Brenna Yovanoff - The Replacement

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Roswell. He was holding the shovel, standing stiffly by the open grave. “That’s about the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

I shook my head, looking down at the thing in Emma’s arms. “It’s just a body someone didn’t want. It’s not any worse than me.”

Roswell closed the casket and we dropped it back into the grave. It thudded in the dirt and I flinched. After a minute, Roswell started to shovel the dirt back in.

The grave was nearly filled in when my phone started buzzing. Tate. When I didn’t answer, she called twice more, then texted the words: total bullshit, mackie. i’m coming over.

I turned off the phone and shoved it in my pocket. There was no way to head her off. I could only hope that when my dad opened the door, he would see a distraught, grief-stricken girl and decide she was in need of some counsel. I didn’t have much confidence in that scenario, though. I knew from experience that once Tate got going, she was nearly unstoppable, and my dad was more broken up than I’d ever seen him.

She’d just have to show up at the house and then do whatever reckless, ill-advised thing she was going to do when she found me gone. It was not a comforting thought.

“So, what’s the plan?” Roswell said, tamping down the last of the dirt with his shovel.

Emma was sitting on the muddy ground holding the revenant, but now she stood up.

I leaned on the handle of my shovel, breathless and dizzy from the steel, soaked from the rain and still too hot. “Go down into the house under the dump hill and take Natalie back.”

“And they’re not going to have a huge problem with that?”

I gave him a helpless look. “We need a distraction. Like, an offering or a present. The woman in charge there loves it when people pay their respects to her.”

“What does she want that we could give her?”

I thought about that, about how angry she’d gotten at the Morrigan—so angry that she’d flood them out slowly, over years, instead of just punishing them once and getting it over with. “She wants to be able to control everyone—the whole world. She wants to make sure that everyone is so scared of her that they’ll never disobey her, never trick or lie to her.”

Emma moved closer to me with the revenant against her shoulder, looking uneasy. “Like we’re about to do, you mean?”

“Pretty much. I guess you could say that people tricking her is her biggest ongoing problem, but I don’t really have a solution for that, and neither do you.”

Roswell nodded, looking thoughtful. “But we know some people who do.”

The twins were not happy about being dragged out into the rain in the middle of the night and less happy about being asked to part with the Red Scare, but they showed up at the cemetery in under fifteen minutes. Danny was carrying the polygraph. It had a handle, like an old suitcase, but he held it carefully in both arms.

The twins could generally be depended on to be completely unshocked by anything. They took the revenant with less self-control than usual.

“Jesus,” said Danny, staring at the thing in Emma’s arms. “What have you guys been doing? Are you out of your minds?”

Drew didn’t say anything. After a second, he reached out and touched the revenant’s arm. It twitched irritably and he stepped back.

I explained the plan, such as it was, and Drew nodded, still watching the revenant with a kind of wary fascination.

Danny was less accepting. He held up the polygraph. “Okay, I’m all for not letting Natalie Stewart get murdered—that’s not really in question. But why are we giving away our most successful project again?”

I tried to think how to explain the Lady and her appetite for power and control, but it was Roswell who answered. “We need a convincing present for the woman who has everything.”

Danny nodded, looking resigned. “Everything except a portable McCarthy-era polygraph, apparently.”

“Well, come on ,” said Drew. “That’s pretty much everyone.”

The walk to the park seemed longer than it ever had.

Emma was a trooper about the revenant. She carried it wrapped in Roswell’s coat. It didn’t seem to mind, just rested its head against her shoulder and kept quiet.

At the dump hill, I reached to take it from her. “We can’t all go—it just doesn’t make sense. And Mom and Dad are going to be going crazy wondering where we are. I think you should go home.”

Emma backed away, clutching the revenant and shaking her head. “No. I’m going with you.” There was dirt was smeared all over her face and her neck. She looked like she’d escaped from somewhere.

I stood looking at her. She’d always been willing to do whatever it took. Always. She’d been going with me my whole life. “You can’t. There’s no reason to, and it might be dangerous.”

Emma moved very close. “Listen to me.” The thing in her arms began to fidget and whine, and I had a feeling she was squeezing it. “I have spent years making sure you don’t die.”

“And I never asked you to—you didn’t have to follow around after me, taking care of me. You could have had your own life.”

“I know. Listen to me. When it’s been a choice between you and anything else, I’ve always picked you. I’m not sure I always made the right choices, but it doesn’t matter. I made them—me. You didn’t do anything to me. I picked you and I am not sorry .”

We stood in the dark at the base of the hill. Roswell and the twins were standing back, staying out of it. The argument was ours—mine and Emma’s. We’d been talking to each other in the dark for pretty much my whole life. The thing is, you don’t realize how much people lie with their faces when they talk. Emma’s voice was always honest, the realest, truest part of anything she said. It was scary to hear how much she meant it.

I looked down at her and said, “Please, Tate is on her way to our house—she might already be there—and I don’t know what she’ll do when she finds out we’re gone. I think she’ll come looking for us, and you have to stop her. Keep her away from the park, away from the cemetery. If she gets involved, it’s going to be a disaster.”

Emma didn’t say anything, but after a second she nodded and let Roswell take the revenant.

“Emma,” I said. “Thank you.”

She went on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek. “Just come home, okay?”

Then she turned and started toward Welsh Street. I watched her walk away through the playground with her head down, not looking back. I knew she was crying, but there was nothing I could do except keep moving forward. We jumped the fence, and I led the way to the base of the dump hill and used the paring knife to open the door to the House of Misery.

In the entryway, the boy with the footman’s uniform asked for my card and I told him I didn’t have one. He gave me a disapproving look and I told him he could fuck right off.

Behind me, the twins were staring around the hallway incredulously. Roswell seemed beyond comment, which wasn’t that surprising, considering the fact that he was holding a squirming, rotting baby that had been dead an hour ago.

“It’s very ill mannered to bring guests without an invitation,” the boy in uniform said.

”We have a present,” I told him. “It’s rare and valuable, and she doesn’t know it yet, but she wants it bad.”

The boy nodded and started away down the hall into the House of Misery, but he didn’t lead us back to the reading room. Instead, he showed us down a wide gallery and through a pair of double doors.