The Rust Maidens Read online

  It was strange every time he let me do this. Rifle through what wasn’t mine to see. But I didn’t argue. I edged nearer to his bed and picked up the papers that were fanned out on the sheets. Here the girls were, on these pages, as close as I could get to them. They were all numbers. Normal blood pressure, normal temperature, normal heartrate. Nothing else normal, but they still had something human about them.

  “Is this it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  Adrian wouldn’t look at me. “I’m sorry.”

  I swallowed back a well of tears that I didn’t realize was coming. A sob at my own uselessness, at how I’d never reach Jacqueline in time. Even if I could reach her, I wouldn’t be able to change anything.

  “We need to do something,” I whispered.

  Adrian nodded. “I know.”

  But neither of us had any idea of how to help the girls. The most we could do was help ourselves.

  Adrian reached out for my hand. It was a small motion, the closing of the gap between us. I didn’t move or pull away. I just closed my eyes and savored the way his fingers entwined with mine. Wanting his touch. Wanting him.

  But then my eyes snapped open, and I did my best to recalibrate myself.

  This was all wrong.

  He was in Cleveland for the worst reasons.

  I was in his bedroom for the worst reasons too.

  I dropped the papers on the bed and moved away from him, toward the door I didn’t want to walk through. I didn’t want to leave, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay either.

  Behind me, Adrian sighed, and I heard the rustle of folders, stacked and tucked away.

  “You don’t have to go, Phoebe,” he said, the remark tossed off almost as an afterthought.

  But it wasn’t an afterthought, and we both knew it.

  I wavered in the doorway, looking back at him, knowing what I should do. I should go home and take a cold shower and start again tomorrow. I should make the right choice.

  But I already knew I wouldn’t do that.

  With my gaze set on the window and the darkness beyond it, I stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door.

  THIRTEEN

  Before dawn, I moved noiselessly through Adrian’s bedroom, not wanting to wake him as I searched the floor for my scattered clothes.

  In the dark, his scent like cedar clung to my skin, and I closed my eyes and breathed him in. Part of me wished being here had meant nothing to me. But that wasn’t true. I wanted him even now, even as I was doing my best to make a silent escape.

  Running. That was my answer to everything.

  Shame boiled in my belly. Last night had been a mistake, but one I was practically destined to make. Jacqueline had called it weeks ago, back when she was still around to cast her vote on topics like boys and booze and silly everyday things that never seemed to matter before.

  With my dress zipped up and feet shoved into unlaced boots, I was halfway to the door. Almost done. Almost free. But when I turned back, just to glance at him one more time, there he was, watching me. Adrian, his body tangled in the sheets. Looking like all the trouble he’d promised me from the start.

  I froze, caught under the weight of his stare.

  “You could stay a little longer,” he said, his voice soft and honeyed and thrumming down into my blood. My muscles went weak for an instant, and I wanted to climb back into that bed. Let the morning pass and the afternoon and another evening. Just wrap myself up with him and keep on forgetting.

  But that wasn’t how this worked.

  I shook my head. “I need to go.”

  Though where I was needed was anybody’s guess.

  Adrian sat up in bed, something in him shifting. “You should probably know,” he said. “We’re heading back to Washington soon.”

  I suddenly couldn’t breathe. It all unspooled in my mind: Adrian gone, this house empty again, a party spot with nobody left to party with. But what did I expect? Of course they’d leave eventually. This was a case for them, not a life sentence like it was for us.

  I wouldn’t look at him. “When?”

  “Next week,” he said, and then added slowly, “Why don’t you come too?”

  I almost laughed at this. Me in DC. Doing what exactly? Lounging around Adrian’s apartment? Shacking up with a man I didn’t know and didn’t entirely trust?

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I should stay.”

  “Why?” he asked, and the question caught me by surprise.

  There were so many reasons I should be in Cleveland. For Jacqueline. For the girls. For college too, I guessed, but that seemed like someone else’s dream now, something so distant I might as well be reaching for the sun.

