Grim anthology

It was like stepping into another world. The music was overpowering, the bass so heavy it seemed to snake up her body from the floor to shake her from the inside out. The lights that strobed over the crowd obscured as much as they revealed: dancers in glitter and vinyl and fur, their bodies glinting with metal in places she would never think to pierce, their hair caught up in crowns and headdresses that looked like antlers. Instead of mirrored disco balls, there were trees made of glass rising from the floor, reflecting the lights. Crystal leaves hung from the clear branches overhead, making it seem as if the ceiling was heaving in time to the music.

The other girls slipped around Liv and Harley, disappearing into the crowd. Harley—who was still holding Liv’s wrist as if she were a child—leaned over to say, “This is the main room. There are two more. I’ll show you.” Then she began to lead Liv around the edge of the dance floor.

The next room seemed to be made of gold. The walls were hammered gold, and gold leaves hung from weeping golden willows while golden spotlights illuminated a dancer in a cage hanging above the crowd, her whole body painted gold. After that was the room made of silver: curving silver tree trunks; silver leaves that shivered in the warm, perfumed air; silver strobe lights that made every dancer’s skin look like platinum. Harley took Liv toward the bar in the silver room, and when Harley let go of her, she realized that sometime during their circuit of the club, Harley had switched to holding her hand.

Harley leaned close and said, “I have to go look for someone. I’ll come back for you before three. You should have a drink.” She pressed a goblet into Liv’s hand, and before Liv could object, Harley was gone.

The goblet was made of heavy gold and encrusted with jewels; it was the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a fairy-tale castle, not in a nightclub. Liv stared at the reflected lights in the shimmering liquid and sniffed it suspiciously. She still felt tipsy from the vodka and wasn’t sure if she should mix it with this...wine? She looked out at the crowd, wondering where Harley had vanished to so quickly, but she couldn’t find her. She couldn’t see any of the other girls from Castle Hall, either. She was about to put the goblet down—she had a sudden urge to look for Harley—when a boy appeared in front of her. He had spiky black hair and both of his arms were covered with full-sleeve tattoos. Liv couldn’t quite make out what the tattoos were—they seemed to swim in her vision—but she noticed that he was holding a gold goblet like hers.

“Hey, you’re new here,” he shouted over the music. He smiled at her, and she stared at him, unexpectedly transfixed. He clinked his goblet with hers and took a sip of his drink. Without thinking, she mirrored him. The wine was bracing—cool and sharp, as if she had inhaled a breath of winter.

She didn’t remember much of what happened after that, but she did remember him taking the empty goblet out of her hand and saying in her ear, “Dance with me.” His words slid like honey down her throat, and she let him lead her onto the dance floor beneath the silver leaves. He was lithe and beautiful and he tasted as icy as that wine when he kissed her. The music seemed to embed itself in her body beat after beat, and she felt as if she could dance with this unnamed boy forever and never be sated.

And then Harley was back, pulling her away from the boy and saying, “Come on, Liv. Time to go.” And Liv stumbled through the crowd, holding Harley’s hand, and she couldn’t remember why she had ever wanted to dance with that boy in the first place.

* * *

Liv awoke the next morning in Harley’s sister’s room, feeling like her head had been stuffed with cotton balls. She glanced at the clock and realized she had already missed breakfast and most of history class, but when she ran across campus and burst into the classroom, the teacher didn’t even notice.

It took almost all day for Liv to shake off her hangover. It wasn’t until she and the others were back in Harley’s room that night, passing the vodka bottle around again, that she felt as if she had finally returned to the real world—just in time to leave it.

At midnight, Harley reminded them of the rules: They had to return by 3:00 a.m., and nobody could bring anything back with them. Then she pushed the bed aside and pulled up the trapdoor, and once more a flight of stairs was revealed. Liv was prepared for a long descent, but tonight it was different. This time the stairs ended after only ten steps, delivering the twelve girls into a tunnel dug out of the earth. Liv didn’t understand how it was possible, because they should only be on the second floor, but there appeared to be roots growing out of the walls.

“It wasn’t like this yesterday, was it?” Liv whispered over her shoulder to Paige.

“Sometimes it’s different,” Paige said.

