Mother of Crows Read online

  At the top of the stairs, Nate turned toward the east wing. Abby was the only one who had a bedroom on that side of the house. The two older Thorndikes slept in the west wing. Bertram had living quarters somewhere on the third floor. Downstairs, it had been eerie to see lights blazing in empty rooms. Up here, the lights were off. This was scarier. The hallway seemed longer than it ever had before.

  He had the intense feeling that someone was watching him. The presence lurking in the house, listening to his calls, had come closer. Nate turned. There were deep shadows all around. It didn’t occur to him to look for a light switch. The darkness was deep enough to hide a person and the furniture, curtains, and paintings all appeared to be doing just that.

  It felt suicidal to turn his back on the hall, but he had to. He had come this far and he was going to Abby’s room. The bag of sandwiches crinkled a little in his hand. Bringing them here felt childish and pointless now. He didn’t want to be found dead, clutching a bag of Fluffernutters.

  Nate’s steps were quick. They grew quicker by the second as the feeling of being watched grew more and more intense. It felt like someone was directly behind him, precisely mimicking his every movement. He couldn’t look over his shoulder; that would only make it real. If he didn’t see it, maybe it would go away.

  Nate stopped at Abby’s door and waited. Shadows seemed to move in his peripheral vision. You’re seeing things, he told himself. Your visual cortex is being starved of stimuli, so you’re hallucinating.

  “Abby?” he said to the door. The house swallowed his voice. “Abby?” he said again.

  There was no answer. Despite everything that was happening, he could never imagine Abby hiding on the other side of the door. Nate could trust her. Always.

  He knocked. Maybe she was asleep. “Abby?”

  Still no answer.

  She wasn’t home. She was probably with everyone else, wherever they were. But he still had to check. He had to be certain. He cracked the door to Abby’s room, whispering her name into the gap. Nothing. He took a deep breath and pushed the door open all the way.

  Empty.

  Nate stared, taking in all the little details. Abby’s bed was made, stuffed animals arranged just-so by the pillows. Some of her makeup was out on the table. He didn’t see her purse.

  Nate shut the door and turned back toward the stairs. His shoulders sagged under the weight of his questions and doubts. Had she been initiated into the Daughters of Arkham at the last minute? Had she vanished with the rest of them? Or worse… Had she lied to him?

  He paused for a moment. A deep, primal instinct instructed him to turn his head very slowly and carefully. He held his breath, turned, and there it was.

  There was a roughly man-sized silhouette outlined against the curtains at the end of the hall. The moonlight stabbing through the curtains gave the shape a strange silver halo and cast shadows so far down the hall that they touched Nate’s feet. He looked down. For a moment, he could see the shadow shifting and writhing, as though it was trying to grab him and draw him in.

  Nate could hear the blood in his ears again. His heart felt like it had been frozen solid. It threatened to shatter right out of his chest.

  He could not move. He stared at the silhouette at the end of the hall, like a mouse hypnotized by a snake, unable to flee to save himself. The shape pinned him in place, as sure as if its shadow could touch the solid world.

  The silhouette cocked its head, and the moonlight revealed a nightmare.

  It was the shape of fear.

  Nate turned and sprinted away. He didn’t realize until much later that he had been screaming.

  26

  The Unexpected Visitor

  Mr. Harris watched Nathan Baxter’s face as it turned stark white. He watched his eyes bulge out and his mouth fall open so that little, guttural sounds of fear and disgust could come tumbling out. Nathan stood there so long that Mr. Harris thought the boy might remain there until he literally dropped dead from fright.

  Mr. Harris hoped that would not happen. Nathan Baxter was his best student. Someday, he’d likely have his pick of the Ivy League. If all that had ended over an honest mistake, Mr. Harris wasn’t certain he could have forgiven himself.

  But what was the boy doing here? It wasn’t a surprise that Nate felt welcome in Harwich Hall-he seemed friendly with Abby Thorndike-but to see him here on Halloween night was quite surprising, indeed.

