Sometimes when I was a kid I’d lie the wrong way in bed and my legs would go to sleep. I’d wake up in a panic, unable to move, convinced I’d lost my legs in a horrible accident. I’d shout out and Alabama would come running. He’d sit by me and tell me I was all right, just hang on, just hang on, until boom, the blood came roaring back. And it hurt, god, it hurt. I’d sit there and shake and pound my legs with my fists and Alabama would stay calm and cool and just keep telling me the pain was good, it meant everything was all right. He’d do this until I could move again. Until I could sleep again.
Poppy screamed and shook on the ratty green Roman sofa and I just kept telling her she was going to be all right, over and over again, like Alabama.
If I’d felt bad before, it was nothing to how bad I felt now.
“You’re going to be all right,” I said. “You’re going to be all right.”
Finally, finally, her arms went slack in her lap, and she went still.
Poppy opened her eyes.
I looked into them. I made myself do it.
They were scared.
And hurt. So hurt. I hadn’t known a person could look so hurt.
“You must all really hate me,” she whispered, her voice quiet and scratchy like it was being dragged over gravel. “You must really, really hate me.”
I didn’t deny it. I couldn’t.
It was true.
I’d hated her.
I felt sick suddenly. Sick like the flu, mixed with too little sleep and cold, clammy fear. The room started blurring at the edges, and I started seeing spots . . .
“Just leave me alone,” Poppy whispered. “Go away, Midnight, and leave me alone.”
And I did.
I ran out of the house. I ran out and left her there. Again, again, all over again.
I found Wink and Mim on the path.
Mim’s red hair was in thick, tied-up braids and her long red skirt was swinging across the muddy path, turning the hem black.
They stopped walking and looked at me.
Mim was serene. Not anxious. Not confused. Not uneasy. Just serene. “You’re very pale,” she said, and gave me a mothering side eye.
“I left Poppy. I just left her in the house. I couldn’t stand the look in her eyes. I . . .”
I blinked. Hard. I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to let Wink see me cry, damn it.
Mim just nodded. “Wink gave me a few details. A very few. How did this girl end up tied to the piano all night?”
Wink glanced at me and I glanced at her. I blinked again. And again.
“She just did,” Wink said, finally.
Mim stared at us, sharp and wary now. She took her hands off her hips and held one out to me and the other out to Wink. “Give me your palms. Quick. Both of you.”
I slid my fist onto Mim’s strong, callused fingers, and opened it. Wink did the same. Mim leaned over my hand.
“Enough,” she said, a second later, and dropped my palm.
She read Wink’s next. Ten seconds. Twenty.
Wink looked up at her mother, and their eyes met, green to green. Something passed between them . . . a flicker— “You went too far,” Mim said, so quiet I almost didn’t hear. She stared at Wink for another long second, dropped her hand, and started walking toward the Roman Luck house.
We followed behind.
Through the front door, down the hall, into the music room.
But we were too late.
Poppy was gone.
MIM MOVED ABOUT the kitchen and made golden turmeric milk and never said a word.
I stood in the corner and watched her, but she never looked at me. Not once.
She was angry.
And Poppy was missing.
There was a hayloft book called The Wolf Without a Howl. It was about a white wolf that lost her entire pack to starvation one long, cold winter. Afterward, she was too sad and lonely to howl. It was a forlorn tale and I didn’t read it to the Orphans very often.
We’d killed the monster, Midnight and I.
We’d taken the howl out of Poppy.
WINK SAT ON a hay bale, and I sat on the hayloft floor, my head against her skinny knees, her hands in my hair.
“Do you think Poppy just went home? I’m worried about her, Wink.”
Wink made her little hmmm sound. “In The Fairy Evil, Jennie Slaughter was cast off by the Tree Fay and wandered the moors for three years, not remembering who she was or where she belonged. Maybe Poppy lost her mind and is wandering the woods like Jennie.”
I moved my head, and her hands slid away. “I’ll never forget seeing her there, with her wrists tied to the piano leg and the dried blood on her face and the bright blue veins running down her white arms. It’s burned into my brain. Forever.”
“I know what a dead person looks like,” Wink said, after a while. “I know what a dead person feels like. I held Alexander, that day in the fog. Poppy was close to dying when we found her, Midnight. Her skin was cold and blue-tinted . . . she was clammy and stiff . . .”
“Who’s Alexander?”
“No one.”
“What day in the fog?”
Silence.
I got up and went to the hayloft opening. I stared down at the farm below, and watched Hops and Moon trying to climb the side of Wink’s house using nothing but their hands and feet, like monkeys, while Peach alternately yelled out encouragement and criticism.
I sat back down and Wink ran her fingertips over my scalp. She smelled like cinnamon. “Mim knows we did it. She knows we tied her up and left her there.”
Wink’s fingers stopped moving. “Yes.”
“Is she angry?”
“Yes.”