The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(43)

“What happened to it?”

Her face was still turned away. “It’s been checked out.”

“I’m sorry,” Finch said softly. When she didn’t re spond, he went on. “Whose library was this? What was this place?”

“It belonged to a magician. A powerful one.”

“All these books—all these worlds—were his?”

“Hers. Only one world is hers.”

“Is? She’s still alive? Who is she?”

“Shh. Come here.” She walked back down and extended a hand. Finch took it. With her free hand Iolanthe fumbled open the book, and began to read.

The words weren’t the fleet, wild-winged things that opened the blood door out of the Hinterland. They were slower, sweeter. They beguiled. Finch wanted to see when it happened, when the door appeared, but he couldn’t keep his lids from closing.

“Keep them closed,” Iolanthe said, her voice wobbling toward Finch’s ear like sun through water. Her fingers tightened around his, and the pair of them stepped forward into something that felt like Finch once imagined a cloud would feel, back when he was a little kid looking out the window of an airplane. It was soft and giving and it smelled like the sweet wood of a cigar box. Then the air cleared, went thin and smoky and cool.

When he opened his eyes they were standing uneven on a cobblestone street, the cutout square of a doorway hanging in the air behind them.





23


Outside the church, the sun was higher, the heat heavy as a hand. Tourists and commuters in sweat-stained business clothes moved like sleepwalkers. My eyes caught on exposed arms and bellies and feet, the sweat-shining canals flowing between women’s clavicles. The glare of it boiled together with incense smoke, the sad-eyed Virgin, the candles lit like so many life-lights. And the message the Trio had for me: that the deaths weren’t murders, but martyrdom.

Martyrdom to what?

I backed into a square of shade and called a car, unable to bear the prospect of twenty blocks of hard sun, or wading through the morning rush in Times Square. A few minutes later a black sedan pulled up and the driver ducked her head down, looking at me.

Sun-dazzled and suddenly starving, I collapsed into its back seat.

Maybe martyrdom wasn’t the crux of it: I’d almost been killed, and there was nothing I’d been ready to die for. The child in white told me to seek out my ghosts. Maybe that was the real message. But what did it mean? I sighed, craving the solitude of my room, ice water, and a shower. I lay my head against the seat.

And heard the click of the child locks. I looked up.

“What are you—”

“Shut up,” the driver snarled. “Don’t say another word till I say you can. And put your hands up—cross ’em, up on your shoulders, where I can see them.”

Her face, what I could catch of it in the rearview mirror, had a wicked Morgan le Fay look to it, fleshy and lush. Her head grazed the top of the car, all of her built on a grand scale. She was Hinterland, of course, but I wasn’t panicking yet; no chance was she the quicksilver thing who’d attacked me on the subway. Mainly I was kicking myself for getting in the wrong damned car.

“Look, what do you want?”

“I told you to be—hey!” She leaned on her horn and shrieked a string of expletives as a tank-topped school of pedestrians bearing Disney Store bags darted in front of the car.

“It’s Midtown,” I snapped. “What did you expect?”

“Shut up.”

There was such focused rage in the words that I did go quiet. When I tried to sneak a hand to my phone she braked hard, glaring at me, and I pulled my hand back. Traffic was stop and go, past chain stores and Netflix ads and people dressed in unlicensed Anna and Elsa costumes and it all felt so surreal I didn’t really get scared till she veered hard into a parking garage. Past the booth, attendantless, and barreling upward, around and around in dizzy circles through the dim, taking every corner too tight and making me dig my nails into my skin. Then we burst out into sunlight glinting off chrome fenders and pearlized finish, so assaultive after the dark I didn’t see the man right away.

Sitting on the hood of a parked car, holding a dark metal wrench.

And it struck me that I should be arming myself, if I could.

Cold, I was thinking dizzily, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my fingers into my collarbone. Cold, cold—

The woman flung open the door and dragged me out by my arm and a fistful of shirt, throwing me onto the ground. Glittery bits of it dug into the heels of my hands and my bare knees as I pushed up, tried to push to standing. Then she had me again, her hand palming my neck like I was a kitten. She forced me to kneel and I felt the beginnings of it: that burn in my throat, that ice-pick ache in my eyes. The man stood in front of me with his wrench over his shoulder, black boots planted. Him I recognized. Brown skin, dressed all in green. I’d seen him in meetings before, even heard him talking about his daughter, but it wasn’t till now that I put it together. The cresting cold in me guttered and fled. I pressed my palms, placating, to the ground.

“You’re Hansa’s parents, aren’t you?”

The hand on my neck tightened and jerked, shaking me till my vision snapped with stars.

“Listen to me,” I gasped. “I didn’t do anything, I—”