When the Sky Fell on Splendor(52)

My heart hammered, and my back tingled like the dark had come alive behind it.

Something rustled on the far side of the basement. Rats, I told myself, though really I had no idea. Just rats!

But I still couldn’t handle having my back exposed. I turned and pressed my back into the door, pounding on it on either side of my hips. “Arthur, stop it now!”

He didn’t answer. Was he even there? Had he left me?

Was this his brilliant plan?

I pounded again, screaming for him, then Levi.

“PLEASE,” I begged, turning back to struggle against the knob. “PLEASE.”

Glass shattered behind me, and something scuttled across the floor at the bottom of the steps, and I whipped around again.

The basement had changed, lightened.

A black garbage bag had been pulled loose from one of the windows, and the resulting trail of light was enough to reveal movement.

Not a rat.

Something much bigger, hurrying through the shadows toward me.

A scream tore out of me. The lights overhead stuttered.

Oh my god.

There actually was someone in here.

I threw my body against the door, screaming. The lights strobed.

There was someone in here with me, a figure cutting toward me through the dark.

I slid down against the door, curled against it, fists pounding.

There was screaming on the other side of the door now too—Sofía and Nick—they were trying to get the door open, screaming my name.

But they weren’t the only ones. Someone else was screaming it much closer.

On the stairs below me.

The lights surged brighter, so bright I couldn’t see. Not just the overhead light, but whatever light lay beyond the now exposed window—the substation maybe, or the porch lights, or something else.

And then my eyes adjusted and I saw him bounding up the stairs toward me.

The figure who’d torn through the window covering. The other person calling my name.

“What?!” Remy shouted, wide-eyed, as he thundered toward me. “What is it, Fran? What happened? I heard you from—”

“Remy?” It was just Remy?

My heart felt like it was dropping back into my rib cage. The lights went out. The door behind me opened, and I fell backward, sprawling out across the filthy linoleum floor of the kitchen.





EIGHTEEN



LEVI, NICK, AND ARTHUR stared down at me, splayed out on the linoleum in a daze. Sofía ran over and crouched beside me. “What the hell were you thinking?” she screamed at Arthur.

Remy jogged up the stairs and knelt on my other side as Sofía helped me up to sitting.

“What happened?” he asked. “We were behind the house when we heard you screaming.”

“They happened,” Sofía raged. “When Nick and I got in here, they were holding the door shut while she screamed bloody murder!”

Levi tried to hide by sinking into himself, but his height wouldn’t allow it. “We thought you needed to be scared, Franny, and—”

“You mean he did.” Nick rounded on Arthur. “This is what it’s come to? You almost gave us heart attacks! Handsome Remy broke a gah-damn window to get into that basement! We thought something was killing her!”

He shoved Arthur, but Art barely seemed to notice. He was staring at me, breathless and flushed in the sober light of Sofía’s LED lantern. “It worked. I knew it would work.”

“I can’t believe you,” I spat, staggering to my feet.

He blinked, coming back down to earth. As his eyes met mine, his victorious expression faded into guilt, which quickly dissolved into a mask of cool indifference. “Yes you can.”

“Fine!” I shouted. “I can, and it makes me sick. How could you do that to me?” Now I shoved him, as hard as I could.

He stumbled into the kitchen countertop but quickly regained his balance and advanced on me. “I did that for you, and you know it! You have a gift, and you need to know how to use it, Franny!”

“Why?” I demanded, heart thudding viciously. “Because that’s what you would do? Because you can’t stand being normal? You’d scare your sister to death just to feel like you’ve got a starring role in a comic?”

Arthur’s eyes hardened and he stepped forward, forcing me back. “You said you trusted me. You knew what that meant.”

The anger dimmed just a little, crumbling back into the secret knot it usually lived in. Some part of me had known. I’d seen his shiny plan glinting behind his eyes and been complicit, because I wanted to understand and control this.

“You didn’t have to take things that far,” I said weakly. “Were there even mysterious boxes back at the car?”

Arthur cracked his knuckles. Hair sticking up in wild tufts, he looked every bit an evil mastermind. “Not as such.”

I faced Levi, who once again shrank like a Newfoundland who’d peed on the carpet.

“We never would’ve left you alone,” he said guiltily. “We just needed you to think you were. We wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.”

“She could have gotten seriously hurt and you wouldn’t have even known,” Sofía said. “She could have fallen down those stairs!”

Arthur’s lips tightened. “I didn’t think of that.” He turned toward me. “Franny, I’m sorry I scared you.”