The Dolls (10 page)

“Do you know why?”

“I just don’t think he was that into her.”

“Come on. That’s impossible.”

“No, Caleb’s different. I think that’s what drove Peregrine nuts: the idea that he wasn’t automatically attracted to her like every other guy in the world.” The corner of Chloe’s mouth twitches, and I have the feeling that she was at least a little bit glad to see someone reject Peregrine. “Anyway, she hasn’t dated anyone since then.”

“But she’s surrounded by guys every time I see her.”

“I didn’t say she doesn’t make out or have fun with them. She just doesn’t let them in anymore.”

“So she still likes Caleb?” I wonder if being interested in him makes me a traitor to the girl who’s inexplicably trying to befriend me. Not that I owe Peregrine anything.

“They’re just good friends now. But I think she’s still pissed that she couldn’t have him. Anyway, I’d just be careful, that’s all.”

She lingers for a moment like she wants to say more, but then she drifts away. Shortly thereafter, she and the Dolls leave without saying good-bye.

It’s not until the party is winding down and the last few stragglers are finishing their champagne that I spot him. Or at least I think I do. He’s standing outside the bakery window, dressed in jeans and a tight gray T-shirt. But his face is obscured by the shadows, so I’m not one hundred percent sure.

I hurry out the front door of the bakery. “Caleb?” I call. But the street is empty, and I feel foolish. I’ve reached a real low point if I’m conjuring imaginary images of the guy I’m developing a very real crush on.

“Ready to head home?” Aunt Bea comes up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m beat. I can do all the cleanup tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good,” I reply. “Mom would be really proud of you, Aunt Bea.”

She gives me a hug. “She’d be proud of you too, honey,” she says. “In so very many ways.”

I’m wound up from the party and confused about Peregrine and Caleb’s dating history and Chloe’s warning, so it takes me until almost two in the morning to drift off into an uneasy sleep.

For the first time in almost a week, the strange nightmare returns. I’m floating down the stairs again, and just like before, the hallway begins to fill with blood. But now there are voices too, coming from behind the closed doors.

                
For each ray of light, there’s a stroke of dark.

                
For each possibility, one has gone.

                
For each action, a reaction.

                
Ever in balance, the world spins on.

The voices fade away as I float into the parlor, which I now notice has walls lined with broad crystal mirrors. When I blink into the darkness, I can just barely make out the shape of the toddler version of myself standing in blood, crying.

“Eveny!” I call to her, but she can’t hear me. She falls to her knees in the darkness, still sobbing. “Eveny!” I cry out again, and this time she turns, her face and hands streaked with blood. . . .

I awaken with a start, drenched in sweat. The visions are getting more and more vivid; this one was like watching a movie on a high-def screen. I’ve never dreamed like this before.
What the hell is going on here?

I try to go back to sleep, but it’s impossible. After a while, I glance at my clock and see that it’s 2:36 a.m. I flick my bedside light on and get up. Maybe I’ll feel better if I can get into the parlor and reassure myself that the dreams aren’t real.

I rifle through my bag until I find a couple of paper clips in a side pocket, then I quickly bend one so that it’s a single long piece of metal and the other so that it’s folded over once on itself: a picklock. I shove both makeshift tools into the pocket of my sweatpants, grab a flashlight, and head out my bedroom door.

I creep down the stairs, keeping my flashlight aimed low. In the front hall, I bend to inspect the floor just outside the parlor. This is the spot where the blood always pools in my nightmare, but of course it looks completely normal now.
It’s just a dream, you dork
, I tell myself. But then I touch the ground to get my balance as I stand up, and for the quickest of instants, I catch a flash of crimson staining the beautiful hardwood.

“You’re seeing things,” I tell myself aloud. But when I reach tentatively for the floor again, the dark stain reappears the moment my index finger makes contact. I hold it there this time long enough to notice two tiny, child-sized footprints in the faded stain. I stand up, and the floor returns to looking normal.

“What the . . . ?” I whisper. I reach for the thick, brass handle of the parlor door, but I pull away as soon as my fingers make contact. It’s burning hot. I try again, holding on tighter as I tug hard, and when I yank my hand back, my palm is a scalded red.

My hand shaking, I pull the paper clip tools from my pocket and prepare to insert the longer one into the lock on the door. But the second metal touches metal, I’m hit with a jolt of electricity so sharp that I’m thrown backward.

Completely weirded out, I scramble to my feet and place my palm against the wood of the door, trying to steady myself. But the second my skin makes contact, I’m hit with a vivid image.

There’s blood everywhere, and suddenly, a shadow in the corner of the parlor catches my eye. Before I have a chance to call out or see who it is, the figure slips out the door in silence. . . .

“This can’t be happening,” I murmur, yanking my hand away.

I take a deep breath and reach for the door once more, tentatively, but nothing happens. I pull away and try again, but when my finger connects with the door, there’s nothing unusual about it, no uninvited images of blood and shadows.

Slowly, I back away. Am I losing my mind?

But when I look down at my right palm, it’s still red, throbbing, and painful—proof that I’m not imagining things.

Something’s going on, but whatever secrets this house is holding, it’s not giving them up tonight.

After smearing Neosporin on my hand, I wander into the living room, my heart still racing wildly.

I sit on the sofa and reach for the framed photo of my mom on the coffee table to the left. Thinking about her always helps center me, and I feel as off-kilter now as I ever have. “What the heck is going on in this house, Mom?” I ask the photo, which was taken on her wedding day. She’s standing in the garden, wearing a beautiful gown of layered lace, her red hair done up in an elaborate twist. She’s laughing and looking at someone off to the side of the photo, but I can’t see his or her face. Curious, I turn the frame over and gently begin to slide the photo out. As I do, another picture, which was hiding behind the wedding one, flutters to the floor.

