The Replacement (29 page)
Authors: Brenna Yovanoff
The one with the gloves got to her feet, stepping close and smiling up at me. "Just once," she said, and her voice was softer than the others'. Almost sad. "Kiss me once, and I'll give them back to you."
I looked down at her. Her eyes might have been green once, but now they were cloudy and pale.
"It doesn't have to be passionate," she said. "You don't have to convince me that you mean it. Just give me the chance to pretend you don't find me revolting."
The other girls watched, hungry and eager, but the girl with the gloves just looked cold. She wasn't laughing.
I bent and kissed her on the cheek, close to the corner of her mouth. The smell was bad. She reeked like groundwater and decay, but underneath was the thin fragrance of church incense and funeral flowers, the dismal aroma of grief, of never really dying.
I stayed with my face close to hers, my mouth against her cheek, even after I'd given her what she asked for. The only thing she'd wanted. I wanted to make it count because I was sorry for her. Because she was dead and I wasn't.
When I finally straightened and stepped back, the girls on the floor muttered restlessly, but the one with the gloves just gave me a wistful look.
"That was nice," she whispered, holding out her hands.
I took the gloves by their fingertips and slid them off. Underneath, her hands were a healthy pink, but even in the firelight, I could see it draining out of her. The warm tinge faded, and her fingernails went an ugly bruised color. She sighed and smiled at me. The smile made the skin on her lips crack.
I jammed the gloves in my coat pocket and crossed back to the desk, where the Morrigan sat playing with her doll, dancing it along the floor. I could still smell the chilly stench of the girl's skin, this ghostly miasma that drifted and clung to me. The Morrigan was humming and it made me want to kick her.
"Why did you let them do that to Emma? I thought the whole agreement was that you would leave her alone if I worked for you. I thought she and Janice were supposed to be
friends
."
friends
."
The Morrigan glared up at me. "You chose to appeal to my sister. You ran to her at the first opportunity. She did her best to break the town, and you went to
bow
to her." She swung the doll against the leg of the desk. Its head made a hollow noise when it hit. "They don't have the will to give us favor when they're sad. They're too caught up in their own misery, their own tragedy, and then they don't love us."
bow
to her." She swung the doll against the leg of the desk. Its head made a hollow noise when it hit. "They don't have the will to give us favor when they're sad. They're too caught up in their own misery, their own tragedy, and then they don't love us."
"Look, you started this. You called out the Lady when you stole my mother back."
The Morrigan sat with her legs folded under her, hugging the doll against her chest. "And look at where it got us. The town is
sick
. It gets worse every year, and now the buildings are falling, the house of God is destroyed, and even the train tracks and the trestles rust."
sick
. It gets worse every year, and now the buildings are falling, the house of God is destroyed, and even the train tracks and the trestles rust."
I let my breath out between my teeth and then held out the zipper pull. "They're going to kill a three-year-old girl. Not a warrior or a king. She's a little kid--she's like you."
The Morrigan took the plastic bear, turning it over in her hand. Then she looked up at me, teeth sharp and glossy. "No, not like me. I'm quite sturdy. She, on the other hand, is going to bleed a river."
When I finally spoke, my voice sounded dry. "What is your problem?"
She dropped the doll into her lap and looked up at me, still holding the plastic zipper pull. "You choose them over us. Every single time."
"And I'll keep doing it! This isn't about picking sides. The Lady is completely out of her mind, and you know how to stop her. Tell me what I need to do to steal Natalie."
The Morrigan seemed to consider that. Then she gave me a sly look. "Dead is dead," she said. "But my sister is plenty cold herself. Sometimes she can't tell the difference."
"Okay, but what does that
mean
?"
mean
?"
"Only that there are always spare children, dead in borrowed beds, buried in borrowed clothes, waiting to be made use of." Her smile was wide and it was hard to tell if it was cruel because she was cruel or if that was just her smile.
"No." I shook my head. "That's not what you're talking about--not children. You're talking about bodies. About grave robbing."
