Authors: C.N. Crawford
Behind the iron gate, the marble angels reflected on the glass surface.
“Mrs. Ranulf unlocked this door,” said Fiona, stepping closer to the glass. The wind whistled over the stone cemetery walls. She tried to peer inside the glass, but in the moonlight she could see only her own reflection, and the wild brown hair curling around her face.
Her heart began to race, and she had a sudden desire to get as far away from this dead-eyed garden as she could. But she forced herself to lean in further. “Hello?” Her mouth went dry as Mariana’s grip tightened on her arm, but she could see only her own reflection and the lamenting statues behind her.
“I think we should go back now,” whispered Mariana.
Fiona had hoped to come back with something concrete—something that would force Tobias to tell her what was going on. She pressed her face between the iron bars, closer to the glass. Something scraped against the floor on the other side of the glass, and Fiona shivered. “I hear something. But all I can see is my enormous hair.”
Byron flapped around her head urgently. Mariana pulled on her arm, but she inched closer to the glass. It must have been a trick of the light, because her eyes looked enormous—black and cavernous below her furrowed brows, and her skin was pale as bone. The curls around her head seemed to writhe like snakes. Shivering, she edged back—but the reflection lurched toward her. A horrible thought sent ice racing up her spine. She was invisible.
I shouldn’t have a reflection.
Transfixed, she could see sunken eyes full of fury, a tear of blood rolling down a hollow cheek to an open mouth, contorted in rage. A pale hand pressed against the glass, and a broken chain hung from an emaciated wrist.
She couldn’t breathe. “Guys.” She stumbled back. “It’s not me.”
“What?” shouted Mariana. “Oh God.”
Thunk.
On the other side of the door, the grotesque reflection banged against the glass, leaving a drop of blood where the forehead hit. A deep, guttural wail rumbled through the cemetery.
Am I screaming, or is that the monster?
A long hand smashed through the glass, chains rattling. Yellow-clawed fingers wrapped around Fiona’s wrist, a thumbnail spearing her skin, drawing a fat drop of blood. Fiona stared at it and screamed.
Mariana shrieked along with her. Someone—either her or Alan—battered at the creature’s arm to break its grasp. With a sickening crackle of bones, Fiona yanked her wrist free.
She stumbled backward, tripping over a stone and tumbling to the ground. Her face slammed against the dirt, the fall knocking the wind out of her. Disoriented, she pushed herself up. Byron darted around her head.
“Fiona, where are you?” Mariana shouted.
Is she on the other side of the cemetery already?
Fiona stumbled toward the entrance, refusing to look back. “Alan! Mariana!”
The hag’s anguished wail ripped through the still night, making her senses falter. Fiona broke into a sprint through the angels. She was only fifteen feet from the wall now, her feet kicking up clods of earth. Behind her, the iron crypt gate rattled louder.
“I’m coming!” she called. “Are you here? Alan?”
“Mariana’s over already,” said Alan.
He waited for me.
She collided with Alan’s invisible body. “Ow,” he said, grabbing her to hoist her up. She clambered up the vines, eager to get as far as possible from the crypt. In her panic, she lost her grip on the top of the wall.
“Fiona, get over!” he shouted with frustration, pushing her back up.
At last, she scrambled over the edge and threw herself down, landing on the other side. A jolt of pain shot through her right ankle.
“Are you okay?” asked Mariana. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” With effort, she righted herself. It was at least a quarter of a mile to the house, and a searing pain screamed up her leg.
Behind her, Alan thumped to the ground. “Let’s go!”
They were off running into the hedge maze, but after a minute, the pain in Fiona’s ankle slowed her down. She gave up on sprinting and sputtered to a pained limp.
Where’s Byron?
The howl from the cemetery pierced the air as she stumbled toward a hedge wall.
“Mariana?” she said, but there was no reply. They were far ahead of her now. Fiona had been left behind. And if her ankle was broken, she’d shatter her bones if she transformed.
Thomas stared at the sneering guests around him, no longer quite as beautiful as they’d appeared before. His anger nearly took his breath away. He and Oswald were nothing more than a joke to them.
“Dancers!” the King bellowed. His reddening nose suggested that he’d slammed more than a few glasses of wine by now.
Fortuna emptied her goblet and grinned, parroting the King. “Dancers!” For the first time, Thomas noticed that her cheeks were painted a lurid pink.
Lithe women clad in silver gossamer leapt onto the windowsills and into the hall, each with lilac hair streaming behind them. Floral tattoos snaked around their bodies.
Delicate string music swelled from the gardens, and the dancers twirled and spun over the tiled floor. Thomas would have enjoyed this, if only his own death weren’t hanging over him.
Long strands of tulle unfurled from the arches and the dancers grasped the fabric, climbing upward. They spun around the hall with astounding grace and agility, swinging from the high arches and pushing off the stone walls. Night had fallen, and the stars glittered.
Thomas’s heart thrummed in his chest, and he took another slug of wine to steady his nerves. Would it be possible to stage some kind of escape while everyone watched the entertainment? But even if he escaped the fortress, he had no way out of Maremount. The King’s forces would surely hunt him down. And he couldn’t leave without Oswald.
As the music drew to a close, the dancers leapt to the flowery ground near the table, pulling handfuls of colored jewels from their bodices. They tossed the gems into the air, and the stones transformed into colorful birds that flew around the hall. Blue, red, green, and gold sparrows circled their heads.
The dinner guests clapped and cheered, and the dancers slipped back into the gardens. Thomas’s hands trembled. He was going to be suspended in a glass vat, eternally stung by scorpions.
