At the bottom of the staircase, they managed to get X to his feet, like a team of workers lifting a statue. Zoe and her mother held his arms to steady him, and Jonah shoved as hard as he could from behind to prevent him from toppling backward. After five nerve-wracking minutes, they reached the landing. Jonah wanted X to sleep in his room with him, and when his mother hesitated, he began chanting, "Sleepover! Sleepover! Sleepover!" In the end, it was decided that X would sleep in Jonah's bed, even though it was small and shaped like a ladybug. The Bissells would all share the floor. The mother didn't want her children alone with him.
Zoe helped X onto the bed, putting a palm against his chest to steady him. X closed his eyes to hide his surprise. His shirt had a rough V at the throat, and Zoe's right forefinger had landed on the patch of bare skin. For the next few moments all he could feel-all he was aware of in the world-were the tiny movements of her hand as she inched her finger back onto cloth.
X was still dizzy and weak. The moment Zoe took her hand away he fell back onto the mattress with such a thud that the ladybug's antennae twitched. Zoe unlaced his boots and put them under the bed. When she went to hang his overcoat in a closet, he shook his head no.
Zoe smiled.
"Security blanket?" she said.
X did not recognize the phrase, but he could tell there was kindness in it.
Zoe placed her palm on X's chest again-avoiding his exposed skin so carefully that he felt her touch even more keenly than before-and said, with a strange kind of sweetness, "Good night, moon."
As she turned away, he reached out to touch her arm. Had he not been in a fog and half out of his senses, he'd never have had the nerve.
"Why endanger yourselves?" he said. "Why do all this for me?"
Zoe looked down at where his hand lightly gripped her. She gave him a smile, a trace of light in the darkness.
"There's nothing good on TV," she said.
Jonah fell asleep first and began battling someone or something in his dreams. Zoe's mom tossed on the floor awhile-she gave a little yelp every time she rolled onto a toy that Jonah had left on the carpet-then slipped off as well, one arm draped lovingly over her son.
X lay quietly, unable to rest despite his exhaustion. He turned to face the window next to the bed. A frantic beetle was flitting back and forth between the panes of glass, trapped forever with the wide world in full view. X knew what it felt like to be that bug. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine escaping the Lowlands and living. Truly living. He pictured himself with Zoe in the summertime when the world wasn't hardened by ice and swallowed in snow. When there was no Trembling. No fear.
He shook his head. The vision was ridiculous-and dangerous, besides. The longer he resisted returning to the Lowlands, the more he imperiled them all.
Yet even the sound of Zoe's breathing in the darkness captivated him. It was nearly five in the morning now. They were the only ones left awake. Some protective instinct made it impossible for him to sleep before she did. So X and Zoe just lay there in the dark. He listened to her breathing-waiting for it to deepen and slow-and had the sensation, though he had a hard time trusting it, that she was listening to his.
The blizzard had mauled Zoe's and Jonah's schools, and they had to be shut down for days. The flagpole at the high school had snapped in half and flown through the front doors like a missile. Half the windows on the northern side of the building had been shattered: all that remained of the glass was a rim of tiny, pointed shards that looked like vicious little teeth. Over at the elementary school, the classrooms were flooded with muddy water. Handwritten essays about climate change and drawings of horses floated through the hallways like lily pads.
X had fallen into a sleep so long and unbroken it was nearly a coma, his chest rising and falling, his legs dangling off the end of the ladybug. He slept through most of Monday. He was only vaguely aware of the comings and goings downstairs. He heard voices. He heard cupboards squeaking open and clapping shut. He heard branches being dragged across the snow and tossed onto a pile.
In the afternoon, a friend of Zoe's arrived in a truck thumping with music. X heard Zoe call him Dallas, but wasn't sure that was actually a name. Dallas had brought Zoe a coffee, which seemed to delight her ("Oh my god, does this have actual milk in it? Do not tell my mother."). Still, she sent him away without letting him into the house. X knew that he himself was the reason, and he was just conscious enough to feel shame trickle through his chest.
