The Replacement (11 page)

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Authors: Brenna Yovanoff

BOOK: The Replacement
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I didn't know how to answer. Yes and yes and no and yes.
I glanced in the direction of the stairs and then I almost stopped breathing.
Two girls were standing halfway up the stairs, leaning their elbows on the banister and whispering to each other.
One was pretty, wearing a huge, puffy dress, complete with a crown and a silver star wand. She looked soft and pinkish, the kind of girl who gets kissed awake at the end of a fairy tale, but she was short. Really short. Standing next to me, she wouldn't have come up to my elbow. Also, she had the biggest ears I'd ever seen on a real person.
She was standing up on the baseboard with her feet struck through the slats, holding on to the banister. She was talking up at the other girl, who wasn't small or pink or cute.
The second girl's face was shiny, like skin after a bad burn. There was a jagged ring around her neck. No blood, just torn flesh and raw edges. Her grin was lunatic, almost as wide as the gash.
She was looking out over the crowded room, and when she smiled, she was smiling at me.
I turned to Alice. "We should go outside."
She shook her head. "It's cold out."
Across the room, the girl stepped away from the banister and started down the stairs. Even from the couch, I smelled the low stink of something dead. It wasn't a costume.
I grabbed Alice harder than I meant to, yanking her up off the couch. "Let's just go outside, okay? Let's go for a walk."
Out in the backyard, people were standing around in little clusters on the covered patio, laughing and smoking, drinking beer out of plastic cups. I tried to breathe slower, but my heart was beating hard and fast in my throat.
Next to me, Alice was wrestling with the cat costume. "God, this tail is so obnoxious."
It was, but not in the way she meant. Suddenly, she was right in front of me, pushing herself up on her toes.
In her mouth, the barbell twanged at me. Her hand on my arm was warm. Her lips were less than three inches away. I swallowed and tried to figure out why this wasn't the best moment of my whole life.
"What's wrong?" she said, breathing out another gust of tequila and stainless steel. She put a hand on her hip. "Look, are you gay or something?"
I stared at her. She was beautiful in the porch light and very far away. I shook my head.
"What's
wrong
with you, then? Seriously."
But she'd never really looked at me. She'd never seen me. Here she was, making up some complicated story, when Tate was right--the answer had always been dangerously obvious to anyone who felt like looking.
Tate, her face inches from mine as she stared up me, telling me that thing in the box wasn't her sister, that something else had died in her sister's bed and all she wanted was for someone to listen when she talked.
Alice leaned closer. "Are you even
listening
to me?"
But I wasn't. I was standing under a rain-soaked tree with a girl whose sister was one more casualty of our shitty little town and who had the good sense to be angry about that instead of heartbroken. It was the only thing I could think of and Alice was so far away.
The screen door slammed behind us and I turned, bracing myself for the two strange girls, but it was Tate. She'd come out onto the back steps and was looking down at us with her elbows propped on the handrail, silver-glitter stars swaying back and forth.
The light from the kitchen was shining behind her. It lit her hair around the edges, giving her a halo, like a neon supernatural being wearing deely boppers. I couldn't see her face, but her silhouette was going back and forth between us. Me. Alice. Me. Alice.
I stood in the yard and looked up, like she was a girl on a balcony. She stepped out from in front of the light and I could finally see her face. I don't know what I'd been expecting. Something remarkable, I guess. She looked like she always did. Completely unimpressed.
"Roswell's looking for you." Her mouth was thin and she was staring me right in the face.
I found him in the living room with a bunch of the student-council girls. He grinned and waved me over, then lunged to tickle Stephanie, making her laugh every time he pretended to chew on her with his fangs.
I squeezed in next to Jenna Porter, who was looking bored and a little drunk. She was dressed in a toga, with leaves in her hair, but she was wearing her normal shoes. They were bright red, with little flowers die-cut on the toes, and didn't match her costume.
"Hey," I said.
She nodded and gave me a smile. Over by the coat closet, the two strange girls stood whispering behind their hands. I pretended not to see, but Jenna glanced at them, shaking her head.
"I can't wait to get out of here," she mumbled, touching the little steel cross around her neck. "As soon as we graduate, I'm moving to New York."
"What's in New York?" I said, raising my eyebrows. My voice sounded easy, but the staring girls were making it hard to act normal. Suddenly, the last thing I was in the mood for was making conversation.
Jenna shrugged. "Chicago, then. Or Boston or L.A. or wherever." Her eyes slid out of focus, and she smiled without looking like she meant it. "Screw it--I'll go to Newark or Detroit if it means getting out of this godforsaken place."
She didn't have to say what she was really thinking--if it means getting away from these people.
I opened my mouth, trying to think of something generic and reassuring. Then I smelled rotting meat.
The girl with the torn throat had started toward me. She was pushing her way through the crowd with the little pink one scrambling after her, and my pulse was wildly out of control.
Jenna made a whining noise, somewhere between disgusted and scared. "That's the nastiest costume I've ever seen. Seriously. What are you supposed to be?"
The rotting girl didn't answer. She just turned on Jenna with her crazed smile, and Jenna backed away, looking glad to be going. I was on my own, with a girl who looked like she'd climbed out of a grave.
"Are you avoiding us?" she said, coming in close. Her breath smelled cold and stale. "I'd have thought the hawthorn was good for a chat, anyway."
"Go away," I said in a whisper, looking past her, trying not to watch the way her neck gaped and squelched when she talked.
