Strange and Ever After by Susan Dennard

above all, I needed to know what he had planned next.
    “What else do you remember?” I asked as gently as I could.
    “Too much,” Jie whispered. “Boarding a train. Leaving a train. Being . . . being stuck while he raised all the Dead. While he . . . put me in this dress.”
    Suddenly, her fingers bent into claws, and she heaved at her undershirt. She was halfway out of it before I managed to skitter toward Allison. “Clothes,” I ordered. “Find her clothes.”
    Allison nodded and hurried into the hall.
    Jie cried out. I spun around . . . only to find her falling forward. She wore nothing but her pantaloons, and her body was covered in gooseflesh. Her legs buckled beneath her, and she cried out again.
    I dived for her but was too slow. Her knees hit the ground, and the two orchids in her hair toppled to the floor. Her eyes landed on the wilted flowers. In a burst of sudden speed, she snatched the scissors from my hands and scuttled back. Gripping a fistful of her long, black hair, she lifted the scissors high.
    “Oh God.” I crawled to her. “Stop, Jie. Stop—you don’t have to cut your hair.”
    “He touched it. He touched my hair, and I don’t want it on me anymore.” She squeezed the scissors, and a grating sound filled the galley.
    She sawed. She hacked. And her hair fell in clumps and strands.
    I grabbed her wrist. “Let me do it.” She flinched away, her eyes bulging.
    I held up my hands, palms out. “I won’t hurt you, Jie, but let me cut your hair. Let me do it. ”
    Her eyes grew wider . . . but then sank shut. Her posture dropped, and she offered me the scissors. I took them and kneeled behind her.
    “All of it,” she whispered, staring ahead at the wall. “Cut all of it.”
    “I will.” I gathered up her hair, staring at the fluffy wisps growing on her forehead. It had always been shaved bald.
    For some reason, that made the moment all the more real. Something as fundamental to Jie as her shaved head was gone. My best friend was here, but she was still gone .
    And then, to my horror, a sob shuddered through Jie’s shoulders. “You can’t stop him,” she said breathily. “It doesn’t matter what you do—he’s always one step ahead. He’ll raise the Black Pullet, and then he’ll take any- and . . . and . . . every thing he wants.”
    The scissor blades gritted through the last bit of hair, and Jie’s head toppled forward. Movement flickered at the door. I glanced up just as Allison reappeared, clothes in her arms. Her lips were drawn up to one side, her eyebrows tight with horror. But she moved to Jie, and in a quick, efficient move, she draped a loose shirt over Jie’s shoulders. Together, we got her arms into the sleeves.
    But as I worked to do up the buttons, I stared hard into Jie’s eyes. “Marcus cannot get the Black Pullet now, Jie. I promise you. We destroyed the only clue left in Marseille.”
    “No.” She pulled back, the buttons only half clasped. “You can’t stop him. He knows where the Old Man is already. He went to the crypt before you—before he went to Paris.”
    Cold wrapped around my heart.
    “He even has his own ship,” Jie went on. “To cross theMediterranean. He can raise the Black Pullet, and he will.” With a slight lift of her head, she met my eyes. “One step ahead, Eleanor. He’s always one step ahead. And you can’t stop him .”
    “We can stop him.” Joseph’s voice cracked into the room, firm and loud. He strode in, and Allison scurried aside. “We will stop him, Jie—even if it means going to Egypt.”
    With a cry, Jie shoved off the floor and pushed past me. Joseph opened his arms, and she burrowed her face in his chest. He pulled her close, his chin resting on the top of her jaggedly shorn hair.
    Joseph did not look young or lost now. There was a darkness in his gaze that I had never seen before . . . but that I knew.
    The true hunger for retribution.
    “We will stop him,” he said. “We will stop Marcus, and he