Chapter Four warnings: Demonic imagery, violence
Chapter Four
Somebody To Love
In Eleanor’s defense, she only promised Mick he wouldn’t have to worry about her, not that she would stay in the car.
And honestly, could he blame her? Here they were, in a town where the most interesting thing to ever happen was the opening of a mall, and they had just found out that said mall was probably haunted already. Oh, sure, ghosts didn’t exist, but the point was, it was something exciting. Breaking into a mall was something exciting.
She just had to convince Mick that this was, indeed, something exciting.
“You’ve lost it,” he said instead of “wow, Eleanor, this is exciting.”
Trust Mick to be, well. Mick.
Despite his reservations, for the past several minutes, the two of them had been delving deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine corridors inside the mall—corridors that were, at that moment, pitch black. It took a minute or two for Eleanor’s eyes to adjust, but in darkness that complete, the best she could do was squint at hazy silhouettes of the few things immediately in front of her. Occasionally, there would be a cardboard box or two (of what, Eleanor couldn’t tell), and then there was the vague outline of her best friend whenever she turned around to make sure he hadn’t bolted (which to her surprise he never did). But other than that, this hallway was so featureless, so dark, that she was reduced to relying on only the most sophisticated techniques of navigation to lead them along.
She walked forward until she hit a brick wall. Or at least, that was the plan. Which was a great one, if anyone asked her.
In any case, she wasn’t turning back; she was determined to make this an adventure. So when Mick told her off for leading them deeper into the unknown, she half-turned to nudge him in the ribs with her forearm.
“And that is exactly why you hang out with me,” she said. “Be honest.”
Even in the darkness, she could see his shoulders heave in a heavy, exasperated sigh. “When it’s going to a party in the woods, maybe, but—Eleanor, I can’t see anything.”
“Yeah, you’d think this place would be lit with emergency lights, if people are here. Fire codes, you know.” Eleanor frowned at a spot where fluorescent lights had to be. She could just barely make out off-black rectangles of unlit fixtures. “No matter. Come on. The mall entrance has to be this way.”
Abruptly, she felt his hand grab her wrist and hold it tightly. She tried to step forward, but he pulled her arm, forcing her to stumble backwards into his torso. She could feel him tremble against her back and felt his breath rush by her ear.
“We shouldn’t be here,” he whispered harshly.
“Well . . . yes?” she replied. “That’s part of what makes this exciting, no?”
Eleanor tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he held on tighter—more desperately.
Okay, maybe he was overreacting a little.
“No, I mean. Somebody is here,” he said.
“Right. Alistair, probably that security guard—”
“No! Eleanor, listen! I saw people outside. They-they were in these weird cloaks, and they were chanting—”
Eleanor twisted around to look at Mick’s face. He was so close she could practically see his features in the pitch black of the corridor.
“Chanting?” she repeated.
He flinched. “Yeah, I know. It sounds like something out of a horror movie, but I swear that’s what I saw. And that’s exactly why we need to get out of here—whatever they’re doing, it can’t be good.”
Mick tried to pull her along the way they had come, but Eleanor ground her feet into the floor and leaned her weight back to stop him. The pieces to a puzzle she had been mulling over were piling up in her mind, and little by little, they started falling into place.
“People outside, chanting . . . Mick, what if these are the people Adelaide was talking about?” she breathed. “The ones ransacking the mall at night?”
Mick stopped trying to pull her along, instead whirling to face her, shoulders hunched and body slouched. “Please tell me you don’t want to go investigate. No, Eleanor, look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want to go investigate.”
He flailed a hand between them, but Eleanor pressed her lips together and stared at the long oval that was his face.
“How can I? It’s pitch black in here,” she said after a moment.
Mick froze, hand poised between them. She could almost feel his growing frustration—especially as he dropped his hand and sighed for a second time in those five minutes.
“Okay. I am going to pick you up and carry you out of here over my shoulder.”
Eleanor squinted at him. “You wouldn’t.”
