The Replacement Read online

  We were six blocks from my house when regret hit, sickening and official. I closed my eyes and counted backward, trying to get the shaking under control, get the bad air out of my lungs. Something lurched in my stomach and I tried to ignore it, taking slow, deep breaths. I was sweating.

  When the warm, squirming thing lurched again, I cleared my throat. “Tate, could you pull over?”

  “Hey—hey, what’s wrong?”

  “I feel pretty sick.” Which was a massive understatement. The feeling I had wasn’t like any reaction I’d ever had, even to blood iron or stainless steel, even on my worst days.

  The dizziness came in waves, making everything slide. It was radio static in my ears, a rain of black dots that swept in and covered everything. The smell of metal filled my mouth and nose. It was under my skin, in my blood, pounding away in my joints, my bones.

  Tate pulled onto the shoulder and slammed the transmission into park. “Is this—”

  But I was already yanking at the door.

  I made it out but could barely stand. In the dark, the ground pitched up at me. I got down on my knees and held very still until the worst of it passed and I was steady enough to lie down. I needed to be someplace quiet and alone. I needed to curl up in a dark room, with no movement and no sound.

  I pressed my face into the grass and breathed the green smells of leaves and stems and roots. The rain felt light and cool against my face. I needed the Morrigan.

  “Mackie, are you okay?”

  Tate was kneeling over me, reaching like she wanted to put her hand on my shoulder but was scared to touch me. I was shaking in huge wrenching spasms.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to stay very still. Every time I took a breath, it touched off a storm of throbbing in my chest.

  “Mackie, tell me if you’re okay.” Her voice sounded tight.

  The pain in my knees and elbows was getting worse, going from low and throbbing to something more like being hit with a hammer. I looked up at her and tried to find something to say that would make her stop talking. I was afraid of what my voice would sound like.

  She reached for my hand, her fingers sliding over my knuckles, my palm. Her touch wasn’t rough, but the pressure made pain shoot up my arm and I jerked away, biting down on the inside of my lip.

  “Your hands are cold,” she said.

  The concern in her voice made my throat hurt worse. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for her to go away, to leave me so I could get myself together and figure out what to do. Her worry made me too aware of how bad the reaction was. It knocked the breath out of me. I needed her to leave, but nothing would make her do that. Even if I hurt her feelings, called her the worst things I could think of, she wouldn’t just go because I told her to. Her face was a white oval floating above me. The only place for help was the House of Mayhem.

  “You have to go,” I said, making my voice as steady as I could.

  “Excuse me? I can’t just leave you on the side of the road. Jesus, I think you’re going into shock. If you’re hurt or sick, you need someone to stay with you.”

  “Tate, listen to me. I need you to find Roswell and bring him here, okay?”

  “Mackie, you’re scaring me.”

  “Please, just go get Roswell.”

  She didn’t like it, but she stood up, looking more frightened than I’d ever seen her, and started for her car.

  When the Buick pulled away from the curb, I closed my eyes. I breathed out, this miserable, rattling sigh that sounded nothing like relief. It was thin, which made it easier to pretend that it was coming from someplace else than that I’d made it myself. Easier to pretend that everything was coming from someplace else and I was asleep, maybe at home, dreaming the way my chest seemed to tighten and seize. The air was too thick to breathe, almost like water, and the ground had stopped feeling cold.

  I turned my face into the grass and wondered if this was how people felt when they knew they were going to die.

  PART THREE

  THE RESTLESS DEAD

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE AFTER PARTY

  I lay on the ground for way too long, with my face against the wet grass and the rain soaking into my clothes. I knew if I stayed, Tate would come back with Roswell, and then they’d want to take me home or worse, to the emergency room.

