“Thanks. There’s food in the fridge, if you get hungry.”
“Thanks.”
Her mother started to close the door, then came back in the living room. “Look,” she said, “I’m not going to lock you up or anything, but for the next few days, do me a favor and don’t go too far, okay?” She smiled at Zoe a little sadly. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours and I’d really like it if you were here when I got back.”
Zoe smiled and picked up a cup of coffee she’d brought in from the kitchen. “Don’t worry, Mom,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Thanks. Is my hair okay?”
“Perfect.”
After her mother left, Zoe watched cartoons and then part of an old black-and-white Fred Astaire movie. After that, The Wizard of Oz came on. She fell asleep just as the flying monkeys were taking off to attack Dorothy and the others.
When she woke up a couple of hours later, her mother still wasn’t back. She hoped that was a good sign. Maybe the guy at the design company had put her to work right away, she thought.
While she’d been asleep, the flying monkeys had invaded her dreams. They’d circled overhead, just above the clouds, waiting for their chance to take her away. It didn’t feel exactly like a regular dream, more like something she was trying to remember. That night, she lay in bed, willing herself to stay awake. And then she heard it-a scratching at the window. When she went to look, there was nothing there, but the window frame was torn and splintered, as if by claws.
Her mother was already dressed when she got up. She moved around the kitchen in an anxious rush, gulping coffee and wolfing down mouthfuls of buttered toast.
“Choking to death is not a good way to start a new job,” said Zoe, pouring herself some coffee.
“I’m so nervous,” said her mother through a full mouth. “I know I can do the work, but I haven’t worked in an office in so long, and everyone else there looks like they’re twelve years old and have been doing design since they were a fetus.”
“You’ll do great,” said Zoe, stealing a half slice of toast from her mother’s plate.
“Hey!” her mother said. “Now I’m going to starve to death!”
“Don’t worry. It’s your first day. They’ll take you to lunch,” said Zoe cheerfully.
“You think so? That would be nice,” her mother said, her voice dropping into a low, thoughtful tone. “If they don’t and I faint at my desk, I’ll tell them it’s my daughter’s fault.”
“Say, do we still have that old Polaroid around?”
“The camera? Yeah, it’s in one of those boxes behind the couch. The one marked ‘Random Household,’ I think. You going to take some pictures?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe I’d shoot some stuff around here for Julie and Laura.”
“Great idea,” said her mother distractedly. She set her coffee cup and plate in the sink. “Is my hair okay?”
“Great.”
“See you tonight.”
After her mother left, Zoe thought about what she could to do to get ready. She should have known Ammut wasn’t going to let her get away. She’d killed his mother, even if she hadn’t meant to. And Valentine had warned her that the snakes wouldn’t finish him off. He’d marked her window for two nights running. She was certain that he’d come for her tonight. He liked threes.
Gathering the clothes she wore in Iphigene, she left them in a pile by the window. In the bathroom, she checked the cabinets for rubbing alcohol, but didn’t find any. She dug through the boxes in her closet and found an old diary with a few dollars hidden in the spine. She got dressed and walked to the corner.
The liquor store sold cigarettes individually, for a dollar each, and on the counter were little glass tubes that were labeled as cigarette holders but which everyone with two brain cells knew were actually crack pipes. On the shelves were brightly colored candles set in tall glass holders with pictures of Jesus and saints she’d never heard of. There were dusty boxes of ancient laundry soap and pet food, but she couldn’t find any rubbing alcohol. But she noticed that the store seemed to have every kind of liquor known to man. She went to the counter, where the bored clerk was watching a talk show on a small television propped up on a milk crate, and pointed to a pint bottle of vodka on a lower shelf, a cheap off-brand with a white plastic screw-on cap.
“How much?” she asked.
“You got ID?” asked the clerk.
Zoe leaned around the man and saw a hand-lettered sticker reading “$3.99” by the vodka. She put five dollars on the counter, took another five from her pocket and set it on top. It was all the money she had. The clerk looked her over for a moment. Zoe looked right back at him, hoping her scratches and bruises made her look older. The clerk took a small bag from under the counter, slipped the bottle inside, and twisted the top closed. As he handed it to her, he swept the ten dollars off the counter and into the pocket of his baggy chinos.
“There’s no drinking in front of the store,” he said.
Zoe took the bottle back to her room and hid it under the mattress. In the living room, she found her mother’s cigarettes and the disposable plastic lighter. She threw the cigarettes in the trash and took the lighter to her room, slipping it under the mattress with the vodka. She went into the kitchen and found a small box of laundry detergent and put it in the pocket of her heaviest winter coat.
She napped as much as she could during the afternoon so that she could stay awake later. She tried to will herself not to dream, but it didn’t work. When the dreams came, they were confusing, a murky combination of Iphigene’s worst sights-the dying dead, the flying snakes descending on her father-and the tree fort where she and Valentine had played. The fort and tree were burning and the snakes she’d seen there once before had overrun the field.
When she got into bed that night, Zoe wore her old, scuffed combat boots, along with her winter coat, her jeans, and Ammut’s oversize pants that she’d stolen in Iphigene. She was hot and uncomfortable fully dressed under the covers, but if what Mr. Danvers had told the class about snakes was right, it could work. She lay down and closed her eyes, but she didn’t fall sleep.
After all her preparations, she still didn’t know if she was ready. Not “ready as in having no plan.” She had a plan for once, as ridiculous as it was. No, she wasn’t sure she was ready mentally to act, to do what needed to be done. It had been easier in Iphigene, threatening a kidnapper, taunting Emmett in the café, fighting the dying dead with her bare hands. None of it was completely real, and the parts that were real worked within a whole different set of rules from this world. She wasn’t the same person here. She felt smaller and more vulnerable. The thought of going back to school the following week made her queasy. Would anyone have even noticed her absence? Absynthe, probably. Maybe Mr. Danvers, still the most interesting adult she knew. If everything worked out tonight, she’d see if she could find him a tooth to pay him back for the one she’d stolen.
She lay in bed for hours, listening to every footfall and creak in the building. Someone was playing some techno very quietly. All that came through the wall was the rhythmic thumping of the bass. A baby wailed miserably, stopped, and then in ten minutes started crying again. Car alarms and sirens went off distantly in the street below.
Sometime after two A.M., a shadow crossed her window. She opened her eyes a little more, but kept very still. There was definitely something outside the glass. She heard scratching noises and the sound of ripping nails as something pulled at the window frame. Then it stopped, and everything seemed to go quiet.
Her window exploded into the room, in a shower of glass and splintering wood. Something heavy landed near the foot of her bed. Zoe rolled to her right, onto the floor and away from the shadow that was rushing toward her. All the extra clothes she was wearing seemed to be working the way she’d hoped. They hid enough of her body heat that the shadow ignored her and attacked the warm spot on the bed where she’d been. The shadow brought down its knife, stabbing the crumpled sheets over and over again, until the box spring underneath cracked.