White Space

“What’s between the Nows?” She cleared the frog that had suddenly decided to squat in her throat. Graves had panops, and so did Kramer. Weber said something about hangers-on. “There’s something there, isn’t there? In the Dark Passages?” Jesus, I’m starting to sound as crazy as Jasper. “What was your dad really doing? He wasn’t just pulling out words to a story.”

Again, she saw the little girl’s face darken and glimmer, her haunted cobalt eyes grow shadowy and somehow opaque as something ghosted through. It was as if, for just an instant, a mask slipped, and Emma got a fleeting peek at what she thought was the much older girl and woman, scarred by loss, that Lizzie would become, and felt a tug of sympathy.

“I’m just a kid,” Lizzie said. Her chin trembled. Blinking furiously, she looked away. “I don’t know everything. He was doing something … bad, all right? Okay? Can we just not talk about that? This isn’t the same thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I just want to understand.”

“What’s to understand?” A huge tear rolled down the girl’s cheek. Another tear chased it, and then more. “I’ve told you what you need to know. House keeps showing you. Now just do it before it’s too late and the others get hurt! They’re in big trouble, and I can’t get them without your help.”

Eric. Her stomach squeezed. “Big trouble? Get them from where?”

“Would you shut up already?” Lizzie dragged an arm over her streaming eyes. “Just do it, Emma! Look at the scroll and find your story!”

“Okay, okay.” The last thing she wanted was to deal with some little kid’s meltdown, and if Eric and the others were in trouble … Find my story? Use myself as bait? She cupped the galaxy pendant in a palm. Okay, so … I want the beginning of my story, how about that? But what really was the beginning of her story? Jasper? She stared at that expanse of blank white parchment. Probably. She didn’t really know anything about her parents.

All of a sudden, she felt a familiar ache between her eyes, that same burn she always got before a blink. In her hand, the galaxy pendant warmed, and then, from the white of that blank scroll, a light pinkish blush began to waver into being, like the stubborn echo of a bloodstain on a collar that just won’t come out.

“Oh my God.” She was so startled she nearly dropped the parchment. On the skin, that weakly scarlet blush shimmered and began to dissolve as if she’d somehow lost her grip on whatever was shuddering its way to the surface. Against her palm, the galaxy pendant began to cool.

“Don’t worry, it’ll come back,” Lizzie said, her voice still a little watery and oddly indefinite. “Remember, you’re the bait. Everything you need lives in you. Just find your words, Emma. Let them come. You’re not like Mom. You don’t need the purple panops to see that far down or between.”

Panops. All-seeing. Her chest tightened. Kramer had purple glasses. So did Graves. But to see what? She opened her mouth to ask but then felt her questions fizzle as a familiar tingle she always felt before a blink swept through: a sense of falling and space opening up. In her hand, the cynosure burned but not as hot or bright as in the London blink. Nothing solid, no path of light leapt to show her the way.

Maybe that’s because it’s functioning as a lens now, bringing something into focus.

Something was definitely happening. On the parchment, that pink smudge was deepening and becoming more distinct. It was, she thought, like watching Jasper prep a design onto a primed canvas, except there was no hand other than the one in her mind, drawing and pulling out meaning. In the next instant, a snarl of brilliant red bloomed over the page, spreading over the surface in the complex tangle of an intricate calligraphy, spinning into letters and words, and she read:

MCDERMOTT-SATAN’S SKIN-FOLIO 45

Everything she knew about her bio parents fit the back of a stamp, with room to spare. Dear Old Drug-Addled Dad tried a two-point set to see if Baby really bounced against a backboard. (Uh, that would be no.) Mommy Dearest boogied before Dad …

2

NO. SHE COULD feel a fist of dread close around her throat. No, this isn’t happening. This was Kramer’s office all over again, just a different story this time. Her eyes flicked to the header: Satan’s Skin. That was the book where her story came from, the one she’d written for Kramer’s class. So what was she doing in the same manuscript?