I bend to pick it up, and I’m so surprised that I almost drop it. It’s a photo of me when I was two or three months old, my red curls so vibrant that I look like a Raggedy Ann doll. My mother is holding me, her expression serene and happy, but what shocks me is the sandy-haired man beside her, his arm slung around her shoulders, staring down at me lovingly.

It’s my father—the father Aunt Bea always told me left before I was born and never returned.

“That’s impossible,” I say aloud. But the image is unmistakable. I turn the photo over after a moment and am even more surprised to see a note scribbled on the back.

                
I’ll watch over Eveny always.

                
—Love eternal, Matthias

Not only had my father come back to see my mother and me, but he’d made her a promise that he’d always watch over me.

The image from the cemetery, the one that hit me so vividly as we entered Carrefour last week, flashes through my mind again as clear as day.
They’re coming for you
, my father said.
You have to be ready.

So was the cemetery recollection a dream, or had he really been watching over me like he promised? And does Aunt Bea know he’d come back at least once? I’m still staring at the back of the photo in confusion when something outside catches my eye.

I blink into the darkness beyond the back window. For a moment, I think I’m imagining things, but then I see it: three faint beams of light bobbing through the gloom of the cemetery beyond the garden wall.

I jump to my feet and press my nose against the glass as I peer out into the blackness. There’s no mistaking it: three shadowy figures are making their way through the maze of tombs beyond our back wall. Suddenly, I have the crazy sense that whatever’s going on out there is connected to the dreams I’m having and the weird mystery of my own house.

Before I can question my own sanity—and let’s face it, I’m pretty sure I’m losing it anyhow—I grab my flashlight and stuff my bare feet into an old pair of Aunt Bea’s ballet flats I find lying in the laundry room. I’m careful to open and close the back door as quietly as possible, and I keep the flashlight off. The moon overhead provides just enough light to see.

It’s only once I’ve landed in the mud on the cemetery side of the wall that I realize exactly what I’ve done. I’ve dashed out of my house without leaving a note, climbed into a creepy cemetery in the middle of the night, and am pursuing a group of people sneaking around in the darkness—all because of a completely baseless theory.

“Brilliant, Eveny,” I mutter. I’m just about to turn back when I hear it: a faint, female voice in the distance, singing words I’m beginning to know well.

                
For each ray of light, there’s a stroke of dark.

                
For each possibility, one has gone.

                
For each action, a reaction.

                
Ever in balance, the world spins on.

Just like in my dream and on the hallway wall.

Now I’m desperate to know what’s happening. My heart hammers faster as I make my way deeper into the cemetery, the light of the half moon vanishing above the thick canopy of trees. I can clearly see the three beams of light now, bouncing toward a small clearing up ahead. I flatten myself against a tomb and pray that no one is looking in my direction. Carefully, I peer around the edge.

I notice three things at once in the pale light of the moon.

First, there are at least two dozen candles flickering on the ground, laid out in a circle.

Second, the three people standing in the middle of the circle, eyes closed, hands raised to the sky, are Peregrine, Chloe, and Pascal.

And finally, Audowido is winding his way slowly down one of Peregrine’s outstretched arms, his scaly body reflecting the moonlight as he hisses into the silence of the night.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
watch in shock as Audowido slithers to the ground and Peregrine begins calling out loudly to someone or something called Eloi Oke—
El-ooh-ah Oh-key.
“Come to us now, Eloi Oke, and open the gate. Come to us now, Eloi Oke, and open the gate. Come to us now, Eloi Oke, and open the gate.”

She pounds on the ground with a big, gnarled stick, while Chloe holds up a huge silver triangle dangling from a string and strikes it once before dropping it. I half expect the earth to open up beneath them, but all that happens is an unnatural calm settles over the cemetery as the air goes completely still.

Peregrine releases the stick and joins hands with Chloe and Pascal, whose eyes are closed. All three of them look like they’re in some sort of trance, and I wonder for a moment if they’re drunk, or maybe even high. Peregrine says something else, in a language I don’t understand, and then she repeats the phrase twice more.

Chloe and Pascal begin to dance slowly, their feet thudding against the ground in an unhurried, deliberate rhythm, their hips swaying in time. After a moment, Peregrine joins in too, and I realize I can hear a distant, musical tinkling sound. Then I see the moonlight glinting off tiny bells attached to all of their wrists and ankles. The breeze that has picked up out of nowhere carries the sound skyward.

The dancing gets faster and wilder as Peregrine chants more urgently in a sultry, velvety voice. Soon Chloe is singing along with her, her voice sweeter and higher. Pascal is the last to join in, his voice gravelly and low. Audowido is coiled in the middle of the circle now, and as the song gets louder, he begins to rise up toward the half moon, his body weaving in time. Suddenly, he turns his head toward me and freezes as his eyes lock with mine.

It takes all my self-control to keep from screaming. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the damned snake had just cracked a small, satisfied smile. After a long moment, he turns his gaze skyward and begins swaying to the music again.

I fall back against the tomb as Peregrine, Chloe, and Pascal abruptly let go of each other’s hands and open their eyes. Audowido retreats back into the studded leather bag, and Peregrine waits for him to vanish before she kneels in the dirt and begins digging with her bare hands. After a moment she stands and brushes her hands off.