Thirteen

Eleanor caught her breath. The dungeon was gone, but her fear was slow to fade. That whole debacle had taken less than five minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

“Where are we?” Thea asked quietly.

“Eden Eld,” Otto answered.

“It’s where we’re from,” Eleanor added in response to the girl’s puzzled expression. The cobblestone road was one of the ones downtown, where all the shops were decorated to look quaint and old-timey and the streetlights looked like Victorian gas lamps. It was night now, and the lamps glowed with pale, colorless light through a thin fog. There wasn’t anyone around, but that wasn’t unusual.

“Um. Guys?” Pip said. “We have a problem.”

She was looking up into the sky. Eleanor frowned and followed her gaze—and her heart skipped a beat. She’d thought it was the middle of the night because it was dark out. But the sun was still in the sky.

It was just covered by the moon.

“The eclipse,” Otto whispered. The faintest line of light licked the edge of the moon, marking its position in the sky. “It’s still totality. How is that possible? Did we come out in exactly the same moment we left?”

“Time does work differently in the Wending,” the hedgewitch said, but she sounded doubtful. “Was it this cold when you left?”

Eleanor shivered. The air was brisk and chilly, no hint of the early summer warmth they’d left behind. And the leaves on the trees had fallen. They were scattered across the cobblestones.

And they were gray.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Eleanor whispered. “How is it still the eclipse?”

A little hiccup of sadness drew Eleanor’s attention. Thea stood off to the side under the glow of a streetlamp, shoulders hunched, holding the kitten-of-ashes cradled in her arms. The kitten looked ruffled and very annoyed at her ill-treatment, but Eleanor didn’t think she was hurt.

Eleanor knelt down in front of Thea. “I’m sorry about your brother and sister,” she said.

“Why would they do that?” Thea asked plaintively. Fat, glistening tears ran down her cheeks.

“Mr. January betrayed us. Big surprise,” Pip growled. She kicked a rock, sending it plinking into the side of the café they stood in front of. Its windows, Eleanor saw with growing alarm, were boarded up.

“Why are you comforting her? She is your enemy. You ought to dispatch her before she grows wise enough and powerful enough to realize it,” the hedgewitch said.

“She’s a little kid,” Eleanor said, putting herself between the hedgewitch and the trembling Thea.

“What she is now matters less than what she will become,” the hedgewitch countered. “We should eliminate her.”

“Whoa! Nobody’s eliminating anyone! Especially not kids!” Pip said. “I don’t know what kind of creepy nonsense is happening, but if Eleanor says she’s on our side, she’s on our side.” Pip went to stand next to Eleanor, arms folded.

“Why did she say I’m your enemy? Who is Mr. January?” Thea asked, looking confused.

Eleanor sighed. “It’s hard to explain,” she said. They’d brought Thea into the present—did that mean there was no Katie Rhodes here? Or did it mean they had Katie Rhodes and Thea in this timeline? Her brain felt itchy thinking about it.

“It’s so quiet,” Otto said, sounding troubled. “And the moon should be moving. It’s staying completely still. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Let’s see if we can find anyone to explain what the heck is going on,” Eleanor said.

“Good idea,” Otto agreed. But as soon as Eleanor took a step, her legs gave out. She collapsed with a groan, catching herself on her palms. Otto and Pip ran to her, helping her back up. She leaned heavily against Pip, and she could feel her eyelids starting to drag.

“I’m sorry. Just . . . really tired,” she said.

“You’ve opened the Wending twice, dragged me across a half-dozen worlds, and escaped the throne room without a proper rest,” the hedgewitch said. “Of course you’re exhausted.”

Eleanor wished she could convince herself there was even a hint of motherly concern in her voice. “I’m fine,” she grated out.

“You’re really not,” Otto told her. “Look, there’s a bench. Sit down. Rest.”

Eleanor wanted to object, but she was too tired. She let Pip guide her over to the bench, and she sank down onto it.

“You four stay here. I’ll look around,” the hedgewitch said.

Pip snorted. “Because that worked out so well last time. I’ll come with you.”

“I don’t need a child for protection,” the hedgewitch said, brow arched.

“I am no mere child. I am the warrior, or have you forgotten?” Pip asked in her warrior voice, hand on Gloaming’s hilt.

The hedgewitch waved a hand. “Fine. Come, then, brave guardian.”

“Let us go hence, and see if the burrito place on Third is open,” Pip declared. They strode off together.

Thea climbed up on the bench next to Eleanor. The kitten-of-ashes jumped free and perched on the edge of the bench, looking around with bright, curious eyes.

“Who is Mr. January?” Thea asked again.

Eleanor looked at Otto, who shrugged. Eleanor wasn’t sure what was best to tell Thea—what to leave out, what to reveal, what would hurt her, what would frighten her. So she settled on the easiest thing: the truth.

“When we came to your kingdom, we didn’t just travel between worlds. We traveled to the past,” she explained. Thea’s eyes were wide, but she didn’t interrupt. So Eleanor continued, though her explanation was halting, fragmented. Otto jumped in when she faltered. Thea didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t say a single word until the very end.

Thea looked away, down the dark street. “Mother and Father must have found a way out of our world, eventually. And conquered all those worlds they talked about. I wonder how they did it.”