“You weigh less than a stack of pizzas, and I’m not about to let you get killed. I can, I would, and I will.”
“No, I mean . . . which way is the exit?”
For a second time, Mick froze. Eleanor could hear his voice catch in the back of his throat, as if he was about to say something but kept stopping before he could figure out what.
Ah, Mick. Good old Mick. Ever worried about her. This reminded her so much of the first time she had ever convinced him to sneak out with her, never mind all the other times he tried to convince her not to get into trouble after that. Oh, sure, they still got into trouble, but they had fun, didn’t they? They came back alive, right? That party in the woods—how far had the two of them run from the cops and then Old Man Turner with his rifle and hunting dog?
So, yes, they were technically breaking and entering to investigate a possible haunting, right after Mick had seen shady people in cloaks just outside. Oh, yes, she believed him when he told her what he had seen. Mick would never lie to her.
The point was, though, what was the worst that would happen?
Eleanor smiled into the darkness and took Mick’s hand.
“Come on,” she said, her voice low and as encouraging as she could make it. “I promise nothing is going to happen to us.”
“Eleanor. What if they’re serial killers?”
“Then we won’t let them see us.”
“Well, if you’re aiming for stealth,” a third voice said, “you’re both doing a really bad job of it.”
At once, as much as Eleanor would hate to admit it later, both she and Mick screamed. A flashlight popped on, and its yellow beam swung up, pointing straight at the ceiling. In its warm light, Eleanor saw Adelaide’s grinning face.
“So,” Adelaide said with a quirked eyebrow. “Going ghost hunting, are we?”
---
Eleanor had to admit Mick was a little bit right about something here: Huntress Woods Mall was unnerving. Or at least it was at night, when it was dark and devoid of people. Adelaide led them down one of the main spurs of the mall, past store after empty store. Grates down, security lights aglow, the souls sucked out of them—storefronts that had once been familiar and inviting to Eleanor in the broad daylight were now yawning maws full of black teeth in the forms of silhouetted clothing racks and spinner shelves of cheap earrings. The smell of cleaner and mildew hung heavy in the cold air, sticking to the walls of Eleanor’s lungs and sending gooseflesh down her arms. Somewhere overhead, HVAC units hummed—the only sound besides their own footsteps. And next to Eleanor, her best friend practically radiated anxiety, a beacon of both warmth and tension at the same time.
It was almost more than Eleanor could stand. Almost.
Adelaide had barely explained why she was there or where they were going. Mick had wanted to turn back and find the exit, but frankly, Eleanor couldn’t say no to Adelaide’s offer for a crash course in ghost hunting, and that made it two against one. And Eleanor de Lepaute wasn’t in the habit of regretting anything, so she held her tongue and convinced herself that this wasn’t a bad idea. That nagging feeling in her gut was just Mick’s unease rubbing off on her. They passed the shell of an Auntie Anne’s, and Eleanor took a deep, steady breath and relaxed to the perfume of hours-old pretzels.
“Gotta admit, I was surprised seeing the two of you again,” Adelaide said, breaking what had been a ten-minute silence by then. “Especially in the employee corridors. What were you doing there?”
Small talk. That’s what this was. Perhaps Adelaide was nervous as well?
“Uh. Delivering pizzas?” Mick replied, arms wrapped around himself. “To you, no less?”
Adelaide raised her eyebrows at him. “Oh. Guess Al ordered more.”
“You . . . don’t know?”
“Al probably mentioned something, but I’m kinda busy doing other stuff, you get me?”
Here, Eleanor nodded, thinking back to the parking lot. “So that explains the short customer we ran into.”
Mick shot her a glare. “I ran into. And eventually, we’re gonna talk about why you snuck out of the Rabbit while I was running into them.”
She laughed nervously, sheepishly, and offered him a limp shrug.
“Anyway,” Mick said, turning his attention back to Adelaide, “what were you doing in the corridor? Weren’t you supposed to be doing inventory with your boss?”
“Funny story about that,” Adelaide replied with a knowing smirk. “They lied to you.”
