Ellery and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
“She’s totally sleeping with Martin, right?” I said.
“In Martin’s dreams.”
But behind Ness’s silly self-interest, there might have been something real. An ancient source, as she said, of true magical weirdness.
“The strangest part,” I said, “is the fact that she stalked my grandmother to her home because she thought she had to save her.”
“No, the strangest part is the fact that this is her last blog post.”
I checked the date: January 17. Nine months ago, just before Althea died.
“How often does she usually post?”
“Every day, almost.”
“Huh.” I clicked on Ness’s bio, looked at a bigger picture of her, and read about how she liked fairy tales, themed dinner parties, and large-scale puppetry. “Think they sicced Twice-Killed Katherine on her?” I was joking, but not.
“She’s not Katherine’s type, but I wouldn’t be surprised. And neither would you. What are you doing?”
I’d gone back to the post and was typing into the comment box. “Asking her to contact me.”
Hello. I’m someone you’ve tried to speak to about Althea in the past, I typed. I thought a moment. I’m ready to speak now. Reply w/email address?
Before I could give the phone back to Ellery, a response bubbled up, its avatar showing Ness’s pale face. Is this who I think it is?
My heart shivered against my ribs. “Um. That was fast.”
Not quite, I typed with rubbery fingers. I wasn’t my mother, but I was the closest thing Ness was gonna get.
I waited one minute, two, for her response.
Are you in New York?
Yes.
A few seconds later, a Brooklyn address appeared in a new comment. I was trying to figure out what part when it disappeared again.
“Shit, shit, remember this: 475 Honore Street, 7F. Got that? 475 Honore Street, 7F.”
Finch snatched his phone and plugged the address into a ride app.
My neck felt goosebumpy. “Was this woman just sitting by her Althea post waiting for me to call?”
“Looks like it.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Strange in the context of the day we’re having? Not really.”
He stood to wait for our car, and I tilted my head back to squint at the sun, letting the last flares of headache sear themselves like needles into my brain.
OceanofPDF.com
14
Ness lived in an ugly modern gray box at the end of a street of brownstones. I resisted the urge to look upward as we trudged toward her stoop. I didn’t want to meet eyes with a snarl-haired woman through a seventh-floor window. This visit was weird enough.
Finch scanned the row of doorbells before punching the one for 7F. A few seconds later, something garbled came through the intercom box.
“What do—sa wait—?”
We looked at each other. Finch rang the bell again.
This time, the voice on the intercom was clearer. It sighed.
“What does Ilsa wait for?”
“She waits for Death,” Finch said smoothly, speaking into the box.
A pause, then the nasal screech of the buzzer. Finch kept peeking at me from the corner of his eye, looking smug.
“You can say it if you want,” I said. There was no elevator in sight, or even a lobby, just a narrow flight of stairs covered in sad gray carpet. Looked like we’d be huffing it to the seventh floor.
“Say what?”
“That your Hinterland knowledge got us in. I had no idea what Ilsa waited for.”
He shrugged. “You could guess, though, right? When in doubt, the answer is always Death. With a capital D. That’s the trick of the Hinterland.”
We didn’t talk again till we reached Ness’s floor, conserving our energy for the climb. On the final landing, I bent over to pant and curse Whitechapel for offering Mindful Breathing and Krav Maga electives rather than compulsory PE.
“How you doin’, slugger?” Finch punched my arm lightly, and I waved him off. The door in front of us creaked open, just a bit, and we startled back.
Though her face was washed clean of makeup, I recognized Ness right away. She stood wedged between the door and its frame, looking at us with unfocused eyes.
She wore black jeans and a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes sweatshirt, stained down its front with runnels of what I hoped was coffee. Her eyes were wide and cloudy blue, her hair a nest of dark curls shot through with gray, though she seemed a little young to be graying already. I was surprised, though, by how old she did look. Her bio pic must’ve been taken a decade ago. Her eyes ran vacantly over Finch and settled on me. I saw her fingers tighten on the door.
“You’re the one who messaged me?”
I nodded.
“Althea’s … granddaughter, it would be? The one who threw an orange at me at the Fairway?”
“Oh. Yeah. Can I come in?”
“Just you.” She stepped back from the door, with a distinct air of It’s your funeral.
I followed, giving Finch an apologetic shrug.
“Hey, wait.” He wedged himself against the doorframe. “Alice.”
“It’s fine, Finch.”
“Is it?” His voice went low. His eyes—big, protective—made my neck go tight. This was what happened when you started to need someone: they got used to it.
“I’m good,” I said tightly, and shoved him out of the way so I could close the door.
Hopefully it felt like a friendly shove.
Ness’s apartment made William Perks’s bookshop look like a Zen garden. The smell of it was a claustrophobic sucker punch of nag champa, old takeout, and dirty hair. Underneath it wound a base note of sage, familiar from Ella’s purifying rituals.
Once I got over the reek, I started to take in the details. It was a studio, a big one. Most of the floor space was taken over by sealed-up cardboard boxes and stacks of books, and every spare surface—the dining room table, the bed, the sagging green velvet armchair—was covered in stuff. Balled-up clothes, pizza boxes, craft supplies. Lots of craft supplies. I hoped Ness was practicing art therapy; she looked like she could use it.
“You want tea?” she asked hoarsely. She looked at me sidelong, her eyes darting skittishly away when I tried to look back.
“No … kay,” I said, twisting my response as her eyes narrowed. She turned her back and stalked over to switch on the electric kettle balanced at the edge of her minuscule kitchen counter. I wondered but didn’t ask how long the water had been sitting inside it.
As we waited for it to boil, I looked for a place to sit. There was a folding chair pushed up to the table that held nothing worse than a stack of newspapers, so I went to move them onto the floor.
A headline on the top one caught my eye. Police Launch Probe into Upstate Killings. While Ness slapped a box of Lipton onto the counter, I sat down and began to read.
The tiny hamlet of Birch, New York, has lately been at the center of a statewide investigation, following three unsolved killings over the course of seven months …
“Lemon or cream?”
My head snapped up. Ness’s milky blue eyes pinned mine. “Er. Sugar?” How old would the cream be? How shriveled the lemon? Sugar, at least, was safe.