Liv wanted to ask how—or why—but she knew somehow that she shouldn’t. She was meant to accept this, the same way she had accepted the rules that Harley laid out. So she kept walking and swallowed her questions.

The tunnel ended in a short flight of steps that led to an ancient-looking wooden door. Harley lifted the latch on the iron handle as if everything was totally normal, and the door opened into the same city alley. The entrance to the club bore a different flyer tonight. It was printed with a black tree drawn like a tattoo, and gothic letters spelled out words Liv couldn’t pronounce: Magh Meall.

Inside, the club had changed in ways that made Liv wonder if she had simply remembered it wrong. The first room had trees of gold, not glass, and instead of a caged dancer hanging above there were aerial acrobats, bare legs wrapped around rippling golden silk. Liv gazed at them as the music thudded through her, and she decided that she wouldn’t drink the wine tonight, because tomorrow she wanted to remember this place.

She turned to look for Harley, but she was nowhere in sight. Liv began to push her way through the dancers, searching for her. Strangers’ hands brushed against her, their fingers sweeping over her arms, and when she looked down she saw trails of gold dust on her skin. A woman with long green ropes of hair caught hold of her, urging her to dance, and she smelled like the ocean, salty and clean. Although Liv wanted to stay with her, she forced herself to remember what she was after: Harley. She had to find Harley. Liv pulled away from the woman, whose face suddenly contorted into anger, and when she snarled at Liv, her teeth looked like fangs.

Recoiling, Liv’s gaze darted around the room, seeking anyone familiar who could explain what she had seen. Finally she glimpsed Harley slipping through the doorway into the next room. “Harley!” Liv shouted, but her voice was lost in the pounding music. She went after her, pressing against the walls so that she could avoid the dancers, but when she entered the next room—silver trees, lit with pulsing red-and-white strobe lights—she had lost her again.

Someone grabbed her elbow and she spun around, her heart racing. It was Paige. “You okay?” Paige asked.

“I’m looking for Harley,” Liv said. “Is it three yet?”

Paige shook her head. “We’ve only been here about fifteen minutes.”

That didn’t feel right.

Paige saw her confusion and said, “Let me get you a drink.” She led Liv to a curtained alcove along the wall—there were many of them, mostly full of couples—and pushed her inside. “Wait here.”

When the curtain fell, it muffled some of the music. The low red lights made the alcove feel like being inside someone’s heart. Liv’s skin itched, and she rubbed at her forearms idly until she realized something was sloughing off. She looked down in horror, but it wasn’t her skin; it was glitter.

Paige returned with two goblets—still gold and jewel-encrusted—and sat down beside her. “Here,” Paige said, handing her a drink. “You need this.”

Liv took the goblet but didn’t drink. “I think it gave me a hangover last night.”

“You get used to it,” Paige said, sipping from her own goblet.

“Where’s Harley?” Liv asked.

“Why? You have a thing for her?”

Liv’s face grew warm. “No.”

“It’s okay. Everybody has a thing for her at first.” Paige sounded resigned.

“Did you?” Liv asked.

Paige shrugged. “Sure. We were together for a while, but that’s over.”

“Do you know where she is?” Liv asked again. It was the only thing she could remember, as if her mind was stuck on repeat, and she didn’t know why.

Paige didn’t respond at first, instead studying her carefully. Liv clutched her goblet with both hands, the jewels digging into her skin, and she wished—she willed—Paige to answer her question. Finally Paige said, “Harley’s looking for her sister.”

Casey. “I thought she left school,” Liv said.

“No,” Paige said, and for a moment she looked frightened. She took another sip of her wine. “She came to the club with us a few nights ago, but we couldn’t find her before we left.”

“You mean she stayed here?”

“I don’t know. Harley thinks she can find her, but...” Paige took another sip, and the drink seemed to calm her. “Melissa and Andrea stayed, too, and we haven’t found them.”

Liv rubbed a hand over her forehead, trying to clear the fuzziness from her brain. “You mean all three of them stayed here? They never returned? How come nobody talks about that at school? Everybody says they just transferred.”

“They didn’t transfer,” Paige said flatly.

“Then what happened to them?” Liv asked. “Why would they stay here? I don’t understand.”