“Lied to us?” Eleanor asked.
Mick threw one of his hands into the air out of disbelief. “And you went with it?”
“Well, two things,” Adelaide replied. “First off, they pay my bills, so if they lie to your face, I’m going to pretend I know what they’re talking about. So if they order pizza for themselves and thirteen of their friends and tell you that—”
“Thirteen?” Mick said.
He peered down at Eleanor, irritation evaporating once more into unease. With a cock of her head, she mouthed “the cloaks” to him. He drew his shoulders up and nodded solemnly.
Seemingly unaware of their near-silent conversation, Adelaide continued, “We’ll get to that. Thirteen. If they want to do it and lie to you about what they’re doing it for, whatever, that’s their company account. But that’s also why I’m here.” She lifted the duffel bag on her shoulder to brandish it in both hands. “As far as Alistair knows, I clocked out at eight thirty like they told me to. In reality, though? Totally hid out so I can keep an eye on them. Until I saw you two.”
“I don’t understand,” Eleanor said. “Why would you be keeping an eye on Alistair? And why would they lie to us?”
Adelaide let her bag drop back to her side and used her newly freed hand to hold an index finger in the air. “Answer to both: they’re totally up to something. Which brings us to their thirteen friends.”
Mick drew himself a little closer to Eleanor. “Eleanor, I don’t like where this is going,” he whispered.
“As you shouldn’t,” Adelaide replied, before Eleanor could respond. “Every night, Alistair meets up with thirteen people, including that mall cop you had the pleasure of meeting today, among other people. Couple of other store owners, pretty sure the owner of the mall, some other persons of interest I never could get a good look at . . .”
Eleanor glanced at Mick, then slowly, back at Adelaide. “To do what?”
“No idea,” she admitted. “I don’t often get a chance to see what they’re doing. But no doubt it’s got to do with the hauntings in the mall.”
Mick audibly exhaled through his nose. He shifted his gaze to the empty storefronts and bit his lower lip in that way he did when he was trying hard to rein in his gut reactions. But that look in his eyes—that told Eleanor that he was silently praying for a bed to crawl into.
“Hauntings,” he said. “Right.”
Adelaide swung her flashlight’s beam up to his face. He flinched, arm flying up to block the light.
“The hell?” he snapped.
“Right,” Adelaide snapped back. “I’ve been scoping out this mall for months before Alistair hired me, you know. Public records should tell us who the owner is, yet that’s sealed for some reason. And then, you’d think someone would’ve heard about the ransackings or disappearances—”
Mick shoved her arm down, pointing that beam of light at the floor. “Disappearances?”
“—yet for some reason,” Adelaide continued without breaking her stride, “not a peep’s gone out from this mall. Somebody up there is hiding something. Covering it up really well too. Only reason why I know about anything is because . . .” She cracked a grin.
“You’ve been following Alistair,” Eleanor suggested.
Adelaide flicked an index finger at her. “Bingo.”
“Right,” Mick said. “Go back to the part about disappearances.”
Adelaide’s expression softened from hard annoyance to grave importance. “And there we have what brought me here in the first place.”
Mick and Eleanor exchanged glances. Mick didn’t have to say a word; the look on his face screamed he was silently begging her not to buy whatever Adelaide was about to say. And that was fair. Disappearances that didn’t make the news? Mall staff hiding something? It was all . . . weird, to put it lightly. Entirely unbelievable, just based on the part about disappearances alone.
Still, it wasn’t that she believed Adelaide. It was more that wherever this was going sounded far more interesting than anything Eleanor might have otherwise done on a Tuesday night.
Well, that and she still had Mick’s knife.
Adelaide groaned in frustration at the sight of the both of them. “I’m from the Faelenvale Paranormal Society,” she explained, as if they should have known this by now. “We’re a small but close-knit community of ghost hunters over in Faelenvale. Don’t laugh. It’s a thing. One day, somebody gets a tip about Southwind’s new mall. Right smack on the crossroads between two major ley lines, built on top of a field that once was sacred ground to the First Age kingdom, shady developer with sealed public records—something’s going to go down. So that someone takes three of her friends and heads off to this place, and . . .”
