A spoke of heat flashed up from the base of her spine and spread over the ribbons of Dragonscale on her skin, in a sweet, shiver-inducing rush. She swayed on her heels without being aware of it. The world possessed a new, liquid quality. She was conscious of a tidal rocking in her blood, as if she were afloat in a pool of warmth and light, as if she were an embryo herself, not the carrier of one.
The next time she poured sugar, the glittering grains seemed to fall in slow motion: a cascade of riches. Brightness cascaded along the Dragonscale around her wrists and throat, a silvery-white trill. She was a kite, filled and rising with song instead of wind. She was as warm as a kite in the sun, too, her skin blazing—not painfully, but with a flush of pleasure. Her hand wore a glove of light.
The Lookouts came and nodded to her and took their cof fee or tea and went on and they all shone; they were all lit up like ghosts. She was glad for each of them, in love with each of them, although she could not remember who any of them were. She could not remember anything that had come before the song. She could not think of anything that mattered more than the melody. She did not believe that any spoonful of sugar, no matter how sweet, could be as fine as the melting sweetness running through her then.
Father Storey was the last to come up for coffee. He had drawn a stone himself, of course. He hadn’t put it in his mouth yet, was just holding it.
“There is Miss Willowes!” he cried. “Happy at last. Happy and looking well!”
“Miss . . . Willowes?” she asked, her voice as slow and dreamy as sugar spilling from a spoon. “Who’s Miss Willowes?”
“It’ll come back to you,” he promised.
13
It did, too. Her name returned to her just before dawn, came back to her almost as soon as she stopped trying to remember it. Her subconscious coughed it up without any warning, in much the way it would sometimes supply her with the answer to a question in a crossword that had been stumping her.
She did not wake coughing smoke again. There were no more hot flashes burning up her T-shirts in the night. At the next chapel, Carol sat at the pipe organ to play “Spirit in the Sky,” and the congregation rose to sing. They roared and stamped like drunk sailors in a Melville story, full of grog and scaring the seagulls with their sea chanteys, and Harper bellowed with them, bellowed till her throat ached.
And they shone, all of them together, Harper, too. Her eyes blazed like lamps, her skin hummed with warmth and pleasure, her thoughts soared away from her like a kestrel rising on a hot summer updraft, and for a few weeks everything was almost all right.
BOOK THREE
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
JANUARY
1
She woke on the second day of January, not from a nightmare, but to a sensation of something shifting inside her, pushing out against the muscles of her abdomen.
Harper lay awake in the darkness, eyes open wide, her hands spread across the taut gourd of her stomach.
A bony protrusion, about the size of a thumb knuckle, pressed up from within, rising against her right palm.
“Hey, you,” she whispered.
2
The night the locket went missing, Renée and Harper were listening to the Marlboro Man on a battery-powered radio.
“I don’t understand how you can stand that man.” Norma Heald was passing by their cots and had paused to hear what they had on. “Every word is a drop of poison in your ears.”
Renée said, “He’s the closest thing to local news left.”
“More importantly,” Harper told her, “we’re awful women and his awfulness excites us. The more awful, the better.”
“Yes,” Renée said. “That, too.”
Harper was planting kisses on squares of parchment paper, trying out various shades of lipstick. After a kiss, she would wipe her mouth clean and try another. Renée had collected different lipsticks from everyone in the basement.
When Harper made a pleasant lipstick print, she would hand it off to Renée, who would roll it around a cinnamon stick, or a fragrant piece of shriveled lemon peel, and tuck it into a little glass bottle and cork it up. These were emergency kisses. Harper was stocking the Portable Mother with them so that when her son needed a kiss, he would have plenty to choose from. The Portable Mother was no longer a book, but a package, a whole collection of potentially useful items, which had swelled to occupy Harper’s entire carpetbag.
Nick was underfoot, playing Yahtzee against himself. Dice rattled and crashed inside the plastic cup. The basement was crowded, loud with conversation, argument, laughter, creaking bedsprings, everyone trapped in close quarters while it snowed heavily outside.
On the radio, the Marlboro Man said, “You think a girl with Dragonscale can blow smoke rings with her vajayjay? Friend, I always wondered about that myself. Well, this weekend the Marlboro Man was on the loose in Portsmouth with the Seacoast Incinerators and had a chance to find out. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute, but first, here’s a story from Concord. Governor Ian Judd-Skiller said members of the National Guard were only defending themselves when they shot and killed eleven burners yesterday on the Canadian border. The mob charged the barricade with sticks—not white flags, as has been reported elsewhere—and the besieged soldiers opened fire to disperse . . .”
“He’s a murderer,” Norma said and sniffed. “That DJ you’re listening to. He’s killed people like us. And he boasts about it. Hemlock in your ears—that’s what he is.”
“Yes,” Renée said. “He’s very stupid, you know. That’s another reason to listen. The more we know about him, the less likely he’ll ever know anything about us. People call in with tips and this bozo airs them live. If anyone ever mentions Camp Wyndham or points him in our direction, we’ll have a head start. And even if they don’t call in, I’ve learned all kinds of things about the Cremation Crew he runs with, just by paying attention to his program. I’ve learned it’s made up of eight men and women, and that two are former military and were able to supply some heavy ordnance. A fifty-caliber something? I gather that’s a pretty big gun. I know they travel in two vehicles, a van and a big orange truck. I know they have a police scanner, and most of the time, local law enforcement is happy to—”
“Orange truck?” Harper asked. “You mean like a town truck?”
Across the room, Allie screamed, “No, NO!” and flipped her cot with an echoing bang.
Every head turned—except for Nick’s, of course, since he had heard nothing.
Allie kicked over a battered suitcase, dumping filthy laundry on the floor.
“Fuck!” she screamed. “Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!”
Conversations petered out. Emily Waterman, barely eleven, a girl who had outlived her entire family and who had pretty feathers of Dragonscale on the backs of her freckled arms, climbed under her cot and covered her ears.
Renée was the first to move, her round, pleasant face remaining entirely calm. Harper was two steps behind her.
Renée slowed as she approached Allie, moving toward her in much the same way she might’ve attempted to get near a feral cat. Harper sank to her knees to look under Emily Waterman’s bed.
“Emily? Everything is okay,” Harper said, reaching out for her. In a whisper, she added, “Allie is being a fusspot.”
But Emily shook her head and shrank from Harper’s hand. Harper wished she had her Mary Poppins lunch box, with its individually wrapped candies and emergency radish.
“Allie,” Renée said. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s gone, it’s fucking gone—”
“What’s gone? What did you lose?”
“I didn’t lose anything. My locket was under my pillow and now it isn’t because one of you bitches took it.” She glared around the basement.
Emily made a thin squeal of terror and turned her face from Harper’s outstretched hand. Harper considered trying to pull her out for a hug, decided that might be too alarming, and settled for reaching under to stroke her back.
Renée said, “Allie, I know you’re upset, but you need to lower your voice—”
“I don’t need to do shit.”
“—because you’re frightening the little ones. Why don’t you ask Nick—”
“I asked him, don’t you think I asked him when I started looking for it, fifteen minutes ago?”