"Call it what you like. You asked how I managed it, and I've told you. The night was long, and in her sitting room full of dead beauties, I exchanged one more dead thing for a live one, and it was hours before she knew. Before she realized that her prize was gone and the silent child in her sitting room was one of ours."
I took a deep breath and felt a little sick. "Tell me how. How you made the Lady believe the body was real."
The Morrigan smiled, shaking her head. "Dearest, it
was
real."
was
real."
"How you made it seem believable, then, how you replaced something alive with something that wasn't."
She fidgeted with the zipper pull, rolling it between her fingers, humming and rocking. "Our children rot, but not as readily as theirs do. They're restless things, the failed replacements."
Over by the fireplace, the blue girls whispered and snickered, braiding each other's brittle hair. The one I'd kissed was looking back over her shoulder at me, just once. Then she turned away, keeping her head bowed.
The Morrigan stood up, facing me with the mangy doll in one hand and the zipper pull in the other. She looked like a little girl, old-fashioned and strange, but her teeth were brutal, and her eyes were wide and black. "I'm not your keeper and I don't owe you anything, not anymore. If you intend to cross her, that's not my business, but you should know the cost. A person should always be familiar with the cost of his actions."
"What's the cost?"
She dropped the doll and it landed spread-eagle on the floor, its arms and legs sticking out at awkward angles. "If you don't know after this morning's escapades, I'm certainly not going to tell you."
She smiled up at me and held out the plastic bear. After a second, I took it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RAISING THE DEAD
W
hen I came in out of the drizzle and the fog, I was relieved to see my dad's black overcoat hanging in the hall. He was sitting in the kitchen with his back to the door. The kettle was boiling on the stove and there were cups on the counter, but Emma wasn't with him and I wasn't brave enough to go in and ask how he was.
hen I came in out of the drizzle and the fog, I was relieved to see my dad's black overcoat hanging in the hall. He was sitting in the kitchen with his back to the door. The kettle was boiling on the stove and there were cups on the counter, but Emma wasn't with him and I wasn't brave enough to go in and ask how he was.
His shoulders were too defeated. His head was bowed like he might be praying. Praying or crying, and neither was something I could deal with. I took off my shoes and went upstairs.
Emma's room was a mess of books and flimsy plastic trays full of sprouts and cuttings. Her shelves ran all the way up to the ceiling and the walls were covered in tacked-up postcards and pictures of greenhouses and gardens cut from magazines.
She was sitting on her bed with her arms crossed over her chest, holding on to her shoulders and looking small. Her hands were their normal color again and she'd put Band-Aids over the scratches on her arms. She glanced up with a wary expression. "Hi."
I didn't have the energy to say it back. I wanted to ask why she wasn't downstairs with our dad. Her hands were warm and alive. The blue girls' assault on her that morning couldn't be the reason they were sitting in different rooms.
The smell of smoke still lay over everything. It was on my clothes and in my hair. Emma's jeans from yesterday were crumpled on the floor and I smelled the black tar smell of shingles and burned copper wiring.
Emma sat rigidly against the headboard of her bed with her hands cupping her elbows. "Why did they do that to me?"
"Because I pissed someone off."
"Was it over something important?" Then she turned so I couldn't see her face, looking away, in the direction of the window. I didn't know what to say. I'd thought so at the time, but what had I really accomplished?
"I got your gloves back." I pulled them out of my pocket and tossed them on the bed next to her, and then they just sat there, pink and dirty.
Emma picked them up. After a second, she put them on.
I sat next to her and looked around at all her clutter. There were books spread open on the desk and the floor, pages marked with sticky notes and colored paper clips. Volumes of chemistry and folklore and a little dog-eared paperback of
The Ballad of Tam Lin.
The Ballad of Tam Lin.
Emma slumped next to me. She rested her head on my shoulder and took a deep breath. "What's happening, Mackie?"
Her voice was barely a whisper, and she sounded sad, like she knew there was no way the answer would be good.
