Chapter 5

5

We slipped outthe back entrance of Jazz Café while Laura and Candace were still onstage, then hurried toward the crowded mouth of Camden Town Station, checking over our shoulders the whole way that we weren’t being followed by whoever—or whatever—was stalking us.

Vivi was still rattled. On the train, she breathed into her cupped hands to settle her stomach. It took a few stops before the color started returning to her cheeks and dots of sweat stopped rising from her forehead.

We emerged from the Underground at Leicester Square, into a world in which Vivi no longer belonged. In Camden, her tattoos and piercings didn’t look out of place, but here, as we hurried past crowds of tourists and chain restaurants and kiosks selling tickets for Matilda and Magic Mike, she was an oddity.

We let ourselves into Grey’s apartment building with the keycodes she’d sent us when she bought the flat a year ago, though she was so infrequently in London that neither Vivi nor I had ever actually visited yet. Horrible images slotted into my thoughts as we caught the lift up to the penthouse, one after another, like an old-fashioned slide projector: Grey, OD’ed on her bathroom floor; Grey, murdered by the man in the bull skull. When we opened the front door, though, we found the place neat and vast and impersonal. City lights seeped through floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Thames. The London Eye turned slowly in the distance.

There were no signs of anything weird. In fact, there were very few signs that anyone lived here at all. A couple of coffee table books about fashion but no bookshelves stuffed to bursting with the dark fairy tales Grey had loved most as a teenager. A sleek galley kitchen of gloss white and marble with floors of polished concrete, but no wood, no warmth, no food. The air tasted bitter, the smack of bleach and ammonia. All the furniture looked as though it had been chosen by an interior designer, then styled and lit for a Vogue photo shoot about bland celebrity homes.

It didn’t feel like Grey. Grey’s brain was chaotic. When she was a teenager, her room had never been clean. Her socks had never matched. She was always at least fifteen minutes late to everything. Nothing in her life had ever been neat or ordered. She slammed through the world, a tornado in the form of a girl, and left a trail of destruction behind her. That’s what she’d been like at seventeen, anyway. Maybe becoming a supermodel and fashion designer had changed that, but it seemed as impossible as switching out the bones of your skeleton.

Vivi and I moved through the apartment in eerie silence, trailing our fingertips over Grey’s possessions. The couches, the mirrors, the clocks and cabinets. It felt clandestine to be in someone else’s personal space like this. Like I could open any drawer or door or cupboard and there find my sister’s bare-naked soul, neatly folded. A thrill settled over me.

Suddenly I was ten years old again and obsessed with my big sister. Back then, Grey’s bedroom had been a temple in wartime, a place of worship I had to sneak into when its guardian was unawares. Whenever I knew she’d be out of the house for a couple of hours, I’d push open the door and start exploring. I only did it when I knew I could take my time, savor the experience. Her makeup bag was a favorite, a seemingly bottomless chest of treasure filled with glosses and glitters that left my skin sticky and shellacked. I wanted to live in her skin, to know what it was like to be as beautiful and mysterious as Grey Hollow.

But the apartment was not the home of the sister I knew. When Grey daydreamed about running away, it hadn’t been to a place like this. It had been to some rich, dark hidey-hole in Budapest or Prague, a place swaddled in velvet and brass. Vivi’s request to Grey was that the place have a library. All I wanted was black-and-white chessboard floors in the kitchen and bathrooms, like I had in all my houses in Sims 4 whenever I played. At thirteen, I’d considered it the height of opulence.

We found neither of those things here.

“It’s like an interior designer masturbated in here,” Vivi said, tapping her fingernails against a vase, “and came on everything.”

“Gross.”

“But true. None of this is Grey. She must’ve paid someone to do it. Either that or a reptilian shape-shifter is wearing her skin.”

“I didn’t know reptilian shape-shifters were renowned for their interior decorating skills.”

“And that’s why you’ll never be part of the Illuminati.”

The master bedroom was something out of a luxury hotel—chic, modern, soulless. The bed was made with neat hospital corners and there were no personal items on display, not so much as a hairbrush or photograph. I opened the walk-in closet. Here, too, it was painstakingly ordered. Rows and rows of unworn heels, bright as beetle backs. I ran my fingers over the clothes. Sequins and braided velvet and silk, all heavy and expensive. Oscar de la Renta, Vivienne Westwood, Elie Saab, Grey Hollow.

