The Eighth Day (4 page)

“What does my birthday have to do with it?” Jax demanded. “What
is
today?”

Unexpectedly, Riley grinned. “Today's Grunsday. Well, that's not its name, really. That's just what Crandall's dad calls it, and the name kind of stuck with us.”

“Crandall's
dad
?” Jax repeated. “Who's
us
? Was that A.J.'s mother on the radio?”

“No, that was Melinda.” Riley sighed. “I wasn't expecting this, but you're here now. Let's set up the generator. You don't want to spend the day without electricity, do you?”

Jax followed him out of the house and into the shed at the back of the yard. “Are you saying A.J. knows about this, too? Or just his dad?”

“The whole Crandall family.” Riley wheeled his
motorcycle out of the way, then threw a canvas tarp off two generators and half a dozen gasoline containers. “This is the eighth day of the week—an extra twenty-four hours between Wednesday and Thursday.”

“No way.” Jax looked at his father's watch, stuck at twelve midnight. “Time is stopped?”

“It's not stopped. The sun still moves across the sky, doesn't it? We're just living through a different timeline.” Riley shoved a moving dolly under one of the generators.

“But I saw a car frozen on the highway.”

“Objects traveling at velocity during the moment of change
look
frozen from our perspective, but they're moving normally in their own timeline. It all depends on the observer.” Riley unbuckled a wristwatch from his arm. “Here. This is a watch I wind only on Grunsdays.” Jax leaned close enough to confirm that it was ticking. “Take it,” said Riley. “I'll get another one. As long as you only wind it on the eighth day, it'll work in this timeline.”

Jax strapped the watch above his dad's Rolex while Riley wheeled the generator up to the electric meter on the side of the house. “So, it's like a parallel universe?”

“No, because it doesn't run parallel. It skips over days. And this is the same universe. Things you do on this day stay done.” Riley narrowed his eyes at Jax again. “What'd you do last week? You must've been pretty freaked out.”

“Uh . . .” Try as he might, Jax couldn't keep his eyes from darting to the back of the property.

Riley looked too and saw the handle of the Walmart cart sticking out from beneath the bush. “Is that—? Aw, Jax.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I should've known a Walmart break-in on a Wednesday night wasn't a coincidence.”

“I thought it was the zombie apocalypse!” Jax said. “How was I supposed to know any different? How did you know, your first time? Why
you
, anyway? Why me? What are we doing in a different timeline?”

“We inherited it. Me, from my family. You, from your father.”

A shiver trickled down Jax's spine. “You're telling me this happened to my father?”

“Every week, between Wednesday and Thursday.
You
only get it from your father's side,” Riley said, attaching cables from the generator to the electrical box, “which is why I wasn't sure you'd be one of us at all.”

“One of us?” Jax croaked. “Aren't we human?”

“Of course, we're human.” Riley looked shocked. “What kind of bad science-fiction movies have you been watching?”

“Where's everybody else?”

“People living in the normal timeline can't see into Grunsday, and vice versa.”

“So, they aren't here?”

“Oh, they're here. We just can't see them.”

“Shouldn't there be some sign of them? Uh, their
clothes . . . ?” Jax imagined puddles of clothes dropped wherever the people were standing, sitting, or lying. Had there been pajamas in the beds at the Ramirez house? He didn't remember.

“Nah. Whatever's on your body goes with you. But that doesn't mean the people aren't still there.” Riley pointed at the house across the street. “If that house burned down today, the occupants would die.”

“It could burn down
between
Wednesday and Thursday?”

“In the regular timeline, the house would explode into flames. It would be gone in an instant.” Riley unscrewed the gas cap on the generator and checked the fill level. “Fetch me one of those containers in the shed.” Jax did as he was told, and Riley called after him. “Things you do on Grunsday have consequences in the other time stream. Break stuff, move stuff around, and they stay broken and moved. And it looks pretty freaky to people on the other side.”

“That can't happen very often,” Jax reasoned, handing him a gasoline can, “or people would notice.”

Riley filled the generator. “It happens all the time. Explosions from unexplained gas leaks. Poltergeists. Crop circles—how do you think they appear overnight?”

“Are there a lot of people like us in Grunsday?”

“A few, but not all can be trusted. Your father wanted to make sure you ended up with someone who would watch out for you. That's why I couldn't let you live with your cousin.”

Jax clenched his fists, suddenly reminded of why he resented Riley. “You never explained any of this to me.”

“I had to wait and see what you were. Since your mother was a Normal, you only had a fifty percent chance of being one of us. Most of us transition for the first time when we turn ten or eleven. For some, it doesn't happen until the twelfth birthday.” Riley powered up the generator. Jax expected a loud roar, but it hummed with surprisingly little noise. “It's a late bloomer who gets it on the thirteenth birthday—and a dud who never gets it at all. If your birthday had passed without you having a Grunsday, I would've let you finish the semester here and then sent you to live with your cousin.” He added under his breath, “In fact, I was counting on it.”

Jax steadied himself against the house, because this really was the final blow. He could've lived with Naomi after all, if this bizarre thing hadn't happened to him.

Except it
had
happened.

And Jax's father had kept it a secret.

“Where
were
you last week?” Jax couldn't vent his anger at his father, but Riley was a handy target. “Why weren't you here?”

“I had to make an overnight trip to meet someone who lives only on Grunsday. I had no choice.”

“Someone who
what
?”

“Normals live seven days a week and don't know about the eighth one. But there's a race of people who
don't experience the regular seven. And then there's people like you and me, who transition between the two time streams. We call ourselves Transitioners.”

“Wait, back up,” Jax said. “A
race
of people who live only on Grunsday . . .”

