“I’m trying to cut myself loose.” She reaches up, not quite touching his bloody face. “I am sorry, though, about how things ended.”
“Then help me. I can’t stay here, Sephie, even for you. It’s getting harder and harder. It hurts. But the other place—the badlands—are worse.”
In spite of everything, in spite of the blood, the too-sharp teeth and gleaming eyes, he’s still Caleb. Still the boy she fell in love with. She was always a little afraid of him, but it was a safer fear than others.
“What can I do?”
“You’ve seen it—the garden, the wall. I need to go there. I need to get inside.”
“I can’t find the way in. And it’s only a dream.” But she remembers the door downtown, the smell of roses and summer.
They just have to get there, past the ghosts, through the empty places. The thought makes her stomach lurch.
But if it weren’t for her, for her fear, Caleb wouldn’t be dead. Wouldn’t need her now.
“Come on.” She touches his cold hand. “I think I know the way.”
The moon watches them as they cross the hollow city, spilling light the color of rust. In the distance something howls, like no dog Sephie’s ever heard.
The dead follow in their wake, nearly a dozen ghosts now, watching with hungry eyes.
“Have you talked to them?” Sephie asks, trying not to glance back at their silent shadows.
“No. I think they’re scared of me.” He pauses. “We’re scared of each other.”
The shop is still there—she was afraid it would vanish, that she imagined it to begin with. This time she sees the sign: The Dream Merchant. As Caleb tries the door, she turns to face the ghosts.
She swallows, her throat dust-dry. “What do you want?”
Caleb catches her arm. “Sephie, don’t—”
“We want out of here,” the nearest answers. A woman, her bone-white face mottled with bruises, hair pale as cobwebs tangling over her shoulders.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help you.”
“Take us with you.” She nods toward the shop. “Whatever’s in there, it can’t be worse than this place.”
“It’s locked,” Caleb says, slamming his hand against a pane; it doesn’t even rattle. “I can’t break it.”
Sephie touches the door. It feels real enough, peeling paint and dry wood, cold dirty glass. She can’t see through the windows. Before she can think too long, she punches the glass.
She gasps as it shatters and pain spills hot up her arm.
The blood that blossoms on her knuckles is definitely real. The smell fills the air, bright and rich against so much nothing. The ghosts sigh like wind in the grass, and sway forward. Caleb swallows, and Sephie pulls her hand away.
Careful of the glass, she slides her good hand through the broken window, fumbling till she finds the lock. The door opens inward with a hollow rattle of bells. She listens for an alarm, but hears nothing.
The howl echoes again, closer now.
“Come on.” Caleb steers her through the door, but Sephie turns to face the ghosts.
“Follow us if you want to, but I don’t know where we’re going.”
One by one they trickle over the threshold, into the darkness of the shop. Sephie shuts the door behind them, and turns the lock. Blood drips off her fingers.
Caleb’s hand tightens on her arm. “There it is.”
She sniffs, catches the smell again, from somewhere in the darkness across the room.
“And what exactly are you looking for?”
Sephie spins, heart leaping in her chest, as a light blossoms on the stairs. Her eyes water at the sudden brightness, and she raises a hand against the glare.
“Who are you?” Sephie asks. The light is wrong, milk-blue and cold, its glare obscuring the man who holds it.
He chuckles dryly. “I’m the owner of the building you’ve broken into, the floor you’re bleeding on. So I’ll ask again—what is it that you want?”
She swallows. “We’re looking for the garden.”
The light dims enough for her to catch his puzzled frown. His black hair is tousled, shirt hanging open, and stubble darkens his jaw. “The— Ah.” His eyes flicker toward the other side of the room. “I see. And who are you, young lady? The Pied Piper? The dead are much more nuisance than rats.”
All the ghosts huddle behind her, even Caleb, shielding their eyes from the pale lantern.
“Please.” The word catches in her throat. “I’m sorry about the window. But I have to take them to the garden.”
