“Yes.” Tania’s eyes, little-girl wide, flitted from her to Casey. “Who’s he?”
“Casey. He’s a friend.”
“From where?” Tania was standing now, a shotgun clearly visible, the barrel pointing at Casey’s chest. “I don’t remember him from class.”
Neither did she, exactly. She improvised. “I found him wandering around when I got the snowcat.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Casey turn another look, but she pushed on. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“How do you know he won’t change?”
Change? The word chilled her blood. Change into what? Then she remembered the broken body in the chancery, and those hands that weren’t quite right. “Who is that? Who did you shoot?”
“Father Preston.” Tania’s chin quivered. “I couldn’t stay in the gym, so I ran to the church and Father Preston was here, only he … he … I didn’t want to, but I had to!”
“Stay calm, Tania. It’s okay,” Rima said, and then she was up, breaking out from cover and going to her friend. Casey said something, but she barely heard, couldn’t really understand the words. “Come here,” she said, gathering the weeping girl in her arms. “It’s okay. It’s going to be all right.”
“Nice that you think so.” Tania smelled of charred gunpowder, the oil the groundskeeper—Fred, Rima thought, his name is Fred—used to clean the shotgun, and sweat. Turning her head into Rima’s shoulder, Tania slumped into her. “I’m so scared.”
“It’ll be okay.” Rima slid the gun from Tania’s slack fingers and handed the weapon to Casey. Casey’s face was a mask of confusion, but she could tell from the firm set of his mouth that he would follow her lead.
“Rima, I … I don’t feel so good,” Tania moaned against her shoulder. “I think I’m going to be … I think I might be s-sick.”
“We just have to get you out of—” Then Rima felt Taylor’s death-whisper flexing and bunching with alarm along Rima’s arms and around her middle, and that was when Rima’s mind registered what her hands—so sensitive to the whispers within—were telling her, what Taylor sensed.
There was something else here, under her hands. Not in Tania’s soot-stained parka or whispering in her clothes, no. Rima saw Tania’s face twist as another pain grabbed her middle.
There was something inside Tania.
EMMA
Just One Piece
“COME ON!” LIZZIE sprang to a sit. “We got to get the others, quick!”
“No, wait, wait a second,” Emma said. Her head ached, and a slow ooze of something wet wormed from her right ear. When she put a hand to her neck, the fingers came away painted bright red. From the pain she’d felt as she reached through White Space, she thought her skin would be torn in a dozen places, but other than the gash on her forehead she’d gotten when the van crashed, there wasn’t a scratch on her. The pendant wasn’t around her neck anymore either. Just another part of her blink, she guessed, like the flannel nightgown and Jasper’s ivory-handled walking stick—and good riddance.
Now that they were in the same space, in the same room, Emma could see that, really, they didn’t look all that much alike. Lizzie’s face was oval, the blond pigtails giving her the look of a pixie. Falling to the middle of her back, Emma’s hair was very dark, lush, and coppery, and her face was square.
What are you? Emma’s gaze fixed on the golden flaw in the little girl’s right eye, embedded in an iris that was a rich, lustrous, unearthly cobalt. Same flaw, same eye, identical color.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, and thought, with an unpleasant little ping in her chest, that this was the same thing she’d said only minutes ago to Kramer or the whisper-man or whatever the hell that had been. All these repetitions and echoes were starting to drive her crazy. It was as if she existed in multiple places at once, the lines slotting into her mouth depending on which choice she happened to make at that instant.
And then she thought, Whoa. Wait a second … multiple places?
“You have to,” Lizzie said. “I can’t do this alone. The others are lost; they’ve fallen between the lines. I couldn’t hold on to them all.”
Okay, so the kid was as crazy as she suspected she was. Not too comforting, that. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening.”
“I’ll explain everything, I promise,” Lizzie said, scrambling to her feet. “But we have to get them now.” When Emma still made no move to follow, the little girl said, impatiently, “Why did you reach through White Space if you didn’t want to help?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing.” That was almost true. The impulse had been instinctive, no more mysterious than rescuing a baby bird fallen from its nest. “You were in trouble and …” And I was in your head, which was just too freaky-weird. “I just knew I could.”
“But why?” Lizzie pressed. “Why did you really do it?”
“Because …” She bit off the rest. Oh, come on, what do you care if she thinks you’re nuts? Just say it. “I saw your dad, at the Dickens Mirror, in my blinks, and I did the same thing because House showed me: in the bathroom, at the slit-door to the … well, I think it’s a library. And I … I was in your head just now. It felt like we were the same somehow, like echoes or twins or …” She made an impatient gesture. “Only we’re not. I was wrong. I don’t look anything like you. You’re a little kid. I’m seventeen.” And I’m nuts and you’re … okay, maybe you’re nuts, too. “Whatever,” she said, and huffed out in annoyance. She was so taking her meds from now on. “I’m not you.”
“No, you’re not,” Lizzie said. “You’re just one piece. You all are.”
RIMA
I Don’t Know Who You Are
NO, GOD. NOT Tania, too. Cold sweat slicked Rima’s skin. The whisper of something unspeakable moved in a darkling roil deep within Tania to shiver and squirm beneath Rima’s hands. It can’t be happening to Tania, not when we’ve come this far.
Tania sensed something, because she drew back, her frightened eyes shimmering with tears. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” Rima managed. She was aware of … of that boy. Her mind blanked, as if all the words she’d been thinking were suddenly erased. The name that had been on the tip of her tongue only seconds ago vanished like smoke. The boy, that kid with her: What’s his name? She couldn’t remember. He didn’t even look all that familiar.
What’s happening to me? A bolt of panic shuddered through her chest. I remember Tania. I recognize the church. I know where I am. So why can’t I remember him?
“Rima,” the boy said, “I don’t think we should stay in here.”
He knows me. Anything she might have said knotted in her throat and wouldn’t come out. She felt as if her mind was being swallowed a bite at a time. How can he know me if I don’t recognize him?