The Children had gathered while I’d slept, and surrounded the camp.

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR:

Sisters, State Secrets, and Just So Many Creepy Children

Lantern-Eyes was asleep. She’d actually gone and, knowing the Children had surrounded the camp, laid down and fallen asleep. Incredible.

Indigo, I wasn’t convinced was asleep. He lay on his side and was breathing evenly, but it wasn’t precisely a sleeping kind of evenness. I’d believe he was dozing, but not anything deeper than that. He probably didn’t trust us enough to really pass out.

Or maybe he was having trouble sleeping, knowing that the Children were eying us like sandwiches behind locked glass. I certainly would understand.

I sat myself down where I’d slept, roughly between the up staircase and the down staircase, and tapped my flashlight against my knee. What exactly did being ‘on watch’ entail? Was I supposed to stare at these things while they stared at me? Should I chase them off? At what point in accumulating monsters did I wake up my companions so that they could kill them and we could run away?

Not that I particularly wanted to watch any of the Children die. Lantern-Eyes had warned us not to hesitate, and they were frightening to look at. I couldn’t mistake them for actual children. But they were close enough that the thought of the lieutenant’s club crushing one’s face in made me shudder.

Something shifted to my right. I turned sharply and caught a glimpse of a skinny naked back scampering down the stairs. The Child crouched in the corner of the lower platform, huddled small, and stared up at me.

It had gotten pretty close to me before I’d noticed it. I turned to look at the upper stairs, but the Children there hadn’t moved at all, just standing, like they were waiting. They were all looking at me, though.

A few minutes later I looked back at the down stairs and caught the Child there frozen in the act of crawling up the steps, pale face upturned and eyes wide, wide, wide and black, black, black.

If I looked at them, they looked back at me, but if I wasn’t looking at them I could feel them watching me. I couldn’t decide which was worse. I also couldn’t decide whether the one higher up on the stairs had come closer since last I looked, or if I’d miscounted how many steps were between me and it. I stared at it for quite a long time, trying to figure out, before I abruptly remembered the ones behind me and looked back to find that they were—still—watching me.

They didn’t move, for the most part, which was almost as unsettling as if they had. I don’t like waiting.

Indigo had scared one off earlier. I shifted up onto my knees, intending to… I don’t know, shake my fist at the one closest to us, but as soon as I moved they scattered. I was a lot bigger than them, I supposed, sitting back down. I almost felt a little bad about it.