Velveteen (37 page)

Velvet scrambled to come up with some other solution, an alternative that would take them far away from this place. But there wasn’t one. She glanced at her team, clearly in the midst of similar thoughts.

“There’s no choice,” Nick said.

Velvet shuddered. She said grimly, “This isn’t going to be easy, but at the end of this alley, there’s a crack in the wall.”

Nick jumped in. “We found it earlier … by accident.”

Kipper narrowed his eyes, scowling into the abyss. “You seriously want us to go in there? Do you hear those things?”

Velvet straightened. “No. You’re right. Let’s just wait here and watch the walls crumble. It’s a nice night for it.”

He shrugged, “All right, then.”

Luisa and Logan wore steely determined expressions, as usual, which gave Velvet the boost she needed to get the ball rolling. “Link up, now!”

She slipped her hand into Nick’s and nodded for him to grab Luisa, and so on back to Kipper. They crept forward like that, boots treading crookedly over the shaking rubble scattered across the ground. The unlevel surface made each step into danger even more unsettling.

The darkness didn’t help, either.

About halfway to the secret crack, Velvet jerked to a halt. Her team crashed into each other, crumpling up at her back like a squashed tin can. The alley had gone as silent as a grave.

“What’s going—” Nick started.

“Shh!” Velvet held up her hand in the universal shut-the-hell-up sign just as a whisper sliced through the air past her cheek. In that next second, the screams began, and, still linked, the entire chain of them were jerked backward and up. Her hand tore from Nick’s amid the jostling, and she turned, snatching and pulling him down into a low crouch.

The screams belonged to Logan. Joined a moment later by Luisa’s horrified cries.

Velvet had to squint to see what was going on. The inky shadows turned everything into dull outlines. Gray against gray. Barely there.

But what she could make out horrified her.

A figure floated above them, arms and legs dangling limply from its torso like the leads on a hot-air balloon. Kipper. The tentacle had him around the waist and was cinching his stomach until it was impossibly thin around the column of his spine. Logan leapt and snatched at Kipper’s hands, futilely swiping the air beneath them, while Luisa merely shook her head, her hand clasped over her mouth and her eyes wide enough to glare spikes of light up at the scene.

All my fault
, Velvet thought, and bolted upright. She should never have brought them down the alley. Especially not after seeing the shadow creatures.

The tentacle shifted and Kipper’s body contorted, dipping
closer to them and then farther away and then back like a crank. As Kipper drew close, Velvet caught a glimpse of his face, waxy and slack around the cheeks and mouth. Images drifted across the glassy curves of his sightless eyes like the reflections of blackened clouds.

Velvet tried not to look at that, but rather back to the way his body dipped as the tentacle repositioned itself. There seemed to be a pattern emerging.

Lift. Lift.

Dip.

Although Velvet had never seen anyone try it, it occurred to her that she might be able to jar the boy loose if she timed it just right.

“Nick!” she yelled. “Basket your hands for me and give me a boost.”

“What?” Nick climbed to his feet, shaking his head incredulously.

“Just do it and then lift when I say!”

The boy wove his fingers together and crouched. Velvet planted one boot solidly in his palms, and as the curling appendage brought Kipper up for the second time and began to sink, she shouted to Nick, “Heave!”

Velvet launched upward, caught Kipper’s arm halfway between his wrist and his elbow, and climbed until she had a solid grip on the back of his neck.

Her fingers instantly felt a little numb. A chill seeped into her from Kipper’s skin, and flickers of something big and lumbering blinked into the corner of her eye. Something coming to get her.

To tear her from Kipper’s limp body and show her …

Things.

Velvet had seen enough horror to know she had to act quickly. She clutched Kipper tightly, and as the tentacle unfurled to its most tenuous grip, she bounced violently. She thrashed and grunted, and just as she thought it wouldn’t work, the two of them fell through the air. Nick threw his arm around her waist, cushioning her fall, while Logan and Luisa did the best they could to buffer Kipper’s significant weight.

He landed with a groan and his eyes fluttered open.

“Wha …?” he moaned.

Totally out of it.

Velvet’s gaze shot skyward. The tentacles stabbed deeper toward the floor of the alley, lapping at the walls angrily. She leaned over and slapped Kipper’s cheek. Hard.