  Adrian hesitated, his eyes dark. “There’s nothing here for you, Phoebe.”

  That twisted deep in my guts, the bluntness of the statement, and the truth of it too. There was nothing here for anyone anymore. But I couldn’t admit that.

  “You’re wrong,” I said, and left the bedroom door open behind me.

  Downstairs, I moved for the back door, not realizing at first that I wasn’t alone.

  Jeffers and Godfrey sat at the kitchen table, their stiff toast crisped around the edges, uneaten on paper plates. I stood in front of them, pretending I was invisible. It worked, more or less. They spoke as if I wasn’t there, as if I was air.

  “I hear we have a guest,” the one I supposed was Jeffers said. “Should we offer her coffee?”

  “Why would we do that?” Godfrey gnawed his bottom lip. “Besides, she’s already gotten what she came for.”

  Jeffers grunted and leaned back on one leg of his chair. “Adrian, always the heartbreaker.”

  His eyes rolled back in his head, and he pretended to swoon. Imitating me like I was some silly little lovesick schoolgirl. Like I was common, the most recent in a long line of conquests. Maybe they were right, maybe that was exactly what I was, but right now with them guffawing at me, I didn’t care. My hands curled into fists, and I imagined pulverizing the bones in their faces until all they could see was blood. But then I thought better of it. Try as he might, Adrian probably couldn’t convince them not to arrest me for that.

  I moved for the back door, but at the last minute, I couldn’t help myself. I kicked that balancing leg of the chair, and Jeffers went down. Or maybe it was Godfrey. Either way, he hollered an obscenity at my back. I smiled and disappeared into the day.

  At the end of the street, the mansion gleamed in the morning light. I wanted to go there. I wanted to try again to talk to Jacqueline. But she wouldn’t answer if I did.

  Besides, there was someone else standing near the street watching me.

  Kathleen, on the sidewalk in front of her own house, sucking down the last of a cigarette. I held up my hand in a half-hearted wave, but she didn’t return the gesture. From the look on her face, she had an entirely different gesture in mind. She must have seen me leave the government men’s house. An early morning exit. She knew what that meant.

  My feet heavy, I approached her, and immediately regretted it.

  “At least someone had a fun evening,” she grunted, the accusation sizzling in her voice. “Fortunately, a few of us were working. Trying to fix things.”

  I scoffed. “Like how you fixed things with your first article?”

  She glared at me and then exhaled a puff of smoke in my face. “And exactly what have you done, Phoebe?”

  Everything I can, I wanted to say, but she didn’t wait for me to respond. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her the sole of her black Oxford dress shoe, the same way she’d like to crush me, no doubt. Then she was gone, headed back into that godforsaken house. To her typewriter, probably, off to finish her latest story. Hopefully, this one wouldn’t be so disastrous.

  I stood on the empty street, baking in the already hot sun. I wondered what I would have said to her, if given the chance. I wouldn’t have asked for absolution, that was for sure. Nothing in me felt as sorry about last night as I
felt sorry about everything else. This was a decrescendo on the long mistake that I called this summer.

  Jeffers and Godfrey, mocking me at the kitchen table, flitted again through my mind. They could be doing anything other than taunting a teenager. They could be helping. As though that was ever part of their agenda.

  They did, however, have one good idea. Coffee.

  The bell in the corner store dinged over my head, and Aunt Betty glanced up from the counter, already glaring like she knew I was coming even before I did.

  I took the stool on the end, not saying a word. She filled a white Styrofoam cup to the brim, and we stared at each other for a while. This should have felt familiar, almost safe, all things considered, but now a different kind of loathing brewed behind her gaze. She blamed me, the same way that everybody blamed me. Like I wanted the girls to go to the mansion. Like I was the one keeping them there.

  I wanted to ask her if she’d seen Jacqueline, or if maybe anything in the house had come up missing. I also wanted her to talk to me. About any early signs of the transformation, or why Jacqueline might have changed in the first place. Nobody could tell us that part. The doctors and the government men and the parents—none of them could understand why normal, healthy girls were now anything but.