  Mr. Harris had noticed Nate halfway through his own slow circuit of the house. (Empty, as expected. He’d found nothing of note.) He’d been taking his time, stepping lightly and leaving no trace. The last thing he needed was for that Bertram to catch his scent.

  He’d spotted Nate peeking into the house from the rosebushes, and he’d thought the boy might leave after that. Instead, he’d snuck into the house as bold as you please.

  Mr. Harris thought perhaps that Nate was a thief. He knew the Baxter boy was at the Academy on a scholarship; his family couldn’t have much money. Some of the knick-knacks in Harwich Hall were likely worth a year of Mr. Baxter’s pay, and Nate was carrying a brown paper bag that he could have easily used to ferret some smaller valuables away.

  The boy touched nothing. Mr. Harris followed him to Abby’s room, and there, he thought the time had come to reveal himself. That was when the boy finally fled.

  Mr. Harris shook his head. Strange that Nate Baxter should enter this home uninvited. He thought that maybe he would understand one day, but he didn’t devote too much energy to the thought. He had a few things left to do.

  27

  Home Again

  It was just after midnight when Abby started walking home, though the party was still raging at Coffin Manor. Abby felt like she was floating. She could still feel Bryce’s presence. His scent was still with her whenever she breathed. When she closed her eyes, she could quite easily pretend they were still dancing.

  She did that often on the way back home.

  Even when she was addled a boy-the boy-she knew exactly when she had to return home. Constance Thorndike wasn’t going to tolerate her daughter breaking curfew, even if it was a Friday, even if it was Halloween. Still, Abby felt good. She had gone to a party and she had danced with Bryce. She had left on time; she hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol; and she hadn’t experienced any strange blackouts. She felt normal for the first time in over a month.

  No… normal didn’t quite cut it. She felt better than normal. For all the strangeness surrounding her, there were still bright spots. She had Bryce. Just how much of him she had was hard to say, but he was definitely in her life. She had a group of friends who accepted her. She and Sindy were fighting right now, but they would make up eventually. Abby felt sure of that. She’d make things right between them. Then she thought of Nate, and felt a small twinge of guilt. She could have taken him to the party, too… But then she never could have danced with Bryce. Not without hurting Nate.

  She swept her guilt aside. She wanted to hang onto the delicious aftertaste of this magical night. In Bryce’s arms, during those too-brief moments on the dance floor, she was able to forget the baby, the creatures she saw on every street corner, and the black gaps in her memory. For a little while, she was just a girl being held by a boy, and everything was right.

  Abby arrived at Harwich Hall just as Mrs. Coffin was ushered swaying and wobbling into the back seat of her BMW. A lanky croatan closed the door after her, then circled around the car to get into the front. He glanced at Abby as he passed, his silvery eyes unreadable. Abby stayed on the dirt path that doubled as both sidewalk and drainage, watching the car go past. The Crow was a brutal reminder that life was far from normal, no matter how much she might like to pretend it was.

  She went into the side gate just in time to see Constance waving to Mrs. Lee. They’d been friends since Mather Primary. Mrs. Lee got into her Lexus-thankfully, she had no Crow driver-and headed down the driveway. The wrought-iron gate opened automatically to let her car through.

  Tha
t seemed to be the last of the guests. The Daughters of Arkham had had yet another successful gathering. Abby thought about next year’s party, and for the first time, she looked forward to it. The party was a tradition in the town, and she felt like she could use something stable, something normal. Best of all, the Crows would be outside in the dark, forgotten at least for a time-except Bertram, of course.

  Harwich Hall’s front door was open, spilling burnished light onto the porch. Abby went inside. The house was still bustling with uncharacteristic activity. Most nights, Harwich Hall was silent and still before eleven o’clock. Constance and Bertram directed a small army of servants as they cleaned up the detritus from the party. Uneaten appetizers, half-empty bottles of champagne, used dishes and napkins all went into the kitchen. The smell of the food was heavenly. Abby’s stomach groaned. She’d been dancing for hours, and she hadn’t had dinner.

