Christine Johnson - Grim anthology

The voice in her ear seemed to come at her from a very great distance, the sound of it bubbling up from the depths of a dark sea, until she felt someone else’s hand—not Harley’s—on her shoulder, shaking her. “Liv! Liv! It’s time to go.”

She blinked her eyes open, and Harley peeled herself away, and beside them, Paige was shaking her head as if she had caught two children misbehaving.

“Come on,” Paige said. She glared at Harley. “You should know better.”

Harley’s cheeks were flushed and most of her lipstick had been rubbed off. She shook her head. “What time is it?”

“It’s time,” Paige said in a clipped voice.

Harley cursed. “Let’s go.”

Liv’s legs wobbled as she followed the girls out of the club. Harley didn’t even give her a second glance as she stalked through the crowd. Out in the alley, the night air was freezing on her skin. Still, Harley didn’t look back. She threw open the door to the stairs, and the other girls followed in drowsy silence. Only Paige gave Liv a meaningful glance as she pulled the door shut behind her, and then it was too dark to do anything but pay attention to where she was walking.

When they arrived back in Harley’s room, Liv headed for the exit with everyone else. She felt completely disoriented, and she could still taste Harley’s mouth. Harley had been drinking the wine.

“Liv,” Harley said. “Wait.”

Liv stopped. “What?”

When all the other girls had gone, Harley shut the door, and it was only the two of them. Harley turned to face her. Liv’s heart raced. This was the real world, she reminded herself. Whatever happened here...was real. It scared her, how much she wanted this to be real.

She had forgotten that she wanted to break whatever curse Harley was under. She had forgotten that Andrea and Melissa and Harley’s own sister might have disappeared because of what Harley had done. All she could remember was what it felt like to dance with her.

Harley went to her dresser and pulled a tissue out of the box, wiping off the remains of her lipstick. Then she went over to Liv, who was standing right where she had been when Harley asked her to wait, and kissed her.

Real: Harley’s full lips, slightly dry now, her tongue still tasting like wine. Real: Harley’s hands on the hem of Liv’s tank top, lifting it and sliding beneath. Real: Harley’s body against hers, warm and soft.

Liv reached for Harley’s slippery shirt and Harley raised her arms so they could peel it off. Harley had a tattoo of a blackbird over her heart, and Liv bent her head to kiss it, tasting the salty sweat on her skin. Harley’s breath was uneven as she pulled Liv’s tank top over her head. Her ring caught on the fabric, and Harley swore and took off the ring, letting it clatter onto her nightstand. Then Liv’s shirt was off, too, and something tumbled out of Liv’s bra and skittered onto the wood floor.

Liv froze.

“What was that?” Harley whispered.

“Nothing,” Liv lied, hoping that Harley wouldn’t notice.

But the matchbook had fallen into the circle of light cast by Harley’s bedside lamp, and the words printed on it practically glowed: Magh Meall.

Liv remembered the curse and the riddle. The sticky sweet desire that had made her dizzy only seconds before turned sour.

Harley jerked away from her. “What did you do?” Harley asked, fear in her voice.

Liv lunged for the matchbook a moment before Harley did. Liv’s knees banged against the floor. Harley’s nails scraped over her arms. Liv scrambled away, her fingers trembling as she opened the matchbook.

“Stop it!” Harley cried.

Liv didn’t stop. She tore out a match and struck it, and the flame flared into life.

Something dead from that world, brought into life in this one.

The smell of sulfur seemed to fill the room. The flame burned blue, and Liv saw it reflected in Harley’s dark eyes, full of horror.

“What did you do?” Harley demanded.

The ground shifted beneath them. The bed moved. Harley tried to stop it, but it rolled back over the trapdoor in the floor, and when Harley tried to push it aside, she couldn’t. She screamed in frustration, bending down to look beneath it, and then her shoulders heaved, and Liv knew that the trapdoor was gone.

The match burned out, scorching Liv’s fingertips, and she dropped it onto the floor.

Harley stood. Her face was hard with anger. “Why did you do that? You’ve screwed everything up!”

Liv’s heart was pounding so hard she was breathless. “I had to break the curse,” Liv said.

“You don’t know what you did,” Harley snapped.

The disgust in Harley’s voice made Liv angry. She scrambled to her feet. “I couldn’t let it keep happening! They couldn’t keep taking the girls.”

Suddenly Harley sat down on the edge of her bed, her shoulders sagging. “I never wanted them to take any girls, but that was the price.”

“For what? What was so important you’d let those girls be kidnapped? Your own sister!”

“I did it for Casey,” Harley snarled. “So she and I could stay here at the Virginia Freaking Sloane School for rich bitches. We would have been kicked out for not paying tuition if I hadn’t made that deal.”

Liv took a step back. “What do you mean? I thought your dad was loaded.”

Harley gave a choked laugh. “That’s what everybody thinks, but no. My dad was the janitor here. While he worked here, we got to come here for free, but after he died last year, that was it. We were going to be kicked out. But where would we go? To live with my deadbeat mom in the city? She has no money, and she spends what she gets on drugs. The only way I could keep Casey here—to keep her safe—was to make a deal with that guy. But now you’ve messed it all up. He said they wouldn’t take Casey. He said—” She broke off and looked at Liv furiously. “And now she’s gone, and I can’t find her. He’ll never make a deal with me again.”

Liv’s stomach fell. Had she made a mistake? “She might come back—Madam Sofia said—”

“Nobody comes back once they take them,” Harley interrupted. She looked utterly defeated.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Liv whispered.

Harley wouldn’t look at her, and after the silence between them became too awful to bear, Liv snatched up her shirt and left. She couldn’t stop shaking, even after she climbed into Casey’s bed and buried her head beneath the covers.

* * *

Things began to change immediately. Harley was reprimanded by the headmistress for wearing boots to class. The paperwork that Harley said she had filed to move Liv from Sheffield to Castle turned out to be forged, and Liv had to move back to Sheffield. The other girls in Castle Hall began to be called in to teacher meetings to discuss their many absences.

Halloween came and went in a gust of wind and rain, stripping the last remaining leaves off the trees. Every time Liv walked by the oak tree where she had made her promises to Harley, she felt someone watching her, but it was only the blackbird that seemed to have made its home there. Once she thought she saw a tall, thin man in the shadows of the tree, but as soon as she noticed him the air itself seemed to shift, as if someone were pulling a shade closed.

Harley’s friends began to drift apart, too, turning inward and barely eating at meals. Rumors went around that they had been doing some serious drugs, and now their supply had been cut off and they were going through withdrawal. And everyone whispered the shocking news about Harley: that her father wasn’t some fabulously rich guy; that he had been the school janitor; that she might have to leave at the end of the semester because she had no money for tuition.

Liv felt bruised inside, as if she had lost something, not saved the lives of the other girls. For weeks, she went through the motions of school and homework in a daze, half awake, half still caught in that world she had visited three times. At night she dreamed of the glittering gold trees, the throbbing music and Harley.