Will looks at him hard. His eyes rise to Pete, then dart about the stones. “Let’s get out of here.”
Pete shrugs. “Nicely done, Frankie.” He drops the watch into his pocket. There’s a click and his flashlight’s bright beam spills yellow light over our cousin. Frankie’s shirt clings to his chest and stomach. There are smudges of moldy graveyard dirt all down his front.
“So I passed the test, right?” he asks.
“I’d say so,” Pete says. “And since I’m the final judge, that’s all that counts.”
Frankie looks to me then. Through my fading fear, realization seeps in: Frankie’s passed their test. We are going with my brothers on their expedition.
Pete’s flashlight swings away as he begins back through the headstones. Will follows, hands buried deep in his pockets.
“I don’t think he heard anything,” he mutters. “I think he made it up.”
Frankie stands up and tries to brush some of those leaves off himself.
“Frankie, you did it,” I whisper as we follow them back to the gate. “You did it!”
“Guess so,” he says. “It wasn’t that bad, really.”
It’s incredible. None of us has ever spent a whole minute over Hiltch’s grave. Frankie ain’t only tough. He’s the toughest boy I’ve ever seen. Who would have thought a city boy would have that kind of guts?
But just then Frankie suddenly stops in front of me. Looking past him, I see Pete and Will have stopped too.
“What is it?” I ask.
No one answers.
Then I see her.
Beyond the beam of Pete’s flashlight, standing among the stones, is a woman. A woman in white.
The witch is here.
Chapter 9
MADLINER PLACE
Fear has a taste. It’s dead leaves and butterfly weed and moldy earth. It’s a funny thing to think as I run through that graveyard in the fog and the dark with my brothers and my cousin and a witch chasing us. But I taste it just the same, even though my tongue is bone-dry in my spitless mouth as I gulp chilly night air—maybe for the last time—and force my rubbery legs to move even faster.
A tombstone rushes out of the dark. I twist away from its shovel shape, my knee scraping rough stone as I go. The next one catches me square in the stomach. I go right over it and land flat on my back, all the wind rushing from me in a sudden gust.
I lie on wet soil with that tombstone leaning crookedly above me. Whoever it belongs to, they’ll be sharing it with me. That witch will kill me right here.
A pair of hands seizes my collar. It’s Frankie. He drags me up and points wildly through the curling fog to the stone wall.
“Straight through and don’t stop!” he shouts.
He don’t make any sense. The wall is too high to jump, and we are nowhere near the gate. Then a piece of mist lifts and I see what he means: there’s a section of the wall that’s crumbled. It’s hardly more than a heap of stones.
“Let’s go!” he cries and, still holding on to my collar, he starts off through those tombstones once again.
A splash of yellow light sweeps across us: Pete’s flashlight swinging crazily as he runs somewhere behind us. So the witch ain’t got him yet. Then I hear Will cussing—awful, terrible things—but that’s a relief too. If he’s cussing, he ain’t dead.
Frankie and me run along the wall. There’s a white-hot fire in my lungs, its flames licking the insides of my ribs. My knee throbs where I scraped it against that stone. My breath comes in ragged gasps.
“There it is!” Frankie cries.
Mist rolls through the hole in the wall. It rushes past my face as Frankie and me hurtle through that opening and go rushing into black night beyond. Next thing I know we’re crashing through high, wet grass and I’m laughing, laughing like crazy though there ain’t nothing funny about it.
Trees ahead. Tall and dark and safe. The trail appears on our left and I angle myself toward it, pointing so Frankie can see where to go. Only he doesn’t see; he keeps running straight and we bump. We stagger yet somehow keep from tumbling into the sea of fog that swirls about our knees. We keep running, and now thick tree trunks are dashing past us. We’re into the woods.
“We made it, Frankie, we made it!”
“Shut up, you fool!”
Will’s voice blasts in my ear and I realize he’s been right behind us the whole time. Grabbing hold of us both, he shoves us down behind one of the trunks, and all three of us slide into dead leaves and wet earth. At once, I twist to look back, expecting to see that witch coming right for us, her pale bony arms out, fingers grasping—