Paige sighed. “You’re not supposed to know this,” Paige said deliberately. “At least, not yet. You can’t tell anyone that you know. You can’t tell Harley.”

Liv was mystified. “Why did you tell me, then?”

Paige looked annoyed. “I don’t agree with everything Harley decides. And you’re one of us now—or you will be tomorrow. You might as well know.”

“What do you mean about tomorrow?” Liv asked. “Aren’t I one of you already? I promised Harley I’d do what she wanted.”

“Tomorrow everything will be finalized. Third time’s the charm.” Paige took another drink. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” She stood, her head nearly brushing the ceiling of the curtained alcove. “I’ll see you later. I have to dance.”

The way she said it—I have to dance—was so strange, as if she was being compelled to do it. Liv watched Paige leave, and then she put her own goblet of wine down on the floor. Bit by bit, like a knife scraping against the frost on a windshield, she was beginning to see.

This place. This beautiful, horrific place. What had she gotten herself into?

* * *

Liv woke to the repetitive screeching of her alarm at 7:00 a.m. She shut it off quickly. The rest of Castle Hall was silent; the other girls probably wouldn’t wake up for hours. Liv threw off her blankets and got dressed. She didn’t feel as hungover as she had the day before, but there was definitely something wrong with her perceptions. The real world seemed blurry.

She threw her laptop into her messenger bag and walked through the chilly late-October air to the dining hall. As she passed the quad, a flock of blackbirds took off from the oak tree, the beat of their wings loud in the silent morning.

The dining hall was beginning to fill with students. Liv poured herself a giant cup of coffee, took a seat alone at the table traditionally reserved for Harley’s group and opened her laptop. Three girls had stayed behind at that club. Melissa Wong, Andrea Richmond, and Harley’s sister, Casey. Liv searched for the girls’ names online, looking for evidence of how their disappearances had been reported. Melissa and Andrea both had Facebook pages, but Melissa’s was private, so she couldn’t read it. Andrea’s, however, was mostly public. Her page was filled with messages from people saying they missed her and were worried about her, but oddly, none of the messages appeared to be from any Sloane students. One was from someone identified as Andrea’s brother, and it said, “We’re looking for you, Ann. Please come home.” It took Liv a while to read through her timeline, but the last update she had posted had been back in August. “Can’t wait to party with the girls again!”

Where had Andrea gone? Liv thought about the flyers posted on the door to the club in the alley. She couldn’t remember how to spell the name that had been on the flyer last night, but she remembered the four letters from the first night: AARU. She entered the word into the search bar. It was a term from Egyptian mythology. A heavenly paradise where souls could exist in pleasure for eternity. Similar to: Elysium, Avalon, Magh Meall. She caught her breath and clicked on the link to Magh Meall and read, “From Irish mythology, a pleasurable realm able to be accessed by only a select few...a place of eternal beauty...occasionally visited by mortals.”

Liv stared at the screen, her mouth going dry. These places were myths, fairy tales. It wasn’t possible for them to exist. But it wasn’t possible for a stairway to open up beneath Harley’s bed, either, and lead to a city where there shouldn’t be one.

It had been real, hadn’t it? Liv thought about the dancers, the wine, the music. If it wasn’t real, she was coming unhinged, and that was even more disturbing than the idea that Harley had found a magical door to another world.

By the time breakfast was over and the students began leaving for class, Liv knew what she had to do. She put away her laptop and headed for the school gates. Technically, she wasn’t allowed to go off campus during the school day, but she knew no one would stop her. She was one of Harley’s now.

The walk into Middlebury cleared away more of the fogginess in her head. When she arrived at Madam Sofia’s Fortunes & Favors, she felt almost entirely real again.

Liv had wondered if it was too early for the shop to be open, but Madam Sofia appeared to be expecting her. “Welcome back,” the woman said as Liv entered the shop.

“I need to know what’s going on with Harley and her friends,” Liv said. “You told me they were dangerous. What did you mean?”

Madam Sofia didn’t seem surprised. “Come sit down.”

“What is that place that Harley takes us to?” Liv asked as they went into the back room. “It’s not this world, is it? How is that possible?”

Madam Sofia sat down at the table. “It is not our world, no.”

Liv felt a brief flush of relief to hear that Madam Sofia knew exactly what she was talking about.

