Evil Returns (15 page)

She could not bear to think of it.

Not her mother!

At last, the pin came out. The door hung stupidly on one hinge.

She got the other pin out. The door fell on her, and it was solid wood, and heavy. So heavy.

How can I ever carry this? thought Devnee. Up two flights of stairs?

Sobbing, she staggered through the kitchen and into the hall, dragging the door after her.

It has to go ahead of me, she thought. The cross has to break through.

But it was too much for her to lift.

What am I doing? she thought, tears spattering her cheeks.

“Mom!” she screamed. “Are you all right?”

There was no answer. There was nothing at all. The silence of the house was as complete as death.

I wish—
thought Devnee, and made a dying whimpering sound. I
don’t
wish. I—I—

She clung to the edges of the door. No wishes.
I am.
I do not
wish
to be strong. I
am
strong.

She lifted the door. She balanced it, tilted it, and somehow, pointing it like a ship’s prow, got it up the first set of stairs. No velvet cloak blocked the way, no smothering swamp air suffocated her. She stood the door up on its end and opened the tower door. She was panting and sweating. The door weighed as much as an SUV.

One more flight, she said to herself. Then I’ll be there.

She went up, pressing her body against the right wall and sliding the door along the left.

She came out into the tower.

Sunlight streamed in every window.

Shutters, yellow with fresh paint, gleamed like love.

Carpet cut into a circle lay like a fluffy lemon on the floor.

“Mom?” whispered Devnee. “Mom, where are you?”

“Right behind you,” said her mother. “My goodness, darling, what are you doing with a door?”

Devnee whirled, almost dropping the door. Her mother was standing by the back wall, in white work pants and sweatshirt. She was holding a big can of plaster and with a flat trowel was filling in the cracks on the inner walls.

“I wished,” said her mother, before Devnee could stop her, “for good weather.”

“That’s it?” said Devnee. “That’s your wish?”

Her mother smiled. Same old smile. Same old face. Same old pudgy huggy body. “What else is there?” said her mother. “I have the best family and the most interesting house in the world.”

Devnee sighed very very deeply. Then she sighed again.

“Why the door?” said her mother again.

“I wanted the door with the cross on it,” said Devnee.

Her mother nodded. “Keeps vampires out. Good idea.”

Devnee stared.
“Keeps vampires out?”

Her mother giggled. “You can never be too careful, Devvy. Listen. I just heard Luke come in. Let’s all have hot chocolate and brownies.” Her mother set down the plaster and the trowel and wiped her hands on her pants. “I’ll go heat up the milk,” she said, “while you hang your door.”

Her mother clattered down the stairs.

Devnee looked around the tower.

It was all light, all sun, all diamonds and freshness.

There was no trace of things dark and cruel.

She did not exchange doors. She leaned the cross door up against the shutters. Even though it blocked some of the sun, the tower stayed cheery and warm.

I’m not sure I needed the cross, she thought. I just needed character. I was weak. I thought somebody, had to give me things, or I had to take them away from the people who owned them. Now I’m strong. I know I have to get things myself. Not wish.

He cannot come where wishes do not whisper.

No more whispering for me.

“I am Devnee Fountain,” said Devnee out loud. “I am strong. And I am also sorry. I am going to try to give back what I stole.”

She looked at her feet. Yes. The sun that came in the window cast a shadow behind her, where it belonged; the outlines of the shadow were firm and clear. But there was no substance to the shadow; it was nothing a vampire could collect; it was just part of her. Mom’s right, thought Devnee. The only thing to wish for is lovely weather.

She opened one of the windows and leaned out. It was cold, but crisp and healthy. “Aryssa!” she yelled. “Victoria!”

She filled her lungs with good clean air. “ARYSSA! VICTORIA!”

The vampire had said that human beings learned their lessons—but too late.

Was it too late to return what she had stolen from Aryssa and Victoria?

“It’s here!” shouted Devnee. “It’s yours! Ask for it! Hope for it! Demand it! Take it!” Just don’t wish for it, she thought, and she was laughing, and the laugh was sweet and generous, and if there was any dark path in the yard around the mansion, it was dissolved by Devnee’s laugh.

“Dev!” yelled her brother. “Come on. Chocolate’s hot!”

She did not look in the mirror as she left the room.

Being beautiful or being ordinary no longer mattered the way it had. What mattered was that she was Devnee Fountain, and her family was wonderful, and her house was interesting.

Down the stairs she clattered.

How ordinary were the sounds of her house! Her mother’s voice, her brother’s chair scraping, a spoon banging on a pot.

That’s what’s beautiful, thought Devnee. Ordinary things.

She danced into the kitchen. Her mother had put Marshmallow Fluff on the hot chocolate. Devnee loved Fluff. Life with Fluff was good. Fluff stuck to her lips and she licked at it.

“You look like a dork,” said her brother affectionately.

Devnee laughed.

“She does look different,” agreed her mother. Mother and brother studied Devnee, heads tilted, struggling to analyze.

“You look happy,” said her mother.

I don’t have beauty, thought Devnee, feeling it leave, feeling it returning to Aryssa, who needed it so much more. I don’t have brains, thought Devnee, feeling that leave, returning to Victoria, who had been kind even without it.

But I have love, and I have happiness.

In school tomorrow I’ll find out if that’s enough.

I’m strong now.

And I think—yes—that’s enough.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life. 

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.

The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”

Cooney at age three.

Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.

Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote reviews of Lois Lenski’s
Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison
and Jean Craighead George’s
Vison, the Mink
. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.