CHAPTER 78

Nisa had seen the black shape outside one of the windows from where she crouched beside the staircase: a sinuous shadow that slid across the veranda and then flung itself against the glass. As she watched in horror, two other shapes had joined it, all three leaping repeatedly at first the windows, then the doors, striving to get in.

The hares, she thought, giddy with terror. They’ve come to kill us.

But then the rapping stopped, and the black shapes disappeared, winking out like matches pinched between two fingers.

A deep silence blanketed her, and darkness. For a few seconds she stayed where she was, her heart pounding so hard she thought she might pass out. But then her terror receded. A strange warmth filled her limbs, almost liquid. She blinked, staring out into the hall but not seeing anything. The front door, the windows and walls, even the floor had melted into the same fluid shadows that now flowed inside her.

Instead of fear, she felt calm. Protected. Safe.

Like Stevie hiding in his room, keeping his secrets.

Just the memory of what she’d glimpsed there filled her with a mysterious, violent yearning. It was how she’d felt the night she met Holly, singing “Hares on the Mountain” at that open mic. It was how she’d felt this afternoon in the tower. Those minutes when her voice and body and the space around them all seemed to cohere, to create some new, more powerful entity, vaster than Nisa herself. A kind of ecstasy, like an orgasm, only both inside and outside her body. She would give anything to feel that again now. The darkness knew that; it understood. She waited till Holly and Stevie and Amanda had scattered to hide, then rose to run silently up the main stairway.

It was dark up here, too, but the gloom felt more familiar, gentler. All the lights were off, save a fuzzy gray glow from the open doorway of the nursery, like a frozen computer screen. The wind must have caused the door to open.

She walked on tiptoe until she reached Stevie’s room, hesitating at the door. She knew he wasn’t inside, but she still felt a pang of guilt at what she was about to do. Yet he was the one who’d betrayed her. He was the one who was hiding something.

Now she grew angry. They were supposed to all be in this together, with the same goal: the play. Yet there was Stevie, upstaging her in the parlor, pulling out all the stops as that damned dog. Her voice and her songs were what knit the entire story together, even Holly had admitted that.

And where was her reward? Nisa had brought beauty and a sense of ancient mystery to Holly’s words. She’d infused them with a power and terror that echoed down through centuries until Nisa held them, protected them, shared them with those she thought she could trust with something so precious.

But all they could see and hear were their own voices. Petty. Selfish. Greedy. Deaf to beauty when it rang out.

She realized then what those black shapes were—not the hares but Stevie, Holly, and Amanda. Manifesting themselves as they truly were: abominable creatures intent on stealing her voice, her power. Destroying her.

In the play, Elizabeth Sawyer cursed Tomasin. As her fingers closed on the doorknob, Nisa did the same, only she cursed Stevie, and Holly, and Amanda.

“Would I had a devil now to tear you all to pieces.”

Her voice echoed in the empty hall. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. Nervously she glanced at the top of the stairway. She was still alone. She opened Stevie’s door and slipped inside, locking it behind her.

She used her phone’s light to find the way, in case Stevie raced back upstairs to stop her. She stubbed her toe against the bed as she walked to where she’d seen him lying on the floor. His duffel bag still slumped against the wall. Hiding something, what was he trying to hide, you goddamn sneak? She kicked aside the duffel and trained the phone’s light on the wall, where a baseboard might have been.

Oh, Stevie, she thought, and sank to her knees, oh, Stevie, what did you find?

A little door had been set into the wall, like something from a dollhouse. Bright green, the green of sunlight on summer grass, with a doll-sized brass doorknob. The door was waiting for her, she felt it, it might have been waiting for her since she was a girl, since that first time she opened her mouth and sang along to the radio in her father’s car. Since the first time she’d seen his reaction to her voice: the power it held, even when she was a child, a power that had grown stronger in all the years since, until she arrived here and at last found the one place that could do her voice justice, a space she could fill until it shattered. She glanced over her shoulder again, grabbed the tiny doorknob, pulled it open, and gasped.

Radiant light spilled into the room, almost blinding her, the most beautiful light she’d ever seen. It didn’t even register as light; it was more like an emotion, like meeting someone you immediately love. But it hadn’t felt like this with Holly, not with anyone, only when she sang. She wiped tears from her eyes, hearing her heart inside her chest, its steady thump, thump.

Though perhaps that sound came from behind the door, as well. She bellied onto the floor and peered inside, blinking.

Shapes moved within a long tunnel, their colors luminous and shifting, colors on a butterfly’s wings as it fluttered past. She cried out softly, in amazement and delight. What would it be like to touch those colors, hold them? She thrust her hand inside the tunnel, but the brilliant shapes remained just out of reach.

She took a deep breath and pressed herself against the wall, sliding her arm into the passage until it could go no farther. Grunting, she twisted, pressing harder, until she felt her shoulder slip inside the narrow space. The tunnel must have been larger than it appeared; that or the doorway was expanding. She didn’t think about how strange that was, not merely strange but preposterous, only continued to push until not just her shoulder but her head and neck were inside, and then her other shoulder, her other arm. Impossible as it was, she was here, she was doing it!

She snaked into the passage, its sides scraping against her hips, until her legs were inside, too, and she could pull herself forward. Her fingers dug into the warm floor as she crawled, and all the while those dazzling shapes flickered and danced in front of her, just out of reach.

Gradually, the tunnel grew colder. Her face felt numb, and her hands. The passage must have led to an attic or an outside space—the eaves? One of the abandoned dormers she’d seen from the driveway?

But she’d gotten closer to the dancing shapes, she was sure. They’d grown slowly larger; now they loomed, immense.

She paused, for the first time unsure of herself, of what she was doing and why. The huge shapes were no longer doll sized. And they no longer shone. Their brightness dimmed, the colors bled from them until they no longer resembled toys or butterflies but something else, something from another kind of dream, a dream she’d had long ago and forgotten and now desperately didn’t want to remember.

Gasping, she began to push herself backward but barely budged. The tunnel pressed against her, squeezing the air from her chest. She tried again to move but couldn’t. She felt a weight against her chest and spine, massive hands cupping her, as if she were the thing to be captured and held.

Why was she here? she thought wildly. Where was Holly? I love it when you sing. Wait—was Holly there? She tried to turn but couldn’t. “Holly?” Holly loved her, loved Nisa’s voice, her songs. Everything you do just makes what I’ve done so much better. I’m so lucky. We’re so lucky.

Holly had said that, right? Nisa wasn’t just imagining it, she’d really said it, and meant it. Holly loved her, she’d always loved her, how could she have forgotten that? Nisa swallowed a sob. She needed to save her breath: like readying herself for a crescendo. She felt her vocal cords strain, felt the muscles quiver and vibrate, near a breaking point. But she wasn’t singing, she was barely even breathing.

It wants my voice, she realized.

She flailed in the darkness, struggling to shout. It wants my voice, she thought again frantically. It doesn’t care about me at all only my voice it wants my voice…

She tried once more to cry out to Holly—who was surely just there, behind her, eager to hold Nisa and feel her warmth, to press her mouth against hers. Holly was with her, she would always be with her. Holly Holly Holly I’m so sorry Holly Holly Hol

The air rushed from Nisa’s lungs as something clasped her wrists and roared.