Eleanor had a bad feeling she knew the answer to that. Katie Rhodes was the mistress of the Wending. She knew how to open the way between worlds. Eleanor would bet that she was the one who’d eventually figured it out for her parents.

“But people fought back,” Otto said. “They locked the Pallid Kingdom away completely. The People Who Look Away—uh, that is . . .”

“Me and my brother and sister, you mean,” Thea said softly. “We did all those horrible things to you to let Mother and Father back out. Even though we hated them.”

“The People Who Look Away are very, very old,” Eleanor said. “Centuries old. A lot can happen in hundreds of years.”

“Does it have to?” Thea asked. She looked at Eleanor pleadingly. “Do I have to be wicked? Or can I stay me?”

“We won’t let anything happen to you,” Eleanor pledged, taking her hand. “You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be.”

“Maybe,” Otto said. Eleanor gave him a withering look. He spread his hands. “I’m just saying, we don’t know how any of this works. Maybe it’s her destiny to be evil. Or maybe not! We just changed the past. Who knows what that’s going to do!”

“Weird, weird things,” Pip said. Eleanor sat up, startled by her approach. The hedgewitch was with her, looking grim.

“You’d better come see this,” the hedgewitch said.

Eleanor got to her feet. Her legs still felt like rubber, but the rest had helped. Thea took her hand as they followed the hedgewitch and Pip down the street to the town square.

“So,” Otto said mildly, “does anyone remember there being a giant statue of Mr. January in the middle of town?”

The statue had to be twelve feet tall. It showed what could only be Mr. January—he had his cane, his formal clothes, his smirk. It had been designed so that there were two Mr. Januarys looking both forward and back, merged at the middle.

“ ‘In honor of our beloved mayor,’ ” Otto read from the plaque on the base of the statue.

“What is going on here?” Eleanor asked, aghast.

Movement caught her eye. She turned just in time to see someone ducking inside a shop. She looked around again, slowly. Here and there, she could see faces peering out at them from behind curtains and between blinds.

Claws clicked on cobblestones behind them. Eleanor turned with a gasp, expecting the umbral hounds. But it wasn’t them.

It was the graveyard dog.

Mr. January’s hulking beast of a dog was advancing down the street toward them, ears pricked forward, breath huffing out in great plumes of smoke.

“You,” he rumbled. “Was looking for you. Found you.”

A new sound joined the steady click-click-click of his claws: a sound like tumbling stones. A fresh cobblestone path rippled through the square, coming to meet the street they stood beside. Rag-a-bone and Shatterblack streamed down it, their tongues lolling and eyes bright.

“Leave them!” Rag-a-bone cried.

“They’re ours to catch!” Shatterblack added.

“Back off,” the graveyard dog barked. “I smelled them first.”

The three dogs glared at each other. Then turned, as one, toward the humans.

“We should probably run,” Otto whispered.

A car engine revved down the street. Pip reached for her sword. The dogs charged.

A van whipped around the corner so fast it almost lifted off its wheels. It blasted past the dogs, sending them yelping and scrambling in all directions, and screeched to a halt in front of them, cutting them off momentarily.

The driver rolled down the window, and Eleanor let out a shaky breath of relief. “Uncle Ben?”

“Get in, quick!” he said, motioning frantically.

Eleanor didn’t waste time asking questions. She hauled open the back door and helped Thea up. The others piled in behind. They’d hardly closed the door behind them when Ben slammed on the gas, throwing them back against the seats in an ungainly tangle. Eleanor twisted to look out the back window. The dogs were falling behind quickly. Shatterblack and Rag-a-bone snapped at the graveyard dog’s flanks, slowing them all down even more. Eleanor let out a relieved sigh and turned back around.

Only then did she notice that the floor of the van was papered with flyers for missing people. Some of them Eleanor didn’t recognize, but there were a few kids from school and people she knew around town, and—

Jenny and Naomi. “Aunt Jenny and Naomi are missing?” Eleanor said, picking up the flyer. She recognized the photo—it was on the mantel at home. “What happened? Uncle Ben, what’s going on?”

“I kind of hoped you might know, since you’ve been missing, too,” Ben said. He’d slowed down a bit as they left the town proper, but he was still hurtling along at well over the speed limit. Ben was the most cautious driver Eleanor knew, other than Jack, but now she clutched the door to keep steady as he swayed in the lane.

Eleanor looked at him in the rearview mirror. He was scruffy—well, scruffier than usual, not in his usual “friendly forest bear” way—and he was wearing a battered baseball cap over long, scraggly hair.

“Wait. How long have we been gone?” Eleanor asked.

“Since the eclipse started,” Ben said.

“And that was . . .” Eleanor began.

“Four months ago,” Ben said.

Eleanor sat back with a moan. How could they have been gone four months?

“Wait. What day is it?” Pip demanded.

“Well, let’s see. It’s hard to keep track without the days and nights, but it’s what, two a.m.? So that means it’s officially October thirtieth,” Ben said.

Eleanor, Pip, and Otto looked at each other in silent horror. For a long moment none of them said a word.

It was October 30. Tomorrow was Halloween.

And Mr. January would be coming for them.