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“No,” Tony said, after a long moment. “Can’t say we have.”

So they
were
lost. The thought made her hug herself tighter—and oh boy,
big
mistake. A jag of bright, splintery pain radiated to her right jaw, and then her cheek exploded:
ker-POW!
Grimacing, Rima trapped the moan behind her teeth, thought to the kid’s whisper:
Calm down, honey, it’ll be okay
. In a few seconds, the pain’s grip loosened and she could breathe again.

Idiot. The parka was her fault, a Goodwill refugee with duct tape slapped here and there to mend the holes. The parka’s previous owner had been a little girl, barely twelve, named Taylor. You wouldn’t think that would be a problem, except Taylor’s final moments were a jumble of glassy pain and a single clear thought:
Daddy, don’t hurt me; I’ll be good, I promise!
The asshole killed her anyway, pitching the kid over a fourth-floor balcony to break on the sidewalk like a raw egg.

To be honest, Rima had nearly tossed the parka back with the other whispers: drug addicts, an old lady murdered by her son, a guy with high blood pressure whose last, very bad decision was to mow the grass on a hundred-degree day. Leaving behind poor little Taylor felt wrong, though; no one but a screwed-up parent could so completely mess with your head. So she took the poor kid.

Swear to God, though, when she grew up and actually had some money? Rima was
so
never digging around a Goodwill ghost-bin. Like,
ever
.

FATHER PRESTON, THE
headmaster at All Souls, called it a gift. Her drug-fogged mother thought she was possessed. Rima just called them
whispers
, the bloodstains of the dead. Once Rima touched something for long enough—soothing, drawing—the whispers eventually dissipated, like morning mist under a hot sun. Whispers such as Taylor’s, whose death had been violent, took longest and were acid in her veins.

Of course, Rima was to blame for her mother’s drug habit because, oh, the
strain
of living with a possessed kid. There had been spiritualists, psychics, and so much incense you needed a gas mask. A hatchet-faced voodoo priestess was the worst, graduating from a raw egg squirreled under Rima’s bed to catch the departing demon—Rima’s room stank like an old fart for a week—to a noxious stew of ammonia, vinegar, and olive oil Rima was supposed to toss back with a smile. Uh … 
wrong
. That voodoo chick was always trying to
spill
Rima’s blood, too. The crazy bitch never said
cut
; she always said
spill
, like Rima was this big glass and whoopsie-daisy, look at that mess. Not a lot of blood, Anita explained:
Just a half-cup to feed the spirits
.

Oh, well, when you put it like
that
 … If Anita wasn’t so dead serious loopy, the whole thing might’ve been funny. Eventually, the voodoo also went bye-bye, either because Anita got tired of Rima being just so
ungrateful
, or the priestess thought she was a lost cause. Whatever.

The damage was done, though. Last week, dead of night, her mother got her supplier to pick the lock of Rima’s bedroom. Before Rima knew what was happening, the supplier
had pinned her wrists while Anita pressed a very long, wickedly sharp boning knife to Rima’s throat. No spilling, not for Anita, nosirreebob: she was going all the way.

The only reason Rima survived was the supplier got cold feet and booked. After another tense half hour, Anita drifted off from all that meth she’d smoked to work up the nerve and then all the downers she popped to take the edge off. It took Rima what felt like a century to ease out from under, and even then the knife won, the keen edge scoring her flesh with a hot spider’s bite.

That was just too darned close. Stick around, and one morning she’d wake up shish kebab. Forget Child Protective Services; they’d only shuffle her from foster home to foster home for the next two years until she turned eighteen. Then it was a handshake and
YOYO, baby
.

Why wait?

CALIFORNIA OR CANADA
, she figured. California had the movies; maybe she could learn makeup or something. Canada … well, everyone in Minnesota who wanted out went to Canada, but only because it was closer than Mexico.

Her thumb got her to Grand Rapids. After a night shivering in the thin light of the visitor’s center doorway, she was contemplating the merits of a bus to Milwaukee when Tony’s vintage Camry, a drafty four-door hatchback from the early Pleistocene, rattled into the lot, trailing a single crow that bobbed along like a black balloon on an invisible string.

Okay, crows were bad. But there was only the one. So
maybe this wouldn’t be so much of a problem. She decided to chance it.

