “I
hope to see you again.”

She looked as if she might say
more—she looked hopeful—but something changed, and her eyes flickered. She
sighed, pressed her lips together, squeezed my hand. Hades turned and
disappeared into the crowd of Olympians.

“No—” I put my hand over my heart,
breathed in and out.

“In front of all the others.”
Hermes was shimmering beside me, leaning close; he shook his head. “She’s
either stupid or very brave.”

I felt as if I were waking from a
very long sleep. I stared at the floor, wondering what was real, what was a
dream. “I don’t understand. That…she was Hades?”

“In the death,” he snickered,
and he held up his goblet of ambrosia to me, as if in a toast. “It has begun.”

Find The Dark Wife wherever you purchase your
eBooks!

Other works by this author:

-  Project Unicorn, Volume 1:  30 Short Stories Featuring Lesbian Heroines (co-written
with her wife, author Jennifer Diemer)
Part of Project Unicorn, a lesbian YA extravaganza, PU seeks to address
the urgent need for queer characters in YA fiction by giving lesbian girls
their own heroic stories.  Find out more
about Project Unicorn at http://www.MuseRising.com

-  Love Devours: Tales of Monstrous Adoration  A collection of new fables for queer women,
extracted from the bones of the dark: ominous fairy tales, sinister myths,
dystopias rife with nightmares. But in the midst of monsters, love still
struggles to find the light.

Sarah has written many
other things, including an entire collection of retold, lesbian fairy tales
(under her pen name, Elora Bishop).  To
learn more, please visit http://www.oceanid.org
and http://elorabishop.wordpress.com

Acknowledgements

I am deeply and
unconditionally grateful to everyone who has ever purchased my work, told
someone they loved about it and spread the word.  I am shockingly able to do what I love for a living
because people believe in these stories enough.  Without my wonderful, humbling and amazing fans, these stories
are meaningless.  What I write is,
always and forever, for you.  Thank you,
from the bottom of my heart, for being, for wanting these stories.

Jennifer Adam loved Twixt
from the very beginning and was endlessly and constantly supportive of its
journey.  Without her, it would never
have been—she brought it into the world through her unwavering support, good
humor and friendship, and I am deeply grateful to her for never giving up on
it—or me.  Rachel Melcher is one of the
staunchest and best friends I could ever have wished on a star for—when I have
felt truly defeated, she’s brought me back.
Thank you for being.  Rhiannon
Matich is a pillar of my life—her sweetness, laughter and love are unending
inspirations for me.  Katelyn Verrill
has unwaveringly believed in this story, and me, and her friendship is a
priceless support in my life.  Valerie
Reho is one of the best things marrying into a family has ever accomplished in
this world.  Her unwavering support and
cheerleading and kindness have meant so much to me.  Gemma Dubaldo is a light in my life, and a constant, beautiful
support.  Rachel Gogan and Katie Raynes
remind me, ceaselessly, that life is beautiful, and I am deeply indebted to
their friendship and adore them both fiercely.
My friendship with James Femmer is one of the best things that ever
happened because of The Dark Wife.  I
love you so much, sir, and am so grateful for your humor, mischief and the type
of support that skyscrapers can only dream of.

The good fairy is one of the dearest people in my
life.  If "'tis nothing good or bad
/ But thinking makes it so," / I must confess, dear friend, / This truth
to me you've shown, / For your friendship is one of the / Most treasured things
I've known.

Bree Zimmerman deserves heaps
of roses and barrels of gem-encrusted skulls for the amount of times she’s read
this book, in its eight million incarnations, and for her invaluable feedback
and belief in this story.  So much of
this book’s existence is because she believed in it so wholeheartedly.  My unending gratitude to you, Miss Hallow’s
Eve.

Tara Taylor is an essential
aspect of my entire writing process.
Her editor’s eye is flawless, and I trust her with my life, and my
words.  My deep, abiding gratitude to
you, Miss Pithia.

This book is dedicated to
Madeline Claire Franklin, who has been one of the best friends that anyone in
this world could ever ask for.  She is
one of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, and her
wholehearted love of Twixt is why it exists in the first place—she would
never let me give up on it.  I love you,
Miss Maddie.

Without the support of the
congregation at Pullman Memorial Universalist Church, I would never be able to
do what I do.  In a harsh, cruel world,
they give Jenn and I a beautiful, safe space to be who we are.  It is a sanctuary, and our home.

My wife, Jennifer Diemer, is
my world.  Without her editing prowess,
her attention to detail and fine eye, this novel would be a mere husk of what
it has become.  Any errors left are mine
alone.  I have the supreme pleasure of
walking through this life with my beloved other half at my side.  You make of my days something shining and
lovely, baby.  Knowing you is the only
memory I’d sell my hair for.

There
are many more beautiful people than I have space to list who I appreciate
immensely, who make my writing life (and life, in general) a joy. You know who
you are. I love you. Thank you for reminding me that magic exists outside of
fairy tales.

About the Author

Sarah Diemer is an award-winning author of lesbian
young adult (YA), speculative fiction. She lives in a purple-doored cottage in
Western New York with her beloved wife, several furred creatures and a few
mischievous pixies. She enjoys covering things in glitter (and putting them on
Etsy), and is a professional fairy. She is addicted to tea.

Her debut novel, The Dark Wife, the YA, lesbian
retelling of the Persephone myth won the 2012 Golden Crown Literary Award for
Speculative Fiction, and was nominated for a Parsec Award (first two chapters
of the audiobook).

She writes her lesbian adult fiction under the pen
name Elora Bishop, including the Sappho's Fables: Lesbian Fairy Tales series,
which she co-writes with her wife, author Jennifer Diemer.

She shares a blog with Jenn at MuseRising.com, where
she talks about being gay, queer books and other sparkly things. Twitter
(@SarahDiemer) and Tumblr (SarahDiemer.Tumblr.com) are some of her favorite
places, and she's had her LiveJournal (Mermaiden.livejournal.com) since before
it was cool to have one, and still now, after it's passé.

She believes, wholeheartedly, in happily ever
afters.