The Paper Girl and the Stilt-Walker

The Final Angel of Death

Art and Pip had warned Mina about going to sleep. They'd said that Richelieu had warped the city and distorted everyone he controlled, so if she slept, she would wake up to a nightmare.

Mina said that was okay. She'd had that happen with a sprite once.

So Mina slept that night after she returned from her mother's grave, and with her memory in mind, she slept easily. Art and Pip's parting words lulled her to sleep. "Things won't be as they seem now," said Pip worriedly, sitting beside her with his hands clenched into fists. "He'll try to scare you, make you stop looking for your rose. He might even want to kill you at this point. A regular Angel of Death could just raise a finger and that would be it. But you'll have to fight tooth and nail to finish this city off."

"But you can't stop," Art put in, holding Mina's hand. "If you do, he will take you completely. You'll be dead."

Mina said thank you. She went to sleep.

Like the night before Christmas morning, tonight was very short and abrupt, filled with apprehension, where at first sleep doesn't come easily and then there isn't enough of it by the time the sun rises. Mina's eyes flew open after what felt like five minutes of light resting, and she found that she was no longer in the clock tower. This alone was alarming, because it wasn't safe for her anywhere else. No, she was someplace soft and warm, surrounded by bluish light from a lamp beside her.

It was her bedroom. Of course.

Mina sat up and looked around. The bedroom didn't look like the depressing, dark place she'd stumbled into after three years of neglect—no, this looked like the happy, sunny bedroom that she'd known as a child. But the more she looked, the more she could tell that something was wrong. For one, the photograph of her mother was replaced by a picture of Madeline Foret as a child. For another, the closet door was open to reveal "The Widow's Song" written in blood on the wall, just like in Marie-Élise's bedroom. Papers were scattered around the room, all blank. And then she saw a shape at the windowsill.

Sitting there was Marie-Élise, who appeared to be crying again...or at least, her shoulders were shaking and she was heaving, as if sobbing very hard. But when Mina looked at her, she saw that she was actually laughing. Not in a nice way, either.

Mina got out of bed and walked out of the room. The ghost woman was just a copy. Like a paper doll.

Out in the living room, she expected to see Monk, but he wasn't there. Instead, she saw huge black spindly spiders flailing in their webs down onto the floor. Mina jumped, heart pounding, at the sight of them, but she tried to look past their webs. There, on the window seat, was her crocheted bag. Chancing to go around the spiders, she quickly struck out her hand and pulled the bag away. Shaking, breathing, she looked inside. There were her Twizzlers, her fairy wand (still glowing), and her goggles. On the wand was a tiny note that hadn't been there before: Probably gonna need this, bro. Mina took all of these things and slung the bag over her shoulder, wondering who'd written the note.

Next, she journeyed downstairs. The staircase from her flat to the shop was much longer and much steeper, so she had to carefully walk one stair at a time, her clunky black boots thudding onto the wood, scattering dust. She eventually got to the bottom, but what met her there made her stop in her tracks and consider going back up.

There were shadow people. Maybe thirty of them, maybe more. They were standing in the shop, right by the counter, and they no longer looked like shades of people...instead, they resembled melting wax figures, swaying slightly like dying flames, dripping onto the floor. When they saw Mina, some of them raised their arms up high and some fell backwards onto the floor, apparently dead.