Dead Set

Ten

His apartment wasn’t far. The building was just a couple of blocks off the main street, and much closer than her father’s room, lost in the tangle of anonymous buildings farther inland. He had to stop twice along the way to drink from a silver flask. He had a limp even worse than Zoe’s and whatever was in the flask seemed to dull the pain.

When they reached his building, the sidewalk was clean and clear of any debris. The buildings stood relatively straight up and down. Oak trees lined both sides of the street and all the streetlights worked. Night-blooming jasmine climbed up trellises, filling the air with their faint ghost scent.

Inside the building, the carpets were clean and the elevator still worked. They rode up to the top floor and went to his room, which was at the front of the building. He had to stop once more in the hallway to nurse his bad leg. When he felt better, he took out his key, unlocked the door, and pushed Zoe inside.

His room was laid out like her father’s, but that’s where the resemblance ended. This room was clean and lived in. The floor was covered with a large Persian carpet in warm colors, and the walls were freshly painted. The dresser was made of a dark, ornately carved wood, decorated with dragons at each corner. The table and chairs in his little kitchen matched the dresser. A maroon silk duvet covered the ample bed. There was a large leather armchair with carved dragon paws for legs. Through the window, Zoe could see the ocean and the moon hovering overhead.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, releasing his grip on her sleeve. He pointed with the knife. “On the chair, sit on your hands.” Zoe walked to the chair and did as she was told, sliding her hands under her legs as she sat. The bird-faced man limped to the end of the bed and dropped down onto it. “What’s your name?” He stretched out his leg and winced as pain stabbed through him.

“Zoe.”

The man nodded. “I’m Prosper. Mr. Prosper to you.” He took out the flask, unscrewed it with one hand, and drank deeply. He kept a tight grip on the knife with the tip pointed in her direction. Zoe could tell that he was exhausted. He was sweating just from the effort of bringing her to the room. His lips were as drained as his gray face, and his hands shook.

It didn’t seem like a moment to be shy. “What’s wrong with your leg?” she asked.

“Never you mind about my leg.” Amber-colored apothecary bottles littered the top of a small bedside table. Zoe saw other bottles on the dresser and the floor next to the bed. She could only read one word on their labels, Laudanum.

Mr. Prosper was staring at her, studying her. A trace of a smile played at the edges of his pale lips. “Brilliant. I knew it the moment you arrived, you know. It felt like ice water running down my neck. Really, it was Hecate who felt you, but her excitement infected the rest of us. Made us all a bit mental. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time. How did you get here?”

“Through the sewers, then the tunnels. I followed Emmett.”

“Emmett?” His eyes were wet and blank. He gazed out the window, then back at her. “Ah, Ammut. Well, you’re the first who’s ever made it all the way here, though not the first who tried. Remarkable girl.”

“If you can tell me the way out, I’ll leave and never come back.”

He let out a deep, hard laugh, catching Zoe by surprise. He seemed so frail it looked like laughing might shake him apart completely. A moment later, the laughter dissolved into wet, phlegmy coughs.

“I’ll bet you would.” He stared past her, at the moon shining through the window. “It’s a tempting idea, just to see Hecate’s face. She’s so counting on you.”

That scared her, but she tried to keep it out of her voice. “Counting on me? For what?”

“Girlie, you’re her chance to be reborn,” he said. He pointed at her with the knife. “She needs a body. A living body. Oh, she has plans for you.” He smiled, his sagging skin creasing around his mouth. The blade twitched in his hand. “She’ll peel the skin right off you and wear you like a ball gown, all the way back to the world. And when she gets there, she’ll use her considerable powers to take revenge on every living soul.” He lifted the flask and drained it. “Of course, it’s as likely that when she draws that first gulp of air into her lungs, she’ll forget all about us down here and run off to be a girl again. It’s so hard predicting the actions of the insane.” His large, wet eyes were red at the edges. Beads of sweat, or maybe tears, slid down his sagging cheeks.

“You helped her trick me into coming down here?”

“Not me. Ammut.” He set the empty flask aside. A few drops leaked from the open top, leaving a dark stain on the duvet. “You’re not so special. Anyone would do. Anyone with the need to find him.” He turned and looked at the bottles at the head of the bed. “A girl. A boy. An old man dancing the Charleston. It didn’t matter. A body was all that mattered. Of course, a pretty young girl was the first choice, and here you are.” He slid up the length of the bed, wincing as he dragged his bad leg. The first bottle he picked up from the bedside table was empty. He threw it to the floor in disgust. Still holding the knife, he took the next bottle in one hand and pulled the cork with his teeth. He drank deeply. Clear liquid trickled out of the corners of his lips.

“So, he did trick me into coming down here.”

“Tricked. Trapped. Delivered you with a bow on to his mom. Yes, you were.”

“That was him on our mountain. Watching Valentine and me,” she said. It made her feel cold inside.

