Page 31

She’d expected to drown. To sink, choking down lungfuls of water.

Instead, Vivienne stood in a room with no end and no beginning, no light and no dark. There was, she realized, no anything, other than an absence of color and a hard, osseous floor. And there she stood, both looking at herself and outside herself, like some strange omnipresence had taken hold.

Like she was wide-awake inside a dream.

A few feet away from her stood another Vivienne. This one was four years old, dressed in a powder pink nightie, her feet stuffed into slippers. Looking at the little version of herself gave Vivienne the peculiar sense of having been cleaved neatly in two.

“Now you’ve done it,” said the tiny Vivienne, sounding furious. Inside her mouth were two rows of teeth, razor sharp. “You’ve ruined everything. We’ll never be together again.”

Vivienne stared down at her, disoriented.

The little girl stomped her foot. “I hope you’re happy.”

“She will be” came that voice like a wagon wheel. “Once you’re gone. And so will I. You’ve caused more than enough trouble.”

Vivienne spun out, searching the nothingness. Slowly, coalescing from the void, there came a boy. Broad shouldered, pale eyed, a dimple in his chin. Thomas. Vivienne fell back, alarmed.

“It’s not possible,” she gasped, and then gasped again, clutching her hand to her throat. Her voice had been smooth and clear. A honey-sweet alto. The voice she might have had, if she’d never screamed herself raw in a ravine. In front of her, the Not-Thomas smiled.

And it wasn’t Thomas, she saw that now. He seemed to break apart and pull together, parts of him going funny at the edges whenever she looked too closely. He had seven fingers on his right hand, and then she blinked and there were only three. His smile seemed to consist of two rows of teeth, but when she looked directly at his mouth, the rows became innumerable.

“Don’t think so hard,” said Not-Thomas. “The human brain cannot comprehend what I am, and so it replaces me with that which it finds most pleasing.”

“What are you?” she asked.

“Those who trickle down into my pool call me the Charybdis,” he said, “but that is not my name.”

“You’re the—” She faltered, startled by both his shifting familiarity and the ease of speaking. “You’re what lives beneath the house?”

“I lived here well before it was a house at all,” said the Not-Thomas. “Before they came and put down their foundation, they tread paths for their cattle. Before the farms, there were trees. Before the trees, there was me. I have been here since the dawn of time, sleeping happily in the mud. And I have been waiting for you, Vivienne Farrow, since the day you were born.”

“She’s mine,” hissed the tiny Vivienne, who’d grown visibly impatient. “I claimed her. Me. ”

The Not-Thomas smiled. It was the patient sort of smile adults used when dealing with petulant children. Vivienne had the sense that whatever ancient thing had taken up residence in her bones was very young, while the entity before her was very, very old.

“It must have been tiring,” said the Not-Thomas, with no small amount of sympathy, “to carry this within you for so many years. I can take it away. I can make everything go still.”

She considered the being’s offer.

“What will it feel like?” she asked. “Dying?”

“Like nothing at all” came the answer. It emanated from above and below. Cocooning her, as though this thing that stood before her, shoved into the ill-fitting skin of the boy she loved, was only a portion of the vast, sleeping Charybdis.

“Close,” it said, rumbling the ground beneath her feet. “You are already inside me.”

She became aware then of the wide bend of ribs underfoot. The protracted bellow of something breathing. That hard, osseous formation overhead became suddenly evident.

She was standing beneath a spine.

The faint ping of something metallic reached her ears. Like a penny dropped into a well.

A lone coin rolled out of the darkness, wobbling to a stop at her toes. Following behind it was a man—or maybe a boy, she couldn’t quite tell—with eyes as dark as obsidian. At first, Vivienne thought it must be her father—that he’d somehow followed her here. But as he drew closer, his features softened, turning boyish beneath a head of dark curls. His mouth was a mess of ruin, a corner of his lips elongated by a scar that stretched nearly up to his ear.

It was the boy from the church. She couldn’t remember his name.

“You,” said the Not-Thomas. It sounded displeased.

The boy peered drolly at the Charybdis. Finally, after a pause, he said, “Do I know you?”

“No,” it said, “but I know you. I gnawed on your bones for years, before you clawed your way back to the sun.”

“Oh,” said the boy, as though it had been an entirely normal thing to say. “Is there a reason you look like Lane?”

A bulb lit in Vivienne’s chest. “Lane?”

“Yes.” The boy was still studying the Charybdis, looking at it first out of the corner of one eye, and then the other. “Don’t you see it?”

“It looks like someone else to me,” she said. She tried again to remember his name. What had it been? What had it been ? It seemed like eons had passed since that fateful day in the sanctuary. She felt both a hundred years old and as little as the sharp-toothed Vivienne still fuming beside her. “I can’t remember your name.”

His eyes dragged to hers. His familiarity nearly bowled her over. He looked at her for a long while, disturbingly at ease for someone inside a veritable stomach.

“It’s Colton,” he said at last. “Price.”

“Price?”

“Unfortunately.”

“But that means— But you—” She struggled to string the proper words together. Her head was spinning. The ribs contracted around them, the Charybdis’s breathing beginning to quicken. The floor tipped, and she staggered, pinwheeling her arms.

“I think I’m your sister,” she finally said. “Well, half.”

“So I’m told,” said Colton.

