Nona the Ninth Sneak Peek

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

Thank you for buying this

Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

DAY ONE

REGARDING NONA—HOT SAUCE IS WATCHFUL—THE CITY HAS A BAD DAY—NONA GETS A BEDTIME STORY—FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE TOMB OPENS.

1

LATE IN THE YEAR of nobody she really thought about that much in particular, the person who looked after her pushed the button on the recorder and said, “Start.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and began in a practised hurry:

“The painted face is on top of me. I’m in the safe water—I’m lying down, I think. Something’s pushing at me. The water goes over my head and it’s in my mouth. It goes up my nose.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“How do you feel?”

“I like it. I like the water, I like her hands.”

“Her hands?”

“They’re the things around me—maybe they’re my hands.”

The pencil scratched loudly on the paper. “How about the face?”

“It’s the picture face.” The sketch they’d made for her, the one locked in the secret drawer where they put all the really interesting things, like cigarettes and the fake identification cards and all the money they said wasn’t legal tender and couldn’t be used. The pencil obligingly scribbled its way across the page. It was hard not to open her eyes and look at the person opposite, so she amused herself by imagining what she would see: tanned sure hands on the notebook, head bent over it, the fringe pinned up waiting for haircut day. Imagining was better than looking anyway, because the battery lamp wasn’t switched on.

She said, “What are you writing?” because the pencil was still going. Most of the time the writing was interesting, but some of the time it was just boring descriptions of how her face was changing when she talked, like 0.24—Smiled.

“Incidentals. Keep going, you woke up late.”

“Can you change the alarm song? I can sleep through ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ now.”