“What? Who?”

“Nothing. Emmett got me good.”

“That he did. That he did.”

Mr. Prosper let go of the knife and held the bottle with both hands. The blade glittered, resting against one thin leg. When he’d had his fill, he took a breath and said, “I was a powerful man back before your father or his father was born. I was mayor of Iphigene, back when it was still Calumet. She told me when she was gone, I could be mayor again. Just another lie.”

He was far away from her, and looked worse than ever, Zoe thought. “But you fucked it up somehow, right?” she said.

Mr. Prosper leered at her angrily, dizzy, curling his lip and fumbling for the knife. He tried to stand, but his leg wouldn’t take the weight, and he flopped back down on the bed. “Don’t imagine that I’m done yet, girlie.” He grabbed the knife and pointed it at her. “I won’t let Hecate have you, and if that means slitting your pretty throat, so be it.”

Zoe wondered if she could get her razor out, and if so, could she use it on Mr. Prosper before he used his knife on her? She slid her hands out from under her legs and laid them gently on the arms of the leather chair. Mr. Prosper didn’t seem to notice. Okay, she thought. “You were supposed to help Emmett, weren’t you? But something went wrong. Were you always a junkie?” she asked.

“Watch your mouth, brat,” said Mr. Prosper.

“That’s when Emmett realized he didn’t need you, isn’t it?” Prosper frowned at her, but his eyelids dropped. He blinked, trying to keep them open. Zoe’s heart beat madly in her chest. Instead of being afraid, she felt angry and reckless, fed up with all of Iphigene. She knew she was taking an awful chance, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Is that what happened to your leg? You were so high that you fell, and then everyone knew how useless you were.”

When he didn’t speak, she thought he might have fallen asleep, but his head snapped up and he gestured with the knife. No. Wait. He’s too awake and he already has his knife out. Forget the razor. “She set the wolves, those man-beasts, on me. Her so-called children. Filth, all of them.” He rubbed his bad leg. “Who knew that after death you could feel such pain?” He drank again and closed his eyes. His voice was light and high-pitched, as if he were talking to a child.

“When she first came here she was beautiful, the most beautiful creature any of us had ever seen. She came from the hinterlands with her black dogs. From over the farthest hills, somewhere very far, very ancient. At first, she was a powerful, reassuring presence among the new souls. She’d greet them when the buses dropped them off. She’d help them get settled and find places to live, places where they’d be comfortable-apartments, longhouses, stilt houses in the forest, and what have you. She was inexhaustible. Everyone knew her, her and her dogs.”

Zoe started to say something, but saw that Mr. Prosper was somewhere else now, lost in drugs and memories.

“No one thought much about it when some of the newcomers went missing. It takes a while to settle in. We assumed they’d found family or somewhere more comfortable. At City Hall we dismissed the stories of the ravaged, sucked-dry souls she left behind while traveling here from the back of beyond.

“By the time any of us who were in a position to do anything about it were aware of the truth, it was too late. Her dogs were everywhere. Snakes, too, but they mostly stay hidden. The whole city was under her spell. They were her army. . not that she needed one. When she marched into my office and told me that she was queen of the new city of Iphigene, I knew she was right. There was almost nothing left of Calumet by then. And when she stole the sun from the sky, we let her. Never fought her. We never even raised our voices. She didn’t come here to lead a revolt. She came here to show us that our time was over. Once we understood that, once we saw that the she-wolf was truly our queen, there was nothing left to do but give her everything, even ourselves.”

Zoe slid forward so that she was sitting on the very edge of the chair. The door was only ten feet away, but Mr. Prosper still held the knife.

“What happens now?” she asked.

His eyes snapped open, wide and red. “What happens is that I’m the one who gets reborn. I know her plans, and how she was going to sort you out.” He slumped against the wall at the head of the bed. “God, the look on her face, if only she knew.” He slurred his words and his eyelids drooped again. “Her face, when she figures it out.” He slid to his side, down onto the pillows. The amber bottle spilled its contents onto the bed. “You’re my treasure. The first one to make it all the way down. Such a clever girl.”

She could hear him breathing, taking regular, shallow breaths. The knife slipped from his hand and fell onto the Persian carpet. Zoe stood and quietly left Mr. Prosper’s room.

When she made it back to the boardwalk, Hecate and the crowd were gone. She didn’t know how long Mr. Prosper had kept her in his room, but it was long enough for the streets to clear, so he might have done her a favor after all.

Zoe started heading to Valentine’s rooftop home feeling less afraid than before. She wasn’t stupid. She kept her head down and steered clear of any dogs, but something had broken inside her in Mr. Prosper’s apartment. The steady, gnawing dread she’d felt since coming to Iphigene was gone. Maybe it was learning what had lured her to the city and why. Knowing she’d been manipulated made her feel a little less guilty. And walking out of Mr. Prosper’s room without a scratch proved something else. That the entities that ran Iphigene, for all their power and sinister magic, were far from infallible. They were fuckups and losers, just like people she knew back in the world. That was something she could understand and find comfort in.

