“Ready?” I ask, although the only person who needs to be ready is me. “Here we go.”
“You can do this, El,” Maeve says supportively.
Cassius squeezes my shoulder.
The clock starts to chime, and I reach down that spiderweb within me that connects to it. “How do I move my anchor?”
The room flips to red, haze moving in and ash snowing from the sky. I’ve never had this happen so fast before, with so little effort. My great-grandfather appears near the fireplace again in all his grayscale glory, silver eyes with their hollow pinprick pupils focused on me. Grams and Gramps appear beside him, then my mom and dad.
“Hand me the ring,” I say to Maeve.
She grabs the jade ring from the sofa table and plops it in my palm.
“How do I make this my anchor?” I ask my ancestors.
My mother points at the ring and shakes her head. Then she points at the clock and moves her arms as if they were the hands on the clockface. She does it again and again until I get it. “The anchor has to be something that moves. Something animated in some way.” I’m not sure how I know that, but I’m sure.
My mother’s ghost nods her head vigorously. Grams is beside me, holding out her hand, beckoning me. “Grams wants me to follow her.”
All my ancestors turn and follow my grandmother toward the backyard, floating through the wall of the house. I grab my coat and shove my feet into my shoes, then scurry out the back door. They’re all heading toward the cemetery, still gesturing for me to follow. It’s eerie, seeing the ghosts of my family members stroll toward their graves. It’s something I never expected to see.
But when we get there, I understand. Grams points to her grave. Phantom is there, curled beside her headstone.
The fox is dead.
Really dead.
Eyes white and belly swollen with maggots dead.
“Oh no,” I say sadly. I cover my mouth and nose with my hands, both from emotion and to block the stench of the dead thing.
Maeve moves in beside me. “Is that the fox you were feeding?”
A heavy weight tugs at my sternum. I press my fist to it and moan. “Something’s happening. It feels like…” I can’t finish my sentence. It’s like I’m tethered to something heavy, something that’s arcing around me. For a second I can’t breathe. It feels as though it will tear my rib cage out. But once the weight swings into the fox, the tension eases.
My ancestors close in, gathering around the dead animal.
“Eloise, what is happening?” Maeve asks.
“The night stinks of ancient power,” Cassius says from somewhere behind us.
Gramps sinks into Phantom’s body first, and the fox’s milky-white eyes begin to clear. My great-grandfather goes next, and the dull fur starts to warm to a vibrant red. Once my great-grandmother sinks in, Phantom’s deflated abdomen fills like a balloon. My parents follow, and more ancestors—ones whose names I do not know, ones I’m sure never lived here but are somehow connected to me through blood—sink in. The red haze in my vision begins to clear as one after another, those black-and-white manifestations blend into the dead fox.
“Something that moves, that can come with me,” I mumble. “Something that no one will suspect or be able to take from me.”
Grams is the last to slip inside. Phantom climbs to his feet, maggots and a thick dark liquid expelling from his mouth onto her grave. The fox coughs, then shakes itself, blinking and flicking its fluffy red tail, more alive and vibrant than it was the very first day it crawled from the woods.
Beside me, Maeve makes a choking sound.
Phantom jogs closer and sits directly in front of me, his eyes sparkling like someone has replaced them with two priceless emeralds. Maeve and Cassius move to my sides, all of us staring down at the resurrected fox.
“The anchor has moved,” I say.
“It’s not a ring, but it’ll do,” Maeve mumbles.
“How the fuck are we going to get this creature into Night Haven,” Cassius says.
The fox lifts its chin. “Well, don’t just stand there, darling,” Phantom says in Gram’s voice. “We’re all hungry in here. How about some of that turkey?”