They got to talking. He was a preacher’s kid, not a born-again, and a nice guy. Same age, same grade, and from his stories, the public high school bullshit factor sounded about the same as Catholic school’s, minus the uniforms and grim-faced nuns, some of whom could definitely use a shave.

When he offered a lift, she said yes, despite the crow. Settling into the front passenger seat, she cringed as the whisper sighed and cupped her body.

“You okay?” Tony asked. “I know the seat’s a little shot, but I got the car for a song.”

Yeah, no shit. No one would want a car whose last passenger had, literally, lost her head when the impact catapulted her right out that busted windshield like a cannonball.

“I’m fine,” she said, and this was true. The woman had been dead-drunk when she died. A fuzzy moment of awareness, a spike of fear, and then
blam
! No white light, no meet-up with old friends and family, no floating around for final good-byes or if-I-stays. Just
hello, darkness, my old friend
, which meant the dead woman’s whisper was easily soothed. After an hour, Rima couldn’t finish a sentence without punctuating with a yawn. Dropping her seat, she blacked out, only coming to when

THERE’S A THUNK
of a lock and a squeal of hinges as Tony drops into the driver’s seat, wreathed in the aroma of fried eggs, salty grease, and coffee.

“Here.” He thrusts a large brown paper sack into her hands. “I didn’t know if you liked ham or sausage, so I got one of each. There’s coffee, too, and some sugar and milk. Or they’ve got that artificial stuff, in case you like that, or orange juice.”

“No, this is great. Thanks.” The paper sack warms her hands, and the aroma is so good her stomach moans. She hasn’t eaten in almost two days. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I know. It’s just I would’ve felt guilty eating in front of you.”

He doesn’t lie well. He could easily have wolfed something inside and she’d never have known. “I don’t have a lot of money,” she says, which is the truth. Her nest egg’s a whopping $81.27, all that was left after her mother found her stash. Again. All that coke, it’s a miracle Anita still has a
nose
, much less a sense of smell. Dirty socks Anita’ll let go until they sprout hair and teeth and start moving up the evolutionary ladder, but squirrel away a wad of cash? Then the woman morphs into a frigging bloodhound.

A blush stains Tony’s jaw. “Hey, don’t worry about that. You’re doing me the favor. Otherwise, I’d have nothing to do but listen to the radio, and all they talk about are those murders. Can you imagine that poor kid finding—”

“How about we eat inside?” The last thing she wants to dwell on is death, especially murder. “It’ll be warmer and we won’t mess up your car.”

“Too late,” Tony says, throwing a rueful glance. The Camry’s backseat is strewn with clothing, crumpled fast-food bags, three shoeboxes of cassettes—mostly Lloyd Webber musicals (if Rima hears “I Dreamed a Dream” one more time,
she might be forced to hurt someone), a wheezy old cassette recorder, vintage comics like
Tales from the Crypt
and
Vault of Horror
, and a couple Lovecrafts with nightmare covers of gruesome monsters boiling with tentacles.

She laughs. “How about we don’t mess it up more than it is already? Those comic books must’ve cost a fortune.”

“Um, no, I paid regular price, but it’d be nicer inside, yeah.” Tony’s grin is hesitant, but when it comes, his whole face lights up. With his mop of brown curls and light blue eyes, he’s really pretty handsome.

“Great,” she says, and reaches for the door handle.

“Hang on.” He depresses the master lock on his door. “The power locks are all screwed up so you can only open them from my side. I keep meaning to get them fixed.”

Crossing the lot, she spots the birds: five very large, glossy black crows ranged round a rust-red truck slotted beneath a gnarly, naked maple. Four crows brood on a trio of low-hanging branches, their inky talons clamped tight. A fifth teeters above the grinning grill like a bizarre ornament.

She knows, instantly. Death—very recent, very strong—has touched that truck. Like the crow floating above Tony’s Camry, the birds are a dead giveaway, no pun intended. The more there are, the closer they come to a house or car or place, the more violent the death. One bird, she can handle. Times when whole flocks blanket the roof at the Goodwill, she takes a pass. And forget cemeteries.

“You okay?” Tony tosses a look at the truck. “What?”

“Nothing.” He doesn’t see the crows. No one normal ever does. Still, as she hurries inside the rest stop, she holds her breath. She doesn’t actually believe that old saw about
breathing in dead spirits, but there’s always a first time for everything and she has enough problems.

