was no big deal, but I was sitting right by the door with Jackie, I mean it was sort of a joke, we’d been asking to see people’s invitations, turning away the offal, but I swear I never saw this guy come in. Later Jackie said she’d seen him come in through the fire escape; but I think she was lying. Anyway, it was weird.
“And so I must have nodded out for a while, because all of a sudden I jerk up and look around and here’s this guy with everyone huddled around him, bending over and laughing like he’s telling fortunes or something. He kind of looked like that, too, like a gypsy—not that everyone didn’t look like that in those days, but with him it wasn’t so much like an act. I mean, he had this long curly black hair and these gold earrings, and high suede boots and velvet pants, all black and red and purple, but with him it was like maybe he had always dressed like that. He was handsome, but in a creepy sort of way. His eyes were set very close together and his eyebrows grew together over his nose—that’s the mark of a warlock, eyebrows like that—and he had this very neat British accent. They always went crazy over anyone with a British accent.
“So obviously I had been missing something, passed out by the door, and so I got up and staggered over to see what was going on. At first I thought he was collecting autographs. He had this very nice leather-bound book, like an autograph book, and everyone was writing in it. And I thought, God, how tacky. But then it struck me as being weird, because a lot of those people—not Candy, she’d sign anything—but a lot of the others, they wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything so bourgeois as signing autographs. But here just about everybody was passing this pen around—a nice gold Cross pen, I remember that—even Andy, and I thought, Well this I got to see.
“So I edged my way in, and that’s when I saw they were signing their names. But it wasn’t an autograph book at all. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. There was something printed on every page, in this fabulous gold and green lettering, but very official-looking, like when you see an old-fashioned decree of some sort. And they were all signing their names on every page. Just like in a cartoon, you know, ‘Sign here!’ And, I mean, everyone had done it—Lie Vagal had just finished and when the man saw me coming over he held the book up and flipped through it real fast, so I could see their signatures . . . ”
Haley leaned forward on her knees, heedless now of the smoke and Aurora’s huge eyes staring fixedly at the empty air.
“What was it?” the girl breathed. “Was it—?”
“It was their souls.” Aurora hissed the last word, stubbing out her cigarette in her empty mug. “Most of them, anyway—because, get it, who would ever want their souls? It was a standard contract—souls, sanity, first-born children. They all thought it was a joke—but look what happened.” She pointed at the scrapbook as though the irrefutable proof lay there.
Haley swallowed. “Did you—did you sign?”
Aurora shook her head and laughed bitterly. “Are you crazy? Would I be here now if I had? No, I didn’t, and a few others didn’t—Viva, Liatris and Coppelia, David Watts. We’re about all that’s left, now—except for one or two who haven’t paid up . . . ”
And she turned and gazed out the window, to where the overgrown apple trees leaned heavily and spilled their burden of green fruit onto the stone wall that separated them from Kingdom Come.
“Lie Vagal,” Haley said at last. Her voice sounded hoarse as Aurora’s own. “So he signed it, too.”
Aurora said nothing, only sat there staring, her yellow hands clutching the thin fabric of her tunic. Haley was about to repeat herself, when the woman began to hum, softly and out of key. Haley had heard that song before—just days ago, where was it? and then the words spilled out in Aurora’s throaty contralto:
“—‘Why trembles my darling? Why shrinks she with fear?’
—‘Oh father! My father! The Erl-King is near!
The Erl-King, with his crown and his hands long and white!’
—‘Thine eyes are deceived by the vapors of night.’ ”
“That song!” exclaimed Haley. “He was singing it—”
Aurora nodded without looking at her. “ ‘The Erl-King,’ ” she said.