One Was Lost(39)

“What is that?” I ask. Sticks and blood? What kind of art and craft from hell is this? Then I see it. They’re arranged and bound into torsos and limbs, little heads and scraps that might be clothing. Like voodoo dolls made from bits of trees.

There are four of them. Three dolls are standing or sitting, and one is sleeping. My eyes catch on a scrap of red fabric on the biggest doll. Red like Lucas’s shirt. There are curling leaves on the head of the doll beside it—poplar leaves, I think. They remind me of Jude’s hair, and I don’t think that’s accidental, especially when I see the black moss and sharply slanted eyes on the doll that’s supposed to be Emily.

These dolls are supposed to be us.

That means the sleeping doll must be Mr. Walker. And I’m…missing? Hidden? I inch forward, my belly a sack of eels and every one of Emily’s hitching sobs making it worse. The doll in the middle has dark hair. There’s a jut of sticks—a pointy chin—dark eyes, and a pool of black liquid underneath it. Ink?

And then it all comes together. That’s not Mr. Walker; it’s me. It’s a me-doll, and it’s lying in a pool of blood.

A wave of vertigo rolls over me. I want to look away, but I can’t.

“Where did you find these?” Lucas asks. “Were they here?”

“The whole time,” Jude says, sounding broken.

My vision’s gone blurry. I can’t focus.

“Sera.” Lucas’s voice is low. He means to be soothing. Because I’m standing here, mouth gaping and eyes wide like a crazy person, and I’m probably scaring the fricking crap out of him. I should say something.

“Why is there blood?” I ask stupidly, and Emily just cries louder.

“Knock it off!” Lucas snaps at her. “You’re not helping.”

Emily doesn’t knock it off, and Lucas is too keyed up to handle it. He stomps forward, and Jude launches to his feet. “Back off!”

“Then calm her the hell down!”

“We’re all freaked,” he says, “so get your little Neanderthal power trip in check, and let her cry if she wants.”

“Neanderthal power trip? What the hell are you talking about?”

Jude’s eyes narrow to slits. “Do you need me to spell the big words?”

“Why is there blood everywhere?” It’s more scream than question, and it shuts everyone up. Even Emily. She’s got tears smeared down her face and snot running over her upper lip, and she’s looking at me.

“Is that supposed to be me?” I already know. I don’t know why I’m playing stupid.

No one will meet my eyes.

“I’m sorry, Sera,” Emily says. “I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t do anything to be sorry for, but that’s not the point. I know why she’s sorry. It’s what decent people feel when something bad happens to you. Or when something bad is going to happen.

I force myself to look at the dolls again, to make some sort of sense of this. My doll is definitely not sleeping. The eyes are still open. And there’s a section of hair that’s shiny and stuck together. A head wound. So there it is. In this scene, I’m the dead girl.

Another flare of dizziness hits, so I close my eyes and take a breath. Slow and steady, my chest opens wide, but it does nothing to soothe me.

I’m supposed to be dead. Or I’m going to be dead.

The other dolls look alive. Lucas is standing. Emily and Jude are seated. No one else’s doll is stretched out in a pool of blood. None of the other dolls are bloody at all.

Wait.

No, they do have blood. I lean in a little because even the last bits of purpling sky are going black. Even in the low light, I can see the dark stains at the ends of the other dolls’ arms.

“So I’m dead and someone’s cutting off your hands?” I ask. I sound like someone else, someone who is asking about something that does not matter.

Emily wipes her snotty nose on her sleeve. She still won’t look at me.

“I mean, that’s what the blood is about,” I say. “Whoever he is, whoever left this—they want your fingers or hands or whatever. Like Ms. Brighton. But you lucked out because they only want me dead. The Darling.”

Someone laughs. Is that me? I think it is. The Darling is amused. That makes me laugh again because it’s ridiculous. Every last bit of it.

“Sera, this isn’t going to happen,” Lucas says.

Something hot rolls over me. I push back at it, but it curls around my edges. It will swallow me, this feeling. I’ll snap.

“We won’t let that happen,” Lucas says, misreading my quiet.

“How the hell do you think you’ll be able to stop it?” My volume startles me. “I know you want to help, but how can you? We don’t even know what this is. Is it a psychopath? That dead girl’s ghost? A serial killer? You should worry about yourselves. About your hands.”

“I don’t think the hands are cut off,” Jude says. He’s studying the dolls with a strange expression, eyes narrowed and thumb at his chin, his Deceptive lost in shadows.

Lucas scoffs. “Why’s that? Because your special hands play such beautiful music?”

“They do, but that’s not why. Do those dolls look injured to you?”

I don’t know. I can’t look anymore. My ears are ringing, and I can’t beat back the image of that sticky pool underneath the doll with my hair. My face.