“And . . . ?” Eleanor asked.
“And nobody ever hears from them ever again,” Adelaide told her. “Four people, just up and vanished out of thin air, right here. And neither Southwind’s nor Faelenvale’s news or cops have anything to say about where they went, let alone that they disappeared at all.” She turned the flashlight back onto the path ahead of them and started walking once more. “So I got the first job I could nab, and I’ve been scoping out this place ever since. We FPS-ers don’t leave each other behind. They disappeared here. I know it.”
Mick crossed his arms and furrowed his eyebrows at Adelaide again, settling right back into intense skepticism. “Okay . . . ? And what does this have to do with Alistair?”
“Or their thirteen friends?” Eleanor added quickly.
“Isn’t it obvious? Ley lines? Supposed hauntings?”Adelaide paused only to glance back at Mick and Eleanor’s blank expressions. “They’re a coven, looking to summon something. Something big, from beyond the veil.”
Mick nodded slowly. “I see.” His hand snapped around Eleanor’s elbow, and he pulled her a step backwards. “So we’re in agreement that everything she’s said is bull, right?”
Adelaide flicked her flashlight back to his face. “You’re aware I can hear you, right?”
Mick’s hands flew to his eyes as he chattered a string of curses directed at Adelaide. Eleanor couldn’t help but laugh as she watched Mick stumble to get out of the literal spotlight.
“I mean. I like her,” Eleanor said. “She’s fun.”
With one more glare her way, Mick lowered his arms and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could get a word out, he stopped. It took a second for Eleanor to realize why, but in the quiet that descended between the three of them, she could hear it, floating above the hum of the HVAC units.
Music.
Can anybody find me . . . somebody to love?
“What’s that?” Eleanor’s words practically fell out of her mouth, carried on her soft breath.
“Ten o’ clock.” Adelaide looked towards the ceiling, scanning the skylights and hanging banners for . . . something.
“What’s at ten?” Mick asked.
Adelaide shook her head and motioned for them to follow. “Come on.”
When Adelaide started forward again, her gait was faster, more determined. Eleanor hesitated for a beat, glancing Mick’s way. He jerked his head slightly towards the way they came, a silent question—or perhaps request—to leave Adelaide to whatever she was doing. But Eleanor shook her head, eyes drifting back to Adelaide. How could they leave her there? She couldn’t argue that there was someone else in that mall with them, and regardless of whether or not everything Adelaide said was true, it wouldn’t be right to leave her alone because of that.
Besides. Wasn’t he curious about the music? The strangeness of that mall? Whether or not Adelaide’s stories held a grain of truth?
She trotted after Adelaide to catch up.
“Adelaide?” she asked, lowering her voice to a whisper. “What happens at ten?”
Adelaide shook her head again. “Music starts. Things get weird. Stay close.”
The ransackings. If they actually happened, they were going to get a front-row seat to them. A worm of doubt crawled through Eleanor’s chest, but she set her jaw and tried to ignore it. It was too late to turn back—not that she would if she had that option. They were entirely too close to the answers to a whole list of questions to not follow Adelaide right into the depths of whatever deep waters were straight ahead.
Mick, on the other hand, was . . . well, Mick. “We’re not actually going to—”
She hooked her arm around his, silencing him almost immediately, and with that, she kept him just a step behind Adelaide. With only the music filling the silence between them, they continued on, past store after store, until they reached the end of the spur. There, the mall opened up into a vast diamond-shaped courtyard, ringed with walkways and yawning into the floor below. In broad daylight, this was the very heart of the mall, a place full of light and color and voices, but in the dark, the once-colorful banners that advertised the mall as the place to be and full of shopping and fun hung like tongues over an open mouth.
Adelaide scurried to the edge of its lips and pulled herself up to look down, deep into the mouth of the beast, down at the floor below.