“But it is entwined with ours,” Madam Sofia continued. “Harley has discovered a way to enter it.”

“How?”

“She has made some sort of bargain. I don’t know the exact details, but she will have agreed to something.”

“Does it have anything to do with the girls who stayed there? Melissa and Andrea and Casey?”

“There is a price to pay for entry to that world, and that is the traditional trade.”

“Are you saying that those girls were forced to stay there? That they’re...payment?” Liv was sickened. “That’s insane.”

Madam Sofia folded her hands on the table. “As I said, I don’t know precisely what Harley has agreed to, but she may be getting something out of it that we are not aware of. Nobody strikes this kind of bargain without a great need of her own.”

“What could possibly be worth kidnapping three girls?” Liv couldn’t believe it of Harley. She didn’t want to believe it. “Someone must be making her do it. How do I get her to stop?”

“She cannot stop on her own,” Madam Sofia said. “It is a curse now. There is only one way to break it.”

“Tell me how,” Liv insisted. “I’ll do it. It can’t go on.”

Madam Sofia nodded. “This is what you must do: You must take something dead from the other world and bring it to life in this one.”

Liv’s forehead wrinkled. “How am I supposed to do that? What do you even mean?”

“It is a riddle,” Madam Sofia said. “And it is a test. If you can decipher it, then you are the one who will break the curse. If you cannot decipher it...” She trailed off, raising one open hand as if she were letting something unseen fly away.

“Then the curse remains unbroken,” Liv whispered.

Madam Sofia leaned forward. “Tonight is your last opportunity to do this.”

“Why?”

“After tonight, you will have entered the other world three times. You will have sealed your own bargain, and you will not be able to break it.”

Liv remembered what Paige had told her, and she remembered that afternoon in the quad under the tree with Harley, saying “I agree” three times. She could practically feel the golden chains of that other world tightening around her.

“Tomorrow morning,” Madam Sofia continued, “if you have not broken the curse, you will be given your own talisman to mark your acquiescence to the curse.”

Liv remembered the girls’ jewelry—bracelets and necklaces and hair ornaments that all seemed to come from the same jeweler. Part of Liv still wanted to be one of them, but even as the idea of having her own otherworldly charm thrilled her, she was also repulsed by the fact that it would bind her to that place. “I’ll break it tonight,” Liv said. “Will Melissa and Andrea and Casey be able to return then?”

“I don’t know. They struck their own bargains when they stayed.”

“But they could return?”

“It depends on how deeply they’ve fallen for that other world, whether they have strong enough ties to this one. It’s possible, but it’s not up to you.”

Liv stood. “Okay.” And then she asked, “How do you know all this?”

Madam Sofia’s thin mouth turned up in a self-mocking smile. “I broke the curse myself, when I was your age. You girls are not the first to discover the allure of that other world, and you won’t be the last.”

* * *

The tunnel to the other world was the same that night, and the sign on the door in the alley said Magh Meall again. Liv wondered if they were truly entering that mythical world, or if whoever ran this nightclub thought of the name as a tongue-in-cheek joke. Inside, the club was as crowded as before, but tonight Liv could see that the dancers were not wearing costumes. What she had thought was clothing made of unusual materials was actually skin: skin covered in scales, skin erupting with downy feathers, skin rippling with spiny ridges the color of gold.

As the other girls disappeared into the cacophony of the club, Liv kept her eyes open, looking for anything that might solve Madam Sofia’s riddle. In the room with the crystal trees, there was a band playing on a stage Liv hadn’t noticed before. The lead singer was a woman with long white hair, her eyes outlined with the shapes of stars. Liv edged around the room, studying the crowd gathered at the bar. Most of the people were watching the show, but one of them, a man with tattoos of tiger stripes running up his wiry arms, had turned his back to the stage. He raised a cigarette to his mouth and plucked a matchbook from a glass bowl on the bar. The sight of someone smoking indoors startled Liv—they could do that here? she thought—and then she felt stupid. Of course they could. They could do anything here.

The tiger man tossed the matchbook back into the bowl after he had lit his cigarette, then vanished into the crowd on the dance floor. Liv crept into the gap he had left at the bar, taking the stool he had vacated. The glass bowl nearby held a whole bunch of matchbooks, and when she lifted one out, she saw that it was stamped with the words that had been on the flyer posted on the door: Magh Meall.