Vivi held up a pair of snakeskin pants. “The reptilian shape-shifter theory is starting to check out.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone has been here for weeks,” I said.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has been here ever.”

“I suppose she has a cleaner or something?”

Vivi trailed a finger over a shelf in the closet; there was no dust. “Has to be, right? Grey is not this tidy.”

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Vivi shrugged. “I don’t know if we need to worry. Maybe she never even made it home from Paris.”

I looked back at Grey’s closet. The green tulle gown she’d worn to Cuckoo Club in her Instagram post from five days ago was wedged in there, pressed and lifeless now that it didn’t have her body to animate it. “If she’s in London, I think I know where she might be.”

---

It felt like some holy ritual. Something I had waited my whole life for. To sit where she sat, to paint my face with her makeup, to slip my body into her clothes. To become Grey.

We thumbed through her wardrobe and draped ourselves in her vestments. Even Vivi, who was generally unimpressed by fashion unless it was ripped or studded, was breathless and giddy at the prospect of unlimited access to Grey’s wardrobe. We tried on piece after piece. Eventually, I settled on a gold minidress and a green silk coat that drifted over my skin like cobwebs. Vivi chose a cardinal-red power suit with cigarette pants and lipstick to match, her peach fuzz slicked flat to her skull with shimmery gel.

I called Grey again and again during the cab ride to Cuckoo Club, certain that we were overreacting, certain that she would answer my next message and Vivi and I would spend the rest of the week cringing at our silliness, but Grey never answered, never read any of my messages.

We got out of the cab on Regent Street and walked beneath a huge shadowed archway to the backstreet that Cuckoo called home. Fairy lights were cast over the street like a net, and restaurants still hummed with late-night drinkers and diners huddled beneath outdoor heaters. There was no line outside the club. The door was unmarked, unassuming. A couple walking in front of us buzzed, and it opened an inch to seep out neon-purple light and electro house music. They had a hushed conversation with whoever answered and were turned away.

Vivi and I stepped up next. I buzzed. The door was opened by a short blond woman with eyes like a cat. “Sur la liste?” she asked, and then she looked at us closely and her mouth fell open a little. We were the ghosts of Grey; of course she would recognize us. “She’s not here,” she said in English; her accent was so heavy, her tongue sounded swollen.

“Do you know where she is?” Vivi asked.

“I told your friend yesterday—I haven’t seen her.”

“Someone else was looking for her?” I asked. “Who?”

The woman’s expression darkened. “A man. A man who smelled like . . . death and burning.”

My heartbeat shifted into a higher gear. I thought of the woman who’d slipped through my bedroom window when I was a child and cut off a lock of my hair, of the man who’d tried to pull Vivi into his car because he’d read about her on the internet. “Did he say why he was looking for her?” I pressed. “What he wanted?”

The woman shook her head. “I didn’t let him in. He was . . . His eyes. They were black, like ink. I was afraid of him.”

Vivi and I shared a look, and a thought: We need to find her.

“We want to talk to this guy.” I showed the hostess a picture of Grey’s boyfriend. “Tyler Yang. Is he here?”

“Yes, but it’s a private event tonight,” she said hesitantly. “If you’re not on the guest list, I can’t let—”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Vivi said, practically purring. She put a finger against the woman’s lips—and that was all it took. The woman closed her eyes at Vivi’s touch, dazed and drunk on the heady smell of my sister’s skin. With her eyes still shut, she opened her mouth and sucked on Vivi’s finger.

I had seen my sisters do this thing before. I had done this thing before too, a couple of times, though the power of it terrified me. The things I could make people do when they were high on me.

When the woman opened her eyes, her pupils were huge and her breath smelled like honey and rotten wood. Vivi stroked her cheek, then leaned in to whisper, “You want to let us in.” The hostess opened the door, giddy, a dumb smile on her face. Her gaze was fixed on Vivi. In the purple light of the vestibule, I saw what she saw: how frighteningly beautiful my sister was, sharper and skinnier than Grey, like a rapier where Grey was a broadsword.

“You shouldn’t do that to people,” I said as we headed down a hall toward the source of the music. A thick bass jumped in my chest.

“Do what?” Vivi asked.

“Whatever the hell that is.”