His eyelids snapped open and he glowered. “Why are you being such a devil bitch?”

Back to normal
, she thought, and screamed, “We have to go! Now!”

Velvet scrambled over the debris, ankles buckling and hands outstretched in the darkness. Behind her, Nick pounded the gravel and loose paper bricks littering the alley, kicking rocks into the backs of her legs and shouting to the others behind him. It had to be just ahead. She braced herself for impact with the dead end. The last thing they needed was an unconscious leader.

But Velvet knew they were short on time. The shadowy tongues were dense toward the middle of the alley behind them, crowded tight and writhing, a black wall of horror. The tentacles would search each of them out if she didn’t
find the crack quickly. They weren’t going to have time to discuss the details of a pull-focus, either.

“Meet up in the Shattered Hall, people!” she shouted.

Her hands slid over the vibrating stone before her, until her nails found the broken seam and began to glow, to draw her in. She couldn’t risk slowing down to remove her clothes; modesty be damned—along with her awesome combat boots—they would just have to end up shredded. Luisa pressed in underneath her, her own fingers turning gaseous and long. She slipped away, followed by the rest until Velvet was left standing amid a pile of shredded fabric and leather.

She focused on the imagery and felt the familiar pull.

A moment later, Velvet landed in the Shattered Hall atop a tumble of limbs and bodies, her face smashed into the gritty floor.

“Ow!” she cried.

“Sorry,” Nick said from somewhere beneath her.

“Sorry,” someone else said, Luisa or Logan. It was hard to hear over the clambering of her team, poking about for clothes from the crates around the hall. Candlelight filled the room with such a warm glow, Velvet let it wash over her like a shower, let it wash away the inky darkness. Footfalls alerted Velvet to Manny’s rapid approach, her shiny silver gown flapping about her legs.

“I knew you’d find a way to get here!” Manny said, leaning down to help Velvet to her feet. “You are brilliant.”

Velvet ignored the compliment. The hows and whys of their arrival were best left in secret.

Manny glanced up and must have seen Kipper standing among the group.

“Perfect. I’m glad to see you, boy. We need to talk.”

Velvet turned to see the big guy pulling on a pair of pants and handing some clothing to Nick.

“Don’t bother,” Velvet said, her hands draped across her privates casually. “We’re not going to be here long enough for modesty.”

Manny nodded a quick agreement. “But there’s something I need to show you first.”

The woman clipped off down the hall, followed closely by Kipper and the twins.

“Hurry up, Nick!” Velvet chided in her most official tone.

There was no sense in giving him any slack, especially in front of Manny. She’d be able to sniff out an office romance like a hound. It was sort of second nature to her, having been a pinup girl and sex symbol in her time.

“I’m comin’. I’m comin’,” Nick said.

Manny led them to the gate and pointed out into the station. Souls drifted aimlessly, some brand-new and un-ashed wandering from the primary crack. The guides had left their stations. But that wasn’t what Manny wanted them to see. It was the curved walls that ringed the atrium. A multitude of cracks rose from the station’s cobblestone floor.

Velvet scanned them with a mixture of confusion and horror.

The cracks were everywhere. Even running across the floor like veins.

“Look at all of ’em,” Logan said, a note of awe stretching the words into something ominous.

“I don’t need to tell you what this means, do I?” There was uncharacteristic fear in Manny’s voice.

Velvet met the woman’s stern gaze and tried to remain as stoic and resolved as possible. Of course she knew what the cracks meant. If
she
had been able to find one and use it for her purposes, the Departurists wouldn’t have any difficulty figuring out what to do.

“It’s the revolution,” Velvet said. “It’s begun.” Her memory flashed on the flyer she’d torn from the door of the Retrieval dorm.

The Departure Is Now. “It has begun.” Manny reached out for Velvet’s hand. “The expanding cracks are giving them more and more points to enter the daylight and to complete their heinous plans.”

“And what are those plans?” Nick asked from behind her.

“Look around you, Nick. It’s an invasion. The departure of which they speak is a full-scale invasion into the daylight. An exodus from purgatory.”

