The Replacement Read online

  “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-mâché. “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 b
edtime 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

  The 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.

  Luther smiled and touched the brim of his hat. “Home, sweet home.”

  “So, you live in the slag heap?”

  He twitched his shoulders, almost a shrug. “Well, to be more accurate, underneath.”

  Then he reached inside his coat and brought out a knife. The blade was long and yellow, made of ivory or bone. I stepped back.

  He laughed. “Don’t be a fool. I’m not going to cut you.”

  Then he jammed the knife into the base of the hill, all the way to the handle.

  When the blade sank into the slag, nothing happened for a second. Then a sheet of gravel slid away, exposing a narrow door.

  He pocketed the knife and pushed the door open, waving me through. The entryway was dark and smelled like mildew. The opening was low and the air was wet and cold, but when he ushered me in, I didn’t hesitate. I stepped inside and Luther followed me into a low tunnel. When I looked back, all I could see was the faded black of his coat as he guided me down.

  We moved slowly, and I kept one hand on the wall. It was rough, crusted with loose debris, but the tunnel didn’t seem to be in danger of collapsing. The floor sloped steadily downward as we went and I was increasingly aware that we were deep underground. Deeper than cellars and basements and the water mains that ran in a complex network under the streets. The weight of earth above us was almost suffocating, but something about it was comforting, too. I felt surrounded, like I was being held in place.

  As we kept going, the tunnel widened, and the air got wetter and colder. A long way down, there was light.

  When we reached the end of the tunnel, Luther stopped, straightening his collar, adjusting his lapels. The light came from the narrow crack between a pair of heavy double doors. He caught hold of twin handles and dragged the doors open.

  Then he swept off his hat and bowed low. “Welcome to the House of Mayhem.”

  I was standing in a kind of lobby, with a stone floor and a high ceiling. Torches burned in rows along the wall and the smoke had a black, oily smell like kerosene. The handles were mismatched, made from dead branches and baseball bats and one that looked like the handle of a garden shovel or an ax. The walls were lined with other doorways, lower and narrower than the one we’d just come through. On opposite sides of the room were two massive fireplaces, but neither of them was lit.

  A group of girls stood around one of the fireplaces, watching us. All of them had on long, grimy dresses and stiff vests that laced up the back. The smell coming off them was worse than the girl at the party. It made me think of a morgue.

  At the far end of the lobby, there was a big wooden desk. It was the kind that a librarian or a receptionist might sit behind, but no one was in the chair.

  When Luther put his hand between my shoulders, the weight and suddenness of it made me jump.

  “Come now,” he said softly. “No need for alarm. She just wants an audience with you.”

  He pushed me closer and we leaned over the desk to look behind it.

  A little girl was crouched on the floor. She had on a white party dress that looked like it was made of old surgical gauze and also like it might have been on fire at some point. She was sitting with her legs pulled up, drawing on the stone with a burned stick. All the pictures looked like eyes and giant mouths full of teeth.

  Luther leaned against the desk and pressed a little brass bell. “Here’s your boy.”

  The girl turned and looked up at me. When she smiled, I stepped back from the desk. Her face was young and kind of shy, but her mouth was crowded with small, jagged teeth. Not a nice, respectable thirty-two, but closer to fifty or sixty.

  “Oh dear,” she said, putting down her stick and reaching out a dirty hand. “I ought to have been more cautious.” Her voice was soft, and her train wreck of a mouth made her lisp. “You think I’m ugly.”

  The truth was, yes. She did look ugly, maybe even horrifying, but her eyes were wide. She was going to be terrifying if she grew any bigger, but for now, she was cute the way even a turkey or a possum can be cute when it’s a baby.

  She patted the heavy, high-backed chair beside her. “Here, sit and talk with me. Tell me about yourself.”

  I didn’t sit down right away. It was hard to know what to think of her. She was different from Luther and different from the girls at Stephanie’s party. Her jagged teeth and her tiny size made her seem more implausible, more impossible than all the rest of them.

  When I took a seat on the edge of the chair, she went back to drawing on the floor.

  “I’ve been curious about you,” she said, scraping a new charcoal mouth with her stick. “We were so pleased that you survived childhood. Castoffs generally don’t.”

  I nodded, staring down at the top of her head. “Who are you?”

  She stood up and moved closer, staring into my face. Her eyes were dull black, like the feathers on a dead bird. “I’m the Morrigan.”

  The word sounded strange, like something in another language.

  “I’m so pleased that you could find it in your heart to visit us,” she whispered, reaching to touch my chin. “It’s wonderful that you need us because we need you, you see, and business arrangements are so much more satisfying if they’re reciprocal.”

  “What do you mean ‘need you’? I don’t need anything.”

  “Oh, darling,” she said
, smiling and reaching for my hand. “Don’t be silly. Of course you need us. You’re becoming so frail, and it’s only going to get worse. This really is the best solution for all of us. You’ll help me, and in return, I’ll make sure you’re supplied with all the remedies and analeptics you need and you won’t have to live out the rest of your days in slow agony.”

  I watched her, trying to see the reason behind why I was even here. “What do you want?” I said, sounding more nervous than I would have liked.

  “Don’t look so alarmed. I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t already desire in your heart.” She turned away and knelt on the floor again, picking at her hair. “While music is hardly the most powerful kind of worship, it’s fine and adequate. We’re always looking to bring new blood to our stage.”

  “What does that have to do with me, though? I’m just . . . no one.”

  “You have a good face,” she said, crossing her legs and fidgeting with her dress. “An undamaged body. Your wholeness makes you immeasurably useful to me. If it’s agreeable, I’ll send you out onstage with the rest of my musical beauties to stand in front of the town and receive their admiration.” Each time she pulled out a clump of hair, she set it carefully off to the side of her drawings, like she was starting a collection.

  “Rasputin, you mean? When?”

  “Tomorrow, at that estimable venue, the Starlight.”

  “But I just saw them. They played last night.”

  “We’re in a bad time,” she said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the signs.”

  I thought of the rusting grates and brackets at the Starlight and nodded.

  “The town is drawing away from us. The rains dishearten them, and their attentions are half felt at best. We need all the adulation we can get. If the season is bad enough, I’ll send them up every night until the worst days have passed.”

  “What do you want me to do, though?”

  The Morrigan smiled. “Now we come to it. Your sister has been a busy girl, as I’m sure you know. She appealed to us on your behalf, asking for medicines and cures, which we were only too happy to provide. It’s easy enough to mix the medicines you need. All we ask is that you help us in our endeavor for applause.”