  But then a shadow passed over my face, and by the time I looked up, Clint was already sidling up next to me at the counter. I had to bite down to keep myself from gagging at the sight of him. My first love, as nauseating as a hangover.

  “Hi, Phoebe.” He gave me an ugly grin. “How are you this morning?”

  “Fine,” I said and stared straight ahead at the wall, hoping if I didn’t look at Clint, he would cease to exist.

  It didn’t work.

  “I would think you’d be doing better than fine.” He paused, savoring the moment. “I saw you leaving his house this morning.”

  He didn’t say Adrian’s name. He didn’t have to. The coffee pot still suspended in her hand, Aunt Betty raised an eyebrow at me, and I sighed. Was everyone out with their binoculars at sunrise? And if so, why weren’t they watching the mansion? That seemed like a better target than me. But this was our problem, wasn’t it? Always watching and worrying about the wrong things. If we could refine our focus, then maybe we wouldn’t have lost the girls in the first place.

  Clint was still staring at me, gauging my reaction. “So,” he said, “have a good time?”

  “Sure did.” I looked at him and smirked. “It was immensely better than a backseat.”

  At that, he grimaced, but didn’t retreat. That should have been enough to scare him away, but apparently everything was going to be hard today, even chasing off exes who possessed all the charm of a housefly.

  I took a long sip of coffee. “What do you want, Clint?”

  By now, Aunt Betty had wandered down to the other end of the counter, where Doctor Ross’s wife was ordering two pounds of ground beef for the family she no longer had. Clint waited until he was sure they couldn’t hear before he leaned into me, so close I could taste last night’s whiskey curdling on his breath.

  “We’re going into the mansion tonight.” Something in his eyes sparked, and he waited for me to respond. As if his plan was the best I’d ever heard.

  I sighed. “We? Who else is going?”

  “A couple of the boys.” With a cocky grin, he leaned back. A little too far, since he nearly toppled off the stool. Face blotched red, he regained his balance and moved in to me again. I held my breath. “Mr. Carter is helping us too.”

  A shudder ran through my body. Lisa and Kathleen’s father. The notion of him helping anyone made me queasy. He didn’t help people. That meant he had other plans. Ugly plans. A punishment doled out to a wayward daughter, perhaps.

  I shook my head. “It won’t do any good,” I said. “I’ve already tried to get in, Clint.”

  “You knocked at the front door.” He crossed his arms and leaned on the counter. “We’re not going to be that polite.”

  My heart squeezed tight in my chest. No, I couldn’t imagine Clint or Mr. Carter or the other boys being polite. But I could imagine them forcing their way in and cornering the girls and telling them they didn’t have any choice in the matter.

  No way were they going without me.

  “When?” I asked.

  Clint smiled. From the moment he walked in, he knew I’d agree. “Meet us in the mansion’s backyard at midnight.”

  Then he was gone, a shadow moving through the store and out the door. The bell dinged, and my coffee cup went cold in my hands.

  I waited through the afternoon, cross-legged on my bed, gazing down at a street that no longer felt familiar. Adrian called the house twice, and though he could almost certainly see me sitting at my window, I didn’t answer the phone.

  ***

  At midnight, they were already in the backyard of the mansion. Clint and Mr. Carter and a few others that I didn’t know. Boys who weren’t from this neighborhood.

  And someone else. She fussed in Clint’s arms.

  Eleanor. He’d brought Eleanor.

  “What are you doing?” I gaped at him. “Why is she here?”

  Clint stared back, blank-faced, and shrugged. “I want Dawn to come out,” he said. “What better way than to show her what she’s missing?”

  Now it all made sense. Clint would do anything to get out of caring for Eleanor. He probably wanted to drop the baby inside the door and call it a day.

  Mr. Carter lit a Marlboro Light and grunted at me. “You never said anything about that one being here.”

  “Phoebe knows them better than we do,” Clint said. “Maybe she can talk some sense into them.”

  Sense. Like any of this made sense.

