There would be wolves and tricks and lies and cunning and vengeance in our story. I would make sure of it.
Long, long ago there lived a German storyteller who wove dark tales in a cottage hidden in the Black Forest. Pa told me about him. He said his books were burned in the Great War, and only a few survived, and someday he would let me read one.
Pa said this German storyteller had a recurring theme in all his tales, and he used to sing it to me in a low, sad voice, like it was a lullaby, over and over:
When you look into the darkness,
the darkness looks into you.
I mentioned my father to the Hero. I didn’t mean to. I’d wanted to talk about the Huntsman, about how he cut out Sweet Ruby’s heart, and put it in a box and gave it to the queen . . . but Pa slipped out instead, slipped right out of my mouth like the Crawly Eels, slipping in and out of the people’s windows in The City Beneath.
I’d been thinking about Heroes, and Midnight, and how Leaf used to say the best Heroes had a bit of evil in them, to make the good shine all the more for being next to it . . . and then the next thing I knew I was talking about him, and his water witching, and the Gold Apple Mine, like the little girl in Winter Earnest who had her wits knocked out of her all in one go.
I’d be more careful from now on.
THE TENTH TIME I kissed Leaf, he kissed me back. We were in the meadow behind the Bell farm and his thin lips were tender and arrogant, exactly, exactly how I thought they would be, exactly how I wanted them to be, he pulled away and groaned against my cheek and that dark, empty part in my chest where my heart had never been, it started beating, beating, beating and I felt joy, red and dripping. He picked me up and turned me over so my back pressed into the grass and the bright little wildflowers, and my fresh new heart faced the sky.
Leaf had a low, growly kind of voice. I saw him singing once. Back before the Blue Twist River flooding, back before DeeDee, he must have been fourteen or fifteen, but not younger, because his voice had changed, and gotten deep. I saw him singing in the forest, I was out there by myself because being better than everyone at everything is really fucking tiresome, and sometimes I have to run off into the woods for a while and pretend no one else exists.
He was standing alone in a little clearing, snow-covered ground and crisp blue winter sky. His chest was puffed out and his head was thrown back and he was singing, just singing at the top of his lungs, some melancholy tune I’d never heard before. It sounded ancient, sung in his gravelly voice, old stone mountains and ice-cold lakes. His breath fogged up in the air and I’d never heard or seen anything half so fucking beautiful. He didn’t see me, or pretended he didn’t. He just kept singing.
I wasn’t built for missing things, I was built for winning and getting what I wanted and not for trying to be better, not for trying to be the best version of myself, it wasn’t working anyway, god, it wasn’t working at all.
I had Midnight eating out of the palm of my hand, it was all so easy, so ridiculously easy. I was barely trying. He thought he was going to betray me, as if I’d let him, as if he had the cunning, what a notion, as if, as if.
This is how far I’ll go, this is how far I’m willing to go.
WINK AND I walked through black trees to the Roman Luck house. It was ten thirty, maybe a quarter to eleven. I told Poppy I would show up at eleven thirty, and Wink and I needed to beat her there.
I shined the flashlight on the sagging porch.
I didn’t like going in the Roman Luck house in the broad summer daylight. No one did. And now, in the dark . . .
The trees seemed to be watching us, watching me and Wink, all their rustling leaves like little eyes, blinking.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
Maybe this wasn’t what Thief would do.
But then, Thief had a sword.
All I had was an abandoned house.
Wink’s fingers crawled into mine. She squeezed. “You’re the hero, Midnight.”
We walked up the worn wooden steps together.
I turned the cold glass doorknob, and shoved.
The floor creaked as I stepped on it, just like the floors did in my own house. And it made me feel better. We walked down the narrow hallway, framed photographs still on the walls, fuzzy in the dim light, the faces of strangers, the faces of the people Roman Luck had run away from.
We ignored the dining room on our right, dusty table and chairs and a dirty plate that sat alone on one end, still untouched by everyone somehow, cops and kids alike.
The music room was next, on the left.
There were scurrying sounds coming from the corners. I ran my hand down the wall, and felt the velvet flowered wallpaper pucker under my palm. The faded red curtains were pushed back, floor to ceiling, framing the jagged edges of the broken bay window.