The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(63)

There’s going to be a time soon when someone’s going to ask you to walk through a door. Say yes. Behind it will be a bright new world bigger and more beautiful than this one and with no cages not one. Just freedom and a place to be happy where you can live or die or just be quiet. This world will be gone and good riddance.

I’m sorry I couldn’t wait for you but look for me and I bet you’ll find me. But even if you don’t don’t worry. I wanted this. I want this.

Love,

Sophia



I read it fast, too fast, the words running up on each other’s heels. By the time I threw open the door, Sophia was long gone.

This world will be gone and good riddance.

My mind rattled the words. Picked over the story my mother had told me. I closed my eyes and her face showed itself in the dark. She was telling me the tale of the Night Country, a cup of whiskey in her hand and dusty sun falling on her shoulders.

The pieces shivered and shook. They formed a figure. It pierced the wall of the world.

The figure breathed in the life of the world behind it, and blew it into the gap.

Into the Night Country. It wasn’t built only on flesh and bone and blood and the tawny muscle of the heart. It was a parasite, feeding itself on the life of the world it was built in. This world.

I started toward the elevator, then ran back for my phone. Sophia didn’t answer my call, didn’t answer, didn’t answer, each ring shrilling in my ear like a scream. I was stepping into my shoes, shoving my wallet into my jeans. Everything I owned smelled like sweat and smoke. I was on my way to the hall when something buzzed in my pocket.

The compass Hansa’s father had given me was rattling like a phone on vibrate. When I pulled it out, the rattling stopped. I studied its face. The needle strained in one direction—behind me, due southeast—like a dog on a leash. I folded my fingers around it and made for the elevator.

Outside, I paced the streets on foot, eyes glued to the compass, praying she hadn’t taken a cab. Breezes tangled around me, just me, leaving the trash and the dirt untouched. I swear I saw the ghost bride watching from the crook of a streetlamp.

The sidewalks emptied as I walked. The darkness deepened, then tipped over the dividing line, inching up toward morning. The sleepless city slept, the stars losing themselves in the whitening sky. My footsteps were muffled but I could hear my breath as clearly as if my hands were cupping my ears. I felt like I was walking through a dream, but my dreams felt realer than this.

I was on an industrial block when the needle jackknifed, swinging toward the building to my right. It was the size of a small warehouse, its face fronted with tiles of reinforced glass. It stood out against the sky like a crisp-cut Halloween decoration. More than empty, it looked abandoned. But there was a side door, a brushed metal rectangle gone lacy with rust. Someone had propped it open with a brick.

Maybe Sophia. Or whoever was waiting for her.

This piece of city felt like an underdeveloped Polaroid. Only the building was sharp. I held my breath as I opened the door a little wider, easing myself through.

There was a trick Ella had taught me, for waking up scared in the dark: stay as still as you can, letting your eyes adjust, waiting for all the hidden things to show themselves. After a few long breaths I could make out a clumsy skyline of spinny chairs. A rolled carpet and an unplugged coffee machine on a countertop. I was in some kind of office, stinking of mothballs and roach spray.

And something else. A metallic, abattoir scent that told me I had to hurry, had to keep going, had to find the black heart of this place.

Beside the chairs was another door. Its knob turned in my hand, letting me into a hallway, windowed on one side. The smell was stronger here and there was someone just stepping clear of a slice of light.

There then gone, but I saw them. Their shape was imprinted on my sight. Small and furtive and somehow familiar. There was something to the sighting that made my mouth go dry, made my heart leap with more than fear.

I followed them. The floor was poured concrete, spattered with mysterious stains, and my shoes moved quietly into and out of the shadows. I heard nothing, then a breath, such a perfect in and out that I knew it was deliberate. A bread crumb dropped at my feet.

I followed it. Hard to the left, into a corridor lit by a red EXIT sign. The door at the other end was just closing. I ran to wrench it open before it caught, and found myself in another office, a wire-glass window on one side looking out over the street. There was a closed door on the other end, but I didn’t think whoever I was following had had time to go through it. Headlights from a passing car strafed the room, lighting all its corners.

Empty. I swore and pulled out my phone to try Sophia. Distantly, beyond the next door, I heard the generic jingle of her ringtone. Before the first ring faded, I was hurtling through the door, into a room with a ceiling as high as a gym’s, pale stripes of sky falling through skylights. The smell was stronger here.

I still had the phone to my ear, listening for the next ring. When the call picked up I nearly dropped it.

“Hello?” I squeezed the phone hard. “Sophia?”

Silence. Then an intake of breath and … a giggle. That giggle burrowed right into my brain, filling it up with an electric terror. It made neon shapes in the air.

“Who’s there?” I whispered.

“Scratch scratch, little mouse,” they whispered back. The call clicked off. When I tried Sophia again, it went straight to voicemail.