Just as an eerie, white glow flickered to life and filled the cavity.
Of course Eleanor joined her. Of course she looked down.
The first floor of Huntress Woods Mall was really set up to be the heartbeat of not just the mall but the community at large, a crossroads between Southwind and her surrounding towns. The flashiest, most enticing shops lined a massive amphitheater, drawing people in and down. Carpeted steps and seats descended down, deep into the pit of the mall, down, down, until they stopped just a few feet from a stage set dead center in the very core of the mall. At the opening of Huntress Woods Mall and practically every weekend after that, there would be free shows there: local bands, occasionally comedy acts, radio shows, once even the filming of a game show.
Now, though. Now, that stage played host to fourteen cloaked figures and a pulsing light.
Eleanor threw a glance to Mick, who had settled in next to her. He stared at the stage, face blanched, body visibly tense. She needed no further confirmation: these were the cloaks Mick had been talking about. Slowly, she turned her head back to the stage, and the two of them watched in silence. Around them, the music continued into a guitar solo, chords crashing into them like waves into the rocks.
And as the music climbed, the light before the cloaked figures expanded, first into a ball, then into a flat disc, then into . . .
. . . a hole. A hole, suspended in the air, right there in space and time. Eleanor had never seen something so perfectly black in all her life. It was nothingness—true nothingness, as if someone had taken all the color, all the depth of one sliver of the mall and just . . . erased it, leaving behind empty.
Got no feel, I got no rhythm. I just keep losing my beat.
And then, it wasn’t black anymore, wasn’t empty. Something white pushed through, reached through, fanning out long claws, reaching, reaching, reaching . . .
(You just keep losing and losing.)
A second hand joined the first. A face emerged from the hole. Black eyes, almost as black as the nothingness it came from, lifted to the moon-filled skylights. Jaws parted; knife-sharp fangs dripped crystalline ichor onto the carpeted floor. Fourteen sets of hands rose, and three voices pierced the music with droning words Eleanor couldn’t understand. Vines and ropes of shadow burst from the floor beneath the creature and ensnared it, snaking around its wrists and neck. It lifted its head and bellowed to the moon, and Eleanor’s bones shook with its roar.
I’m okay. I’m all right. (He’s all right, he’s all right.)
The chanting grew more frantic, blazing and angry. One of the fourteen lifted their hands higher, and fire erupted from their fingers.
But in the brilliant, orange light, Eleanor’s attention slid from the creature to something glinting off to the side.
Eyes. Alistair’s eyes, framed in a pitch-black hood, staring directly at her. First in shock. Then confusion. Then anger. Their mouth opened and shaped a word, and though Eleanor couldn’t hear them, she knew. You.
I ain’t gonna face no defeat.
“You!”
The security guard’s voice boomed over the music, over the chanting, over the growls of the beast. The vines and shadows exploded into fireworks of green and violet light, and the white beast burst from the hole and crashed into the ground beneath it. Around it, thirteen of the fourteen cloaks scattered, just enough to let it barrel through them, but the fourteenth, Ophina, threw back her hood and stormed for the nearest escalator.
Mick’s hand grabbed Eleanor’s arm roughly. She let him—let him pull her to her feet, let him wrap his other arm around her back, let him turn her away from the stage.
I just gotta get out of this prison cell.
And behind them was another beast.
Identical to the first. Looming over them, claws out, dagger teeth bared, onyx-black eyes pools of great nothingness fixed on Mick and her.
Someday I’m gonna be free, Lord!
She screamed. Or she thought she did. She must have. But the next minute was a blur. She blinked, and all of a sudden, she was on her feet, running full-tilt behind Mick. He held her wrist in a vice grip, yanking her along almost painfully. How he hadn’t pulled her arm clean from its socket, she didn’t know. How she kept up with him, she didn’t know. All she knew was to run.
Run.
Run.
Find. Me. Somebody to love.
A shadow appeared in front of Mick, several steps ahead. It looked like Adelaide, but for reasons Eleanor couldn’t process right then, her eyes couldn’t fix on her.
