The kitchen was empty. A trickle of water ran out of the faucet, and there was an odd, sharp smell. Sitting grotesquely in the middle of the green linoleum floor was a paper doll.
It was folded to allow it to sit, and one arm was twisted up to give it a mockingly casual air. As if Audrey were saying: "Here I am. Where have you been?" It was obscene.
Tom's hands were on Jenny's shoulders, trying to calm her. She wrenched away from him and picked the macabre little figure up. It was the doll Audrey had used in the Game, her playing piece in the paper house. Audrey herself had drawn the face, had colored in the hair and clothes with Joey's crayons. Jenny hadn't seen it since she'd packed it up with the rest of the Game in the white box. She realized suddenly that it hadn't been in Angela's toolshed None of the dolls had.
The waxy face looked up at Jenny with a terrible cunning smile. A U of bright pink. As if this doll knew what had happened to the real Audrey, and was glad about it.
"Oh, God-God," Jenny was gasping, almost sobbing. The doll crumpled in her hand. Everything in the kitchen was wavering.
"I don't believe it," Michael said, pushing past the others. "Where is she?" He stared at Jenny, grabbed her arm. "Where is she?"
Tom grabbed Michael. "Let go of her."
"Where's Audrey?"
"I said, let go of her!"
Dee's voice rang out dangerously. "Cool off, both of you!"
"But how did she get out of the kitchen?" Michael said wildly. "We were right around the corner-we didn't hear anything. Nothing could have happened to her. We were right there."
Dee was kneeling on the floor, running her fingers across the linoleum.
"It's darker here-see? This whole area is darker. And it smells burned."
Jenny could see it now, a circle of darker green several feet in diameter.
Tom was still gripping Michael, but his voice was quiet. "You didn't see that thing on the beach-that void, Mike. It didn't make any noise at all. That's how she got out of the kitchen."
'"In the midst of the word she was trying to say,/ In the midst of her laughter and glee,'" Zachary quoted, behind them.
Jenny turned sharply to see him standing there.
With his thin, intense face and his dark-circled eyes, he looked like a prophet of doom. But when his gray eyes met Jenny's, she knew he cared. He was still holding the poem.
The last of the cloudiness in Jenny's head vanished. Tears and hysterics weren't going to help Audrey. They weren't going to help anyone. She looked down at the crumpled paper doll in her hand.
It was her fault. Audrey had fallen into a black hole, and it was Jenny's fault, just as Summer's death had been. But Audrey wasn't dead yet.
"I'll find her," Jenny said softly to the paper thing she held. "I'll find her, and then I'll rip you to pieces. I'm going to win this Game."
It went on smiling its cunning waxy smile, bland and malevolent.
Michael was sniffling and rubbing his nose. Dee was investigating the floor like an ebony huntress.
"It's like the marks a UFO might leave," she said. "When it lands, I mean. A perfect circle."
"Or a fairy ring," Michael said thickly. "She was so scared of that kind of stuff-legend stuff, you know?" Tom patted him on the back.
"The Erlking," Jenny said grimly. She reached across Tom to grip the sleeve of Michael's sweatshirt. "But we got her back from him last time, MichaeL We'll get here back now."
Dee stood in one fluid, graceful motion. "I think we'd all better stay together from now on," she said.
Zach had moved up behind Jenny. The five of them were together, standing in one connected knot in the center of the kitchen. Jenny felt herself draw strength from all the others.
"We can sleep in the living room," Michael said. "On the floor. We can push the furniture back."
They raided the bedrooms for blankets and mattresses and found sleeping bags in the closet. In the bathroom Jenny stripped off her golden dress and put on an old sweatsuit of Michael's. She jammed the shimmering material in the laundry hamper, never wanting to see it again.
It scared her to be alone even for a minute.
But we haven't had another clue, she thought. He can't do anything else without another clue. It wouldn't be fair.
"It wouldn't be sporting," she said through her teeth to the wall. It had suddenly occurred to her that Julian might be able to hear her. To see her, even-he'd watched her from the shadows for years. It was a disturbing thought, to know that no place was private, but right now Jenny hoped he was listening.
"It's no Game at all if we don't have a chance," she told the wall softly but fiercely.
In the living room she sat down on a mattress next to Tom. He put an arm around her, and she rested against him, glad of his warmth and solidity.
If there was one tiny comfort in all of this, it was that Tom was with her again. She snuggled into his arm and shut her eyes. This was where she could forget about Julian-forget about everything dark and terrible. Tom's strong warm hand clasped hers, held tightly.
Then she felt the pressure released and sensed the change in Tom's body. Tension flooding in. He was holding her hand up, looking at it.
No, not at her hand. At the ring.
The golden band which had felt like ice on her' finger earlier that night had warmed to her bodj temperature. She hadn't even noticed it for hours.
Now, horrified, she snatched her hand back from Tom's. She tried to pull the ring off. It wouldn't come.
Soap, she thought. She pulled frantically, twisting the circlet, reddening her finger. Soap or butter orIt was no good.
She knew without even trying. The ring was on to stay. She could do anything she liked, but it wouldn't come off until Julian wanted it to. If she could have gotten it off, she might have been able to change tie words inside-and Julian would never risk that He'd said that speaking and writing words made them true. He would never take the chance that Jenny might change the words and change her fate.
"We're going to win the Game," she said to the shuttered darkness in Tom's eyes. "When we win, I'm free of my promise." She said it almost pleadingly-but Tom's face remained closed. He'd gone away again, leaving a polite stranger in nil place.
