The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(12)

The man looked back and forth between us, from Sophia with her knife to me with nothing but my two hands. That was all I’d needed in our tale.

“Look at me,” I said. My head was a howling sea cave and my voice wasn’t my own. “Don’t worry about her. Don’t worry about anything but me.

“Now lie down and show me your throat.”





7


I blinked.

I closed my eyes and light shifted over my lids, moonlight and lamplight and the delineated scatter of stars fading out as the sun dragged itself over the skyline. Streetlights buzzing, blinking out, headlights white and the yellow flicker of the subway. I knew something, wanted to hold on to something, but it was like clinging to a flashlight’s beam. Another blink, and it was gone.

I opened my eyes on early morning coming through my bedroom window. A zip line of nightmare slid through me, retreating to its hidden place. For a moment, my head was an empty room. Then the night rushed in.

Drinking at Robin’s. Walking to Red Hook. Slithering in through the brother’s window. The claustrophobic apartment, the sweet awful rip of his lip. His scorn turning to fear, and Sophia looking at me. Alice. Your eyes.

There was a weight bearing down on me, making it hard to breathe, and I thought it was panic till my fingers followed the feeling up, to my neck.

Something was there, wound around my throat, hard and warm and too tight to see. I kicked free of the sheets, tumbled out of bed and ran down the hall. The bathroom mirror reflected the cold hollows of my eyes. The faded eyeliner vines.

And a necklace of fat red rubies circling my throat.

I’d bitten the man from my tale. I thought I’d done worse than that, but there was a void in my memories, its borders tidy as an egg’s. His blood made rusty swirls around my lips. It was a slaughterhouse flavor on my tongue. And where the worst of the blood had been, where it ran down my chin and settled in a brutal collar, lay this circle of stones.

They gripped my neck like a row of ticks. I scratched, frantic, feeling my way to the back. There was a hook under my hair; I unclasped it. The necklace slipped off, coiling over my hands, rubbing red on my skin. I flung it into the sink and turned the water on. The stones bled and ran under its stream, melting away like paste, till there was nothing left of it but the pattern of its claws and catches imprinted in my skin.

I thought it was a cry, bubbling up in me, but it was laughter. A low sound, boiled thick as campfire coffee.

This was magic, and it wasn’t benign. It was a world I wanted to forget and a night I couldn’t remember, and a dark gift left to strangle me. The Hinterland was tugging at me, blowing its breath in my face, wrapping its fingers around my throat. My laugh cut off clean.

Be sure, Sophia had told me.

I said I didn’t want to see any lambs. Daphne.

“What did you do?” I asked the girl in the mirror.

She looked back at me. She showed her bloody teeth.



* * *



I stripped off my clothes and climbed into the shower. The water started out tepid and shifted by degrees to just this side of scalding. When my skin, at least, was clean, I dried off with one of the scratchy towels Ella stole from the pool at the Y, hard decisive strokes that burned. The vines were washed away. The blood, the liquorish sweat, the night.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. I combed my hair back, put on ChapStick. No eyeliner, my face scrubbed. Fresh clothes, old sneakers, my stomach a mess but I ate toast and jam anyway, washing each bite down with a flood of cold tea.

No missed calls from Sophia. I pulled up the internet and considered it for a moment. A quick news search: red hook.

I put the phone away. My ChapStick had come off on my toast. I went to the bathroom to put on more, staring at my soft eyes, the eyes of a damsel, circling the stick round and round till my lips were waxy. Then I jerked away sharp from the mirror because—

No because. No need to think too hard. If you poke around too long in the dark, you’ve only got yourself to blame for what you find. I had a feeling in my chest, a persistent asthmatic ache I couldn’t quite rub away. A walk would help. It was early yet, so early Ella was still sleeping. I didn’t have to be at work for hours.

I checked my phone again. No texts. I looked toward Ella’s closed door. Typed and deleted, typed and deleted.

Out getting coffee, I said finally. Have a good day.

The sidewalk ran with morning commuters holding cups and phones and briefcases, flowing around me like water breaking itself on a rock. A terrier recoiled from my feet, growling through its teeth. Its owner looked up to apologize, then said nothing, his jaw tightening as he sped away.

I walked for a while without really seeing where I was going. Some uneasy frequency hummed off my skin. Men playing dominoes under awnings looked up warily as I approached, an old woman pushing a shopping cart veered into the gutter to avoid me. When sirens shrilled a block away, my hands went sweaty, my mouth dry.

Two police cars hurtled around the corner, passed me.

When they were gone I could breathe again.

The ache in my chest was climbing, it was a weight in my throat. When I realized I would throw up if I kept walking I dropped onto a stoop and texted Sophia. My fingertips trembled over the screen.

What happened last night?

Her reply came almost instantly.

Wait you don’t remember

I waited for a follow-up. Waited, waited, unshed tears making rainbows over my sight.