“Well, I was told you were dead.”

It came out blunter than she’d meant for it to. It was a ridiculous accusation, in any case. Whatever she was, it wasn’t alive. The floor tilted again. The little Vivienne let out a sibilant hiss as Colton glanced overhead. The ceiling had begun to drip ominously, ropy stretches of sputum sliding down the arciform bend of bone. Vivienne had the faint sense they were being digested. Apparently, so did Colton.

“We can’t stay,” Colton told the Charybdis. “Although it’s been nice.”

“ You may go,” said the Not-Thomas. “I’ve taken all I want from you. You’ve spent so long turning on the spit of hell, there’s nothing tender on your bones.”

“I have never in my life been described as tender,” Colton agreed mildly, and checked the time on his wristwatch.

There followed a terrible beat of silence. The ribs expanded and then contracted in a disconsolate sigh.

“The girl stays,” said the Not-Thomas. “She belongs to me.”

A tremor shook the void. Gobs of saliva shook loose, falling around them like rain. The floor rippled underfoot. In front of Vivienne, the Not-Thomas began to shake apart.

“What’s happening?” she demanded. “What is this?”

“There’s a disturbance at the house,” said the Charybdis. It was facing away from her, looking out into the dark at something she couldn’t see. The shape of Thomas flickered out like a candle and then gusted back again. “Fool.” Its voice rumbled through the cavernous expanse. “He is coming in after you.”

Thomas. Her heart gave a sickening lurch.

“He will fail,” said the Charybdis. “The way is shut.”

Another tremor followed the first, stronger this time than before.

The Charybdis bared its teeth. Back arching, it let out a horrible snarl. “What manner of boy is this,” it demanded, “that can force his way through the sky?”

It’s Thomas , she thought again, this time with a swell of pride. Because of course it was.

He’d always come for her. Wasn’t that what he’d promised?

“The way is shut,” bellowed the Charybdis. It no longer sounded like Thomas. Now its voice was a whale song, shuddering and vast. It pummeled into her with a force that nearly bowled her over.

A hand folded around hers, and she was wrenched violently backward. “Time to go,” said Colton Price in her ear.

“Wait—”

She stumbled through the dark, her feet leaving little silver splashes.

“Don’t leave me,” shrieked the little Vivienne. She was running after them, her tiny gray hand outstretched. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

There came a great sucking sound, like air being swallowed up in a vacuum. Vivienne felt her entire body pinch in on itself as, somewhere behind her, the Charybdis let out a violent roar. The air changed, turning as frosted as a winter. Her breath hung before her in pale white fractals. They were beside a flat, frozen pond, staggering hand in hand through a meadow of spiked white florets. A dark-haired little boy sat up from beneath, startled, and peered over at them. On his head sat a lopsided flower crown.

“Who is that ?” he asked Colton.

“Your sister,” said Colton, without ever once stopping. “Don’t go by the water.”

Out on the pond, great black fissures began to form atop the ice. They crackled outward, splintering like glass. A watery thud came from beneath, as though something heavy was trying to push through.

“Don’t let go,” ordered Colton.

Another pinch. They stepped out of ?ice and into darkness. Vivienne fell and fell, tumbling forward and then back, dropping once more into that unholy gorge. They were weaving down a dry ravine, thin as a river and black as adamite. Behind them, the ground split apart, cleaving open like some great stony maw. Colton ran faster.

And there, high above them, a little girl with rainbow mittens stood beneath a sprawl of desert starlight.

“Come back,” she said. “Come home.”

They erupted into sunlight. A brillant sear of blue. A fragrant cluster of dogwood trees. The road stretched out underfoot, sizzling hot beneath her bare feet. Vivienne swayed where she stood, her equilibrium knocked senseless, and then toppled to her knees. She managed to suck in a single, unsteady breath before the breathing stopped altogether.

“Check her,” said Colton. There was an undertone of worry in his voice. “Make sure she didn’t sever anything vital. I was moving too quickly to be careful about it.”

Vivienne didn’t have time to make sense of what he’d said before the white-haired girl from the church was there, squatting before her. Lane, Vivienne remembered. She was joined by a freckled, flame-haired redhead.

“Breathe in through your nose,” instructed the redhead. “Don’t hold your breath.”

“The first time is awful,” said Lane, rubbing circles into her back. “You did great.”

She didn’t feel great. She heaved violently and attempted to breathe in through her nose. She managed it twice more before she was sick all over the grass. She felt curiously hollow. In the cavern of her chest, her heart swung emptily, like the clapper in a bell.

Tommy , she thought, panic surging in a white-out heat. The last she’d seen of him, he’d been on his knees, slowly bleeding out from a graze in his side. She’d told him she loved him, and then she’d gone. She had to do it—she’d had no other choice. It was the only way to save him.

“Graze wounds are rarely the cause of death,” said Colton, standing over her. “It’s highly improbable that bleeding out from a shallow laceration is the thing that kills him.”

“Colton,” said Lane, horrified.

“What? I’m being comforting.”

It wasn’t until Vivienne peered between them, her throat aching, that she realized she’d said it all aloud. It had spilled out of her in a mad, mortifying babble, but in a voice that was all her own.

“Where is he?” asked Lane. “Do you know?”

“The Hamptons,” Vivienne said softly. “He’s in the Hamptons.”