“Knowledge is power.”

“And ignorance is bliss.”

There was a muffled yelp from downstairs then, followed by a thump. Agnes snatched her hand back from my throat. We looked at each other for a moment, each questioning the other: Did you hear that too? There was silence for a few heartbeats. Then Vivi’s scream bolted us both into action. I scrabbled to get inside, but slipped down the old roof tiles. Agnes was faster than me, smaller and more nimble. She was already on the stairs by the time I hauled myself through the window, my limbs windmilling and adrenaline slamming. I heard glass break; a gasp of pain; Tyler swearing. I took the stairs three at a time and stuttered to a stop on the last one behind Agnes, who was standing with her shotgun aimed across the room.

The man had found us. In one hand he held Grey by the hair, her chin lolling on her chest, her hospital gown a Jackson Pollock painting of blood and vomit. Vivi, still dressed in a crop top and jeans, was hefted over his shoulder, biting and clawing and kicking, trying to break free. Tyler brandished a broken wine bottle and was trying to stab it into the man’s chest, but he was too slow, his reflexes softened at the edges by booze. Then he caught one of the horned man’s fists full in the face and collapsed, boneless, to the ground.

Agnes screamed. The man looked toward us. Agnes pumped the shotgun and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger. The gun went off and made a stippled mess of the man’s shoulder, but he didn’t bleed. He grunted and dropped Vivi and let Grey go, then came barreling toward us. Agnes shot again, but the man was furious now, and even a second shot that tore a chunk of dead flesh from his neck and sent shattered particles from his bone mask flying like grains of rice wasn’t enough to stop him. He slammed both of us into the wall, the wood and plasterboard tearing like paper beneath our weight. It was suddenly dark and I couldn’t breathe, the heft of two bodies on top of me, a pile of rubble digging into my neck, the soft parts of my back. Then the weight of him was gone and I sucked in a breath. The world blurred and rippled around the pain. I coughed up a wad of blood and spat it to the side.

We’d burst through the wall and were sprawled out on the kitchen floor. I pushed Agnes off me and stood, trying to ignore the too-limp feeling of her body, the ugly angle of her neck. None of my limbs were broken, but whenever I inhaled, a bright pop of pain in my ribs made me gasp. I staggered back through the hole in the wall—which, I noted dully, was filled with crawling things and black mold. Tyler was slack on the floor, one side of his face bloody and sunken. The room was trashed and the front door was open.

Both of my sisters—and the man—were gone.

I didn’t stop to check if Tyler was alive. I fished Grey’s knife out of my coat pocket and lurched down the front steps onto the street. There was a sharp, tugging pain across my collarbone that brought tears to my eyes. Somewhere, not far away, Vivi was still fighting, giving the man hell. I could hear her strangled shrieks, the slap of her fists against his skin, just around the corner. “Vivi!” I tried to scream, but the impact had crushed something in my lungs, in my throat, and I couldn’t get out more than a wheeze. I tried to run but kept teetering sideways if I moved too quickly. A concussion, maybe.

Then Vivi’s screams abruptly stopped midway, fizzling out like hot metal plunged into water. I turned the corner, half expecting to find the man standing over her lifeless body, but the street was empty. I caught the scent of smoke and rot. A handful of dry leaves curled across the cobblestones toward me.

There was nothing else.

They were both gone.

They had both been taken.

“No,” I rasped, limping down the street. “No, no, no, no, no.”

They could not be gone.

I would not allow them to be gone.

Not both of them.

Not again.

I banged on doors and windows, wheezing a broken animal moan. “Vivi! Grey! Vivi! Grey!” I rattled door handles and rang bells. Lights came on in windows. Sleepy residents came to their doors and swore at me. Didn’t I know what fucking time it was?

Somewhere, not far from where I stood, my sisters had been dragged through a crack in the world. I didn’t know how to follow. The one person who did—a little girl with rotten limbs—was, I suspected, already dead. Tyler might be too.

Something tightened in my chest, picking holes in my lungs. I couldn’t stand anymore. I sank to my knees in the middle of the street, struggling to suck air past my broken ribs, and cried with my forehead pressed against the cobbles until I heard sirens.

17

I hobbled back to Agnes’s house in a daze, before the police arrived to arrest me. What could I say to explain myself? Well, you see, Officer, my sisters were kidnapped and taken to a mysterious limbo for unknown reasons. I suspect this is not the first time it’s happened.

I closed the front door behind me, then drew the curtains and turned off all but one light.

Tyler was alive. Agnes was not.

He sat on the kitchen floor next to her small, broken body, crying quietly. There were flowers teeming from her eye sockets, vines growing from her mouth, lichen colonizing her face and neck. I sat down on the other side of her and put my hand on Tyler’s bare shoulder. We sat like that for a while, both of us with tears running down our cheeks. Then I crossed Agnes’s arms over her chest. Her skin already felt desiccated, her joints creaky and dry. Carrion flowers grew from under her nail beds, cracking and peeling the fingernails to make way for their blooms. Ants and beetles had already made their home in the soft hollows of her face. The pungent stink of her made the warm kitchen air taste green, wild.

Tyler looked at me. One of his eyes was shot with red, a burst blood vessel. The cheekbone beneath it jutted awkwardly, broken and pressed painfully against the skin. His expression was one of searching. Asking.

I shook my head. “He took them,” I managed to rasp. “I couldn’t follow. I . . . I lost them . . . I lost them both.”