  I had to get up and get moving. It was a painful and multi-step process, but I did it. The street was empty and the rain made everything disorienting. I was wandering through patches of light and deep shadow. The streetlights hummed so loud that my joints ached each time I passed one. I was on Welsh Street, then Orchard, then down the slope of the ravine and crossing the footbridge. My knees felt weak, and all the times I’d thought about my condition or the chance that I might die, I hadn’t understood what it meant. I hadn’t understood how much I wanted to live.

  The ground was slick and muddy, but I made it, sliding on the steep path down to the bottom of the ravine. The slag heap was a vague, looming shape. It had never looked so welcoming.

  I slumped against the base of the hill, resting my head on the loose gravel. There was nothing to show me where the door had been, nothing for me to catch hold of or grab onto.

  I lay in the shale and the fill, trying to think what to do. I was starting to lose feeling in my hands when I heard the crunch of footsteps, not in the ravine but from inside the hill. The gravel slid away and the door swung open, showing a yellow rectangle of light.

  It was Carlina.

  “Decided to come after all?” she said, holding a lantern up so that it cast a circle of light over both of us. “You look a little out of sorts.”

  I nodded and struggled into a sitting position, trying to catch my breath. “Please, do you think I could get paid now?”

  Carlina stood in the doorway. The lantern was so bright that it was hard to see her face. “What have you been doing to yourself? No, never mind. You’d better come in.”

  I got unsteadily to my feet and followed her inside.

  She closed the door behind us, then turned to face me. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you keep anything on hand for first aid?”

  I shook my head.

  With a sigh, she took a tiny bottle out of her pocket and uncorked it. “Okay, deep breath.”

  She held the bottle in front of my face and I breathed in, feeling my lungs expand. It wasn’t the analeptic, but the green smell of leaves rushed over me and then the huge, shuddering relief of finally getting enough air.

  When I’d gotten my breath back and was standing upright without using the wall, Carlina took me by the elbow and started to lead me down toward the lobby. “Is that better?”

  I nodded, still a little stupefied over the difference between breathing and suffocating.

  Carlina led me down, talking under her breath, shaking her head. “What is it about boys? Why do you always have to push things as far they can go? Just because you’re not completely ragged anymore doesn’t make you invincible.”

  I nodded again and followed her along the tunnel and through the main lobby into the huge, high-ceilinged room where the floor was covered in puddles and water welled up from the ground.

  The entire room was full of people, talking and laughing. Some of them were playing cellos and violins, and over in a corner, a girl with long, stringy hair was tuning an upright harp, but mostly they just stood around in little groups, looking happy. The floor was covered with intermittent puddles and drifts of bright autumn leaves.

  The Morrigan was sitting by one of the dark pools. She’d taken off her shoes and socks and was trailing her feet in the water. She was playing with a folded paper boat, pushing it back and forth across the surface with a stick.

  Carlina put her hand on my shoulder. “Here, sit down. I’ll have Janice grab you some more of the hawthorn and we’ll get you sorted out.”

  I sank onto the floor, careful to pick a dry spot, and leaned my back against the wall. It was nice to be able to breathe again, but I was ex
hausted.

  The Morrigan glanced over her shoulder and saw me. She jumped up and ran across the room, clambering over my legs and scrubbing her wet feet against the cuffs of my jeans.

  She gave me a huge smacking kiss on the cheek and settled down on my lap to watch the milling crowd. I leaned back against the wall and let her hug me around the neck. I was still wet and cold, and she was very warm.

  Some of the dead girls were splashing around over by the Morrigan’s pool, laughing and trying to push each other in. The little pink girl from the Halloween party scampered between them, still wearing her princess dress and waving her star wand.

  In another pool, farther along the room, a blue-faced girl surfaced slowly, rising out of the water in ghostly silence. Her hair was the powdery-green color of mold and her nose had started to rot away in places.

  The Morrigan squeezed my face between her hands. “Aren’t you pleased with yourself? You did this—you and the other players—you’ve made everyone so pleased.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. There was something disturbing about being responsible for partially decayed girls going swimming.