“Right. They exist on this one day and skip over the other days of the week. They can't interact with anyone confined to the normal seven days, although they frequently live in those people's houses.” Riley leaned on the dolly. “Any place that's ever been called
haunted
probably has one living there, eating the food and moving stuff around.” He looked like he was waiting for Jax to reach some kind of revelation.

But Jax was already there. “Mrs. Unger's ghost . . .”

“Yeah,” said Riley. “She's real.” Then he looked at the second floor of Mrs. Unger's house and made a thumbs-up sign.

Jax lifted his head.

A girl with long, ghostly-pale hair was watching them from an upstairs window.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

EVANGELINE DROPPED THE CURTAIN
and walked away
.

Now there was a second Transitioner living next door—a newly developed one, if yesterday was any indication. New Boy had been terrified, banging on Mrs. Unger's door and peeping in windows all over the neighborhood. Then he'd dragged groceries home in a cart and carried them inside like he was preparing for a siege. Evangeline had watched his antics from the upstairs windows. It would've been funny if he hadn't obviously been scared half to death, and she wondered why the boy had been left so ignorant
.

Not that Evangeline could claim to know a lot about Transitioners. Maybe they let all their children discover the eighth day by surprise
.

It seemed as if he was getting an explanation now. She'd only caught a few words of the conversation by the shed, but apparently New Boy would be living here. She didn't like it, but no one cared what she did or did not like. And she'd tolerated the other boy for
eight months, so what was one more?

Of course, in their timeline it had been several years since the first boy arrived. He'd been no older than New Boy was now—maybe thirteen, with dark auburn hair in need of a haircut and bruises on his face like someone had beaten him. He'd walked with a crutch. Evangeline had assumed he was a runaway passing through town and thought if she kept herself out of sight for a few days he might move on without ever being aware of her
.

But then he'd stood on the lawn between the houses, leaning on his crutch, and called out her name—her family name. “I know you're there,” the boy had shouted at the house. “The Taliesins told me. I don't mean you any harm.”

Evangeline's first instinct had been to flee, to dash out the back door and take off running down the street. But if he really did know the Taliesins . .
.

Cautiously, she had approached the window. He raised his left hand when he saw her, identifying himself
.

“Will you come out?” he'd called
.

Rattled by his presence, by him knowing who she was, by who he was, she'd shut the curtain with a snap of her wrist. He could have been lying, although when her heart stopped pounding and she thought it through, she decided he probably wasn't. By the time she'd reconsidered his offer, he'd given up and gone inside his house
.

The Taliesins must have sent him to watch her, although why they'd done so, she didn't know. Evangeline had been in this house five years by her own counting, and she'd spent the first four utterly alone. This boy was the first person she'd seen since the Taliesin
brothers brought her here and left her, so long ago. She didn't count the Taliesins as friends, but they were Kin, trapped in the eighth day like she was, and they had every reason to keep her safe
.

By their definition of safe, of course
.

The day Evangeline's parents died, she'd been running through the woods with Elliot hanging on to her hand and Adelina on her heels, when two men stepped into her path. She'd gasped and drawn her younger siblings close before she saw the strangers' pale blond hair and piercing blue eyes and realized they were Kin and not Transitioners. She thought they must be allies of her father, sent to help her
.

But they weren't. She'd learned that when it was too late to do anything to do about it
.

The Taliesins had separated her forcibly from her brother and sister and ordered her to stay in hiding until she received further instructions. That was how she'd become the lonely ghost in this house—her only company, books and the photographs of the Unger children who shot up like weeds, quickly surpassing her. Eventually they'd all moved out, and then Mr. Unger had died, leaving Mrs. Unger a widow
.

Five years of her life in this house equaled thirty-five to the Ungers and the rest of the world, and she'd received no further instructions from the Taliesin men
.

Just the boy who moved in next door
.

He hadn't spoken to her after that one time, hadn't threatened her or done anything to frighten her into running away. Occasionally he acknowledged she was there—like with the thumbs-up just now or the snowmen last winter. Once in a while she even acknowledged
him back. Recently, he'd started hooking a generator to Mrs. Unger's house on the eighth day, providing her with electricity. He seemed to live a solitary life, but he was in contact with other Transitioners. There was Fat Friend and the two people she thought were Fat Friend's parents. Once there was a Black-Haired Girl who drove an expensive-looking blue convertible
.

And now there was New Boy
.

His arrival probably had nothing to do with her, but the other one—Red, she'd nicknamed him—had been absent a lot lately, which was a change in habit for him. She sensed trouble afoot. Although she hadn't inherited her mother's talent for prognostication, Evangeline always tried to listen to her instincts. One never knew when a feeling might really be a premonition
.

She should renew her protections on this house
.

All the symbols she needed for home protection were stocked in the kitchen: salt, basil, fennel, dill weed, bay leaves, and olive oil to bind them together. Once she had the elements gathered in a porcelain bowl, she closed her eyes and rubbed the herbs between her fingertips
.

“No harm shall enter here.”

She repeated the command over and over, building the potential until she was breathless and gasping. Her eyes flew open, and she looked down at her work. Her ancestors would have ground this mixture into paste with a mortar and pestle. But Mrs. Unger had a Cuisinart, and thanks to Red, Evangeline had electricity
.

Minutes later, she was marking every entrance to the house—window and door—with a thin line of paste. “No harm shall enter here.” It wasn't a perfect form of protection, but it was the best she
could do without making a permanent alteration to the house that would frighten Mrs. Unger and attract unwanted attention. Putting the library card out to request new books was one thing. Painting magical symbols on the walls was a different matter entirely
.

She had just finished and was heading for the kitchen to clean up when she heard footsteps on the porch. Evangeline threw herself into the corner of the hallway where she could see the front door, but not be seen from it
.