“I run a business, not an underground railroad for the dead. Such services aren’t free.”
“I don’t have any money. But I can get some—”
He studies her for a moment, his eyes cast in shadow. “I’m sure you can. And what surety will you give me, if I let you pass tonight?”
She opens her mouth, closes it again. “What do you want?”
His smile turned her stomach to ice. “I’ll have your name, as a down payment.”
“No,” Caleb whispers.
“It’s Sephie.”
“No, my dear. Your whole name. And I’ll know if you lie.”
“Don’t,” Caleb says, louder. He moves toward the stairs. “Leave her alone.”
The man raises the lantern higher. The light blazes, and Caleb falls back with a groan. “The name, if you please. Or I can send your friends back to the ground where they belong.”
“Sephronia Anne Matthews.”
“Excellent. Very well, Sephronia—” She winces at the sound of her name in his mouth. “—you and your friends may go down.”
He descends the rest of the stairs and the ghosts flinch from the light as he passes. He unlocks a door in the far wall; it looks like a closet, but when it opens a shiver runs through Sephie’s bones. His lantern can’t touch the blackness inside. One of the ghosts moans.
“This is it?” But she can smell it, warm and summer-sweet.
“That is the way.”
She glances at the man, her eyes narrowing. “And we can come back this way?”
“You can. We still have your debt to settle.”
“What now?” Caleb murmurs.
“We go down.” The steadiness of her voice amazes her. Her good hand gropes for Caleb’s as they step into the dark.
Down and down and down. Caleb’s hand tightens painfully on hers, and she remembers the last time they went below, the trip into the darkness that started all of this. The gravemeat, the secrets of the dead. When they first became monsters, between-things.
But this road doesn’t smell like death.
The ghosts make no sound behind them; Sephie doesn’t look back.
She brushes her wounded hand against the wall, leaving a trail of blood—better than breadcrumbs. It feels like cement at first, cold and rough, but the texture changes, becomes sleeker, slicker, ridged and curving.
She doesn’t know how long they walk, or how far. Step after step, one foot after another. The dark swallows sound, swallows time.
Eventually the wall falls away, and the smothering sensation eases. A moment later the stairs end, become a gentle slope; earth and rocks skitter beneath her boots. The air warms, and a humid breeze carries the smell of green things. The ghosts whisper among themselves. Sephie’s hand is falling asleep in Caleb’s, but she doesn’t let go.
The darkness changes ahead, lessens. The mouth of a cave—they’re almost out.
Something moves in the shadows, rasping breath and scraping claws. Three pairs of eyes burn against the black.
“What’s this now?” A rough guttural voice. Nothing that comes from a human mouth.
“Little feet trip-trapping down our stairs,” another hisses. “Is that you, merchant?”
“No, sisters. It’s the little dreamer.” And this a woman’s voice, deep and rich.
“Ahh, so it is. I knew she’d find the way eventually.”
“And she brought her friends.”
“What do you want, little ghoul?”
Sephie swallows, trying to moisten her tongue. “We want to find the garden.”
“Well, that’s easy, isn’t it sisters?”
“All you do is follow the path.”
“But you must pay the toll, to leave the cavern.”
“Yes. Passage is not free.”
“Not again.” Sephie tugs her hand free of Caleb’s, flexes tingling fingers. “What do you want?”
Even as her eyes adjust, she can’t make out the speakers. Only vague shadows and glowing eyes, gold and silver and poison green. They smell like fur, like musk and blood and autumn leaves.
One of them laughs, a chuffing animal noise. “Come closer, child.”
Caleb tries to hold her back, but she shakes off his grip and steps forward. Shadows lap over her, thicker and cooler than the air, and she shivers. Something crunches under her foot, dry and hollow; she doesn’t look down.
“What’s the price?” She searches her pockets. Coins on the eyes of the dead, but she can’t remember where she read that.