Liv didn’t have any pockets that night. She was wearing a tank top and leggings and boots, so she tucked the matchbook into her bra. It only took a second, but her heart began to accelerate the moment the matchbook’s sharp edges scraped against her skin. When she turned around, Harley was standing only a foot away from her, and Liv jerked in surprise.

Harley’s black hair was loose tonight, falling in thick waves over her shoulders. She looked suspicious. “What’re you doing?” she asked.

Liv thought fast. “Looking for you.” She slid off the stool and reached for Harley’s hand. Harley didn’t move; she only continued to scrutinize Liv’s face. “You want to dance?” Liv asked, and she pulled her toward the dance floor.

Liv hadn’t had anything to drink tonight—she had even avoided the vodka upstairs—but the music was intoxicating enough. There was something hypnotic about the woman’s voice, as if she gave Liv permission to do whatever she wanted, and there was something hypnotic about dancing with Harley, too. The movement of her muscles beneath the slippery fabric of her tank top; the warm flushed skin of Harley’s upper back; the tickle of Harley’s long black hair over her neck as Harley seemed to wind herself around Liv. After a while, it didn’t even feel like they were moving anymore. The dancers around them were moving; the bass from the band was shuddering; the lights above were flashing. But the two of them stood motionless, their bodies pressed together, and Liv closed her eyes so that she could feel Harley better, so that she could shut out the dream world all around them and make this real.

The voice in her ear seemed to come at her from a very great distance, the sound of it bubbling up from the depths of a dark sea, until she felt someone else’s hand—not Harley’s—on her shoulder, shaking her. “Liv! Liv! It’s time to go.”

She blinked her eyes open, and Harley peeled herself away, and beside them, Paige was shaking her head as if she had caught two children misbehaving.

“Come on,” Paige said. She glared at Harley. “You should know better.”

Harley’s cheeks were flushed and most of her lipstick had been rubbed off. She shook her head. “What time is it?”

“It’s time,” Paige said in a clipped voice.

Harley cursed. “Let’s go.”

Liv’s legs wobbled as she followed the girls out of the club. Harley didn’t even give her a second glance as she stalked through the crowd. Out in the alley, the night air was freezing on her skin. Still, Harley didn’t look back. She threw open the door to the stairs, and the other girls followed in drowsy silence. Only Paige gave Liv a meaningful glance as she pulled the door shut behind her, and then it was too dark to do anything but pay attention to where she was walking.

When they arrived back in Harley’s room, Liv headed for the exit with everyone else. She felt completely disoriented, and she could still taste Harley’s mouth. Harley had been drinking the wine.

“Liv,” Harley said. “Wait.”

Liv stopped. “What?”

When all the other girls had gone, Harley shut the door, and it was only the two of them. Harley turned to face her. Liv’s heart raced. This was the real world, she reminded herself. Whatever happened here...was real. It scared her, how much she wanted this to be real.

She had forgotten that she wanted to break whatever curse Harley was under. She had forgotten that Andrea and Melissa and Harley’s own sister might have disappeared because of what Harley had done. All she could remember was what it felt like to dance with her.

Harley went to her dresser and pulled a tissue out of the box, wiping off the remains of her lipstick. Then she went over to Liv, who was standing right where she had been when Harley asked her to wait, and kissed her.

Real: Harley’s full lips, slightly dry now, her tongue still tasting like wine. Real: Harley’s hands on the hem of Liv’s tank top, lifting it and sliding beneath. Real: Harley’s body against hers, warm and soft.

Liv reached for Harley’s slippery shirt and Harley raised her arms so they could peel it off. Harley had a tattoo of a blackbird over her heart, and Liv bent her head to kiss it, tasting the salty sweat on her skin. Harley’s breath was uneven as she pulled Liv’s tank top over her head. Her ring caught on the fabric, and Harley swore and took off the ring, letting it clatter onto her nightstand. Then Liv’s shirt was off, too, and something tumbled out of Liv’s bra and skittered onto the wood floor.

Liv froze.

“What was that?” Harley whispered.

“Nothing,” Liv lied, hoping that Harley wouldn’t notice.