The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(17)

Scratch scratch

Hasten to your home

Lock and latch, do up the catch

And pray that you’re alone

Little spider

Twitch twitch

Run to seal the gate

Weave and sew, stitch stitch

Pray it’s not too late



Something about that whisper tugged at me, distant but familiar. The words they spoke were a Hinterland rhyme. I knew by the way it played over my tendons like a rosined bow. The tide of the place was lapping at me already; the rhyme drew it over my head. The cold in me was a frozen wave climbing. As the rhymer reached for me, the wave broke.

Their hands were fast and certain. But I slipped around and behind them; I slithered like smoke. Then I was on them. Running my fingers over their body, searching for skin. I felt the rough drag of cotton and the rasp of knit—they were wearing something over their face, like a balaclava—before plunging my fingers into the slit over their mouth.

Their teeth were sharpened pearls and their breath felt like nothing. I could feel my eyes clotting black, my mouth filling up with ice, but this time my head stayed clear. I wasn’t going to forget this: breathing in the subway’s stale air, transmuting it into cold. Into death. I held it in my mouth like a marble, trying to twist their face toward mine. They gave a noiseless shudder and bit down. I grunted and ripped my hand free, feeling their teeth dig bloody grooves. I jerked a knee into their gut and they folded over, spinning in my grip like a fish. A flash of heat lightning skittered down my side and I screamed: their nails, hard as glass.

The air smelled like a fairy tale, glitter and green things and blood. The person’s nothing breath was in my ear, with a catch in it that made me think they were laughing. I yanked them down by the shirt and pressed my arm to their covered throat. I hovered over them, my mouth all ripe with ice, and now they were quiet.

I lunged down to press my mouth to theirs. When we touched, the air between us puckered with static. I recoiled just long enough for them to dart forward and bite me.

They caught the edge of my chin and bit all the way through. I felt warmth before I felt pain, banging my head against an empty subway seat as I fell back clutching my face.

The air was still. It didn’t smell like magic anymore, it smelled like a stalled-out subway car laced with blood. The person stood up, and I braced myself. But I must’ve made them think twice. They walked the few steps to the nearest doors, peeled them open with a straining mechanical clang, and dropped to the tracks below. I heard the wood-and-metal thump of their falling. The doors shrugged shut, and they were gone.

A few swollen moments. Then the lights came on, their milky yellow glow revealing the wreckage that had been made of me. Holding my head, pressing the hem of my T-shirt to my chin, I stood.

The other passengers stared with open mouths. At my arms, an ombré of whites to my elbows, and my eyes, I was certain, a galactic black. Blood dripped from my bitten hand, my bitten face, the mess over my ribs. The guy in scrubs was peeking down at his phone, its camera angled discreetly toward me. He stiffened as I stalked over and slapped it out of his hand, stomped its screen twice, and kicked it down the car.

“What are you?” asked the teen boy, his voice reverent. “Are you a supervillain?”

The adrenaline and the ice would recede. Soon I’d be shaking. Soon I wouldn’t be able to stand. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m a supervillain. Now gimme your phones. On the floor, slide ’em over. And you.” I said it to the mother. “I need your sweatshirt.”

Her face was stone as she shrugged it off, throwing it after her phone so it pooled at my feet. Pulling it over my head made my scratched side throb. New blood soaked into the waist of my jeans as I crouched to gather their surrendered phones. “Sunglasses. Somebody here has sunglasses.” I snapped my fingers. “You want me to get them out for you?”

The boy took a pair from his pocket and slung them at me, wincing when they hit my chest. “Sorry. You can keep those.”

I caught them, shoving them on and tugging the hoodie’s sleeves over one hand, using the other to put pressure on my bleeding chin. A seat hit me behind the knees and I collapsed into it, feeling the first tremor roll through me, the aftereffect of shock and ice and magic. But my thoughts were edged finely as frost.

I’d almost become the fourth Hinterlander to die. Whoever had tried to kill me, they were Hinterland, too.





9


At least someone in the car had a god who listened. The guy in scrubs had been praying with his eyes closed for only a few minutes when the train started to move again. The mother was crying, though her baby was quiet. When we reached the next station, they all watched rabbit-eyed as I walked off, their phones stuffed into the front pocket of my stolen sweatshirt.

I felt like I should turn around and say something scary to them as the doors closed. But my mouth still tasted like freezer-burned death and all the places I was hurt were running together, pain pumping through me like central air. I let the moment go.

I stood at the very edge of the platform and let three trains pass by, woofing my hair back and sliding their doors open to show me their insides. Half of me was sure the lights would turn off, and the figure would come back to net me with fairy-tale rhymes in the dark.

Little spider

Twitch twitch …



I shook my head sharply and spat onto the tracks.