The shadow bounded ahead of them, leading them down a spur of the mall. Behind them, the beast thundered. A roar sent waves of hot wind against Eleanor’s back, and its claws cracked against the floor like sledgehammers slamming into boulders.
Find. Me. Somebody to love.
The shadow rounded a corner, and a moment later, so did Mick and Eleanor.
Find. Me. Somebody to love.
The beast drew close. Eleanor could feel its hot breath against her neck, could see its shadow engulfing hers. It howled, splitting her ears.
Somebody, somebody.
Suddenly, all she could feel beneath her feet was air. Pain screamed through her shoulder as Mick pulled her off her feet and threw her out of the way. White claws sailed through the space that her head had occupied a moment ago, and a scream caught in her throat as she crashed onto her opposite shoulder between Mick and the glass doors to the outside. Freedom was just a few short steps away, but Eleanor couldn’t pick herself up to close the distance.
Somebody, find me.
“Mick!” she shrieked.
Can anybody find me . . .
The creature swept a set of claws at him.
Eleanor watched helplessly as the beast snatched Mick in its giant claws and lifted him off his feet. It opened its great jaws and roared into his face.
Then lunged.
Then stopped.
Something gold burst out of the flesh between its eyes and fell onto Mick’s face. The creature’s claws splayed, and Mick and the gold object slipped between its fingers and into freedom. As soon as he hit the floor, Mick kicked himself backwards, fumbling to get away from the monster as it collapsed before him. Its body dissolved into smoke, through which Eleanor could just see the shadow they had been following. The figure lowered a slingshot and darted away before the smoke could clear enough for Eleanor to see their face.
Suddenly, finally, Eleanor could move, and she used her first second to launch onto her feet and dash for Mick’s side. Mick’s hand closed around the object the beast spit out, and he sprung up, catching Eleanor with his opposite arm and rushing her to the doors. And then, at long last, they burst into the cold night air.
It was only after the doors closed behind them that a thought flit through Eleanor’s still-spinning consciousness.
“Wait! Adelaide!” she cried. “We have to go back for her!”
She slipped out of his grasp and ran for the door, but when she seized its metal handle and yanked back . . .
Nothing happened. Or, rather, she slammed it against its own lock.
“What?” She yanked the door once again, but the lock held tight. “Mick! Help me out with this!”
He was at her side at once, grabbing the door around her hands. Together, they pulled, but still, it refused to budge. Mick slipped to the next door, then the next, trying each one. Every one was locked tight. Mick glanced to Eleanor, searching her face for a suggestion, but she could only stare back, helpless for the second time in ten minutes. Setting his jaw, Mick steeled himself and took a few steps back. He rolled his shoulders and planted his feet into the cement—
And then, Adelaide’s voice burst out behind them.
“Whoa whoa whoa! First rule of trespassing: don’t do anything that leaves evidence!” She appeared from seemingly nowhere to place herself between Mick and the door, arms spread to protect the glass. “They lock behind you at night. Don’t ask why. You’re not gonna get in this way.”
“Adelaide!” Eleanor gasped. “You’re . . . you’re okay!”
Adelaide flashed her a relieved grin. “Yeah, so are you. I lost track of you guys in there. You both okay?”
“Yeah. We—oh! Mick!” Eleanor shifted to his side, grasping his arm. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
He blinked at her, caught off-guard by her question. “Huh? Oh.” Color flooded his cheeks—or was that just a trick of the light? “Just . . . just a little banged up. I’ll be fine.”
“What happened?” Adelaide asked.
Though Mick pulled at his arm to take it back from Eleanor, she held fast and pushed up his sleeve. It wouldn’t roll far enough to let her see where the creature had grabbed him—not that she knew exactly what she was doing to begin with.
“Mick got attacked by that thing,” Eleanor murmured, distracted.
“What thing?”
Eleanor raised her eyebrows at her. “The monster. Eight feet tall?” She lifted one hand to gesture above her head. “Scaly? Big claws?”
