Before I can question my own sanity—and let’s face it, I’m pretty sure I’m losing it anyhow—I grab my flashlight and stuff my bare feet into an old pair of Aunt Bea’s ballet flats I find lying in the laundry room. I’m careful to open and close the back door as quietly as possible, and I keep the flashlight off. The moon overhead provides just enough light to see.
It’s only once I’ve landed in the mud on the cemetery side of the wall that I realize exactly what I’ve done. I’ve dashed out of my house without leaving a note, climbed into a creepy cemetery in the middle of the night, and am pursuing a group of people sneaking around in the darkness—all because of a completely baseless theory.
“Brilliant, Eveny,” I mutter. I’m just about to turn back when I hear it: a faint, female voice in the distance, singing words I’m beginning to know well.
For each ray of light, there’s a stroke of dark.
For each possibility, one has gone.
For each action, a reaction.
Ever in balance, the world spins on.
Just like in my dream and on the hallway wall.
Now I’m desperate to know what’s happening. My heart hammers faster as I make my way deeper into the cemetery, the light of the half moon vanishing above the thick canopy of trees. I can clearly see the three beams of light now, bouncing toward a small clearing up ahead. I flatten myself against a tomb and pray that no one is looking in my direction. Carefully, I peer around the edge.
I notice three things at once in the pale light of the moon.
First, there are at least two dozen candles flickering on the ground, laid out in a circle.
Second, the three people standing in the middle of the circle, eyes closed, hands raised to the sky, are Peregrine, Chloe, and Pascal.
And finally, Audowido is winding his way slowly down one of Peregrine’s outstretched arms, his scaly body reflecting the moonlight as he hisses into the silence of the night.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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10
I watch in shock as Audowido slithers to the ground and Peregrine begins calling out loudly to someone or something called Eloi Oke—El-ooh-ah Oh-key. “Come to us now, Eloi Oke, and open the gate. Come to us now, Eloi Oke, and open the gate. Come to us now, Eloi Oke, and open the gate.”
She pounds on the ground with a big, gnarled stick, while Chloe holds up a huge silver triangle dangling from a string and strikes it once before dropping it. I half expect the earth to open up beneath them, but all that happens is an unnatural calm settles over the cemetery as the air goes completely still.
Peregrine releases the stick and joins hands with Chloe and Pascal, whose eyes are closed. All three of them look like they’re in some sort of trance, and I wonder for a moment if they’re drunk, or maybe even high. Peregrine says something else, in a language I don’t understand, and then she repeats the phrase twice more.
Chloe and Pascal begin to dance slowly, their feet thudding against the ground in an unhurried, deliberate rhythm, their hips swaying in time. After a moment, Peregrine joins in too, and I realize I can hear a distant, musical tinkling sound. Then I see the moonlight glinting off tiny bells attached to all of their wrists and ankles. The breeze that has picked up out of nowhere carries the sound skyward.
The dancing gets faster and wilder as Peregrine chants more urgently in a sultry, velvety voice. Soon Chloe is singing along with her, her voice sweeter and higher. Pascal is the last to join in, his voice gravelly and low. Audowido is coiled in the middle of the circle now, and as the song gets louder, he begins to rise up toward the half moon, his body weaving in time. Suddenly, he turns his head toward me and freezes as his eyes lock with mine.
It takes all my self-control to keep from screaming. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the damned snake had just cracked a small, satisfied smile. After a long moment, he turns his gaze skyward and begins swaying to the music again.
I fall back against the tomb as Peregrine, Chloe, and Pascal abruptly let go of each other’s hands and open their eyes. Audowido retreats back into the studded leather bag, and Peregrine waits for him to vanish before she kneels in the dirt and begins digging with her bare hands. After a moment she stands and brushes her hands off.
“It shall be done,” Chloe says solemnly. She pulls a cloth bag out of her pocket and sprinkles some sort of black powder in the shallow hole.
“It shall be done,” Pascal echoes, pulling a cloth bag from his own pocket and doing the same thing.
“It shall be done,” Peregrine says solemnly, sprinkling powder of her own into the hole.