I leaned my cheek on the top of her head. "The same thing that always happens."
Emma nodded and I wondered if she knew what it was that always happened or if that was part of the creepy thing about Gentry. You always knew that something was happening, but you never knew what it was.
"I know what's wrong with Mom," I said.
"A little chunk of granite where her heart should be?"
"Sort of, yeah. You know how I came from somewhere else? For her, it's backward. They stole her away, then brought her back, and she couldn't ever figure out how to be normal after that."
Emma was still watching the pink gloves. "Are you sure?" she said.
I nodded.
She leaned against me suddenly, letting her head drop against my shoulder. We sat like that, leaning against each other. Outside, the sky was dark and heavy. Rain pattered on the window and ran down the glass, reflecting yellow and red in the light from the street.
"We have to do something terrible," I said. "We have to dig up--" I stopped. "There was this thing that replaced Tate's sister. We have to dig it up."
Emma pulled away from me. "What are you talking about?"
I didn't want to take the conversation any further. Digging up a grave was the worst kind of desecration, but I knew there was no other choice. Even if I stood back and let Natalie die, none of the bad things would stop. Kids would keep being replaced. Gentry would keep looking the other way, just like it always had. Except that then, I'd have to live with myself.
I took a deep breath. "Natalie Stewart's alive and I think we can save her. But we can't do it unless we have something to leave in her place. If we can get the body back, there are ways of waking them up. I'm not sure how, but I know there are ways."
Emma's gaze drifted to her bookshelves. "I've read about replacements coming back from the dead, but you need the blood, or sometimes the possessions, of the people they replaced. We'd need something of Natalie's. You could call Tate, right?"
"I really don't think that's a good idea. Anyway, I've already got something." I took the zipper pull out of my pocket. "It's not much, but it's Natalie's."
Emma gave it a doubtful look. "Okay," she said finally. "I'll start going through folk stories, scholarly essays, anything that might give us instructions. But this is going to be pretty bad. And it's going to mean a lot of digging."
"I know. I think we should call Roswell."
"Excuse me?"
"He'll help," I said. "He might not be thrilled about it, but he'll help."
Emma sat very still, eyes fixed on some unlikely point just past my shoulder. Finally, she pushed away the quilt and stood up. She yanked her hair back into a ponytail with one hand and went to her dresser for a rubber band. Her face was sober and her hair was already slipping down again, drifting in mousy wisps around her clenched fist.
"Okay," she said, snapping the band around her hair. "Okay, but we need a plan. This is serious, what you're talking about."
"Yes, but it's not a break-in." I tried to keep my voice steady. "It's not black ops. Everyone in charge of anything is down at the hospital or the police station, Dad's at home, the church is wrecked. We'll wait until dark and then sneak in. No one's going to be looking out for trespassing or vandalism. The whole town is too busted up to care what someone's doing in the graveyard."
I lay on my bed, trying to get some sleep and failing completely. Planning to dig up a body pretty much ruled out any peace of mind.
Tate called twice, but I didn't answer and didn't listen to her messages. It was hard enough to contemplate the night's work without her getting involved. If she knew what I was going to do, she'd be horrified. Or worse, she'd want to help.
After half an hour of dozing off and immediately jerking awake again, I got up and went downstairs. I found my dad in the kitchen. The kettle was still rattling on the burner and he hadn't moved since the last time I'd looked in.
I crossed to the stove and turned it off. "Dad?"
He glanced up and his face was hollow, raw around the eyes. "Yes?"
"The building doesn't matter."
He straightened in his chair, looking up at me like he was trying to figure out if he should be angry or hurt or something else just as bad.
"It doesn't matter," I said again. "The church is you and the town.
Where
doesn't matter. You'll build a new one and the congregation will be there with you, and that's what you love. Them, not the building. It will be as good as it always was."
Where
doesn't matter. You'll build a new one and the congregation will be there with you, and that's what you love. Them, not the building. It will be as good as it always was."
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