CHAPTER 20

Above, a flock of birds takes sudden flight, and flees across the horizon. In the trees, squirrels scurry and leap from branch to branch, all headed in the same direction—away. We stand watching them, frozen.

“Um, that can’t be good,” Germ says.

But I can’t think about what I see around me. All I can think about is the word “twins.”

“Rosie,” Germ says, looking up at the sky, “we have to go. We have to get home. Your bow and arrows…”

Germ yanks on my arm, and after a moment I fall into step behind her. But as we launch into motion, I turn my head back to look once at the Murderer. Something strange is happening to him. He is holding out his hands, staring at them. A pink, sparkling dust has appeared around him. He looks at me and lets out a laugh.

This is the last glimpse I have of him—surrounded by sparkling dust and rising slowly from the ground as Germ and I turn away and race across the hospital lawn.

I don’t have time to wonder about his fate. I only run.

We’re on our bikes within seconds, standing on our pedals and thrusting up the hill. It’s so dark, we can’t see more than ten feet ahead of us, and that’s only thanks to my flashlight.

Heart pounding, iron taste in my mouth, I look up at the sky. If there’s a witch out there, it’s too dark to see her. I scan the darkness of the trees. I look for the sliver of the moon to show from behind the clouds.

“It’s too early,” I say to Germ as we pedal. “It’s not time. She can’t be coming.”

Germ casts me a doubtful look as we chug our exhausted legs up the incline. “I think maybe she’s going to take a chance,” she says.

We take a shortcut past the edge of town, soaring downhill. Germ is like lightning on her bike, but she keeps slowing to wait for me. It occurs to me for the millionth time that she’s much more of a fighter than I am.

“Strange weather,” someone calls out to us as we pedal past the convenience store. “Be careful, guys.”

And they’re right. Up ahead, lit from below by the lights of town, clouds are gathering very fast beyond the trees, in the direction of my house. I don’t like those clouds. And then, as we round the bend onto the beginning of Waterside Road, something happens that makes my heart falter. A luminous moth flutters past my face, just barely missing me. I watch it flap past—its iridescent, pattern-shifting wings are unmistakable. Germ and I exchange a panicked look.

A few minutes later, another slaps against my handlebars and tumbles off into the air.

The closer we get to home, the more memory moths fly out of the dark at us. We’re riding so fast, they only graze us as we whip past them.

We cut left, into the woods, onto one of our shortcuts. Branches slap at our faces, snag and tear our clothes, but we don’t slow down. I follow Germ’s eyes up to the sky, and gasp. A blanket of magical moths is headed in the same direction as we are. There are thousands now. Some drift down through the canopy of the woods like snowflakes at the beginning of a blizzard.

My legs feel like they’re on fire, my lungs about to burst. The woods have started to look familiar now. This tree, that boulder—we’re close to home. But then we burst out into the open clearing of my yard. I skid to a halt in the grass and tumble off my bike in shock.

I feel rough hands pulling me up, Germ yanking me to my feet as I gape.

My house is no longer my house. It is covered, every inch, in fluttering, squirming, shimmering moths. Moths blot out the sky and cover the lawn.

In the woods, panicked grasshoppers and fireflies, spiders and crickets and dragonflies, swarm out from the trees and circle the roof.

A flash of light zips back and forth across the lawn, and I see it’s Ebb.

From somewhere inside, there’s the sound of glass shattering—and a moment later a cloud of moths bursts out through one of the windows. Roof shingles fly across the yard. The front door, as we watch, comes flying off its hinges as a swarm of moths explodes out from behind. The ghosts of the house have scattered onto the lawn, confused and terrified. Crafty Agatha is swirling in circles, uncertain where to go. The washerwoman ambles past us into the woods. So much for my booby traps.

And then I hear a bloodcurdling scream from inside the house.

As I run toward the sound of my mom in terror, she appears in the doorway, hair in a million directions, clutching her heart.

“Mom!” I scream, and run toward her.

And then I see… out above the ocean, perhaps a mile away, a shape is coming toward us. It glows purple against the dark.

“Inside!” I yell, unable to think of anything else. But as we turn toward the house, a cyclone of moths, spinning wildly in circles, barrels into the side of the house, and—with a sound like ripping and then a deafening crash—the whole front wall of my house comes crashing down.

