The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(74)

When Finch got to the car, he’d been crying. He still was, a little, and didn’t try to hide it.

He still hasn’t told me what they talked about, but he knows I’ll listen if he does.

He did tell me about Iolanthe, the blood door, the string of worlds they walked through. That the air in Death’s kingdom tastes like fennel seeds and somewhere there’s a library in a dead land whose shelves are lined with doors. I told him about Sophia and Daphne and the Hinterland meetings. How his letters came to me, one by one. He laughed till he cried when I told him about the time a squirrel got into Edgar’s bookshop, and Edgar went into battle with a broomstick and an atlas belted over his chest. We were sitting by the fountain at Grand Army Plaza, watching water refract itself over all the stone merfolk, when I told him about running into Janet and Ingrid in Manhattan so many months ago. How Janet had told me about his adventures, and I thought I’d never see him again.

“They were tourists,” I told him. “World-hopping with their magical passports and their money belts.”

“We could do that,” he said offhandedly. When I looked at him, he was staring at a laughing merman.

“Do what?”

“Travel. We could look for them, even. I’m going to see them again.” It was a little prayer, I think, spoken like a certainty.

I thought about it. Thought about my mother talking about getting a degree at last. Paging through those college catalogs still, but dreaming now for herself. I considered the way her dreams for me took different shapes, and how one of them might look like this: back on the road with someone else who knew me. Knew me. Who could love me, maybe, if I stuck around long enough to let him.

His palm was going sweaty on mine.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I mean. Montreal? LA? This world I went to that’s basically one big garden, where everything’s edible but it all gives you really weird dreams?” He looked at me. “Or we could just go to New Jersey. Eat pizza.”

“That sounds good,” I told him.

“Which part?”

“The part where you’re with me.”

Falling for someone makes you say shit that would’ve made you vomit, back before you were toast.

It’s true that sometimes I think about the third Alice, the one the Spinner claimed I carry inside me. If I’m still here, she must be, too. And I wonder, again, how I’m still here. Whether it’s by the grace of the slumbering Spinner or whether being loved by people who actually belong in this world made all the difference. Maybe Finch did something wrong when he ended his world. Or he did something right, and kept it a secret. If the Spinner’s still alive somewhere, I hope she’s sleeping in her golden cage. Hurting no one. Dreaming of fairy tales. And if she’s gotten out, remade herself, I hope she doesn’t come looking for us.

I don’t think she will. We’re something formidable now. I’m an ex-Story, the girl who got away. He’s a Spinner who survived the rise and fall of his world. We’re both survivors, the two of us. We’re wanderers. We could make a home in any world.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Hats off to the usual suspects: Faye Bender, my indispensable agent; and Sarah Barley, my tireless editor. Sarah, this book would be a blob floating in space without your patience, your faith in the story, and most of all your questions, which never failed to unlock doors I didn’t know were there. To the whole Flatiron team, my eternal gratitude for the care you’ve taken with this book and its weird sister (or maybe this book is the weird sister). The Hinterland and I couldn’t have found a better home.

Thank you also to two intimidatingly brilliant authors who helped make this book better: Emma Chastain, for your sharp, life-saving story notes; and Emily X. R. Pan, for turning your gimlet eye on the so-close draft.

Second books are hard, I’ve heard. Wouldn’t know. (Hahahahaha!) Thank you, thank you to all those who generously shared their advice, a listening ear, and most of all their own stories of surviving the trials of the second book. You will go unnamed here, but you know who you are. Thank you also to Tara Sonin, for offering emotional text support; and to Josh Perilo, for patiently listening to a whoooole lot of angsting. Stephanie Garber, thank you for being a lighthouse of kindness. Bill Tipper, thank you for your practical support and understanding.

Thank you to my parents, my first readers and the best unpaid street team I could ever ask for. Thank you to Michael, for too many things to write down here without getting hot eye. And Miles, my Miles. Thank you.