  She imagined what might taste good. Fluffernutters, definitely, the kind Nate liked to make her whenever she was sick. She could have eaten ten of them. Her guilt returned after a moment. She was probably only craving them because she’d lied to Nate.

  Constance swept into the front hall looking like a movie star. Abby wondered how much of her mother’s appearance was a subtle boast to everyone in the Daughters of Arkham: I can raise the perfect daughter, keep the perfect house, throw the perfect party, and still find time to look like this. Although, knowing the adults of Arkham… Maybe it wasn’t boasting. Maybe it was just survival. Show no weaknesses at all, or get eaten.

  “Abby!” Constance went right to her and wrapped her in a brittle hug. “You look lovely. Home from Nate’s already?”

  “Um. Yeah.”

  “You’re perspiring. Are you all right?”

  “Long walk is all.”

  “You’ll be driving soon, before you know it. Do you want anything before you go to bed? I can have the staff whip up whatever you like.”

  Abby almost said yes, but her appetite died quietly as her guilt grew more intense. “No, no. That’s fine. I think I just want to go to bed.”

  “Good night then, dear.”

  Abby went upstairs. The bustle of activity faded as she went into the cool darkness of the second floor. It felt like a whole other world. She could look down, see the lights blazing and the servants moving every which way, but she wasn’t a part of it. She went down the hallway toward her room, allowing the feel of the evening to return to her. It settled over her like a smile.

  She reached her door and sighed. Going in meant taking off her kind-of costume. It meant brushing her teeth and washing her face. It meant leaving this beautiful night behind. She hesitated, knowing that even though it was inevitable, she wanted to prolong the moment as long as she could.

  Her body had other ideas. Her stomach contracted into a burning knot. Not her stomach, no-lower than that. The agony pushed her to her knees. She tried to cradle the pain, but couldn’t. She swallowed an anguished groan, turning her head as though that would stifle it.

  There was a shape standing at the end of the hallway, a silhouette backlit in the open window. Its shadow stretched out over the floor to meet her.

  “He-” she managed before another cramp tore through her and ate the rest of the word.

  The silhouette was still. Only its shadow seemed to move, reaching for her in front of her door. She wanted to recoil, but found she couldn’t. The pain kept her locked in place.

  With the agony came clarity. While her body was paralyzed, Abby found that her mind was clear. She couldn’t move, so running was out of the question. She couldn’t speak. She could only look.

  She peered at it, her senses whetted against the stone of agony inside her. She tried to latch onto details, to see the hard angles that help her identify whatever or whoever it was. As her eyes chased shapes, they vanished into smoke. Abby realized that she was not looking at a solid being. She was looking at nothing more than an amalgamation of shadows. In the next instant, it was gone.

  The pain disappeared along with it. Abby got to her feet. She should have been frightened, but she felt inexplicably revitalized. After a night of dancing, she thought she could probably go right back out. She looked at the place the silhouette had been until she was satisfied it was gone, and then went into her room.

  28

  Part of the Job

  Nate piloted a riding lawn mower in large, concentric circles. His father had once told him that the idea was to make the lawn look like a woven throw rug. Nate nodded along, wondering the whole time why anyone would bother trying to make grass look like anything other than grass. It was plenty pretty on its own, so long as it was taken care of.

  Mowing the lawn was kind of an odd thing to request in November. Pretty soon the ground was going to freeze, and the Baxter family’s chief source of income would go into hibernation. His father would take odd jobs, usually maintenance or temp construction work, while his mother would pull some extra shifts at the market. In any case, Nate’s family would be carefully budgeting to make sure that what they’d earned in spring, summer, and fall would carry them into the following March. Thank God for families like the Coffins, though Nate hated that his family was dependent on the eccentricities of rich white people.