Celia rose, grinning. “Oh, how I love birds!” She chased a golden sparrow as it flew around. “Come to me, golden birdie!”
Idiot. Celia’s obviously no help.
She certainly seemed mad, or at least simpleminded. “I’ve caught one!” she trilled.
The rich food churned in Thomas’s stomach, and he dragged a hand across his mouth.
Just as he picked up his goblet, the golden sparrow landed on his plate. The bird clutched a small, coiled piece of paper in its claws.
“Father, I can dance, too!” Celia twirled, laughing loudly. The guests’ attention turned to her, giving Thomas the chance to pry the paper from the bird’s foot. He held a small, handwritten note his lap:
We’re both in danger. They keep me locked in the Gold Tower. If you can get to me there, I have the spell to get us out of Maremount.
Dizzy, Thomas rose from his seat, pushing back his chair.
Asmodeus stood next to him, glaring. “Leaving so soon?”
“I’m just wondering what the plans are for my return to Boston,” he stammered.
The Theurgeon grinned. His cheeks were flushed from the wine. “You didn’t really think we were going to let you go, did you? You assaulted one of the King’s advisors. And you consort with a Ragman.”
Thomas shot a glance at the King, who was ogling Fortuna’s cleavage over his goblet.
“So you mean to keep me here?” Thomas bellowed. The dinner guests went quiet, glaring at him. He was ruining their evening now, but the wine and rage simmered away his fear. “And you didn’t send Oswald home.”
A glimmer of amusement flickered across Queen Bathsheba’s face.
The King thinned his lips into something between a smile and a sneer.
“How could I send you home? You’ll make such a charming ornament on Fishgate.” He threw back his head with laughter, and the others joined in. “In any case, an execution could liven up the Mayflower celebrations.”
“I will wave at you when I pass by,” Fortuna chirped.
Asmodeus guffawed before turning to Thomas. “Of course Oswald remains in the Iron Tower. You should have heard him whimper when I crushed his little familiar.”
Thomas’s thoughts raced. They were torturing Oswald somewhere nearby, and he’d been sitting here among them, gorging himself and watching dancers.
Anger gripped him. He had nothing to lose. He glared at the King. “You’re a plague on this city,” he spat. Adrenaline coursed through him. “And do you know what rids cities of plagues? Fire. When the Tatters rise up to burn the fortress—”
Strong hands grabbed him from behind, yanking him toward the exit. “—they will cleanse the pestilence—”
A hand clamped over his mouth, and an arm tightened around his throat. Someone was choking him, and as his lungs burned, a small part of him felt relief.
In this world, a quick death is a mercy.
If she screamed louder, would it attract unwanted attention from the guards? As she contemplated this, the creature’s howls stopped. Fiona could hear only her own breathing, fast and rasping. The crickets, so loud before, no longer chirped. In the silence of the night air, her breath was deafening.
She looked up to the sky. “Byron?”
There was no reply, no winged form fluttered in front of the moon. She had a sudden urge to look behind her to see if the snake-haired wight had followed her out of the cemetery. She stumbled around another hedge corner into a dead end, pain searing her ankle. Something told her that if she glanced over her shoulder, those haunted black eyes and the bone-pale face would drag her under the earth, into Hell itself.
She limped faster, gasping in her panic
.
There was a crunching noise in the distance. Footsteps?
Hair rose on the back of her neck. She glanced around. There were just stupid hedges everywhere she looked.
Who builds a hedge labyrinth?
She hobbled in the other direction.
Crunch.
The footsteps were closing in. She tried to run again, but pain shot up her leg.
Crunch.
Her heart beat fast as a hummingbird’s wings, and with a trembling hand, she covered her own mouth to stifle the sound of her heavy breathing.
Crunch.
She was being hunted by her own monstrous doppelgänger.
I can handle this. I helped defeat the bone wardens.
She tried to make herself as still as one of the cemetery’s marble angels. If the crypt-demon couldn’t see or hear her, it couldn’t hunt her.
Crunch.
Except that it had seen her.
The footsteps drew closer over the gravel, and she could hear its breathing as well as her own. Maybe she could call up a small flame, just long enough to distract it while she slammed a fist into its face. She’d taken a self-defense class at Mather, though most of the moves assumed she’d be fighting a man and not a crypt-demon. Still, a well-placed elbow could do a lot of damage.
Crunch.
She held her breath.
But the hand that touched her shoulder was gentle. “Fiona?”
She squinted in the darkness. She could just make out a pair of broad shoulders. “Tobias?”
“There you are. What the hell are you doing out here?”
Despite her doubts about his honesty, she was relieved to see him, and some of the tension in her shoulders relaxed. Whatever he was up to, he wasn’t trying to murder her. “There’s something after me. A demon thing. With snake hair.”
“There’s nothing there. Where are the others?”
“I think they’re back at the house already. I landed funny on my ankle.” She leaned into him as they began walking.
With Tobias’s arm around her, her racing heart began to slow, and she caught her breath. “How did you find me? Those stupid hedges are a safety hazard.”
His body was warm in the chilly night air. “I could hear your panicked breathing. You sounded like an ox tilling a field.”
“An
ox
? Wait—what do you mean you could hear my breathing?”
He shook his head. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I wanted to find out what was in the crypt.” She leaned into his arm, tight around her waist. He smelled like a campfire in spring.
“I told you not to throw yourself in harm’s way, and then you run out and wake up a demon.”