“I need to trade him for Kathleen,” Death returned, icy.
Adam’s gaze flicked to Custo’s face, but Custo knew Adam could read nothing from his Shadow-webbed expression.
“I’m sorry for her. For you,” Adam said, looking back at Death. “But I cannot fight this war and protect Talia at the same time.”
Custo noted the slow descent of a skinny female wraith dropping to the pavement at the corner of a building near Adam, but obstructed from his view.
“My daughter can protect herself.” Shadowman turned, dragging Custo along.
“She can’t do anything,” Adam shouted after him. “She’s pregnant. Every time she touches Shadow, every time she uses her voice, she risks both her life and the lives of our twins. We are besieged until she delivers.”
Shadowman stopped again. The street’s shadows throbbed around him.
“What would Kathleen want?” Adam asked.
Death bowed his head.
“Didn’t she give her life to bring Talia into this world?”
“Twenty-nine years of pain in Hell,” Shadowman ground out.
“That was her trade,” Adam said. “Twenty-nine years for a daughter and two grandchildren. It was a good bargain. The best of bargains.” Adam’s eyes took on a strange sheen. “I need Custo to see that Kathleen’s legacy is safe. Join us, help us end this war, and we can find a way to free Kathleen that much faster.”
“You can’t help me free her, mortal,” Shadowman sneered. Then he threw his head back and roared to the sky. The air convulsed with his rage and ripples of power blew the windows out of the immediate buildings.
But Custo felt a contraction within him, a shudder of darkness, and then a scoring rip as the tendrils of Shadow released him. He fell to the ground in a heap, his head landing on shattered glass. Blinking through a haze of red, Custo saw Death continue alone into the night, then disappear beyond the strobe of police lights.
Custo planted a hand on the ground. His arm shook as he pushed himself to sitting. As he brought up his head, the female wraith darted toward Adam’s turned back, her jaw unlocking, jagged teeth extending. Custo gulped free air and shouted, “Adam!”
Giselle drew Prince Albrecht to the side of the clearing as a line of wilis flew down the stage like a severe arrow of white. Myrtha stepped out from the trees, holding branches of rosemary to symbolize remembrance. Like Giselle, each of the wili spirits had died betrayed by a man who’d pledged to love them.
The music lowered with condemnation as Myrtha cursed Albrecht in the language of the dance. She pointed at him, you, she circled her hands over her head, will dance, and then she crossed her wrists in front of her, until you are dead.
Giselle rushed forward, placing herself between her love and her queen, stretching her arms out to the sides to protect him.
It was too late. Myrtha had no pity. The wilis rearranged themselves on the edge of the clearing, cold and indifferent to the lovers.
Giselle did not join them. If Albrecht had to dance, then she would dance with him. Together they would pass the darkest hours of night, and her love for him would see him to the dawn.
She tiptoed to the center of the clearing. The music deepened and the notes lengthened, a sad violin singing over the dread of the curse.
She began a slow développé to the side, stretching the limits of her ghostly form, then stroked the air and inclined into a melancholy, turning arabesque. The movements were effortless, boneless, as if, indeed, the laws of nature no longer applied to her.
Holding on to the moment, Annabella slowly focused her eyes on her surroundings. The stage, the two-dimensional trees, and the audience were all there, solid, but superimposed on a vast, darkening landscape of magic. The Shadowlands.
She’d done it again.
Her heart clutched. Her fear had the magic wavering, but she steadied herself with the knowledge that an angel watched over her.
Albrecht supported a soft turn. Where before the promenade had been a negotiation of skill and balance, now the movement was easy. She didn’t have to think or try at all. All she had to do was feel, and want, and the magic would comply.
It could be like this always, his voice said in her mind.
Their communication was suddenly just as easy as the movements they’d practiced over and over, just another level of their performance communion.
A dream. It can’t last, she answered to herself.
Albrecht lifted her into a soaring spiral over his head. In the regular world, the lift was a difficult study in trusting her partner, but now she was flying. Gravity had no pull on her.
In the Shadowlands, anything is possible, especially forever. Let’s linger a while.