It wasn’t until then that Velvet noticed souls slipping away. Tendrils of their evaporating selves, dozens of smoky ribbons receded into the chasms, into the daylight.

It didn’t take a criminologist to put together the pieces.

The revolutionaries wouldn’t have any intention of floating freely as ghosts in the daylight. Why would they? They’d be merely whispers of themselves. That wasn’t really living. Not when they could find a perfectly good person to inhabit and experience all the things life has to offer all over again, or things they missed out on.

“Body thieves,” Velvet breathed angrily. “They’ll possess the living!”

And saying it out loud felt like the answer to what she
hadn’t been able to figure out until now. The revolutionaries’ ultimate goal.

The banshee had been certain that it was going to happen. Rancho and Mr. Fassbinder, too. Velvet hadn’t wanted to believe that souls would be so selfish as to think they deserved another shot at living, especially at the expense of someone who wasn’t finished living their own life.

“It’s got to be Clay,” Kipper said. “He wasn’t anywhere in Vermillion because he’s here. Or he’s already crossed over.”

“So he wasn’t there at all?” Velvet asked.

“No.” Kipper shook his head. “My sources told me that he hadn’t been there in some time. But the rumor was that he had never left the Latin Quarter.”

Manny gasped. “You have to stop him,” she said, leading them frantically back toward their departure crack. “If it is Aloysius Clay perpetrating this particular shadowquake and he’s still powerful enough to rattle the station this way, then you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

She pointed toward the long crack in the wall again and began to deliver the details for their crossing. “Neon chopsticks lifting hot pink noodles from a bright blue bowl. A sweaty single-paned window with the name Sal drawn onto it in a big greasy cursive. And a red flyer for the South Hadley Chamber of Commerce Haunted House Spectacular.”

“Then we go. Now!” Velvet cried.

Always ready for a battle, Logan dove for the crack with a snarl. His body thinned and stretched out, slipping through with ease. Luisa was right behind him, followed in short order by Nick.

Manny gripped Velvet’s arm and hissed, “Be careful. The darkest of evils is being committed to create what we’re seeing here.”

“Are you afraid?” Velvet asked.

The woman shook her head, the soft curls of her hair drifting from side to side about her powdered face. But Velvet could sense that something horrible waited for them on the other side. And for the first time, she sensed that they might not all make it back.

She
might not make it back.

She thought of Nick and his soft lips, and the horror of the situation rocked through her. What if she made it back and Nick didn’t?

Velvet dove for the crack without saying her final goodbyes to Kipper or the station agent.

T
hey stood in a parking lot. In front of them, a completely unremarkable strip mall, the sort you’d find in Any-town, America, stretched hundreds of feet in each direction. There was a nail salon and a sub shop, a check-cashing place, and what Velvet was looking for: a dive called the Quickie Teriyaki.

The neon sign fluttered in the same greasy window that framed the scribble of letters spelling out “Sal.” The Halloween flyer was taped at an odd angle on the glass.

Velvet moved, instantly on task. A Closed sign hung on the door, and beyond the sweaty windows the restaurant was dark.

“There. It’s coming from there,” she said.

They each pivoted toward the place in turn. “Why there?” Nick asked. “It doesn’t look any different from the Super Nail or Lucky Dry Cleaner. It’s not even open.”

“That’s precisely why. It’s closed,” Velvet said. “Doesn’t it seem like an awfully busy day for them to be closed?” She pointed at the people coming and going from the other shops.

Nick shrugged. “Point taken.”

Logan passed them, his blue furry Grover feet shuffling along the pavement, and peered in the front window. “I don’t see nothin’ in there but dirty tables and people’s half-eaten food. What a mess!”

Velvet perked up.

“See? What kind of a restaurant doesn’t clean up before they close and closes on a busy day?” she asked. “Doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

“She’s right,” Luisa said.

Velvet passed through the front window, the others following close on her heels.

The inside of the Quickie Teriyaki was as Logan had described, as though the customers had simply disappeared. Forks stuck out from plates of kung pao chicken and spicy yakisoba, and flies congregated on a lonely California roll, nibbling away at the fake crab salad stuffed in its center. Velvet glanced to the table next to where Logan stood and noticed a steaming hot bowl of egg drop soup.