“Through the door—quickly!” I shout.
The wind whips Felicity’s hair across her pale face. “We can’t leave Pip!”
“We’ll come back for her!” I scream, pulling her hand.
“No!”
“Don’t leave me!” Pippa moves onto the bow of the boat. It tips under her weight.
“Pippa—no!” I scream, but it’s too late. She jumps into the river and it closes over her grasping hands like ice, entombing everything but her watery, strangled cry. I remember my vision the day of Pippa’s seizure, of her pulled down into the water. And now, with great horror, I understand at last.
Outraged, the thing howls and the dark races toward us, shrieking.
“Pippa! Pippa!” Felicity shrieks till she’s hoarse.
“Felicity, we’ve got to go—now!”
The wraith is nearly upon us. There’s no time to think. I can only react. I reach the door and pull us through into the caves as the candles flicker and cough with the last of their light. We’re all here, safe and accounted for, it seems. But on the floor, Pippa’s body has gone rigid. It seizes uncontrollably.
Ann’s voice is fluttery. “Pippa? Pippa?”
Felicity is sobbing. “You left her there! You did it!”
The last candle sputters and dies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“YOU’VE GOT TO HELP ME!”
I’m a wild-eyed thing standing outside Kartik’s tent. He doesn’t argue with me, doesn’t say a word, not even when I tell him what’s happened. He hoists Pippa over his shoulder and carries her through the woods all the way to Spence. The only time he stops is when we pass the ravine and the corpse of the deer we’ve left there. He helps us get Pippa to her room, and then I’m racing for Mrs. Nightwing’s door. I bang furiously, calling her name with a desperation I can’t hold back.
Our headmistress throws open the door. Her nightcap is sliding down her long, graying braids. “What on earth? Miss Doyle, what are you doing in your clothes? Why aren’t you in bed?”
“It’s Pippa,” I gasp. “She . . .” I can’t finish, but it doesn’t matter. Mrs. Nightwing has caught the alarm in my voice. She springs into action with that immovable firmness of hers, a quality I’ve never truly appreciated until this moment.
“Tell Brigid to call for Dr. Thomas at once.”
The lights burn through the night. I sit at the window in the library, hugging my knees in my arms, making myself as small as possible. At the edges of sleep, I see her. Wet. Hollow-eyed. Slipping under the smooth surface with a scream for help. I dig my fingernails into my palm to stay awake. Felicity paces past me. She avoids looking at me, but her silence speaks for her.
You left her there, Gemma. Alone in that watery grave.
A lantern moves across the lawn. Kartik. The light bobs and shakes in its metal cage. I have to strain to see him. He’s carrying a shovel, and I know that he’s going back to what he couldn’t ignore in the ravine. He’s going to bury the deer.
But whether he’s doing it to protect me or himself, I cannot know.
I sit for a long time and watch the night bruise toward morning, the purple turning yellow, the yellow fading till it’s as if the dark has never marked the skin of the sky at all. By the time the sun peeks over the trees, I’m ready to take one last journey.
“Keep this,” I say, crumpling the crescent eye amulet into Felicity’s hands.
“But why?”
“If I don’t come back . . .” I stop. “If something should go wrong, you’ll need to find the others. They’ll need to know you’re one of them.”
She stares at the silver amulet.
“It will be up to you to come after me.” I pause. “Or close the realms for good. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Promise you’ll come back.”
The scrap of silk from my mother’s dress is soft in my tight fist. “I’m going to try.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THERE ARE NO BIRDS. NO FLOWERS. NO SUNSET. THERE’S an eerie grayness to everything beyond the bright door. The empty boat is still on the river, stuck fast in a thin sheet of ice.
“If you want me, here I am,” I shout. It echoes all around me. I am, I am, I am.
“Gemma? Gemma!” My mother emerges from behind a tree. Her voice, sure and strong, draws me in.
“Mother?”
Tears spring to her eyes. “Gemma, I was afraid . . . but you’re all right.” She smiles, and everything inside me bends to her. I’m tired and uncertain but she’s here now. She’ll help me set things right.
“Mother, I’m sorry. I’ve made a mess of things. You told me not to use the magic yet, and I did, and now it’s all ruined and Pippa’s . . .” I can’t bring myself to say anything more, can’t even think it.
“Shhh, Gemma, no time for tears. You’re here to bring Pippa back, aren’t you?”
I nod.
“There’s no time to lose, then. Quickly, before the creature returns.”
I follow her past the silver arch, deep into the garden, to the center of those tall crystals that hold so much power.
“Put your hands on the runes.”
I hesitate. I don’t know why.
“Gemma,” she says, green eyes narrowing. “You have to trust me or your friend will be lost forever. Do you want that on your conscience?”
I think of Pippa struggling in the icy water where she fell. Where I left her. My hands hover over the runes.
“That’s it, my darling. Everything’s forgotten now. Soon, we’ll be together again.”
I put my left hand to the rune. The vibration travels through me. I’m weakened from our other trips, and the magic starts to pull me under with its power. It’s too much for me. Mother opens her hand to me. There it is, pink and alive and open. I have only to take hold of it. My arm rises. My fingers reach toward hers, till my skin vibrates with the nearness of her. Our fingers touch.
“At last . . .”
Instantly, the thing that hides in my mother’s shape emerges, rising high as the stones themselves. With a great yell, the creature grabs hold of my arm. I can feel the coldness of it sliding through my arm, into my veins, creeping toward my heart. The heat leaving me. I’m no match for it.
Everything falls away. We’re falling fast together, past the mountain and the churning sky, through the veil that separates the realms from the mortal world. The thing cackles in delight.
“At last . . . at last . . .”
This new magic takes me by surprise as it surges through me, joining to my will. It is overwhelming, the raw nakedness of this power. I never want to let it go. I could use it to control, to wound, to win.
The creature cackles. “Yes . . . it’s intoxicating, isn’t it?”
Yes, oh, yes. Is this what my mother and Circe felt, what they were afraid of losing—a power they could not have in their own world? Anger. Joy. Ecstasy. Rage. All theirs. All mine.
“We’re almost there,” the thing whispers.
Below me London spreads out like a lady’s fan, ornate and delicate. A city I wanted to see when I lived in India. A city I still want to see. On my own.
The thing senses my discomfort. “You could rule it,” it says, nearly licking my ear.
Yes, yes, yes.
No. Not really. Not attached to this creature. The power would never be mine. It would control me. No, no, no. Let it win. Be joined. I’m weary with choice. It makes me heavy. So heavy I could sleep forever. Let Circe win. Abandon my family and friends. Float downstream.
No.
At this the thing seems to grow weaker. You have to know yourself, know what you want. That’s what Mother told me. What I want . . . what I want . . .
I want to go back. And it’s coming with me. Suddenly, London shrinks to a pinpoint, out of reach. I’m pulling the thing back from the world with me, back to the mountaintop, back to the grotto and the runes.