CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

THE sky dumped hail the size of marbles onto the street. Harken weaved the Harley through traffic, riding bumpers and nicking side mirrors, trying to outrun the storm. He whipped in and out so fast I felt the air being sucked from my lungs. Colors ripped past, and sounds bled together, but we couldn’t outrun the ice that pelted us, stinging our faces.

I tried to hang on, struggling to make sense of what had just happened. My arms were wrapped around him, one hand locked on my wrist and the other pressed against his chest. His shirt was soaked with rain, and I could feel his muscles right through it, the tendons working as he steered, the heat from his body. I pressed my head between his shoulder blades and felt him breathe, slow and steady, like this was just a joyride.

Then I remembered the white face.

The death rattle voice.

The wicked sharp scissors dripping with blood.

And my separate peace was gone. “Whose blood was on the scissors?” I yelled, but before he could answer, I heard a weird buzzing sound and looked up.

Birds.

A swirling, dazzling cloud of noise that widened and thinned, then turned toward us.

“Look out!” I yelled.

Harken swerved as the swarm swept past, and birds splattered the windshield of a delivery truck, leaving a smear of blood and guts. The driver yanked the wheel, and the truck sideswiped the bike, slamming us into a parked car. The bike whiplashed, and Devon flew over the handlebars.

“Devie!”

I saw my little sister skid along the pavement until she lay still in a pile of hailstones.

“No!” I beat Harken on the back. “Stop!”

I heard a rushing noise and saw nothing but white. The city was gone. The street was gone. Only a white sidewalk remained, where I stood in front of Urban Market’s plate-glass window.

“I’m losing my mind,” I said, blood trickling from both nostrils.

A crack made of ever-growing blue and red triangles opened in my vision, and pain poured through the crack. The pain grew brighter and fiercer until I curled up in a fetal ball, moaning.

And then, it stopped.

The wind.

The sound.

The light.

The pain.

Stopped.

And I was standing on the sidewalk. Facing a shopwindow, a finger on the glass, where shaky letters spelled out, Do not accept her cold caress. For the Shadowless will kill.

“Hey, ya big ginge.” Devon tugged on my sleeve. “That’s the same poem.”

“It is?” I wondered how she got here but wrapped my arms around her anyway. “I’m glad you’re not dead anymore.”

“Why’s everything so white, Willow Jane?” she whispered. “It hurts my eyes.”

“I’m sorry. I just. Just . . . Can you see that?”

The window looked like the surface of a winter pond, dappled with crystals of ice that sent ripples through the glass. A pinprick of light glinted from the center. It grew lighter and brighter as it expanded. The light was hypnotic, and it held me in its spell.

Devon walked toward the expanding fissure, laughing and raising her hand to the mist that rose from the frosty glass. Her fingers sank into it, and instantly the light changed. White turned to sickly green, and the ice melted around her wrist. A sulfur-infused stench drifted from the hole, an odor so strong my stomach heaved.

“No!” I screamed. “Stop!”

She turned and smiled. Her eyes were vacant and dark, and she covered her mouth with a hand and giggled, a lilting, high-pitched sound that sent a shiver through me. I leaped across the sidewalk and reached for her, hearing laughter. My face appeared in the glass as a blur of red hair and porcelain skin that transformed into a bone-white skull and a row of jagged teeth.

The Shadowless, I thought. She’s come for me.

But it wasn’t me she reached for.

“Devon!” I snatched at my sister’s coat, catching nothing but air. She seemed impossibly far away. “Don’t go with her, Devie! Stay with me!”

Like an antique doll rotating its head, Devon turned. Her face was a blank, glistening slate. “The dead girl wants to play.”

My blood ran cold.

Kelly’s reflection appeared in the window beside mine. She wrapped an arm like a tentacle around my waist, pressed her body against my back, and put her cheek against mine. She stank of dirt and rot, and when she thrust her lips to my ear, I thrashed against her embrace. But she held me too fiercely, laughing with quiet ferocity, and pulled me away from the window.

A long, bony hand covered Devon’s mouth. “Treasure for treasure,” Malleus said. “The clock ticks, Uncanny. The clock ticks.”

Then they were gone.

“No! You can’t leave! I can make you come back!” I bit my thumb and tried to pull out a gossamer thread. “Damn it, work! I need you to work!” I bit down again. All I got was skin. “Come on, stupid thread!”

“Uncanny tricks won’t work in the land of shadows,” Kelly said, mocking me.

“No!” I gasped. It was the only sound I could manage, a weak, impotent noise, as insignificant as I was.

“Submit,” Kelly said. “Submit and be free.”

An ill wind flowed in from the bay. The air blew straight through me, and I felt Kelly’s teeth on my earlobe, tugging and tasting my skin.

“Devon and Willow swinging in a tree,” she sang, “H-A-NG-ING.”

Then she stepped through the window and was gone. Without a sound, she was gone. The rippling glass solidified, the fog dissipated, and I alone was reflected in the glass.

Above me, the clouds had parted, and the dark sky was pocked with silver stars. I stared at them dumbfounded, until Harken, the street, and the world came back in a rush of color and sound.

I stepped off the sidewalk, and Harken caught me before I could fall into oncoming traffic.

“Steady there!” he ordered. “Willow Jane, where is your sister?”

“Devon is gone.” I heard myself say. “To the place of shadows.”