"We'd better get to sleep," he said and turned to his own pile of blankets.
Jenny was left sitting there, feeling the inscription on the inside of the ring as if the letters were burning their way into her skin.
Nothing is as frightening as waking up and not knowing who you are, not knowing it's you waking. It happened to Jenny Sunday morning. She opened her eyes and didn't know which direction was which.
She didn't know her place in the world, where she was in time and space.
Then she remembered. Michael's living room. They were there because of Julian.
She sat up so suddenly that it made her dizzy, and she frantically looked for the others.
They were all there. Michael was curled almost in a ball under his blanket; Dee was sprawled lazily on the couch like a sleeping lioness. Zach was on his back on the floor, his blond ponytail streaming on his pillow. Tom was beside him, face turned toward Jenny, one hand stretched toward her. As if he'd reached out in his sleep, unaware of it.
Jenny took a moment to look at him. He looked different asleep, very young and vulnerable. At times she loved him so much it was like a physical ache, a pain in her chest.
Dee yawned and stretched, sitting up. "Everybody here?" she said, instantly alert and oriented. "Then let's kick Michael and make him get us some breakfast. We're guests."
Tom pulled his hand away when he woke up, and avoided Jenny's eyes.
"Do you really think we can get away with it?" Michael asked doubtfully.
"We've got to," Jenny said. "What else are we going to say to them? 'I'm sorry; your daughter's been kidnapped, but don't worry because we're going to get her back'?"
"It'll be all right as long as we get the housekeeper," Dee said. "I'll talk to her while you go upstairs."
"Then we'll go by your place," Jenny said, "and you can tell your parents you're staying with me. And Zach can tell his parents he's staying with Tom, and Tom-"
"But the question is: will they buy it?" Michael said. "I mean, we're not talking about just one night, here. It could be days before we find that base."
"We'll tell them we've got a school project," Jenny said, "and it may take a few nights of working on it. We'll make them buy it. We have to."
She and Dee and Zach went in Dee's jeep, while Tom and Michael followed in the RX-7. Tom hadn't said a word to her all morning, and Jenny tried to hide her left hand whenever she could. She felt as if the ring were a badge of shame.
They'd decided to go everywhere together from now on. Nobody was ever to be alone, and whenever possible all five of them were to be in the same place. They pulled up in tandem to Audrey's house, and Dee and Jenny knocked on the door while the boys watched from the sidewalk.
"Hi, Gabrielle," Dee said to the housekeeper who answered. "Are Mr. and Mrs. Myers here? Oh, too bad. Well, could you tell them that Audrey's going to spend a couple nights with Jenny and me at Jenny's?"
Meanwhile, Jenny speedily headed up the stairs of the stately house and came back a few minutes later with an armful of clothes. "Audrey just asked me to pick up a few things for her," she said brightly to Gabrielle, and then she and Dee made a fast retreat,
"Whew!" Dee said when they were back in the jeep. Jenny blinked away tears. Handling Audrey's clothes had brought the sense of guilt back. But it had to be done. Audrey would never go anywhere overnight without a few different outfits.
"We probably should have taken her car," Dee said. "She takes that everywhere, too."
"Maybe later," said Jenny. "I picked up her keys while I was in her bedroom."
"Next victim," Zachary said from the back seat.
Tom disposed of his parents quickly; he and Michael came out of his Spanish-style house with a bundle of clothes each.
"And a few textbooks," Michael said. "For authenticity."
Jenny's mother was at church. Jenny shouted her message to her father, who was bent over the pool, wrestling with the floating cleaner. "Gonna stay with Dee for a few days, Dad! We're working on a big physiology project!"
"Call us occasionally to let us know you're alive," her father said, pushing his glasses up by hunching his shoulder and not releasing his grip on the pool cleaner.
Jenny gave him one quick frightened glance before she realized it was a joke. Mr. Thornton complained a lot about being the father of a teenager with an active social schedule. She surprised him by running up and kissing his sweaty cheek.
"I will, Daddy. I love you." Then she ran away again.
It was at Zach's house that they ran into trouble.
They were giddy with their previous successes, and not prepared when they pulled up to the mock Tudor house on Quail Run. Jenny went into the garage with Zach while the others talked to Jenny's aunt Lily.
"You keep your textbooks out here?"
"The art ones. And I figure we might as well bring a flashlight." He took one off a hook on the wall.
Jenny looked around the studio Zach had made in the garage. Being here made her think about Julian, about the time in the paper house when he had impersonated Zach. Flustered, she stared at a print on the wall. It was a giant mural print showing school cafeteria tables stacked in a glorious pyramid, four high and four deep, almost blocking the exit. Zach had taken it last year after she and Tom and Dee and he had stacked the tables one night. They'd left the tables that way for the VGHS staff to find the next morning.
Jenny tried to concentrate on the fun of that night, her mind adding color to the gray tones of the picture, but a soft assault on all her senses had begun. She kept seeing Zach's face in her mind, watching it turn to Julian's. Feeling the softness of Julian's hair under her fingers.
"You okay, Jenny? You look kind of red."
"Oh, no, no, I'm fine." More flustered than ever, she added hastily, "So what have you done lately? You haven't shown me any new prints for a while,"
Zach's shoulders hunched slightly, and he looked away. "I've been busy with other things," he said.
Jenny blinked. That was a new one. Zach too busy for his photos? But she had to make conversation; she was afraid to let the silence go on.
"What's this?" she said, touching a textbook that lay open on the desk.
"Magritte," Zach said succinctly.
"Magritte? He was a painter, right?"