She found the twisted garage where Valentine lived and limped up the fire escape to the roof. He was coming around the far side of the shack when they saw each other. He ran to her, his homemade legs pumping at crazy angles, and threw his arms around her.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said over and over again. “I should never have left you alone.”

“It’s all right. I’m all right,” she said.

He let go and took a step back to look at her. “I thought Hecate had you for sure. All those people in street, they’re all looking for you.”

Zoe nodded. “I know, but no one saw me. No one even looked at me.”

“I’m kind of not surprised,” said Valentine. “The way Hecate talked about you, they’re probably all out looking for someone ten feet tall and riding a tank.”

“That’s me all right,” she said. She couldn’t believe how good it felt to see a friendly, familiar face. She tried picturing Julie and Laura, even Abysnthe, here with her in Iphigene, but their faces all came out blurred and indistinct. Valentine took her hand and pulled her toward the shack.

“We should keep away from the edges of the roof. Someone might see you.”

Zoe followed him inside his crowded little home. Valentine got out a teakettle and started rummaging around the shelves for cups. “I went back looking for you just a few minutes after I left, but you were already gone,” he said.

“I kind of freaked out,” Zoe said, picturing the scene in the restaurant. The black creatures swirling in the air. Her father disappearing under them. “I ran off and got lost. It was stupid.”

“I came back for you,” Valentine said, his voice a little high and strained. “I really did come back.”

Zoe looked up at him. “I believe you.”

He lit the camp stove and put water on to boil. “So, you saw Father.”

Zoe nodded. “You were right. There was nothing I could do for him. Hell, I couldn’t even watch.”

“I’m just glad you got back here in one piece.”

Zoe took off her sneaker and rubbed her sore ankle. Her whole leg was burning. It wasn’t until she was sitting here, where she felt relatively safe and at home, that she noticed.

“I can’t leave Dad like this, paying for my mistakes,” she said. “I have to do something.”

Valentine picked up the teakettle from the stove and slammed it down hard. “Yeah? And what are you going to do for him? You going to bring him back with you to the land of the living? Maybe he can live under your bed or be the monster in your closet.”

Zoe looked down at her sore ankle as she adjusted the rag. “I can’t leave him here, being eaten piece by piece. I saw the dying dead. I won’t let him end up like that.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll leave him just like you’re going to leave me, because it’s what Father and I want and it’s the right thing to do,” shouted Valentine. “You keep trying to change things you can’t change. Some things are just too big. They are what they are and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He came over to her and bent down, pushed Zoe’s hands out of the way, and retied the cloth around her ankle until it was snug and comfortable. “If you love Father, do what he told you when you first came here. Go home. Be safe. Have a life.”

“How can I just run off and leave you?”

Valentine got up, went to a pile of dishes, and put two cups on the table. “Just put one foot in front of the other and keep doing that until you’re far away from this shithole.”

“I don’t even know how to leave.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” he said. “I’ve learned to sneak around the edges of things. Get far enough out of town to sneak into your dreams, but that’s because I’m dead. You need some other way back.”

“Emmett. . um, Ammut, he’s alive, isn’t he? I could go out from the place where he goes.”

Valentine turned away from her, rummaging for the sugar. “If we knew where that was.”

“I might know someone who does,” said Zoe.

Valentine turned and looked at her intently. He reached over and turned off the stove. “Let’s go.”

Traveling with Valentine made Zoe feel safe and they didn’t see any dogs along the way, so it wasn’t more than half an hour before they were standing in front of Mr. Prosper’s building.

Valentine looked up and down the bright, clean street and gave an exaggerated whistle. “Damn. I’ve seen these buildings, but I’ve never had the nerve to go inside. I always figured they had some kind of alarm that could smell street scum.”

“You’re not street scum.”

“I’m sure not one of them,” he said, looking up at the top of the building.

They went through the lobby and took the elevator up to the top floor. Zoe led the way to Mr. Prosper’s apartment. She turned the knob slowly, and when she could feel that the door wasn’t locked, she pushed it all the way open. Mr. Prosper was still asleep on the bed where she’d left him. She went over and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the sleeping man. Valentine remained in the doorway, his gaze taking in the room and its opulence.

Zoe gestured for him to come in and close the door. Valentine nodded and did as he was told. Inside, he spotted Mr. Prosper’s knife on the floor and picked it up. Zoe watched him weigh the blade in his hand. He shrugged off his greatcoat and let it fall to the floor. Zoe hadn’t seen his arms in the light before. They really were pipes. His hands were a crazy combination of metal scraps all fitted together like a rusted jigsaw puzzle. It didn’t make sense that they could work, but they did, by whatever magic ruled Iphigene. Plus, they looked formidable.