She smiled wider. Her teeth were sharp and yellow. "What's wrong? Are you worried we'll attract attention? Expose your little secret? This is our season, dear--the time when even the worst of us can go out on the town and look just like everyone else."
"Did you see the Orionid shower last night?" the little pink one asked, peering out at me from behind the other girl. "The Orionids are falling all the time now--astral bodies separating from the parent body. They originate from Halley's comet. Did you see them?"
I shook my head. Her cheeks were very pink.
"They won't peak until Monday. You have plenty of time."
The other girl turned on her. "Shut up, you ninny. No one cares about stars."
"He does," said the little pink one. "I saw him gazing in the kitchen. He was positively coveting them." She waved her toy wand at the other girl and tried to pat my arm. "It's quite all right, you know. Not everyone is as unmoved by beauty as
she
is."
I stared straight ahead, tasting rancid meat every time I breathed. "Look, what do you guys want?"
The other girl smiled wider. "You, of course. We've been hunting for you."
"Yes," said the little pink one, smiling so that her eyes squinted into crescents. "We're hunting." Then she tipped her head back and laughed like that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard.
The other girl leaned close, staring into my face with milky eyes. "Your foster sister accepted our services and now she owes us a favor. Come to the slag heap and be quick about it. If you don't, we'll find Emma and take the price out of her skin."
"Oh, don't be hateful," the pink one said, swatting the other girl with her wand. She turned to me. "Malcolm, please, if you're amiable and cooperative, everything is going to be fine."
Then they were gone and I was standing in Stephanie Beecham's very floral living room, with a taste in my mouth that reminded me of roadkill. She had called me Malcolm.
Drew was next to me suddenly, smelling stoned and a little like papier-mache. "Jesus," he said, taking off his rabbit mask. "What was
that
all about?"
I turned to face him. "What was what about?"
"Those girls just now." His expression seemed to narrow. "It looked like a pretty intense conversation is all."
I shrugged and looked down. "I never met them before." Which, as we both knew, was not an answer to anything, no matter how factual the statement sounded.
He raised his eyebrows in a suggestive way. "Just as long as you weren't planning on hooking up with one of them. The tall one was ass ugly."
"That's not really a danger," I said, and reached for Roswell's arm. "Hey, you ready to get out of here?"
He didn't act surprised--he never did--just pinched Stephanie's cheek and started for the door.
In the car, we sat looking ahead, not talking. My heart was skipping beats all over the place.
Roswell turned the key in the ignition. "So, are you up for going over to Mason's for a little?"
"Nah--" My voice sounded weird even to me and I started over. "I should get home. Stuff to do . . ."
Roswell nodded and put the car in gear. His profile was serious and younger looking than normal.
I didn't say anything else because I couldn't think of anything to say. There were too many things in my head. I told myself that Emma was at home, working on a botany project, maybe, or curled up with a book, already in bed. That she was safe. She had to be because I couldn't stand to consider the possibility that she wasn't.
Come to the slag heap
, like some kind of invitation. But the slag heap was just a crumbling pile of rubble. It was weedy and abandoned, nothing to find if I went there.
Except if the girls were as unnatural as they seemed, there would have to be a secret that went along with it. There would be a way in because sometimes at night, the dead rose and walked around deserted streets. If you listened to the rumors and the dark murmurs of bedtime stories, something lived under the quicklime and the shale. I was no expert, but the girl at the party had been dead. The smell coming off her was the rank, clotted smell of decay, and nothing could live with its veins and arteries cut open. Her smile had been horrific, and I had a sneaking fear that she was just the beginning of what I'd find if I went there.
But only one thing really mattered as I stared out the passenger window on the drive home. Emma. She'd been trying to help--and the little bottle of hawthorn water
had
helped--but what was the payback, the price? When I thought about it that way, though, the answer didn't matter. I couldn't let anything happen to her. So I knew what I had to do.
CHAPTER TEN
MONSTERS
T
he neighborhood was quiet. No creatures, no dead things, nothing creeping in the shadows.
I walked along Concord to Orchard Circle, past the dead end and down the slope to the bridge.
It was lonesome walking so late at night and more lonesome navigating the deep ravine between my neighborhood and the center of town, not knowing what I was walking into. As I started down, I could smell a wet, mushy odor like garden compost and rot.
The guitarist from Rasputin Sings the Blues was standing on the footbridge, his silhouette barely visible in the dark and made unnaturally tall by his top hat. He was smoking a cigarette, and when he looked up, the cherry glowed a bright, violent red.
I stepped out onto the bridge. "Are you waiting for me?"
He nodded and waved toward the other end of the bridge. "Let's go for a walk."
My skin was prickling all over. "Who are you--what's your name?"
"Call me Luther, if you like."
"And if I don't like?"
"Then call me something else." After a fairly mysterious pause, he pointed to the other side of the ravine again, then jerked his head down at the slag heap.
"Where are we going?"
"Into the pit, of course."
The sound of his voice made shudders creep down my neck. A person would have to be crazy to go down into a lair of dead things. A person would have to out of his mind. I knew that I should just tell him no deal, just walk away.
It was no good, though. There were all kinds of arguments for turning around, climbing the path, walking straight back home and locking the door. But when it came to Emma, my loyalty had never been in question. I would do pretty much anything.
I followed Luther across the bridge and along a tangled path that ran down to the bottom of the ravine, where the slag heap sat lumpy and black. As we moved deeper into the shadow of the ravine, it seemed to rise up, huge against the sky.

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