  The men took out their bag of tools—a hammer, a crowbar, even a couple of screwdrivers for good measure—and pried open the back door. But even once the house was open and waiting for us, we all hesitated, suddenly unsure of ourselves.

  Then Clint took an uneven step forward. “Dawn?” he called into the darkness before disappearing into it. The other boys followed him, leaving only me and Mr. Carter out in the night.

  “Are you ready, girl?” he asked with a sneer.

  “You bet,” I said. “I just wonder if the rest of you are.”

  Inside, the mansion looked like an industrial apocalypse. We entered through the kitchen and crept into the main living room. Everything smelled of earth and brackish water and the vague sickly sweetness of something decomposing.

  As we moved, our flashlight beams dancing across the walls, the whole house swayed around us, as though it could barely support its own weight.

  We stayed toward the perimeter of the room, and I ran my fingers along the old paneling, rough and oddly cold.

  I stopped at the front door. It was blocked off from the inside. Everything here was blocked off. All of the windows were dark. None of them were soaped or blanketed like the neighborhood mothers had claimed. They were sealed, gray decay and rust filling every space, sealing out the sun. Some of the rot was from the stolen items—the missing wheelbarrow had been vivisected and merged into the mosaic—but most of this rust must have come from the girls. Their own personal creation, an art project gone awry. The walls bowed under the heft of the decay, drywall sloughing off to the floor like snowfall in February, the room creaking and straining with our every step.

  “What did they do to this place?” Clint murmured.

  “It’s a cocoon,” I whispered. The girls had turned the mansion into a cocoon.

  But other than the rust and rot blocking off the windows, there was no other sign of them. No noise at all except for our steps, clumsy as we were in the dark.

  “Where are they?” one of the boys grumbled as they went off to search the rest of the first-floor rooms. Of course, he was disappointed. They were here for a confrontation, a fun little chance to pick on someone. Finding the Rust Maidens would be so much better than their usual pranks, like pulling a girl’s pigtails. The boys might
even get a reward if they managed to bring them out.

  “They must be up there.” Mr. Carter shined his light on the winding staircase, dark and unwelcoming. He tried not to quiver.

  I grinned. “After you, then.”

  The steps dipped under our weight, and I held my breath, unsure if they could sustain us. But the house held fast. For now.

  “Lisa?” Mr. Carter called, his gruff voice shaking the already fragile walls. “No more games. You get out here right now, girl.”

  No one answered. He tried hollering her name again, like that was all she needed to come out, a little bit of coaxing. I shivered, not wanting to hear his awful voice anymore. Without a word, I broke away and slipped down a narrow hallway. The corridor was longer than I expected, and turned suddenly, an endless coil of sagging walls and flecked-off paint. The ceiling sank over me, and I felt like I was being swallowed whole.

  The boys cajoled each other somewhere behind me, but I was soon out of their reach, all alone in this place where I didn’t belong. Where none of us belonged, except the Rust Maidens.

  I kept moving, kept telling myself that Jacqueline would be here, somewhere. That it wasn’t too late.

  Something in the gloom sighed, and it sounded close, so close. But there was nothing next to me. Nothing in front or behind. The flashlight beam held steady in my hand. I wouldn’t look above me. I wanted to find Jacqueline, but if she was there hanging from the plaster overhead, I wasn’t brave enough to see it yet. Because girls couldn’t cling to the ceiling. And they had to still be girls, didn’t they?

  At the end of the hall, a door was ajar. I froze, and wondered what I was doing here. I should go back. I should leave this place altogether. This mansion, this street, this whole damn town.

  But I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t abandon her.

  The tip of my boot eased the door the rest of the way open, and I went in. Almost immediately, I regretted it. Inside, the room reeked of vinegar and ammonia and metal. My eyes watering, I covered my mouth with my free hand and tried to turn back. But it was too late. Instantly, I was caught in a tangle of something thicker than spiderwebs. I flailed in the shadows as the flashlight passed over dozens of strings and clothespins. Laundry lines, but not quite the same. These were strung with hundreds of pictures.