Adelaide blinked. Then, her eyes bulged nearly to the lenses of her glasses.
“There was a demon in there, and I missed it?” Adelaide threw herself at the door. “Dammit! Let me in!”
Mick’s mouth fell open, and it took him a couple of tries to make words come out of it. “How did you miss that?”
Adelaide glanced over her shoulder. “Like I said. Things get weird. You apparently get the nice weird that lets you stay in the mall. I, meanwhile, get the jerk weird that spits me out into the bushes at 10:05 sharp.”
Mick checked his watch, then slid his arm Eleanor’s way. In the light of the mall entrance, Eleanor could just make out the time: a quarter past ten. Adelaide hadn’t been in the mall for the past ten minutes.
Eleanor and Mick exchanged glances, and she could tell by the furrow of his eyebrow and his sharp frown that he was thinking what she was. That figure—the one that led them to the exit where Adelaide just happened to be.
That wasn’t her.
“Wait,” Eleanor said quietly, “if we weren’t following you out, then—”
Mick interrupted by throwing his hands into the air. “Okay, you know what? I think I’m about done for the night. Eleanor? Let’s go home.”
For a beat, Eleanor thought about protesting, but it didn’t take a genius to see how exhausted Mick looked. And then, of course, there was the attack . . .
“All right,” she relented. “Adelaide, do you need a lift?”
At once, Adelaide stiffened, her eyes sliding away from the two of them. “Uh . . . welllll . . .”
And Mick, ever the gentleman, shook his bowed head. “Of course you do,” he said. “Of course you do.”
---
An hour’s drive and one drop-off later, Mick brought Eleanor home. Her family’s mansion crouched like an old spider on the crest of the hill she’d lived on all her life, and now, an hour and a half after fleeing for her life from a bloodthirsty hellbeast, she dreaded entering its shadowy depths. What she wouldn’t give to spend all night out there, with someone familiar and friendly. Making up excuses for why she was out that late was the furthest thing from Eleanor’s set of priorities, though as Mick walked her to the front door, the thought wormed its way into her mind and added to the dread that was the lonely dark of her own bedroom.
“Here we are,” she murmured as soon as she stood beneath the light above the door.
Mick bowed his head, and one of his hands massaged the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
“Should we . . .” Slowly, hesitantly, she lifted her eyes to her friend. “Should we talk about what happened?”
“Eleanor.”
“Sorry. You’re right. Probably not tonight.”
She dug her house key out of her jacket pocket and slid it into the lock, but she didn’t turn it. She stood there, hand on the key. Everything inside her wanted it to break inside the lock, if only to give her an in to go back to the Rabbit.
But Mick was tired. She knew that. If it wasn’t everything that happened at the mall, it was . . .
Well. Everything else in his life. She would feel sorry for him, if she didn’t know he hated being pitied. That and the thought of pushing into the darkness of the de Lepaute mansion loomed over her like a ghost.
As if he could sense her discomfort, Mick stared into the living room window and cleared his throat.
“Hey, um. I was serious about this weekend,” he said. “I’ll call off. We can do whatever you’d like.”
Those words filled her heart with warmth and wiped away at least some of the dread she felt. Not all of it, of course. But enough.
“Well. Anything that doesn’t have to do with the mall,” she said.
“I mean . . . maybe that security guard won’t remember us?”
Eleanor scoffed. “It’s nice to hear you be so optimistic, but I meant we don’t have to go somewhere that made you uncomfortable before a hellbeast attacked you there. I’m thinking a day trip to Silverport. I’ll pay for everything.”
At last, he pulled his eyes away from the window. “You really don’t have to do that. But Silverpoint sounds nice.”
