What the Night Knows (with bonus novella Darkness Under the Sun)

Mother’s studio, darted through another door onto the landing at the head of the main stairs.

When Naomi realized that Melody intended to enter the master bedroom, she said, “Wait! That’s my parents’ private space. You need an invitation to enter.”

“We must make the preparations at the top of the house, m’lady. Later, we can only leave from the top of the house.”

“The studio is also at the top of the house.”

“But the studio is inadequate.” Indicating the master-suite door, she said, “Anyway, there’s no one within.”

“How do you know?”

“I know as I know.”

“At least we have to knock,” Naomi said. “It’s the rule.”

Melody smiled mischievously, fisted her right hand, and rapped silently on the air. Before them, the door swung open magically.

Against her better judgment and in violation of the rules, but giggling with delight, Naomi followed Melody into the master suite and closed the door behind them.

Here at the end of the afternoon, with twilight nearing, the world outside was white with whirling snow, but the master bedroom lay mostly in shadows. As Melody approached the bed with the attache case, both nightstand lamps switched on as though attended by an invisible chambermaid, and there was just enough lovely soft light.

“You’re going to have to teach me stuff like that,” Naomi said.

“Your powers will return when your memory is restored, m’lady. And this evening you will learn many things. Many amazing things. You’ll learn more this evening than you have learned all your life so far.”

Melody put the attache case on the bedspread and then patted the spot beside it, indicating that Naomi should sit there.

Naomi perched on the edge of the bed, legs dangling. “Now what?”

“Now you will wait here, right there exactly where you’re sitting, while I go downstairs and manifest quite dramatically to each member of your family, convince them that this is a night of magic, and bring them here one at a time.”

“Can’t I go? I want to see you manifest quite dramatically.”

“I must do this as it is written it must be done,” Melody said with a faint note of admonition. “All must be done according to the guidance of the royal mage.”

With that, she stepped lively across the room, exited onto the landing, and closed the door, leaving Naomi alone.

Naomi wished that she could shut off her overloaded mind for five minutes and allow her legions of spinning thoughts to slow to a speed that wouldn’t dizzy her. At least a thousand thoughts were in motion, each rotating on its axis but also revolving around the center of her mind like planets around a sun. All of them were such dazzling thoughts, too, all of them wonderful, except two or three fraidy-cat thoughts that simply weren’t worthy of her, compliments of Minnie’s infectious pessimism. Naomi was determined not to let those yeah-buts or what-ifs grow into ugly little mind warts that would spoil the mood and the magic. She was a positive person, a believer in believing, a first-chair flautist, and though she didn’t know much about math, she knew an enormous amount about magic.

She watched the snow falling diagonally past the window. The wind had gentled to an easy breeze. The ceaselessly unraveling snow was a calming sight.

A deep quiet filled the master suite. Naomi tried to let the quiet seep into her noisy mind.

With a growing disquiet, John roamed the ground floor and the basement, not exactly searching for anything, but half expecting to find something important or even ominous, though he had no idea what that might be.

Eventually, in the kitchen again, he used the security-system keypad beside the back door to set the perimeter alarm. Night lay almost an hour away, but none of them had a reason to go out in this weather. He had told the girls to stay inside. Zach had seemed happily occupied with his drawing tablet. John felt better with the alarm on. He didn’t allow himself the illusion that they were now perfectly safe. No one anywhere was ever perfectly safe.

Forty-seven days remained before the tenth of December. John should not yet feel that a countdown clock was urgently ticking—but he felt it anyway. He could almost hear it.

When darkfall came, the lighted house would be a fishbowl to anyone outside in the night. He decided to close all the draperies and pleated shades, starting in the kitchen. As he went, he checked to be sure that the door locks and window latches were engaged.

This was the anniversary of the worst night of his life, and each window he inspected reminded him that his parents and sisters perished while he lived because of his selfishness and weakness.

On school nights, Marnie and Giselle went upstairs to bed at nine o’clock. John’s parents were teachers, early to rise, and they were usually asleep by ten.

Because he was fourteen, John was permitted to stay up later, but that night he pled weariness and retired when his sisters did, at nine. He sat in the dark until he heard his dad and mom close their door at nine-forty.

His room lay on the opposite side of the hall from his parents’ room. His window looked onto the front-porch roof.

He slipped out of the house through the window and slid shut the well-waxed bottom sash. Because it wasn’t latched, he could open it without difficulty when he returned.

During the past few months, he had sneaked out often. He was so practiced at it that a cat couldn’t have split the scene any more quietly than John did.

The thick limb of a tree overhung the north end of the porch. He reached up, grabbed it, lifted his feet off the roof, and went hand over hand just far enough to be away from the house. Then he dropped to the grass. When he came back, he would climb the tree to the porch roof and enter his room, so ready for sleep that he would pass out as his head hit the pillow.

Her name was Cindy Shooner. She lived two blocks away, and he could be at her place three minutes after leaving home.

Mr. and Mrs. Shooner were dysfunctional, Cindy said. They hated their jobs, they hated their relatives, and they weren’t that fond of each other, either. When they didn’t drink, they fought, so because neither of them was a mean drunk, they started drinking early each evening as a way to have some peace in the house. Most nights by ten o’clock, they were either about to pass out, already passed out, or in bed watching wrestling on cable channels because muscle-bound men in brief costumes appealed to both of them.

Their bedroom was on the second floor, and Cindy’s was on the ground floor. She could escape her house even more easily than John could slip out of his.

In early August, when this started, they would take a blanket into a nearby meadow and lie under the stars.

Then Mr. Bellingham, who lived two doors from the Shooner place, was asked by his company to take a nine-month assignment in another state, to help turn around a problem factory there. Mrs. Bellingham decided to go with him. They didn’t want to rent their house, so they closed it up and paid Cindy a little money to look after the place, to do some dusting and vacuuming every couple of weeks.

After that, she and John didn’t need the meadow anymore. They could have candlelight, music, and a real bed.

She was sixteen, a year and a half older than John. She was the first girl he’d been with. He wasn’t her first guy. Although still a girl, Cindy was in some ways a woman by then. She had assurance, attitude, appetite, and birth-control pills that her mother got for her because her mother hated the idea of a grandchild more than she hated her job or her husband.

Cindy was bad for John, though he didn’t think so at that time. In fact, if the wrong person had told him that she was bad for him, he would have had his fists up in an instant.

In truth, he was bad for her, too. He liked her well enough, and he definitely liked being with her, but he didn’t love her. If a girl wasn’t loved a little bit, without the depth of affection that might at least be