more figures in plastic masks. Finn heard Moth shout, “Keep running!” as she and Sylvie raced toward an ivy-clotted alley between two boarded-up houses. She glanced back to see Moth heading in another direction, followed by several of the masked creatures.
As Sylvie hauled herself over a fence, Finn heard running steps behind her and a piercing whistle from the pine trees surrounding the houses. She glanced over her shoulder to see a figure in a suit and plastic crow mask loping after them.
She and Sylvie fled across a yard, toward a cottage in a cavern of weeds and creepers. Sylvie grabbed Finn’s hand, pulling her into the creepers, and they slid along the paint-peeling exterior of the house, to the cottage’s back door. Sylvie indicated a window to the left, which was open.
They heard more whistling.
Finn pulled herself over the windowsill, and Sylvie followed. They dashed through a kitchen where yellow wallpaper peeled from the walls, and an old refrigerator covered with souvenir magnets and faded photos was open to reveal rotting food in a slant of sulfurous light.
When another whistle came from outside, Finn and Sylvie dove to the linoleum and crawled toward a closet door. Finn reached up, grasped the knob, and winced as the door creaked. As they crept into the closet and shut the door, she could clearly see Sylvie’s white face in the dark. Finn pressed her brow against her drawn-up knees.
The cottage door crashed open. She reached out to grip Sylvie’s hand.
Something heavy hit the floor. There came the sickening sound of a blade being driven into flesh, a pained cry. The second time they heard the noise, Finn drew the silver dagger. Sylvie, who had lost her bow, pulled two arrows from the aluminum quiver and held them like knives.
There was a murmur, a cough, a gargling voice. It was unbearable—
The closet door flew open.
Finn shouted as she was dragged out, the dagger wrenched from her hand. She heard Sylvie scream.
Moth was crouched near the door, his hands pinned to the floor by two blades. He despairingly met her gaze through a tangle of hair. Standing around him were several figures in stained and torn school uniforms, each wearing a plastic mask representing an animal—an alligator, a crow, a fox, a rabbit, a possum.
The rabbit—a girl—sauntered forward as Finn rose unsteadily, keeping her back to the wall. Sylvie, on the floor, scrambled across it until she was against Finn’s legs. They’d taken away Sylvie’s arrows. There were scratches on her cheek.
“Well,” Rabbit Girl said, eyes shining in the hollows of the mask. “I smell blood.”
As terror spiraled into an insane anger, Finn found her voice. “What do you want?”
Rabbit Girl came closer. There were old bloodstains on her blouse and kilt. Her dirty blond braids were knotted with ribbons and plastic charms. She smelled like poppies and something dead.
“What do we want?” The girl leaned forward, and Finn looked away from eyes that glinted like beetles. “Well, we’re hungry.”
Sylvie lunged up, slamming the arrow she’d hidden into Rabbit Girl’s chest. As the girl staggered back, Sylvie and Finn launched themselves past her, toward Moth.
The animal-masked figures blocked the door, but Finn and Sylvie managed to yank the kitchen knives from Moth’s hands before pulling him up between them. This time, he bled.
“You should have kept running.” His voice scraped out. The muscles in his arm were steely against the back of Finn’s neck. “I could have kept them away.”
Rabbit Girl plucked the arrow from her chest. The point of the weapon dripped papery-red petals as more petals slid from the tear in her skin.
“You’re a Jill.” Moth straightened, sliding his arms from around Finn’s and Sylvie’s shoulders and standing on his own. He looked around at the masked creatures. “You’re all bloody Jacks and Jills.”
“That’s not what we’re called.” The boy wearing the alligator mask gestured gracefully to his companions. “We are the dead. And you are in our territory.”
“So”—there was a smile in Rabbit Girl’s voice as she twirled the arrow in one grubby hand—“you’re our evening’s entertainment.”
Finn spotted her backpack nearby, along with the jackal-headed walking stick. As the Jacks and Jills closed in, she began sliding along the wall. Moth tensed. Sylvie was whispering a prayer in Japanese.
Something caught the light on Rabbit Girl’s wrist—a pewter spoon twisted into a bracelet, like something made in an arts and crafts class. The crow wore battered Nikes. The alligator had on a Star Wars watch.
All the little details clicked. They were kids,