El-Saffani nods. People filter into the room, but Bishop lags behind. He walks to a skeleton. He reaches down and picks up a thick thighbone. He grips it in both hands, gives it an experimental swing.
Then he raises it above his head and he whips it down. It smashes against the skull with the triangular hole, shattering it, sending shards of bone skittering across the hall.
A piece of what used to be a person is now a weapon.
Bishop shows the thighbone to El-Saffani, gives a single, firm nod. The twins nod in return. They grab thighbones of their own. Without a word, they take up positions on either side of our coffin-room door.
Bishop has changed. Killing the monster affected him. He looks so solemn, so serious. That little-boy smile is nowhere to be seen.
And on his face, for the first time, I see a faint hint of stubble.
Bishop isn’t a kid anymore.
I enter the coffin room.
TWENTY-NINE
Spingate draws pictures in the dust.
She uses her fingertip to make a line or a curve, then stops to think. When she does, she touches her face, leaving smudges and broken lines on her skin.
We all stand and watch. No one knows what to say about the magic that brought us back to where we started.
We went straight. We didn’t turn left, we didn’t turn right. There were no bends in either direction, not even subtle ones. We would have seen them when we looked far down the hallway. Even when we were walking in the dark, it was still straight.
Minutes pass. There are twenty people in this room, sitting on the floor, leaning on coffins. Everyone waits. Spingate stares into space. She doesn’t seem to realize that we’re there.
Bishop leans toward her, over her, but he’s not looking at the drawings—he’s looking at her face.
A blast of anger wrinkles my nose and narrows my eyes. Does Bishop think Spingate is pretty? Her red hair, her long legs, her shirt tight against her woman’s body…there’s no way I’m as pretty as she is.
I rub at my eyes. Why would I worry about that now? My thoughts keep running away from me. Bello is gone and there are monsters—I don’t care who Bishop looks at.
He spits on his index and middle fingers. He kneels, dips them into the dust. He drags his fingertips first down one side of his face, then the other.
Bishop stands. He has two lines of wet, dark-gray dust running down each cheek. His eyes are cold and hard.
He walks to the archway, bone clutched in his hand like a club. He leans out and quietly says something to El-Saffani. I know Bishop saved me from the monsters, but right now he’s making me nervous. The look on his face, the sharpness of his movements…
He is scary.
Spingate draws another line. She had me call everyone in here because she said she knew how we wound up at the same pile of bones. Her silence makes the room heavy and awkward.
A few heads turn my way. Then a few more. People are waiting for me to speak.
But it is Aramovsky who finally breaks the silence.
“Tell us what happened, Em,” he says. “Tell us what happened to Bello. Tell us about the monsters.”
Now everyone is looking at me. Everyone except Spingate, who seems to have forgotten that any of us exist.
I take a breath. I didn’t tell them before because I didn’t want them to panic. They did what I asked them to do. Now these people—my people—deserve to know what happened.
I start talking. I tell as much of it as I can recall. The whole thing was a blur of movement and noise, of shapes and emotions. I tell them how Bello and I walked into the woods. I tell them why we went, no longer caring that I’m supposed to be embarrassed at how my body works. I tell them how she was taken, dragged through the underbrush. I tell them how I went after her.
Then I describe the monsters. Two of them, one tall, one about my height. Wrinkled and black. Not dark brown, not white or tan or pink or any of the skin colors in this room, but black like my hair.
As black as rot.
Spindly arms and legs. Hands like skinny spiders. Red things that might be eyes. Hissing voices, voices that made my nerves shudder—but I don’t tell everyone how the woman’s voice sounded strangely familiar. That part I keep to myself. I’m not sure why.
I tell them about the bracelet that might have been a weapon, and when I do, my stomach flops: dammit, whatever that thing was, we should have taken it off the corpse. Now it’s too late.
As I tell the people what I saw, I see their fear swell. Our bodies are grown, but our hearts and minds are still those of twelve-year-old kids. I’m telling them that not only is the bogeyman real, he took one of our own.
But…those bogeymen can die. I tell them how Bishop killed one. Brave Bishop drove the spear into a monster’s heart. The intensity of my words hides neither my admiration for Bishop nor my hatred for the creatures.
Gaston raises a hand—he has a question.
I almost laugh. I’m standing here lecturing while wide-eyed children wearing adult masks listen to me like I am their teacher.
I nod to him.
“You said the monsters talked,” he says. “Tell us what they said.”