The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(65)

What were we now?

“Hey,” he said, catching the moment when my laugh turned south. He hesitated half a second, then pulled me in tight. It was such a human thing to do, it caught me by the throat. He smelled like a man who’d been on the road a good long while, with unsteady access to soap. He’d been back a minute, and already he was holding me like he knew me, like we weren’t strangers at all.

He’d always had more armor than me, and less.

The woman behind him cleared her throat.

“You gonna introduce us?”

Remembering she was there made me remember everything else. I shrugged out of Finch’s arms, face hot, glad the light behind the door was fading.

“How did you find me?” I asked him.

“I didn’t. We were looking for a place called—I told you about it in my letters—we’re looking for something called the Night Country. I didn’t know we were coming here. That you’d be right here.” He looked at the woman behind him.

“How did this happen? Was it me? I wanted—” He turned back to me, smile so sweet and shy. “I wanted this. Did that mess up the magic?”

He didn’t even look afraid. He still had the wrong idea about magic. He still thought it could be nice.

My stomach twisted. “This makes no sense. Finch, this can’t be a coincidence. Why are we both here?”

Behind me, and very close, came that sugary giggle.

The joy on Finch’s face lost its footing. “What was that?”

“Shh.” I lifted my phone, letting the beam of its flashlight scatter the dark. I scanned the room once, twice. The third time it snagged on a face.

A pale oval, peering out of a drawn-up hood. It be longed to a child. She held one arm in front of her. Her chin was down, her eyes cast to the ground. And my insides went shivery, because I’d been wrong.

It wasn’t the Trio who’d been following me. They’d never sought me out at all. The little girl I’d seen trailing me around the city was right here.

“Who are you?” I took a step toward her. “Where’s Sophia?”

The child let her hood fall. Beneath it was a mass of blond hair.

She looked up.

And grinned as I finally got it, as I finally understood who I was looking at. The figure in the subway car, in Central Park, on the street. The giggle on the phone, so horribly familiar. The only creature with ice in her hands, enough to kill.

She was me. A younger me, me at age twelve. Feral and princess-haired. She wore flowered shorts and iridescent yellow jellies and a green hoodie. Her eyes were black from end to end.

“You.”

“You,” she echoed back, and snapped her teeth.

I took a step, heart pounding, head floating off my neck with the strangeness of it. Her mouth hung open a little and her gaze was as oily-flat as a selkie’s. When we were close enough to touch, I reached out a hand. After a beat she reached back. Her fingers in mine were a curious numbness, smooth and small.

“Do you know me?”

She put one foot atop the other, balanced. “I am you.”

“How do you exist?”

“How do you?”

I felt like a person pacing at a locked gate. I didn’t know the words to get in. But I knew now that she was the ghost who haunted me. The one the Trio had told me to seek. The ghost of a past I once thought I could get clean of.

“Wait.” Finch’s voice was stricken. “That’s you. I thought I saved you.”

I remembered then that he’d watched me grow up. In the Hinterland, trying so hard to reach me.

“Why did you do it?” I asked her. “Are you building a night country?”

She narrowed her black eyes. “What’s that?”

My head was filling up with hot sand. “You tried to kill me. On the subway. Why?”

“Nuh-uh.” She was indignant. “I just wanted to meet you. Scare you. She said I couldn’t let you see my face.” My phone light made pinpricks in her beetle-shell eyes. “She said you’d be punished if I did.”

“Who did?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb.”

A new voice came out of the dark. The speaker stepped into the flashlight’s beam, beside little Alice. Arms folded, teeth sharp, red hair piled into a heavy topknot. There was a hunting knife in her belt. The light was in her eyes, but she seemed to see us.

“Alice,” she said. “Ellery.”

His name in Daphne’s mouth filled my stomach with oil.

“How?” I spat.

Daphne smiled at me, jack-o’-lantern wide. “Don’t you mean why?”

“I know why. I know about the Night Country. I should’ve known it was you. I should’ve known your giving-a-shit act was an act. I’m asking how—how are there two of me?”

Daphne put a hand on little Alice’s shoulder. Alice looked at that hand like an animal debating whether it should bite.

“Silly girl,” Daphne said. “There are three of you.”

I felt Finch flinch beside me. He’d read my tale. I hadn’t. “What are you talking about?”

“She was always inside you. All I had to do was ask her to come out. When you were sleeping, sweet in your bed. And your mother down the hall.” Daphne bent over her knees like someone coaxing a dog to come closer. “I just talked into your ear till you tossed, till you walked into a dream you couldn’t wake from, and I led her out of the deep. Alice-Three-Times, three little monsters like stair steps. The littlest one is still hiding.” She gestured at my chest. “Can you feel her there? Does she burn?”