Just as she’s about to turn into the ladies’ room, a hard-faced kid in baggy, olive-green fatigues cuts a sharp dogleg. “Hey,” she says, pulling up short. “Watch it.”

“Say what?” He whirls, incredibly fast, his fists coming up. The kid’s pupils are huge, black holes rimmed with a sliver of sky blue. Then he spazzes, blinking away from whatever horror show he’s watching. “Oh. Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry. I thought you were—”

“Hey, Bode!” Another kid, also in olive drab, stands at a table in the fast-food joint. Even at this distance, she spots the angry sore pitting the left corner of his mouth, and the kid’s so meth-head jittery he could scramble a couple eggs.

“Hey, Chad,” Bode says. And then to Rima: “I got to go.” Before she can shrink back, he puts a hand on her arm. “You sure you’re okay?”

His touch is volcanic, atomic, so hot she can feel the death cooking into her flesh. “Oh, yeah,” she says, faintly. “I’m good.”

As soon as he lets her go, she bolts into the bathroom, making it to a stall just in time. Later, as the taste of vomit sours her mouth, she hangs over the bowl—lucky for her, no one died on that seat—and thinks about Bode. The guy’s touch was mercifully brief and fragmentary, but she’d seen enough. Ten to one, he’s that truck with the death-crows. The real question is who, exactly, is dead?

Because when Bode touched her, he
changed
. Just for an instant, but enough so she saw Bode’s head—

“OH, HECK,” SAID
Tony.

Rima blinked back to the here and now. “What?”

“The truck’s gone,” Tony returned grimly.

“Maybe there’s a turnoff.” Something sparkled then, and she squinted through the snow frothing the windshield. Way off to the right, there was a sharp glint—glass?—and something very black and formless floating over the snow. “Is that …?” She almost said
smoke
, but the word died halfway to her teeth.

Not smoke.

Crows.

And, in a crush of splintered trees, an overturned van.

ONLY MOM POPS
out of the barn, and she is screaming: “Get in the car, get in the car, just get in the car!” Mom hauls Lizzie down the porch steps, practically throws Lizzie into the front seat. She thrusts the memory quilt into Lizzie’s lap: “Hang on to that; don’t let go, no matter what!” Mom’s hand shakes so bad the ignition key stutters against metal, and she’s sobbing: “Oh please, oh please, oh please, come on, come on, come on goddamnit, come on!” She lets out a little cry as the key socks into place and the engine roars.

Then they are moving, moving, moving, going very fast, racing after their headlights, her mother hammering the accelerator. The force slams Lizzie back against the seat; her teeth come together
—ka-chunk
—and her tongue screams as the taste of dirty pennies floods her mouth. But Lizzie is too scared to cry; she is absolutely silent, quiet as a mouse, as the car fishtails, kicking up gravel rooster tails.

We’re never coming back
. She clutches her memory quilt in both hands. The glass might be magic, and those stitches as
strong as her mother, but Lizzie’s life is unraveling.
I’ll never see my house again. I’ll never find Marmalade
.

She cranes over her shoulder. Peering through the rear window is like seeing a movie through the wrong end of a telescope. She watches as their farmhouse, Wisconsin-sturdy and built to last until the end of time, recedes. To the left and across the drive, the big prairie barn hulks in the gloom, and that is when her sharp eyes pick out the pulse of a weird orange glow that is very, very wrong.

“Mom!” she says, urgently. “Mom, the barn’s on fire!”

“I know,” her mother says. “I set it.”

“Mom!”
A blast of horror rips through her body. “We’ve got to go back! We’ve got to get Marmalade! We’ve got to find Daddy; we have to
save
him!”

“We can’t save your dad.”

“But Mom!” Lizzie’s frantic. Why doesn’t her mother understand? “Daddy
needs
us!”

“No, he needs
it
, Lizzie. He hangs on, takes it inside, and the horrible, awful things it asks in return …” Her mother’s voice falters, then firms. “Lizzie, why do you think we came here after London? Why do you think we live so far away from other people?”

So no one gets hurt
. She thinks of the terrible things in her father’s books: squiggle-monsters and spider-things growing in people’s chests and crawly things in tunnels and parents eating their kids. What Mom says is true.