Valentine smiled at her. Zoe reached over and shook Mr. Prosper’s shoulder. “Wake up! Hey, wake up!”

Mr. Prosper jerked violently away from her and raised his head. “What?” he said hoarsely. He opened his eyes and looked at Zoe, but didn’t seem to recognize her. His gaze moved past her to land at the foot of the bed, where Valentine was standing, the knife held tightly in his metal hand. “Gah!” shouted Mr. Prosper, scrambling back farther on the bed. “Go away!”

Zoe gently put a hand on Mr. Prosper’s leg, and that seemed to get his attention. He jerked away from her, his eyes wild with fear. “You!” he said in wonder.

“Me,” said Zoe. She glanced up at Valentine. “I told my brother how you kidnapped me and how you said you were going to slit my throat. Know what he wants to do to you?” She leaned in closer and spoke in hushed tones. “With that bad leg of yours, he wants to drag you down to one of those dark streets and leave you for the dying dead. How does that sound?”

Mr. Prosper put his hands over his face. For a second she felt bad for the man, blubbering and terrified, stripped of his dignity and everything he valued by Hecate and now by her. But he did threaten to kill me and steal my body and we really won’t give him to the dying. Maybe scaring him a little is payback.

“No! Go away, please! I’m sorry,” Mr. Prosper said.

“If you’re really sorry, tell me how Emmett gets back to the world. What’s the way out for someone who’s alive?”

He looked at her in horror. “No. I can’t.”

“Tell me how to get out of Iphigene,” Zoe insisted.

“She’ll know it was me. She’ll feed me to her dogs.”

“She will if I go and tell her what you did.”

“What?”

As Zoe and Mr. Prosper talked, Valentine went around the man’s room taking small things and stuffing them in his pockets. He slipped the empty flask off the bed, took a silver bottle opener off a table and a faceted glass paperweight off the top of Mr. Prosper’s dresser.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Zoe said to Mr. Prosper. “I bet I can make a deal with Queen Hecate. My brother and father would like living in this building. Would you like this room, Valentine?”

Valentine looked over at her and Mr. Prosper as he was slipping a cigarette lighter into his pocket. “Very much.”

“I can do more,” said Zoe to Mr. Prosper. “If you worked for Hecate, I bet Emmett has one of those records with your soul on it. I’ll get her to tell Emmett to break it. What will happen to you if your record breaks?”

The man’s wide, wet eyes swiveled in their sockets, looking first at Valentine and then at Zoe. “Please. You can’t.”

“What will happen to you?”

“I’ll fall apart,” he said in a tone that was more of a plea than a statement. “It’s horrible. I’ll burn up from the inside out and disappear. Forever.”

“It doesn’t have to happen. Just tell me how to go home. But first tell me this. If Emmett can get to the real world, why doesn’t Hecate take his body?”

Mr. Prosper seemed horrified by the question. “He’s her child. She’d never hurt him.”

“Why can he go back and forth to the real world when no one else can?”

“For the same reason that he holds the records. He’s Ammut, the eater of the dead. The keeper and destroyer of lost souls. Some spirits are ushered into this world and others-”

Zoe nodded. She didn’t want to hear the rest of the sentence.

“I understand. Now, how do I get out?”

Mr. Prosper held up a hand in Valentine’s direction, palm out, defensively.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” he said miserably. He pulled one of the pillows from the bed and clutched it to his chest. His face contorted. “Please, my leg,” he whispered.

Zoe took one of the laudanum bottles from his bedside table and handed it to him. Mr. Prosper tore out the cork with trembling hands and downed half the bottle before coming up for air. “Thank you,” he said, gasping. He pointed out the window. “On the beach, near the far end of the boardwalk, is a rocky outcropping. At low tide there’s a drainage pipe. You can’t miss it. It’s big enough for a man to stand up in. Follow the pipe for perhaps a quarter of a mile and take the left fork.” He took another drink from the bottle. A smaller one this time. “Soon you’ll come to an underground entrance to the palace. Only Emmett ever uses it, so no one will bother you. When you see the door, you’ll know you’re on the right path. Keep going until you see light. When you reach the end, you’ll be back in the world of the living.”

Valentine came over and leaned on the wall at the top of the bed. “Are there any tricks or traps along the way?” He weighed Mr. Prosper’s knife in his hand.

“Why would there be?” Mr. Prosper clutched the pillow tighter as Valentine loomed over him. “No one knows about the tunnel but Hecate’s most trusted advisers.”

“I hope you’re not lying,” Valentine said. “If anything happens to my sister. . well, those unlit streets are already calling your name.”

“Thank you, Mr. Prosper,” said Zoe. She started to turn away, but stopped. “I’m sorry about what Hecate did to you.”