We turn to look at the sky. The shape is now close enough to make out, closing in on us fast. The clouds are gathering low behind it.

It’s a chariot, streaking across the sky toward us, but it’s made of moths, thousands of them all flying together in unison. And holding on to the reins is a figure all in black. She has one hand in the air, and moths gather around her hands like a flame.

The Memory Thief.

“She’s the weakest witch?!” Germ yells. The sound of moth wings is deafening now. My mom cowers by the front door of the house.

I swallow, and turn my attention to the rubble falling around me, my hands shaking. I have to find my bow. Right now.

I pick up bits of rock and splintered wood and throw them aside. You can find it, sweetie, I think. Just focus, focus, focus. As I do, bugs swirl through the air like a tornado.

Each time I glance over my shoulder, the chariot looms closer and larger, and I feel so scared I think I might vomit. The bow is nowhere to be found.

But just as I’m about to fall back in despair, I spot it: the corner of the top of one of the arrows. I lunge at it and free the bundle from the debris piled on top of it.

Around us, the clouds are moving faster, and for a moment I catch a glimpse of a strange shape in the mist across the grass, before I turn away.

My eyes on the sky, I try to fit the arrow onto the string, but I can’t get my fingers still enough to do it. Suddenly Germ is beside me. She grabs both of my hands, hard and steady, and looks at my face.

“You can do this,” she says.

But Germ is a terrible liar. I can see by her eyes that she’s not sure at all.

Still, I manage to steady my hand enough to fit the arrow.

The witch is descending toward us.

I want to shoot, but I know I need to wait until she’s close enough. As close as the oak tree in Germ’s yard.

She comes. And comes. And comes.

She is so close now, I can see her sad, longing eyes. She grins at me.

And then, when the distance is right, I let the arrow fly.

At first, it looks to be far off the mark; it arcs up as if it’s going to go clean over her head. But then, on its way down, I see it. It is going to hit. It sails downward, picking up speed, and I can’t believe it, but it’s headed right at her, trailing colored beams of shapes behind it.

Germ grabs my arm. The shot hits its mark.

And then sails right through her and out the other side. Without even slowing her down.

The wind whips as the chariot reaches the ground, and the Memory Thief leaps out—cast in the glow of ghosts circling the yard. She floats toward me with her arms outstretched, her feet zipping across the ground.

“Come with me, little one,” she says. “Come forget with me.”

I stumble backward, but not before she reaches my shoulder with her hand—just the tip of her finger. I feel her touch, and with it, a deep frozen chill.

The witch slows in the air for a moment. Then the moths around her swarm directly at me, barreling through the bugs surrounding me.

They land on my shoulders, my face, my ears.

Forget, they seem to whisper through my skin—forget. I sink down onto the grass, not because I can’t stand, but because I don’t remember why I should. Beside me, Germ is yelling something, but I don’t know what.

Memories float in my head: drinking Gatorade with Germ on the veranda, Bibi West looking at me at the Fall Fling. Each vision rises up and begins to sparkle like dust, then disappears.

And then the moths are knocked back. The wind is whipping. Patches of fog blow toward the trees. It’s unmistakable: shapes loom in and out of the fog, though I can’t make them out.

The Memory Thief takes several stumbling steps backward. And just as the clouds part far above to reveal the last sliver of moon in the sky, it dawns on me: The cloud shepherds are helping.

A stream of dim white moonlight falls down onto the lawn. The Memory Thief lets out a cry, stumbling backward and shielding her face. With a howl of rage she reaches out for the figure nearest her—Crafty Agatha. A cluster of moths swarms Agatha as she screams. A moment later, the moths fly apart—and Agatha is gone.

Across the grass, Ebb lets out a cry.

The Memory Thief leaps onto her chariot, which lifts up and into the sky, and shoots into the air like a star. In another moment, she’s beyond our sight.

I lie on the grass, paralyzed for the moment. My head turned to the side, I gaze at the clouds lingering just at the edge of the field—the strange, misty faces looming out of them, looking at me, almost beckoning me. I can hear Germ and Ebb talking to me, but it’s like they are far away. I can only focus on the cloud shapes as they float toward the edge of the trees.

I sit up slowly, and look back toward the house at my mom, then up ahead, at the strange patch of foggy cloud. This may be the only chance I will ever get.

I find the strength to stand. And then, I run. I chase the cloud shepherds into the woods.