Twenty-Two

Eleanor sat alone in her room. She’d spent so long in this room listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock just outside that now its silence was unsettling. But even with time ground to a halt, she could feel the seconds slipping away.

The bag from the Library lay next to her on the bed, the books the Editor gave her stacked on top of it. Eden Eld. Claire Barton. The Glass-Heart Girl. Things lost and unwritten.

Her hand strayed toward her mother’s book, but she didn’t pick it up. She wasn’t sure she could bear to read about all the things she’d lost when her mother faded away. Instead she picked up The Glass-Heart Girl, opening it gingerly.

It was like the story from The Tales of the Gray, and it wasn’t. The princess was born with backward hands and a glass heart—a heart that contained the princess’s magic. Her parents were Stories. They knew they would be taken over by the tales eventually, and wouldn’t be able to protect her. They feared for her fragile glass heart, and so they taught her not to feel anything too strongly. They taught her not to love anyone, especially them.

And so when they faded, and the Stories forgot her, the princess was prepared. She felt some slight sadness, but they had kept their distance from her all her life; she felt no sorrow.

Then came the knight. She rode a silver horse and carried a silver sword and a silver bow. And she, like the princess, liked to wander. And despite herself, the princess fell in love. She loved with abandon, heedless of her parents’ warning.

And then came the part Eleanor was dreading. The knight fought a dreadful beast and won—but the beast’s fangs carried a lethal poison, and the knight lay dying from her fatal wound.

Eleanor knew how it ended. The knight died. The princess’s heart shattered. And she learned never to love again.

But Eleanor kept reading on, and as she did, she frowned.

“Hey, Miss Studious,” Pip said, knocking on the doorframe and tearing Eleanor’s attention from the book. She and Otto entered, both looking as worn out as Eleanor felt. “What are you doing in here all by yourself?”

“Reading. Thinking,” Eleanor said, setting the book aside reluctantly. “Waiting for a perfect solution to all of our problems to occur to me.”

“Awesome. Is it working?” Pip asked. She plopped down into the chair by Eleanor’s desk, elbows on her knees.

“Not so far,” Eleanor admitted.

“Rats,” Otto said. He plopped down onto the bed next to Eleanor, leaning back on his hands. “Maybe if we all frown at each other like we’re thinking really hard, inspiration will strike.”

“As long as there’s no actual thinking involved. My thinker’s all thinked out,” Pip said. She waggled her eyebrows at Otto. “Got anything useful in your extra brain?”

He made a face. “It’s not an extra brain,” he said. “It’s more like I’ve got my own search engine.”

“And what does it tell you about the People Who Look Away?” Eleanor asked.

“Mostly just the stuff we already know,” he said. “Plus a whole bunch of awful things they’ve done to other people. No secret ‘how to defeat them’ knowledge.”

“Of course not. That would be too easy,” Pip said.

“There’s got to be a way to fight them,” Otto said. He stood up and started pacing back and forth.

“You’re the one who comes up with the plans, Elle,” Pip said. “What have you got?”

Eleanor thought hard. She was the world-walker now. Pip was a skilled fighter, and Otto knew just about anything he wanted to, magical and otherwise—that had to add up to an advantage. “We can’t hurt the People Who Look Away. But when we beat Mrs. Prosper, we didn’t have to. We trapped her in the labyrinth,” she said.

“Temporarily,” Otto clarified. “She’s probably found her way out by now.”

“But temporarily is fine,” Pip said. She leaned back on her hands. “Right? The deal we made with them was that if they don’t get us, they don’t get to try again.”

Eleanor bit her lip. “What if that’s not enough? They broke time to make us fight them all at once, right? What if they find some other loophole? A way to make it Halloween again. Or a way to get to the Pallid Kingdom that isn’t that specific door or something.”

“They’ll never stop, will they?” Otto asked darkly. He sat against the windowsill, scowling.

“So we have to destroy them,” Pip said. She didn’t sound disappointed.

“It’s the only way to stop them for good,” Otto agreed. They looked at Eleanor.

Pip was right. The People Who Look Away would never stop trying to get to the Pallid Kingdom, even if they had to bend the rules to do it. The only way to save their world—to save all the worlds the Pallid Kingdom would conquer—was to stop Mr. January and Mrs. Prosper and Thea for good.

Not Thea, she reminded herself. Katie Rhodes. Thea was gone.

“Elle?” Pip prompted.

“We destroy them,” Eleanor agreed, and tried, as Wander had urged her what felt like a very long time ago, not to feel anything.

“But how?” Pip asked.

Eleanor stared at the far wall. “Thea told me that her parents could Empty entire worlds. I think that’s what happened to the gray world we were trapped in on Halloween. They Emptied it out except for the last scraps.”

“That’s terrifying,” Pip said with a shudder.

“Otto, does your hedgewitch knowledge know what would happen to someone if their world was Emptied completely?” Eleanor asked.

He blinked at her. Then got his focused expression. “If you Empty a world completely, it collapses. It stops existing, and so does everything inside of it. Including people.”

“What are you thinking?” Pip asked.

“We do to them what Mr. January tried to do to us,” Eleanor said. “We trap them in the gray world. And then we Empty it.”

“Is that—could we do that? Empty something?” Pip asked.

“Eleanor can,” Otto said, meeting her eyes, his expression serious.

Eleanor nodded. “The world-walker is all about connections, but it’s not just connecting. I can pull things out. Like when I brought the hedgewitch to us. Or when I pulled the Stories out of the books and put them into us. I’ve never tried to Empty a world, obviously, but I think that I could. If I tried.”

“Could you, though?” Pip asked. She looked intently at Eleanor. “I’m not talking about the magic. I’m talking about you. This would destroy the People Who Look Away. Kill them. Could you really do that?”

“If it meant saving everyone? Yes,” Eleanor said.

“We’d have to trap them in the gray world long enough for you to do it,” Pip said.

“Okay,” Eleanor said. “So let’s back up. Make the plan. What’s step one?”

“We could—” Otto started, but Pip held up a hand to stop him.

“Step one,” she said seriously, looking at both of them, “is remembering that we are in this together. The three of us. We have beaten everything the People Who Look Away have thrown at us. We’ll beat this, too.”

“Because we’re the Heroes Three,” Eleanor said with forced levity.

“No. We’re Pip. And Eleanor. And Otto,” Pip said. “That’s all we ever needed to be. You were right, Eleanor. We’re going to win this because we’re us.”

“Because we’re us,” Otto agreed.

Eleanor gave a small smile, trembling but true. “Because we’re us,” she echoed.

“Though the magic sword doesn’t hurt,” Otto added. They laughed, and for a moment, it didn’t matter that they had Stories coursing inside of them, that there were villains prowling outside. They were just Pip and Otto and Eleanor, and they were friends, and they were enough.