“Go away now, please,” Mr. Prosper said. He lay down and curled up on the bed, clutching his bottle and pillow.

Outside, it was starting to rain again. Clouds of silver and midnight blue roiled over the rooftops as a few fat raindrops fell onto their faces. It’s going to be a downpour, Zoe thought. She was struck again by how beautiful Iphigene could be in the right light. There was something wrong with that. It didn’t seem fair for there to be any beauty in a place like this. She was about to say something to Valentine when he shoved her back against the building. She tried to move, but his hand swept back and held her in place. She was getting annoyed when she saw something across the street coming toward them.

She could make out three of Hecate’s wolf men in the rain, which was coming down hard and steady. As the wolf men advanced, Valentine shifted, keeping Zoe behind him. He reached under his coat and pulled out Mr. Prosper’s knife. The wolf men hesitated. Moving away from the apartment building, Valentine pulled her along, shifting his stance with each step, keeping himself between Zoe and the wolves. She looked around for a way out, a place to run. She couldn’t see anything. This wasn’t fair, not after they’d learned how she could get home. She held on to Valentine’s coat sleeves.

“Zoe?” whispered Valentine.

“Yeah.”

“When I tell you, I want you to run. Find Father. He’ll take care of you.”

Zoe held on to him harder. “What are you going to do?” She felt his body tense.

“Now!” he said, pushing her away and leaping at the wolf men, slashing the closest one. The knife flashing streaks of silver streetlight as the air filled with Valentine’s shouts, the wolf men’s howls, and the hissing of the rain.

As the wolves closed on Valentine, Zoe looked around for something to hit them with. A branch or pipe, anything.

“Go!” yelled Valentine.

Still, her mind screamed for her to stay, to help him, but she knew what this was. It was Valentine’s sacrifice for her. To stay now when she couldn’t help and would only get in the way would turn him from a hero into a fool. So she turned away from the fight and ran as hard as she could. The pain in her ankle grew steadily worse, but this time she was grateful. It was something to focus on, something to enable her to shut out the voices telling her to turn around and go back. In her mind, she drew a circle, then she eased the white-hot pain in her leg into its center, letting the hurt propel her through the storm all the way to the sea.

She walked out onto the beach and her feet sank into the wet sand. Each step hurt her ankle and the usefulness of pain had passed a couple of blocks back. Now pain was just pain and each time she had to drag her injured leg out of the heavy sand, the pain made her breath catch in her throat. But she didn’t stop walking until she made it to the abandoned carousel.

She stepped up to the crooked platform and dropped immediately to the floor, breathing hard. Rain seeped through the cracks in the carousel’s wooden roof, dripping onto the faces of some of the nearby animals. The horses looked like they were crying. Zoe lay down and pressed her ear flat to the floor. Overhead, the rain was a high-pitched patter, while the sound coming into her ear on the floor was deep bass mixed with the pounding of the waves. There were no monsters here. No mad queen. Just the rushing of the water. There was no reason for her to ever get up, she thought. I might stay just like this forever.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. She rolled over and saw a man’s legs. He was sitting on the floor smoking, his back against the carousel’s hollow central core, the spindle room where the ride’s motor was housed. Zoe couldn’t see the man’s face, but she knew him immediately.

Slowly, she rose and limped over to her father. “I wondered if you’d be here.”

“Zoe,” he said. He lowered the cigarette and rubbed his red eyes. “Damn. I hoped you be gone by now.”

She leaned on the pole connected to a pink-and-silver shark. “Nope. Not yet,” she replied. She shrugged and looked out at the boardwalk, a bit more paranoid now after the wolf men’s sudden appearance. She looked at her father. There were fresh scars on his face and hands. He looked even more gaunt than before.

“I’m sorry I ran,” Zoe said.

Her father patted her leg. “You did the right thing.”

“At least we found a way out.”

“You and your friend?” Her father took a puff of his cigarette. In the dark, the red glow lit up his whole face. Worn and weak, he suddenly reminded her a little of Mr. Prosper.

“Yeah. Val-” she started to say, but broke off, reminding herself of her promise not to tell her father about him. She could at least keep her word about that. “He really saved my life. Hecate’s cops or whatever they are-those wolf assholes-they arrested him.”

“I’m sorry, honey. You all right?”

Zoe nodded. She knew it was silly since he was already dead, but it bothered her to see her father smoking. Still, there was something comforting and normal about it all. Having a cigarette at the end of a long, hard day. It’s what regular people did back in the world. The real world. It seemed so far away now. Like Iphigene was the new normal and the other was a dream. Would she ever see the other world again? She felt a sudden, unexpected twinge of homesickness. “I’m okay,” she said. “You know, I thought you were dead back there at the café. Like dead dead. You know what I mean.”

He smiled up at her, a weak, exhausted smile. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I just need to rest for a couple of days and I’ll be fine.”