  The Morrigan rested her head on my shoulder. “They’re happy,” she said. “The performance was a success, and everyone feels quite merry right now.”

  Out in the crowd, a girl with a ragged hoop skirt and no skin on the ridges of her collarbone raised a glass above her head. Her hair was arranged in a braided crown around her head and the hoops showed through the frayed fabric of the skirt like bones. “A curse on the House of Misery! May God strike down the harridan and let her rot!”

  That made the other girls laugh and shriek, tossing handfuls of red and orange leaves, splashing each other. “Let her rot,” they sang. “Let her rot in the House of Misery!”

  I smiled uneasily at the way the girls howled and danced, but the Morrigan just sighed and fidgeted with her stick.

  “The what?” I asked. “What are they talking about?”

  “It’s properly called Mystery,” the Morrigan said. “My sister’s venerable house, which they ought to speak of with reverence. Instead, they mock and make jests at her, but it’s only because she frightens them.”

  “Why are they scared of her?”

  “Because she earns it.” The Morrigan’s head was heavy against my shoulder and she was talking around her thumb. “She frightens me too, come to that.”

  Janice wound her way through the crowd and over to us. She was still barefoot but had changed out of her romper suit, or at least put a dress on over it. Her hair was up, and she was carrying a wide, painted fan. She looked rumpled and sleepy. The bottle she held was much bigger than the tiny vials they’d given me before.

  “Here’s to wild nights and the maddening crowd,” she said, handing me the bottle. “May you continue to put that bass to good use. And you,” she said to the Morrigan, “you leave him alone until he’s had a chance to get his breath back.”

  The Morrigan gave me a quick pat on the cheek. Then she jumped up and went skipping back to her pool and her boat. “Feel better,” she called over her shoulder, waving the stick.

  I cracked the seal on the analeptic and took a long drink.

  My obvious relief made Janice laugh. “If you lived here like a proper ugly boy, this wouldn’t happen to you.”

  Luther and Carlina came over together. They were holding hands, leaning against each other as they walked.

  Janice shook her head at them. “Have you talked to this one? He lives up in the town like a local.”

  Luther rolled his eyes. “Why, I have no idea. It can’t be pleasant or easy. You’re as bad as that lunatic, Caury.”

  I stared up at him. “Kellan Caury? The guy from Hanover Music?”

  Luther nodded. “He was a strange one. Thought he could live topside if he just drank his restoratives and played nice with the locals. And look where that got him.”

  I looked at the bottle. There was no denying that whatever Caury had believed, it had gotten him someplace messy.

  Over by her pool, the Morrigan and the star girl had dropped their toys and were hopping around in a circle, holding on to each other’s hands.

  Janice watched as they spun and then fell down. “She’s a sweet little thing. Petulant to try the devil sometimes, but she never misuses us or asks for more than we can give. She cares for us.”

  “Why does she use us for music?” I asked. “I mean, does the town really need it?”

  It was Carlina who answered. “When we play for them, we give them something rare and wonderful, and in return, they give us their admiration. I know you felt it tonight. You must know you that belong here, with us, playing for their admiration and helping to keep the peace.”

  Luther slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, leaning down to kiss her.

  I looked away because it seemed impolite to watch them. When they kissed, it was completely unselfconscious, holding on like they loved each other. It bothered me to realize that in my own experience, loving anyone, even my own family, just made me feel sort of awkward and shameful.

  In the House of Mayhem, it was different. It wasn’t shameful to be strange or unnatural because everyone else was too.

  When I felt better, I got up and crossed the room to sit at the edge of the Morrigan’s pool, watching the paper boat. It was painted with wax to make it waterproof, but it couldn’t last forever, and the bottom was starting to get soggy.

  The after party wound down and people began trailing out, leaving the room in twos and threes. Others lay tangled together on the floor or pinned each other against the walls.

