Wink Poppy Midnight(41)

I was there when they met in a little meadow near the Roman Luck house at midnight, flashlights dancing across the forest floor. I was watching. Thomas set up the Ouija board on the ground, right on the pine needles and dirt. He was so serious and careful and solemn about it that I half wanted to laugh and half wanted to put my hand on my heart and swear him my everlasting loyalty.

They set their fingers on the pointer and then started asking so many questions that the Ouija board could never have kept up, even if it actually worked, which it didn’t. Thomas asked about Three Death Jack and the Greek gods and what it all meant and I remembered the time the two of us sat up on the mountain watching the skiers and it made me kind of sad and nostalgic. Briggs asked about the gold marble and teacups and lemonade and it sounded like Alice in Wonderland gibberish, except it wasn’t.

Buttercup and Zoe asked about apple picking and apple poems, and Midnight asked if the mist was a spiritual place or a real place and the pointer never moved, not once. Not even a flicker. Finally, finally, Midnight said they needed Wink, Wink could find me, if anyone could, and that was when it all really began, when it got aching and beautiful and palpable and true. They all started fighting, quiet at first, and then louder and louder until their voices echoed through the trees like the black-haired Bloodly Boys at one of their midnight feasts . . . oh hell, I was talking like her now, like Wink.

Anyway, anyway, you should have heard them, arguing about who knew me best, and why I really disappeared, why I would run away, why I would throw myself in the Twist. Thomas said I did it because I was sad, but that’s because he’s sad, and Briggs said I would never do it, because I’m a fighter, but that’s because he’s a fighter, and Buttercup said I felt guilty about all my past cruelty because she feels guilty about hers, and Zoe said that if I wanted to run away or throw myself in the river it was my right to do so, because she wants that to be her right too.

And none of them, not one, came close to the truth.

Except Midnight.

He repeated what he’d said earlier, about how they needed Wink, and off they went to get her.





THEY NEEDED MY help. I knew they would.

I washed my hair with cinnamon soap and put on my acorn skirt and waited for them in the hayloft.

I told them we had to have the séance in the Roman Luck house. That it all had to end where it began. I took one of the extra quilts Mim kept in a trunk at the top of the stairs and I threw it over my shoulder and then grabbed my basket and we walked through the woods together.

I laid the blanket on the floor in the music room. I took three white candles out of my basket and placed them in the middle. I knew how it went. I’d seen Mim hold séances seven times. She didn’t do it for every client, only the special ones, the special ones with a lot of money. I went off to the corner and stood there silently for a bit, as if I was preparing myself, but it was mainly for dramatic effect.

Midnight was quiet, and didn’t say much. He was scared. All good Heroes are scared, if they know the evil they face.

Briggs asked why I didn’t bring a Ouija board and when I told him I didn’t have one he looked like he didn’t believe me.

Thomas clung to the shadows in the corner of the room like he was trying to hide, like he was Anthony Twilight in Fourteen Stolen Things.

Buttercup and Zoe cuddled into each other and whispered in each other’s ears and held hands.

I lit the candles.

It began.





ME AND THE Yellows found Wink in the hayloft.

Her eyes had a look in them when she saw us all climbing up the ladder, like she’d known we’d come for her.

She grabbed the quilt and basket that she’d already packed, that’s how ready she was. Wink and I walked side by side down the path, not talking, like that very first time, when we’d stumbled into Poppy’s party.

Wink set the unlit candles on the blanket and then stood in one of the corners, in the dark. I figured she was meditating, or whatever it is that mediums do. I sat on the green sofa and listened to the floorboards groaning in the hallway, though no one was walking on them. I listened to the tree branches scraping the un-smashed pieces of the bay window. I listened to the old house make its old house sounds, rasp, creak, groan.

Here I was again, in the Roman Luck house in the middle of the night.

Tricking Wink and then tricking Poppy and kissing them both and tying them both up . . . and now I was back in the house again and Poppy was missing and I’d gathered the Yellows for a séance.

Briggs tried to make a few jokes, about how stupid séances are, and how it’s all bullshit, just rapping tables and sliding panels and fake beards, but no one laughed or even looked at him.

We all sat down on the blanket in a circle.

Wink lit the candles.





I MADE EVERYONE hold hands. I looked very grave and said that if they let go during the séance bad things would happen. Which wasn’t true, I just wanted to see if they believed me, and they did.

Midnight was on my right, his fingers strong and sturdy, like Thief’s. Thomas was on my left. He had long, elfish fingers that were warm, almost hot. I waited until Buttercup and Briggs and Zoe were clasped and ready.

Nothing happened.

I asked Poppy if she was present.

Nothing happened.

The house creaked and moaned and the Yellows breathed and twitched and fidgeted and Midnight squeezed my hand.