“Then she can do it to you all over again.” Zoe hugged her coat tightly around herself.

Her father didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “If you know a way out of here, you need to go. The whole city is looking for you. How the hell did you get here?”

“I ran. I really wasn’t thinking about it. It was raining hard. I don’t think anyone noticed me,” she said, looking back toward the boardwalk again. “I guess someone must have seen me before and told the cops, right? But I was so happy to have found a way out. I should have been more careful.”

“You know, if Hecate arrested your friend, he isn’t coming back,” her father said.

Her injured leg made it too hard to stand anymore. She slid down the pole and sat facing her father. “So, I just run off back to Sweet Valley High? I leave him in a dungeon and you to get sucked dry.”

Her father leaned forward and touched the dirty toe of her sneaker. “If Hecate finds you, she’ll kill you.”

Zoe felt herself laugh, but nothing felt funny. “She’ll do worse than that, from what I hear.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Her father finished the cigarette and tossed it away. The glowing tip arced high, making burning red loop-the-loops through the rain out into the sand. “You can’t just sit here, honey. You have to go.”

“Don’t worry. I am,” she said. “But the beach is the way out. I have to wait for low tide.”

“Oh.” Something in his voice surprised her. After he’d told her to go home God only knew how many times, there was a hint of regret in his voice. It made Zoe happy, in a quiet, sad way. She said, “Is it okay if I sit here with you while I wait?”

“That would be nice.”

As she went over to him, he put one arm out and she laid her back against it, leaning against him as he wrapped the arm around her. She held on to his jacket as she had to Valentine’s.

As she sat there quietly in the dark with her father for what would be the last time, the ice inside Zoe began to crack. She’d felt nothing for so long. The numbness was comforting, even though it brought the guilt of not really feeling how she knew she should, how she would feel normally. About her mother, about her brother’s arrest, and this last meeting with her father, doomed to be food for Hecate’s children. And then what? He would just wander away with the dying dead forever?

If leaving was what everyone wanted, why did it feel so bad? The truth was that a part of Zoe wanted to leave Iphigene right then. To run away and forget about it, about everything she’d seen and heard. Even father and Valentine. How could she live with herself knowing she couldn’t save them and that she was partly responsible for the horror that was their lives?

The cracking ice inside her was being replaced with a spongy fear, as if a monster were trying to swim up out of her guts and swallow her whole. She bit her lower lip and breathed hard, trying to drive the monster back into the void. If she allowed the monster to touch her, she knew that she would begin to cry and that she’d never stop. What good was crying now? It was a child’s trick that kept her from having to deal with the hard things. She wouldn’t hide from the hard things anymore. Never again. I owe it to Dad to be here with him now. And to Valentine. My shit, I can deal with later. She hugged her father harder while feeling furious with herself for being so weak and confused.

No crying. Nothing. Just be here.

They sat on the broken carousel without talking, just looking out at the moonlit sand.

Zoe drifted, halfway between sleep and daydreaming. She was on the mountain overlooking the almond grove and the tree fort behind the house in Danville. Black dogs prowled among the trees, sniffing the air. She wasn’t surprised or even particularly scared to see them. They were a part of her world, both in life and now in her dreams. Every now and then one of them would look up to where she was sitting on the mountain. They know I’m here. They’re waiting for me to come down. They’re not in any rush. They can wait forever. Could she? Half buried in snow, a rusty telescope lay at her feet. Emmett’s telescope. The one he used to watch Valentine and me. She picked it up and looked for their tree fort. It took her a while because she didn’t recognize it at first. The fort was falling apart. Half of it lay on the ground in a heap. What was left looked like scrap lumber that a hurricane had blown into the tree a hundred years ago. The wood was black, pulpy, and rotten, the nails rusted and barely holding what was left of the fort together. Unlike the dogs, that sight scared her. It was all being taken away, the good things in her life and now her dreams, too. And when even her dreams were gone, would there be anything left of her? Finally, the dogs started up the mountainside. They aren’t going to wait, after all, she thought. Zoe set down the telescope and clutched her knees to her chest. She watched the dogs come all the way up the hill.

There was a sound. Then something moved, brushing against her leg. Beside her on the carousel, her father sat up. He turned his head, looking as confused as she felt. “No, it can’t be,” he said.

Zoe looked at him, waiting for her head to clear. She’d drifted farther away than she’d meant to and the world was fuzzy around the edges. Her father stood slowly, pulling himself up on a bright yellow sea horse. “Not now,” he said quietly.

She finally heard it. The rain had stopped and the sound was replaced by the soothing white noise of the ocean. Then slowly, as the world came into focus, there was something else, the animal-like wail of a siren that Zoe knew was calling her father to another feeding.

“But you just did it,” she said. “You said you’re supposed to rest now. They can’t call you right back. Can they?”

