Chapter 4

They didn't take me to the hospital.

Colette had fainted, so Mom and Dad left me where I was and ran to help carry her to the ambulance.

Everyone in the crowd was watching that. While nobody was paying attention, Caleb pulled me off the ground and shoved me into the family car parked around the corner.

"You are such a jinx." He started the engine and looked at me in the rearview mirror. "You wrecked Colette's parade and then made her collapse in front of the entire school. Do you exist just to cause problems for this family?"

The car didn't go to the hospital. It went home.

He dragged me out, hauled me down to the basement, and dropped me on the floor.

"Stay here. Mom and Dad will deal with you when they get back."

The lock went on.

This time I couldn't get up at all.

The rib Dad had kicked in was somewhere inside my lung. Every breath came with a hissing sound in my chest, and everything I coughed up was foam and blood.

It was cold.

Colder than that first night.

Footsteps moved around upstairs, then the sound of suitcases rolling. Dad's voice came through the ceiling, muffled. "We'll go straight to the private hospital. Colette needs a few days of rest. Caleb comes with us."

Mom said something I couldn't make out.

Then the front door opened and shut. The engine started up outside and faded down the street.

Quiet.

The whole house went quiet.

All that was left in the basement was the old clock ticking on the wall. I counted the ticks. As long as I could count them, I was still alive.

I was hungry. But I already knew how that was going to go.

Last time they left, they told me to help myself to whatever was in the kitchen. Then they left the keypad locks on the fridge and the cabinets exactly where they were. This time they walked out without saying anything at all, so there was no chance they'd left me anything.

I didn't have the strength to crawl up and check. There wasn't any point.

I lost track of the ticking at some point.

I wanted to see outside. The little basement window sat high up on the wall, so I pushed myself along the floor on my elbows. It took a long time. When I finally got underneath it, I realized I couldn't lift my arm that high.

But there was a gap in the broken cardboard, and through it I could see a strip of sky. Gray. No stars.

Snow came in through the gap and landed on my open palm.

It didn't melt. My hand had gotten cold enough that snow just sat there.

I worked my way back across the floor and felt around until I found the box in the corner. I reached in and there was the blanket.

The one from the first night.

The warmth was long gone. It was cold to the touch now, no different from the concrete. I pulled it out and wrapped it around myself anyway.

It was the only thing I'd ever owned.

The photo was still in my pocket. I took it out to look at it one more time, but the basement was too dark. I couldn't see anything.

I put it back and closed my eyes for a while, leaning against the blanket.

I don't know how long it went on. It got dark, then light, then dark again.

The clock kept going.

Sounds came in faintly from the street. People singing carols, a whole group of them, laughing as they went, getting farther and farther away.

So it was Christmas.

They were all celebrating. Turkey, presents, families gathered around the fireplace.

And I was on the floor of a basement, wrapped in a blanket that had stopped being warm, counting the ticks of a clock.

"Merchant."

There was almost no voice left. Just breath.

But the mirror changed anyway. Black smoke seeped out of the crack, and the shape in the tailcoat came back.

"Poor little thing." He crouched down, and his cold fingers moved across my bloody face. "You've got a few hours left. Is there anything else you want to trade?"

"It hurts." Tears ran down mixed with blood, salty. "I don't want it to hurt anymore. I want to die without the pain."

"Even dying has a price." He looked at me. "What have you got left to give me?"

"My memories of them," I said. "Take all of it. Wanting to be loved, getting hit, being locked down here, every single thing about them. Don't leave any of it."

"I don't want to remember them in my next life."

The Merchant went quiet for a moment. He looked down at me, and I couldn't read his face, but something flickered in his eyes.

"As you wish."

He pressed a finger to my forehead.

The pain went away.

My ribs stopped grinding. My lung stopped leaking. The fire in my chest went out. My body suddenly felt light, lighter than it had in a very long time.

Then the memories started to go.

Dad's face blurred first. The shouting, the boot in my ribs, the brass padlock on the basement door. All of it faded and pulled away.

Mom's hand across my face. Caleb leaning on the doorframe saying, if you'd just behave. Colette crouched next to me saying, nobody's going to know it's you in there.

All of it, coming apart.

Half a peanut butter sandwich from Harper. The broken tooth. The teacher shouting over me in the street.

Gone too.

The last thing left was a photo. A woman holding a baby, smiling so hard her eyes crinkled. There was writing on the back, but I couldn't read it anymore.

"Mo—"

The word disappeared before it got out of my mouth. I didn't know what it meant anymore.

Outside, the snow seemed to have stopped.

The blanket was still around me. The photo was still in my pocket. But neither of them had anything to do with me now.

I closed my eyes.

Nell died.

She died on Christmas, at seventeen.

Upstairs, the lights on the Christmas tree were still on.