The Ten Thousand Doors of January(84)

And when they returned, when Molly Neptune herself lay the scrawny, white-draped form on the table, her eyes like open graves, I didn’t think: My fault. All my fault. Bad leaned his warm weight against my leg and I felt a tremor run through me, a shiver of grief.

Samuel entered the courtyard in a hunched shuffle, guiding a frail-looking woman in long gray skirts. She clutched pathetically at his arm, blinking watery eyes over the twisted root of her nose. He seated her carefully, adjusting her shawl with such tenderness that I wondered if he was thinking of his own grandmother—a cackling crow of a woman I’d seen perched on the Zappias’ porch, muttering Italian curses at Mr. Locke’s Buick as it rolled by. I wondered if Samuel would ever see her again. My fault.

The old woman’s eyes flicked from face to face until they landed on me. Her mouth gaped, moist and unpleasant, and I flinched. It was a familiar sensation—I’d been stared at by rude old white women for seventeen years as they speculated whether I was from Siam or Singapore—but it jarred me. I’d already gotten used to the luxury of invisibility among the Arcadians.

Jane was speaking in low, urgent tones with Molly and the other hunters, discussing rotating patrols and all-night watches. A flock of women had encircled the old lady, cooing with pity. She answered their questions in a tremulous, timid voice—yes, she’d been rowing along the coast, but she’d gotten lost; yes, a man in a dark coat had chased her; no, she didn’t know where he’d gone. Her eyes skittered over mine too often as she spoke. I looked away but could still feel the clingy, cobwebbed sensation of her eyes on my skin.

I found myself resenting her. How had she even found the lighthouse? Why had she invaded this tiny, fragile paradise, bringing death on her heels?

Samuel came to collect me eventually, like a shepherd gathering a wayward sheep. “There is nothing else we can do tonight, except sleep.” I trailed after him through the dark, cracked streets.

Several times I thought I heard footsteps shuffling behind us, or long skirts trailing on stone, or breath rattling from an aged chest. I chastised myself—don’t be stupid, she’s a harmless old woman—until I noticed Bad standing stiff as a copper statue, staring behind us with his lips peeled back and a growl radiating in his chest.

A silent coldness slipped over me, like when you dive too deep in the lake and stir up the winter-chilled waters at the bottom. I nudged Bad with my knee, dry-mouthed. “C’mon, boy.”

I lay beside Samuel in the moon-streaked dark of our adopted house, thinking things like surely not and it’s impossible and then reflecting on the word impossible and its many abrupt fluctuations in recent days and continuing to stare sleeplessly at the ceiling.

Jane came in sometime after midnight and crawled into her blanket pile. I waited for her breathing to deepen, for the soft whistle of her not-quite-snore, and then crept to her side. I slid Mr. Locke’s revolver carefully from her skirts and stuffed it beneath my waistband. It rested cold and heavy against my thigh as I ducked out of the house and into the bright black night.

I followed our street upward, Bad padding at my side, until it petered into tufted grass and tumbled brick. The plains rose around me, painted silver by the half-moon. I waded through the grasses, trying to ignore the sweat prickling my palms, the quivering in my belly that said this was a very, very stupid idea.

Then I stopped. I waited.

And waited. Minutes thudded by, measured in too-fast heartbeats. Be patient. Be brave. Be like Jane. I tried to stand the way she would, tense and ready as a long-legged hunting cat, rather than shivering and uncertain.

A whispering shuffle sounded behind me, so soft it might have been some small creature runneling through the grass. Bad growled, low and deep, and I believed him.

I drew the revolver from my skirt, turned, and pointed it at the hunched figure behind me. I saw the long twist of her nose, the saggy folds of flesh at her throat, the tremor of her hands as she raised them.

I strode closer. “Who are you?” I hissed.

How terribly, painfully cliché. Even with blood pulsing in my skull and my throat terror-tight, I felt conscious that I was doing a fairly poor impression of one of the Rover Boys, if the Rover Boys had ever threatened any innocent old ladies.

The woman was breathless and stammering with fear. “My—my name is Mrs. Emily Brown and I just got a little turned around, I swear, please don’t hurt me, miss, please—”

I almost believed her. I felt myself shrinking, retreating, except—there was something wrong with her voice. It didn’t actually sound like an old woman’s voice, now that I was standing close to her; it sounded like a younger person doing a slightly rude impression of an old woman, high and shaky.

Her hand began to creep toward her skirts, voice still babbling with terror. Something silver glinted up at me from the black folds of cloth. I froze, had a half second’s vision of how disappointed Jane would be if I let a little old lady slit my throat—then knocked her hand away and scrabbled the knife out of her dress pocket. Something black and flaky crusted the blade.

I threw it into the darkness and leveled the gun back at her chest. She’d stopped babbling.

“Who. Are. You.” It sounded much better this time, almost menacing. I wished the gun would stop shaking.

The woman’s mouth closed in an ugly seam. She glared for a moment, narrow-eyed, then clucked her tongue in disgust. She fished a cigarette from her pocket and struck a match, puffing until her cigarette glowed and crackled. White smoke streamed from her nostrils in a sigh.