  The blue girls didn’t seem to be included in the fun, though. Even in the House of Mayhem, the dead ones weren’t popular at parties.

  Over in a corner, Carlina still had her arms around Luther’s neck. She kissed him hungrily, pulling his mouth down to hers, and his bony face and jagged teeth didn’t matter because she was beautiful enough for both of them.

  The initial wave of euphoria from the analeptic was wearing off and I started to wonder about Tate. What she’d thought when she’d gotten back to the side of the road with Roswell and found me gone. I hadn’t had a choice. It was get myself someplace where someone could help me or stay on the side of the road until I passed out. Even now, I remembered the pain, the terrible weight in my chest, like I was never going to be able to breathe again.

  I didn’t want to be so invested in what happened to her, but her eyes were hard to forget. Her grief seemed almost like a solid thing, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  I looked down into the water, trying to see the bottom. The pool was too dark to see much, but there was a series of shallow steps cut into one wall, leading down.

  “Why are there steps?”

  The Morrigan gave me a puzzled look. “For going up and down.”

  “Why would you want to climb up and down in the water, though?”

  The Morrigan turned her paper boat with the stick, making it wobble and spin. “The water wasn’t always there. My noble sister has been punishing me with a flood. The lower floors are unusable now, except by the restless dead because they aren’t troubled with the inconvenience of breathing.”

  “Where does it come from?” I said, watching the boat as it wavered and spun.

  “From everywhere. It falls from the sky and seeps up from the ground.”

  “Aren’t you worried that she’s going to flood you out?”

  “She’ll relent soon and tire of abusing us. Perhaps she’ll even regret her fit of pique. Until then, we’re quite adaptable.” The Morrigan smiled and kicked her legs, slapping the soles of her feet against the surface of the pool. “My sister makes the mistake of assuming that because we live one way, we’re bound to it, but that just isn’t so. Give us the corpses of children and we raise them. Give us water and we learn to swim.”

  “It’s a lot of water, though. I mean, what will you do if it doesn’t stop?”

  �
�She’ll be kinder after All Souls’ Day. Once she gets her libation, we might even prevail upon her to be more sparing with the rain.”

  “I don’t know All Souls’ Day. Is that the same thing as Halloween?”

  The Morrigan laughed and tapped me on the head with her stick. “Don’t be silly. Halloween is just another name for All Hallows’ Eve, when the locals burn their lanterns and throw the bones of their livestock on the fire to keep the devils away. Next comes All Saints’, for the pious to be revered and sanctified and have their fingers cut off and kept as relics. And very last, there’s All Souls’ Day, and that’s for the rest of us.”

  “The rest?”

  The Morrigan nodded. “The creatures in the ground. All Souls’ is when my sister renews her hold on the town and sacrifices an offering to herself. It’s when we gather in the churchyard and burn sage and rue. And then, just before the sun comes up, we bear witness to the bloodletting, and the world is better again.”

  She said it like she was reciting a poem or telling me some kind of story instead of discussing something that happened in an aging steel town on a regular basis.

  I gave her a hard look. “And you don’t see anything wrong with that? The Lady takes kids so that she can slaughter them, and you’re fine with it. You act like what she’s doing is normal. You keep saying that she’s so bad, that she’s so out of line—then why doesn’t someone do something about it?”

  I watched her face, the way she kept touching her mouth, like she was trying to cover her teeth without meaning to. “Do yourself a service and keep out of her way. She’s a hard, cruel mistress and she’ll punish you as easily as breathing. She has the child in her house and will keep it safe until the night of ritual and blood.”

  “So, you’re saying you’re all just going to stand around and let her kill a little kid?” I thought of Tate’s hard eyes, her desperate insistence that the girl who’d died wasn’t her sister. My mom hadn’t wanted to discuss the subject, but the kids who were replaced went somewhere. They didn’t just vanish. If there was any purpose or reason to the substitutions, then Natalie was alive right now, waiting for someone to collect her blood.