Hours later, he woke again: another car engine, another friend. The sky was black, except for the fuzzy yellow lights of another town on the horizon. X's shirt was soaked with perspiration.
This friend must have known Zoe well. She didn't bother to knock on the front door-she just strode into the front hall, calling her name. The instant Zoe tried to send her away, the friend said, "Why are you being weird? Gloria and I take one four-hour nap-okay, it was five hours, shut up-and now you're dissing me? And, by the way, what the hell was up with that insane Instagram? People are asking me about it."
Even feverish and half-asleep, X could feel Zoe grow tense.
He heard a wooden step creak as she sat down: She didn't want her friend anywhere near X. She was blocking the stairs.
"I'll tell you everything, Val," she said, finally. "But first tell me what you've heard."
Val sighed.
"I hate this game," she said. "Okay, I heard you solved the Wallaces' murder, met a hot alien, and made the chief of police cry like a bitch." She paused. "Let's start with the alien."
"He's not an alien," said Zoe.
"I'm disappointed," said Val, "but go on."
"I met him during the storm," said Zoe. "He helped me and Jonah."
"And?" said Val.
X didn't understand the question, but Zoe clearly did. She lowered her voice to a whisper, not knowing how keen X's hearing was.
"And he's so hot I can't even," she said.
"You can't even?" said Val.
They were giggling now.
"I can't even begin to even," said Zoe. "Ask me about his shoulders. Ask me about his arms. I mean it-pick a body part."
"Okay, okay, I get it," said Val. "Just because I think heterosexual sex is gross and immoral doesn't mean I don't understand what a hot guy is."
Zoe laughed.
"It's immoral now, too?" she said.
"Hello, overpopulation! Hello, world poverty!" Val said. "But I'm trying to be open-minded. Say more about the alien."
"Still not an alien," said Zoe.
"Still disappointed," said Val.
X sank back into sleep like someone pushed down into a river. He only half-understood what he'd heard.
He awoke only twice on Tuesday.
The first time, Zoe propped his head up against a pillow and spooned broth into his mouth, saying gently, "Three more sips … Two more … One more … Come on, don't fight me."
The second time, she leaned over him with a glass of water and attempted to push something into his mouth. X was confused. He began to choke. Jonah, who'd been playing with dinosaurs and wizards on the floor, looked up and said in a shocked voice, "He doesn't know how to use a straw?"
"Shut up, Jonah," Zoe said. "Don't embarrass him."
Now that he was under Zoe's care, X began to surface from dreams more regularly. The Trembling had loosened its grip. Stan's sins flowed more quietly through his veins, though they never disappeared entirely.
Sometimes, he heard the Bissells wonder aloud about him when they thought he was sleeping. Was he from hell-was that what he meant by the Lowlands? Why was he sent there? What had he done? Was he alive? Was he undead? What were his superpowers and what were his weaknesses? These last two questions came from Jonah, who, as X's eyes fluttered open momentarily, had also crept close and asked if he was one of the Avengers.
Zoe's mother suggested they all write their questions down on slips of paper and put them in a metal mixing bowl she had placed on the nightstand. When he had recovered, she said, she'd see to it that he answered them all.
Now, even as he slept, X could sense the bowl beside him filling with paper. He dreaded answering the questions, and the dread crept into his dreams like a rising flood. He saw terrible images: a parade of every soul he had ever dragged to the Lowlands. He saw the fear he inspired in his victims and, sometimes, even his own hands in a ring around their throats. X was certain that the more Zoe knew about him, the more repulsed she would be. He had only done what the lords had commanded him to do-but he had done it.
X finally had the strength to sit up on Wednesday morning. Zoe and the others were curled on the floor, still murmuring low in their sleep. The Trembling should have forced X back to the Lowlands by now but, thanks to Zoe's presence, the pain was muted. He gazed out the window, hungry for air. The frozen river glinted at the bottom of the hill like a long glowing ribbon.