  The section of yard where Nate was working had once been about the size of a football field. It was a wide, flat space that folded up into a few pleasant hillocks before it surrendered to the forest. It was soothingly pastoral. Nate enjoyed zoning out on the riding mower with the sun on his shoulders. Mrs. Coffin would never be content with leaving anything as it was, and a large section of the yard had already been cleared in preparation for some new outbuilding or another. Nate would not be shocked if his father was called in during the dead of winter to help with the construction.

  If that did happen, Nate would ask to go with him. Arnold Baxter would refuse, of course-working outdoors in the winter was no place for a kid. He loved his father for that. But they needed the money, and that excuse was already nearing the end of its shelf life. Nate looked forward to when he could finally leave for college, and his scholarships would take him off his parents’ books.

  For now, Nate was content with his job. Coffin Manor looked worse than usual, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Though the staff had likely been cleaning all morning, it was pretty clear there had been a party. Nate could see trash here and there, mostly beer bottles and the remains of red plastic cups, hidden in the foliage where they would be easily missed. He had no doubt that Bryce had had some kind of big Halloween bash.

  Nate shivered, thinking of the shape in Abby’s house. He was doing his best to pretend that it had never happened. He called Abby the next day-yesterday-just to make sure she was fine, and she claimed she felt better. “Completely recovered,” she’d said. She didn’t mention any monsters in her house, and Nate wondered if he’d imagined it all. He couldn’t’ve. It had been too real for that.

  The lie bothered him more than the monster (if there had even been a monster). Abby had not been sick. She had not been in her room, and there was no way she would have been resting in another bedroom. In all likelihood, she had been with the rest of the Daughters of Arkham, but… She had told him about the baby. There was no reason she couldn’t tell him she was going to skip out on their Halloween to go to some party for blue-blood women.

  Nate hoped this didn’t signify yet another change in Abby. They were all starting to pile up, especially with Sindy’s encouragement, and each one drove Abby a little further away from him. But what could he do? It wasn’t like he could confront her about lying by saying, I know you weren’t sick because I broke into your house.

  Bryce came out of his house. He wore swim trunks and mirrored sunglasses, and he had a towel thrown over his shoulder. He yawned and stretched, and Nate felt every smoldering bit of hatred he had for Bryce erupt into a burning flame. How was he supposed to compete with that? Bryce looked like someone had sculpted him out of marble, while Nate’s combination of mellow horm
ones and outdoor work had turned him into the hobbit of Arkhamshire.

  Bryce padded over to the hot tub and lowered himself in. After a moment, he glanced around, and then gestured to Nate.

  Nate turned off the mower. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks, that’s good.” Bryce settled into the water.

  Nate turned the mower back on. Bryce frowned and made the same gesture.

  “What?” Nate asked over the sound of the mower. “I can’t hear you!”

  Bryce pulled himself out of the hot tub, shivering in the autumn air, and strode toward Nate. He leaned across Nate and turned the mower off. “Mow somewhere else. That thing is loud.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sitting on it.”

  “You can sit on it someplace else. We have a lot of grass. I’ve seen it.”

  “Your mom wanted us to do this part.”

  “My mother doesn’t know the difference. Go away.”

  “Like I said-”

  “Hey, I’m not paying you to have an opinion on things. I’m paying you to cut the damn grass. So unless you want to run home and explain to your parents how you got fired, I suggest you run along and find another part of this lawn to cut before it gets covered in snow.”

  Bryce dismissed Nate with a wave.

  Nate wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. Bryce was right. They needed this job. He started up the mower and drove away, leaving Bryce to lounge in his hot tub.

  29

  The Hanged Men

  sindy and Abby didn’t speak much in the week following the party. To be fair, Sindy hardly spoke with anyone other than Eleazar. Abby saw them holding hands in the hallway. At lunch, they huddled together and shared private jokes. They existed in the rarified world of a brand new couple.

  Abby had to continually remind herself that what she was seeing was not the same as what the rest of the world saw. Her stomach turned too much to even acknowledge the croatan as another race. Watching Sindy lean in toward that horrible, circular maw, with those yellowish teeth mere inches from her throat, destroyed Abby’s ability to think of the Crows as anything but monstrous.