They stood there then, gazing at one another. Eleanor couldn’t quite tell what was on Mick’s mind, but she knew what was on hers: a desperation to fill that silence between them with something. Anything. But as much as she wanted to talk, she knew it wasn’t her move, so to speak. It had to be Mick’s. He had to be the one to invite her elsewhere. To propose that they go back into the Rabbit and drive off to Denny’s—someplace open late, open until sunrise, full of light and pop songs and acidic coffee. Someplace where she wouldn’t be alone to chew on questions about the mall, about the beast, about everything else that threatened to haunt her dreams.
She fantasized about leaving. Sharing cheap mozzarella sticks and stories. Forgetting the past, embracing the now, waiting until the first gray light of dawn. Only then would they ride off, watching the sunrise through the windshield of the Rabbit, and only then, in the gentle morning, would she accept the loneliness of her room, and she would sleep through half the day in the safety of sunlight.
But Mick never invited her.
Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets like the awkward beanpole that he was and gave her a promise.
“So, uh. I’ll . . . I’ll call—” He stopped. “Oh damn.”
Well. Mick was predictable up to a point, Eleanor had to admit, but that pause was a surprise.
He pulled an object out of his pocket, and in a second stroke of unpredictability, it was not the keys to the Rabbit. Instead, it was . . .
The pendant from the magic kiosk that afternoon. The gold one with the single jewel in its center. It winked at her as Mick held it in the light of the porch lamp.
“What’s that?” Eleanor asked, when she really meant why is it in your pocket? Mick was no shoplifter, after all, and she would have remembered him paying for something that frivolous and . . . unlike him.
“I completely forgot about this,” he mumbled. “The-the monster. I think it dropped this.”
The gold object that shot through the beast’s head. Of course. Eleanor reached out with careful fingers and held the delicate chain against her fingertips. A small tag, battered and clinging to the gold with the tiniest thread of paper, rested against her fingers.
“‘Wish-granting amulet. Wear it and focus, and that which you most desire will be yours.’” Eleanor lifted her eyes to catch Mick’s gaze. “It fell out of the monster?”
He frowned. “I think? It was next to me when that thing dropped me.”
Eleanor knitted her eyebrows. Questions about why Mick had this object and what it did to that beast popped up like dandelions in Eleanor’s brain. This object was important—that she knew. But how or why . . .
“Maybe we should take this to Adelaide,” she said. “She should know what this is.”
“Something tells me we shouldn’t.”
A third surprise. Or maybe it wasn’t. It was clear Mick didn’t feel comfortable around Adelaide; maybe he didn’t want an excuse to go see her.
Fair enough. But the other option was asking the short shopkeeper, given that this came out of their kiosk, but something told her that this would be a bad idea.
So Eleanor nodded and closed his hand around it.
“Then keep it until we figure out what to do with it,” she told him.
“Me?” he asked.
Eleanor shrugged. “Sure. You could use the wish anyway.”
And that was that. The last thread of the night, unless Mick came up with something else. Eleanor held his gaze, waiting for him to speak. But he stared back, exhausted and confused and in desperate need of sleep.
She thought about inviting him in. She’d done it before: let him sleep on the floor or the daybed in her room. But then again, she also knew why that question hadn’t tumbled out of her mouth yet. The morning after, when Astrid promptly told their father that Eleanor had a boy over all night long. How many days did Eleanor spend afterwards, both grounded and mortified?
Sure, she was an adult and not a teenager, but first and foremost, Mick was an adult now too, which meant he stood less of a chance surviving Bertrand de Lepaute’s wrath after being found in the bedroom of one of his adult, unwed daughters. And second, would he accept if she offered?
He wouldn’t. She knew him well enough. Maybe teenage Mick would have happily done it, but this adult Mick, the one that had cropped up in the years Eleanor had spent in Eldaven?
She exhaled and opened her front door.
“I’ll call you,” she said. “Good night, Mick.”
“R-right. Sweet dreams, Eleanor.”
Something about his voice sounded soft and plaintive—like there was disappointment around its edges. Eleanor almost wanted to ask about that. Almost said something else. But she knew he wouldn’t answer if she did.
Someday, she thought as she slowly, silently, carefully shut the door on her best friend. Someday, she would solve that mystery.
But not tonight.