The club—Grey’s favorite, if her Instagram was to be believed—was lit from all angles by screaming pink neon. For the private event, the ceiling had been laced with a forest of cherry blossoms that dripped down over the dance floor. Oversize buckets of Dom Pérignon with glow-in-the-dark labels gave every table a soft green phosphorescence. The bar was gold and glass and framed by a set of sumptuous purple velvet curtains. Drinks were served in tall, impossibly elegant glasses that looked remarkably similar to the tall, impossibly elegant women who drank from them. The crowd was made up mostly of people in the fashion industry—models, designers, photographers—but I also spotted a famous rapper, an actor couple from an American cult teen TV show, the socialite daughter of an old British rock legend. Many did a double take when they saw us, then leaned together to speak in hushed tones.

“Keep your eyes peeled for him,” I told Vivi.

“How did you know he’d be here?”

“Grey’s here all the time. Tyler is always in her pictures.”

Tyler Yang was a heavily tattooed Korean British model who’d gained a reputation in the fashion world for the ease with which his style blurred gender boundaries. Rarely was he seen in something that wasn’t daring: Gucci floral suits, bespoke lace blouses, strings of antique pearls, pussybow shirts, heeled loafers. His eyes were always lined, his lids and lips slicked with a candy shop of bright pop colors.

Grey’s sexuality was a much discussed but ultimately unconfirmed topic of gossip. Was she dating this Victoria’s Secret Angel or that new Hollywood leading man? Vivi and I both knew that Grey was straight. It had always been men for her, the same way it had always been women for Vivi.

For me, it had always been both. My very first kiss had been with Justine Khan in the game of spin the bottle at Jennifer Weir’s sleepover. Her mouth had been soft and her perfume had smelled like lip gloss and vanilla frosting. It was supposed to be a bit of giggling fun, but it lit something inside me. A disco ball in my chest, an insistent hunger somewhere within me that made me want to thread my fingers through her then-short hair and press my hips against hers. It confirmed something about myself that I had suspected for a while. The kiss did something to Justine too—something strange and ugly. She kissed me again and again, hungry and insistent, until I tried to push her away and she forced me down, until she bit my lip so hard it burst and bled, until her fingernails raked claw marks into my arms and I had to start fighting her off, until all the girls who were watching us realized it wasn’t a game anymore and had to wrestle her, keening and frothing at the mouth, off me. The story had twisted over time, so now girls at school said I was the one who bit her; I was the one who wouldn’t let her go; I was the mad witch who’d tried to bite her face off.

It remained the less terrifying of the two kisses I had endured.

“There,” Vivi said, nodding toward the back wall.

Tyler was in a pink velvet booth wedged between a pop star and a supermodel. An ex–Disney teen star hovered nearby, trying to find her way into the conversation.

I could see why Grey liked Tyler: the bouffant of black hair tied in a knot at the crown of his skull, the strong line of his jaw, the muscles that moved beneath his tattoo sleeves. Tonight his brown eyes were rimmed with kohl, his lips shellacked with green lipstick. He wore a sheer lilac blouse and high waisted trousers, the kind men favored in the 1920s. The glowing Dom Pérignon label gave his skin an absinthine quality. The women were beautiful, but Tyler Yang was—like Grey—utterly striking. I licked my lips.

“Damn, is that who I think it is?” Vivi said, eyeing the supermodel. “The Victoria’s Secret Angel, right? I think she just broke up with her girlfriend.”

“Keep it in your pants,” I said. “We’re investigating our sister’s mysterious disappearance. This is no time for fraternizing.”

“Says the girl salivating over Tyler Yang. Said missing sister’s boyfriend.”

“I’m not salivating.”

“At least not with your mouth.”

“Gross.”

“Yet true.”

Tyler spotted us then. We made and held eye contact across the room.

“Uh . . . He does not look super pleased to see us,” Vivi said.

Tyler’s expression had fermented into vinegar. He was staring now, his eyes dark and jaw set. He raised a thin finger, curled it toward himself. Come.

“It appears we are being beckoned,” I said.

“Well, that’s all the invitation I need.” Vivi pushed past me and made a beeline for the model. Shameless. As we approached the table, however, Tyler had a quiet word with the women, and they rose and made their way toward the bar, two goddesses draped in starlight.

“No, why are they going away?” Vivi said, staring after the women as they glided through the crowd. My phone pinged in my hand. I glanced at the screen, but the message was from my mother, not Grey. Shit. In all the panic of trying to find Grey, I’d forgotten about my curfew.

