The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

Her eyes open wide, with that bottomless black glimmer they get. She reaches a fingertip over to touch the wax seal. It’s stamped in a pattern like a spindle.

“Wes,” she breathes. “That’s it.”

“That’s what?” I say.

“The letter. See?” She points to a clean rip in the center of the paper, about an inch long. “What letter?” I’m confused.

“The one they found on our door. The death threat.”

I touch the note gently with my gloved finger. It doesn’t look like much.

“Open it!” she cries. “Please! Please, you have to open it.”

“Okay, okay,” I say. “Hang on. I don’t want to tear it.”

Annie’s vibrating with urgency in her seat. I move my thumb along the edge of the paper, and the waxed seal lifts up cleanly, where it was broken long ago. I unfold one leaf. Then I unfold the other. The pattern of cuts made by one knife through all the complex folds is starlike, reminding me of when we’d make paper snowflakes in elementary school.

Trembling, Annie reaches over and takes the paper from me. I’m astonished, that she can hold it. She cradles the letter delicately in her hands, looking down at it.

“That’s all?” she asks, her voice catching.

I don’t know if she’s talking to me, necessarily. I think maybe she’s asking the universe. I stare at Annie’s face, lit strangely by the fluorescent library lights. Something about her skin has changed. It’s like instead of the light shining on her, it’s shining in her. No, that’s not right.

It’s shining through her.

“Annie?” I whisper.

She doesn’t seem to hear me. Or if she does, she doesn’t answer.

“That’s all it says? Why would it say this?” she says, but her voice sounds sort of hollow. It’s hard for me to hear, and not just because she’s whispering.

“Annie!” I hiss, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the librarian doesn’t hear me.

She’s fading. A pit of terror and panic yawns open in my stomach. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Is she doing it on purpose? Does she know it’s happening? I can actually see the tabletop through her arms, as if the substance of her forearms has thinned, faded like an overexposed photograph. The paper almost looks like it’s floating a couple of inches off the library table, because Annie’s hands underneath it are disappearing.

“Wes?” she asks.

But her voice is so far away that I’m not actually hearing it, in my ears. I’m just hearing it in my head.

“Wes!” she calls again, but the faint rosebud outline of her mouth doesn’t move. I only see the outlines of her eyes widen with surprise.

Wes.

“Wait!” I burst, reaching for her, and the librarian glances up at me with curiosity.

I grasp at nothing. The paper lingers in midair for only a second, as if figuring out that the hands holding it have vanished, and then with a soft sigh the letter begins to drift down to the tabletop. I scramble to get my hands under it, to catch it and keep it safe.

The letter settles in my gloved hands, and I stare down at it. The slip of browned paper, wrinkled with age and riddled with knife cuts, bears just one word, written in spidery old-fashioned handwriting.





CHAPTER 6


I don’t understand.

I’m staring down at the letter that Wes has put into my hands, so crisp and yellowed that I can’t conceive it’s the same letter that I saw stabbed into my front door only yesterday. It seems to have been folded so long it’s forgotten how to be unfolded, and the fragile, stubborn creases make it sit uneasily in my hands, like a dead leaf.

I’m trying to decide if I recognize the handwriting.

Slavemonger.

Why would someone levy that accusation on our door?