Conjured

One of the librarians piped up. “Want me to fetch Patti?”

Aidan released her. He took a step backward and raised his hands as if in surrender. “You can trust me, Green Eyes, even if you don’t know it yet. I have your best interests at heart. We all do.”

Keeping an eye on him, Eve skirted around the circulation desk. The other librarians kept their eyes on Aidan as well. He didn’t vanish or even budge. She felt shivers on her skin. If he was telling the truth … She couldn’t think about that right now. She had to find Zach. Zach first, then she’d face Victoria.

She pushed open the door to Patti’s office and stepped inside. “Patti …”

Patti’s desk chair was swiveled to the side. A sweater was draped over the armrest. She’d just stepped out, Eve guessed. Her computer hummed softly, and her desk lamp was on.

On the desk under the lamplight, in the center of a semicircle of books, was a small box. It had gilded edges, jeweled faces, and an ornate clasp.

Eve took a step backward slowly, carefully, as if her knees weren’t fully functional. Her heart thudded so hard and fast that the sound of it filled her ears. She felt it beat through her chest and into her skull. Her lungs tightened, as if her rib cage were constricting. It was hard to breathe, and the air felt thick.

She’d seen this box.

In a vision.

It had a silver clasp in the shape of a tree. Rubies clustered like glittering apples in the silver leaves. It was the size of her palm and had slats on all sides. There was also a hook on the top so it could hang from a rope—or from a silk ribbon inside a wagon between feathers and painted skulls.

It couldn’t be real.

And it couldn’t be here.

She backed against the door.

As her back touched the door, she screamed, and she shoved her hands forward as if she could shove the box and all it meant away.

Books and papers blew off the table in a blast. The box flew against the wall and smashed into it. It crashed down, falling over stacks of books, end over end, and rolled onto the carpet. It lay on its side, and Eve kept screaming.

Behind her, voices were shouting. And then she heard shouts change to screams as magic poured out of her like water through a broken levee. Books flew from the shelves, and the computer monitor shattered into shards of plastic, glass, and metal.

Eve plunged into darkness.

* * *

Dangling from a silk ribbon, the boxes sway as the wagon bounces over the road. I am tossed against the painted wood walls, and I feel my skin bruise.

Eyes in the boxes watch me, and I watch them.

Bottles clink together on the shelves. Skulls snap their mouths open and shut. The skull of a mouse, of a bird, of a cat, of a man. Across the wagon, the Storyteller knits a ribbon of red and blue and gold. It coils around her feet already. Still, she knits it longer and longer.

“Once upon a time,” she says.

I want to speak, but my lips won’t move.

“A man and a woman wanted a child …”

I touch my face with my fingers. My skin feels soft and pliant, but my lips are sealed shut. I tug at them, and then I tear. My fingers gouge my cheeks and chin and lips. My mouth will not open.

Across the wagon, the Storyteller continues to knit. “So they made a child out of clockwork parts.”

I have blood on the tips of my fingers and under my fingernails.

“And when it was older, it killed them.”