The dispatcher’s voice buzzes in Holly’s ear. “Yes, he’s breathing,” she says. “Barely. Please, please hurry.” But even as she’s struggling to answer questions, another part of her is watching Eden make her way to the desk in the corner of the room. Her daughter seizes a letter opener. She brings it back to Jack, kneels beside him, cuts an X into his wrist, his wrist that is already sliced and cut and scarring.
“What are you doing?” Holly cries. But even as she utters the words, she knows, because Eden has turned the letter opener onto herself. She slices her wrist open, cuts deep, so deep that the red blood wells against the white of her skin, suspended for a moment. She presses her wrist to Jack’s. Her face grows white, then whiter, the color of paper, of chalk, of bone. And like some gruesome magic trick, Jack slowly flushes, color seeping through his cheeks.
“Enough!” Holly says. “That’s enough.”
But Eden’s not listening. She’s swaying, about to collapse. Holly drops the phone, kneels beside her, tears her wrist away. Clamps one hand over it and rips at the hem of her own white nightgown because there’s nothing else.
Jane helps hold Eden down, helps bind the wound. They’re so busy tending to her that they don’t see Jack stirring, revived by Eden’s blood, not until Eden herself pushes them off and brushes the hair from his forehead.
“Jack?” Holly says. “Jack, can you hear me?”
He opens his eyes, but it’s not Holly that he sees.
“Eden?” he whispers. “Is that you?”
“Hi, Flea,” she says. She’s smiling, but there are tears too. She reaches out her good hand and pats his shoulder.
“You used to call me that,” he says sleepily. “I remember. But I don’t think I liked it.”
Eden laughs. “It’s not a nice name,” she agrees. “Jack it is, then.” She turns her gaze to Holly.
“They’ll be here soon,” she says, and only then does Holly remember the dispatcher. She’s been caught up in a world that doesn’t exist, one where both of her children are with her.
* * *
Jane retrieves the phone from the floor and disconnects it. “There really isn’t much time,” she says. “Not for us.” Her voice is light, but her eyes are dark. Ever changing, quicksilver, shifting like the sun chasing shadows across the landscape. It’s as if she’s been stripped to her core, anything extraneous burned away.
“I should be really, really angry with you,” Holly says. “Not to mention that I’m still dizzy.”
“I’m sorry about the whiskey,” Jane says, deadpan. “It pained me to waste that vintage.”
They both look at the children, who have their arms wrapped around each other. “I am sorry,” Jane says. “But how could I let you or Eden risk yourselves, my darling?”
“He believed you.” It’s not a question.
“Yes. It was a gamble, of course. I bet on my good health and lack of injuries. I hoped the proteins in Eden’s blood would repair my old age instead, bring me to that adolescent perfection Peter can’t seem to resist.” She holds her hands up, turns them back and forth beneath the light. They are slim and perfect, without age spots. “Remarkable, really. The rush of well-being it brings. I’d forgotten what youth feels like.”
“What happened?”
“It was the strangest thing—flying through the air, the silhouette of Big Ben in the distance. The moon overhead, so bright and clear I could almost touch it. Like being inside the storybook.” Jane’s face grows dreamy. “Then swooping through the tiny entrance behind the clock face. Peter was sitting in a chair in the center of the room, just staring out at the night sky. At the stars, I think. The story says he used to be able to hear them, did you know? That they whispered and sang their secrets to him.”
She pauses, as if seeing it again. “At first I thought he might be a watchman or a guard—he looked terrible. Wrinkled and gray, with a single streak of golden hair in the front. Jack was on a small cot next to him, asleep, and when Peter saw us, he bent over and did . . . something. Tink . . .” There’s a golden chatter from outside the window, a spark of light that zooms around the room, bouncing off walls and furniture until it shoots outside again, and Jane corrects herself. “Bell dashed over and knocked a syringe from his hand. He looked at me then, full-on, and his eyes were terrible. Beautiful and blue but dead. No warmth at all. ‘So you’ve come,’ he said. ‘Canny girl. I knew you would.’？”