Her father looked down at her. “It’s never happened before.” He leaned his head on his arms, propped on the sea horse’s back. “I know what this is. It’s Hecate. She wants to trap you and she thinks if she calls me back you’ll follow. You have to leave now. Right now. To hell with the tide. I have to go to the café.” He let go of the sea horse and collapsed onto the carousel platform.

Zoe scrambled over to him and pulled him upright. “Look at you. You can’t even stand up,” she said. “I’m supposed to watch you walk off and get bled to death?”

“Neither of us has a choice.”

She stood and pushed her father back against the carousel pole. She smiled at him. “Listen to me. Don’t go.”

“I have to. I can’t help myself.”

“Try. I know what to do. It’s so simple,” she said. She stopped at the edge of the platform. “Stay here. Don’t follow the siren. Fight it. Everything is going to be all right.”

She jumped down onto the sand. Her father said something as she went, but she couldn’t hear him over the wailing of the siren. Zoe felt good, energized, better than she’d felt since the funeral. For the first time she saw things with total clarity and knew exactly what she had to do. It was so simple. She was a little scared as she fell into step with the souls marching to the café, but she was excited, too. It felt good to be doing something real after having lived so long in a stagnant gray gloom. She wondered if it hurt when you were covered with the snakes. A few had bitten her the last time. The bites stung a little, but it wasn’t that bad. She remembered that Mr. Danvers had said there were bats and snakes with anesthetic in their saliva, so their prey wouldn’t feel their bite. Maybe these snakes were like that. She took a deep breath and let it out, knowing that she’d have the answer soon enough.

This is was what I should have done the moment I got to Iphigene. It’s what the city wanted-blood and sacrifice-and it would have it. Not a pale ghost version, but the blood of a living person. That should make Hecate happy enough to leave Dad alone.

She fell into step with the other dazed spirits, jostling and being jostled as she pushed her way to the middle of the throng. She was nervous, but she knew that was all right; normal, even. Zoe let go of everything she’d been clinging to and let herself be swept along by the tide of dead souls.

In front of her was an older man who was nearly bald. A few bristly sugar-white hairs on the back of his head were pressed flat by a plastic bag pulled tight onto his scalp. Reading upside down, Zoe made out the words WHITE RABBIT and saw a picture of an overly cute bunny. She remembered White Rabbit candies. They sometimes came with the check when her family would go out for dinner in Chinatown. The old man in front of her was using the bag as a makeshift rain hat. Next to him was a girl just a few years older than Zoe. Her head was shaved and she had large Chinese-style dragons tattooed on her scalp above each ear. The dragon on the left was red and the one on the right was blue. Zoe wondered what that meant. She wished she’d met the girl somewhere else so she could ask. She looked like someone who would have been in the club the night her mother and father met.

The steady sound of the siren soon melted into the background and everything seemed to go very quiet. Zoe’s gaze flickered back and forth between the twin dragons and the cartoon rabbit as she splashed through the silent streets.

Time was moving in funny ways. A block could shoot by in a second, but passing a single building could take hours. It was the fear, she knew, playing with her head. Zoe closed her eyes and let the crowd guide her with the motion of their bodies. She felt like an overwound guitar string, vibrating at some unnaturally bright and delirious frequency, knowing she could snap at any moment. She hoped they reached the café soon.

A moment later, the siren stopped, for real this time, leaving the street in unsettling quiet. Zoe opened her eyes. There in front of her was the café. Scared though she was, she smiled to herself, suddenly remembering something her mother had once told her: “Be careful what you wish for.” Without a word, the crowd began filing through the open door. Zoe followed them in.

Inside, she went to an empty table near the front window. It felt important that she be able to see outside and not be suffocated by the Half Moon Café’s drab walls. The gray street through the window might be dead, but at least it looked a little bit like the world and home.

Zoe took off her coat slowly. She had to. Her hands felt thick and clumsy, like she was wearing mittens. She took a deep breath, her face filling with heat. She ignored the sensation, refusing to think about it. She didn’t allow any thoughts to form in her mind at all. What she needed to do was to keep her body moving and not think about anything.

She stood and folded her overcoat, but as she dropped it over the back of her chair, the straight razor clattered to the floor. She grabbed it up and stuffed it into the pocket of her hoodie, hoping that no one had seen it, but it gave her an idea. She checked her pants pockets, and when what she was looking for wasn’t there, she checked the pockets of her coat. Nothing. Valentine’s compass was gone. Somewhere, through all the running and hiding, she’d lost it. It was too bad. It was something of his and something from home. And so she wrapped her fingers around the razor. She needed something to hold on to when it, and it was the only word her mind would permit her at that point, was happening. She unzipped her hoodie and pushed it back, exposing her shoulders and neck. She pushed up her sleeves and rested her hands on the table, waiting.

