Thirteen Days of Midnight by Leo Hunt

Author:Leo Hunt [Hunt, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8223-1
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2015-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Holiday pushes open a white door with a gold H nailed to it. Her room is dark, lit by a string of blue and pink lights that are looped over the poles of her four-poster bed. Her hair is threaded with the cool light that seeps from the bed frame. Downstairs, the music is thumping, like a headache you’re about to have.

“I cannot believe someone got red wine on the hall carpet,” Holiday’s saying. “Like, all over it! I just barely convinced Dad to even let me have people here . . .”

“It was Alice.”

“Oh, are you kidding? That girl — she just spray-painted my bathroom with vom as well, I had to put her to bed in my brother’s room. Thank god he’s not here.”

“She dumped wine all over Elza. That’s why there are stains.”

“Oh.” Holiday sits on the edge of her bed. “That wasn’t kind of her. Is that why you were outside?”

“Uh, yeah. Elza was angry, obviously. She went home.”

“You did come here with her, then?”

“She’s a friend.”

“Only a friend?” Holiday asks.

She holds my gaze with a delicious intensity.

“I . . . Holiday, I can’t do this right now.”

“Can’t do what?” she asks, smiling.

“Look . . . I can’t explain. . . . I’m, like, way over my head. I’m dangerous.”

“What, you’re a heartbreaker?” she says.

“No, look, it’s . . . my dad,” I say, not quite believing we’re suddenly having this conversation. “He died last week. We weren’t close, though.”

“I’d like . . .” Holiday’s saying, “I’d like us to be close, Luke.” She’s lying back on her bed, clearly out of it. I wonder if she’ll even remember this conversation in the morning.

“I’d like that, too,” I say. “But you look like you want to sleep right now.”

“You don’t have to go,” she says, almost a whisper.

“You’re very drunk. I think I should,” I say. She doesn’t answer. Her breathing is slow and deep. She reminds me of Mum suddenly, and I have to turn away. The music has stopped downstairs. They must be changing the track or something. I hope that’s what’s going on.

I open Holiday’s door and come face-to-face with the Judge.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, though I already know.

“Sorry, boss,” he says, rubbing his stubbly head. “Can’t be helped.”

Before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed him with my right hand. The sigil is cold, freezer-burn cold, like a tiny star of frost on my finger. I grab the Judge around his fat throat and lift him up into the air. He strains and squirms in my grip, his outline starting to blur like captive smoke, but I won’t let him go.

“Boss, please —”

“Shut up. I’m talking. I’m your necromancer. I’ve got the Book,” I say, holding it under his nose with my left hand. “I know how to use it. Where are the others?”

“Boss —”

I squeeze his throat tighter, cutting his protests off into a squawk. The sigil blazes even colder; my right hand feels like a shape carved from ice.

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