Heading home soon,I messaged Cate, then I turned on airplane mode so she wouldn’t show up at the club to escort me home.

“Little Hollows,” Tyler said, looking from Vivi to me. “You have to be.”

“We’re Grey’s sisters,” I said as we sat.

“If she sent you to apologize, I’m not interested in hearing it.”

“Apologize for what?” Vivi asked.

“Oh, you know, for being a lying, cheating witch.”

Vivi raised her eyebrows. I pressed my teeth together. We both hated that word. “We’re here because we can’t find Grey,” she said. “We’re worried she might be missing.”

Tyler laughed, though not kindly. “No, she’s not.”

“When did you last see her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. A few days ago, when we broke up. I suppose I haven’t seen her since then.”

“You broke up?” Vivi asked.

“Yes.”

“Why? Did you fight?”

“That’s usually what happens when people break up.”

Vivi’s jaw tilted down. There was still the ghost of a smile on her lips, but her eyes were sharp. Going in for the kill. “Did you get angry?” The way she asked it, it was almost like she was flirting. “Did you hurt her?”

Tyler stirred his drink. “I don’t like where this is going.”

He tried to stand then, but Vivi grabbed him by the collar and pulled him down. She sidled up close to him and hooked her leg over his thigh; to anyone watching, it would look flirtatious, not threatening.

“You’re the first person the police are going to come to after we call them,” said Vivi, her lips close to Tyler’s ear. I sat up straighter at the word police. Vivi was bluffing, surely. It wasn’t that serious yet—was it? “The ex-boyfriend. You know it’s true. So tell us what happened.” She stroked his cheek, but whatever cloying spell she’d used on the hostess, it wasn’t working on him.

He’s quite special, Grey had told me. You’ll know what I mean when you meet him. Is this what she’d meant?

Tyler looked the way I felt: afraid. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Police? Why are you getting them involved?”

“Because we can’t find her, you idiot,” Vivi said. “Grey is uncontactable. The hostess here tonight said a weird dude was looking for her. Something might have happened to her.”

“Grey is always disappearing. That’s nothing new.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“For days at a time, she disappears off the face of the earth, okay? Won’t answer calls, misses work, dates, fittings. Everyone else got used to it. It was part of her mystery. Would she show up or wouldn’t she? All very exciting. But it sucks when you’re dating her. Your sister was a lousy girlfriend.”

Vivi prickled. “Be very careful what you say about her.”

“Why? Would I bad-mouth her if I’d done anything to her? No. I mean it, Grey was a bad girlfriend. There was someone else, I assume. That’s why we broke up. That’s probably who she’s with right now.”

“Grey cheated on you?” I asked. It didn’t sound like her. Grey was wild, sure, but not flippant—especially not with other people’s hearts.

“Well, she didn’t admit it to my face, but what else am I supposed to assume? Where does she go when she disappears? All I know is when she was here, she was only ever here halfway— if I was lucky. We were together for a year and I feel like I barely scratched the surface of who she was. She kept so many secrets, so much of herself compartmentalized. Especially the occult stuff.”

Vivi and I exchanged glances. Tyler had our attention, and he knew it.

“Oh, I suppose you don’t know much about that, do you?” he said. “I don’t either, really. All I know is the one time she let me come to her apartment, it was the creepiest place I’ve ever been. Full of weird shit. Dead things, dark magic. Grey thinks she’s some kind of witch.”

“We were at her apartment tonight,” I said. “There was nothing like that there.”

“Everybody keeps secrets, Little Hollow. Perhaps your big sister has been keeping more secrets from you than you realize.”

It was no surprise to me that Grey was still interested in the occult. It had been that way all her teenage years. Grey liked things that were obscure and dangerous: older men; drugs; séances in graveyards; heavy leather-bound books that smelled of chocolate and promised spells to commune with demons.

“What did you fight about when you broke up?” Vivi asked Tyler.

“I saw a man leaving her apartment,” he replied. Vivi and I shared another look. “That was the final straw.”

“Did he . . . ,” Vivi began. “Uh, how does one phrase this? Was he, perchance, some kind of Minotaur with all the flesh stripped off the bones of his face?”

Tyler stared at her for a few moments, then smiled. “I think we’re done here, Little Hollows,” he said as he finished his drink and shrugged on his velvet jacket. “When you find Grey, tell her I hate her.”

With that, he stood and was gone.