Nothing moved outside the window. Everyone was inside. The café was about half full. Zoe turned around in her seat. No one was talking to anyone. Most people were staring off into space, either still under the hypnotic effects of the siren or just wanting not to make eye contact with anyone. Zoe looked around for the man with the White Rabbit bag on his head, but she couldn’t find him. She spotted the girl with the tattoos near the back of the place, under a dusty cuckoo clock. Zoe smiled at her, but the girl turned away.

Without her wanting it, an image of her mother popped into her head. She wondered where her mother was right now. In a funny way, as far as Zoe was from home, she felt close to her. She’d made her own sacrifice, given up so much, and now here was Zoe about to do the same and she wanted to talk to her mother about it, maybe thank her and maybe get some reassurance that she was doing the right thing. I don’t even know what’s going to happen next. Wish I’d had the chance to say something to her in case I’m not going home.

“Look at the brave little princess all alone. Where’s Daddy? Did he abandon you again? First in the world above and now here. He’s not a very good daddy, is he?” Zoe knew who was speaking without turning around, though his voice was different now. It was more of a whisper, and he had a slight lisp that turned each s into a hiss.

Zoe looked up into Emmett’s cold snake eyes. He was a horrible sight-a glistening cobra’s head perched atop a man’s body. His tongue shot out every few seconds to taste the air. Ugly as he was, seeing him now, she wasn’t frightened as she had been the first time she saw him. The awful thing she’d been dreading was happening and was no longer a crippling imaginary terror. As scared as she was, she could hide it. Don’t give him the satisfaction, she thought.

“I like you better like this,” she said brightly. “It really suits you. All slimy and crawling through sewers, eating shit and rats. Who taught you that? Your mother?” She cocked her head coyly at those final words.

“My mother is a goddess,” said Emmett.

“Your mother is a dumb dead bitch!” Zoe said, her voice getting louder with each word.

Emmett lunged at her. Zoe jumped back, almost knocking over her chair. Emmett grabbed her before she could fall and held her, his warm, wet snake breath in her face.

“I was going to take you out of here,” he whispered. “But now, princess, you get to bleed. Not die, but you get to bleed like Daddy.”

Zoe shook herself free and leaned her elbows on the table. She didn’t care about anything at that moment except shouting loud enough for the whole café to hear. “That’s your threat? I get to bleed? That’s why I came here! You can’t threaten people with what they’re already doing, you fucking retarded lizard!”

Emmett took a step back. Zoe got the feeling that no one had ever yelled at him in such a way before. It felt pretty damned good. The feeling didn’t last long, though. Emmett’s eyes turned upward to the ceiling then back down to meet Zoe’s. “It’s starting.”

Zoe looked up. It was happening just the way she remembered. A dense black cloud swirled around the ceiling, and as the cloud descended, it broke apart into individual, chittering, batlike snake things. This is it. She closed her eyes. Maybe she could fool Emmett by not letting him see her fear, but she couldn’t fool herself. She took deep breaths and squeezed the razor. Her stomach was full of ice. The chittering grew louder and the light grew dimmer. She braced herself for the first bite.

Something slammed into the window and someone was shouting, but it didn’t sound like anyone in the café. Zoe opened her eyes and froze. Her father, pale and sweating, his hair plastered to his forehead, was pounding his fists against the window near where Zoe was sitting. He was yelling to her.

“Zoe! Get out of there!” he screamed.

Emmett turned and let out an airy little chuckle. “A day late and a dollar short, Dad,” he said.

“Zoe! Don’t do this!”

Emmett laughed merrily.

Then the first snake landed on Zoe’s shoulder and dug its fangs into her neck. The pain was electric. Hot and dizzying, it shot through her, making her whole body shake. A bat landed, and then another. Through the pain, she could hear her father calling her name. Emmett was right beside her. She could hear him laughing.

Something snapped. The taut string she’d felt like earlier finally frayed and came apart. Before she knew what she was doing, Zoe was on her feet and screaming. She had the razor in her hand and she was slashing at Emmett’s arms. He whirled and backhanded her across the face. She fell back into the table, then ran at him again, screaming and hacking away at his arms and hands, driving the razor into his chest and slashing his face.

Emmett bellowed, a horrifying, deep-throated roar of pain and fury. But the snakes, which had ignored him until then, were on him. Driven into a feeding frenzy by the scent of his blood, they flew away from Zoe and the others to attack Emmett. An immense, writhing horde of flying snakes forced him to the ground. His hands burst from the ravenous black mass, scattering snakes and reaching for Zoe. She leaped back as Emmett rolled over, crushed under the weight of his starving brothers and sisters.

Zoe turned and burst out of the café door, running to her father. They held each other while, behind them, the other spirits dashed from the café, scattering down the wet, gray street. When the street was clear, Zoe’s father took off his overcoat, wrapped it around her, and they ran back into the city.