“We’ve never had rats before, though,” Mark said, frowning at the wastebasket and the creature thrashing around inside it as he carried it gingerly toward the door, as if he were holding a bomb.
“He wasn’t small when he came in,” Olivia said.
I released her from the hug, but stayed close beside her on the bed, keeping one arm around her. Her body was still shuddering.
By now Izzy had stepped into the room and had the camera pointed at her little sister. “What do you mean, Liv?” she asked.
“I mean, he was the Rat King. When he came into the room, he was up on his hind legs, and he was bigger than Daddy.”
“You were dreaming, sweetie,” I told her, rubbing comforting circles on her back.
“I was not dreaming,” Olivia insisted. “I was wide-awake.”
“There’s no such thing as the Rat King,” Izzy said from behind her camera. “Not really.”
“Is so, and there he goes,” Olivia said as Mark carried it out, the hugeNutcrackerbook clamped over the open top of the wastebasket so the enormous rat would not escape.
Scrabble. Thump. Scrabble. Thump.
Izzy panned the camera, following her father.
I let go of Olivia and slid off the bed, kicked at the pile of stuffed animals on the floor, making sure the rat hadn’t been accompanied by a friend. My foot hit something hard. I bent down, pushed aside Freddy and Trixie, and let out a funny little strangled-sounding gasp when I saw what was beneath them.
“What’s your grandmother’s stone doing in here?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. Her face was splotchy, and she was still choking back sobs.
I looked Olivia in the eye. “Did you take it?”
“No!”
“Well, how did it get in here, then?” I asked.
Izzy stepped back to frame both me and Olivia in her shot.
“I don’t know,” Olivia said again, tears in her eyes. “Maybe he brought it?”
“He who?” I asked.
“The Rat King.”
“There is no Rat King,” I said, my voice high and shrill.
“Is so,” Olivia said. “Didn’t you see? Daddy just carried him outside.”
I made myself take a breath. “That was a rat, Liv. Just a regular old rat.”
“He changed back. Before you came in.”
“Olivia—”
“Grandma Needle will believe me,” she said.
I clenched my jaw. “Why do you call her that?”
“Because that’s what she told me to call her. Needle Sivam. I think it’s kind of a silly name, but she said it’s one of her names and I can know it because I’m special.”
My skin prickled. “One of her names?”
