Less than that.
And then it was back, Alucard’s boots no longer on a rug, but a stretch of paneled floor. The Veil was gone, replaced by a different house, cavernous and still. There was no sign of Lila, but Kell buckled to his knees with a gasp, as the threads around him sparked and frayed. He tore the mask off, dragged in shuddering lungfuls of air, pain scrawled across his face as he struggled up to one knee.
“Where are we?” he gasped.
Alucard was about to say he didn’t know, but the words died in his throat as he looked around. His heart fell down, through his chest, and his feet, and the floor. He knew exactly where he was.
He was home.
VI
Tes worked as fast as she could, trying to ignore the grim truth.
An hour wasn’t enough time.
It wasn’t enough time to make a persalis from scratch—especially since her hands had already begun to shake. She’d cleared the desk, separating the objects by use, and which elements she’d find threaded through each spell. The container itself didn’t matter, so she’d chosen a clock, pried open the back, and studied the inner workings, the twisted ribbons of amber and green. She drew them out, moved them quickly to another box and tied them there, before the light went out.
She wished that she’d put Vares on the desk, so she could at least pretend—pretend that she was back in her own shop, getting lost in the work. But she didn’t trust Calin not to crush the bird for sport, so she kept him in her pocket as she tried, frantically, to reconstruct the spell.
Not enough time, pounded her heart, even as her hands kept moving, weaving threads, holding them aloft.
It had taken so many hours to fix the first doormaker.
But you didn’t know then what it was, she countered to herself. Now you do. It was true, she had learned the pattern of the spell, the warp and weft of the threads that made it up. All she had to do was repeat it.
And if you do? said another voice. What then?
This wasn’t just a piece of magic. It was a weapon, one the Hand planned to use to kill the royal family, and cause a rebellion, throwing the empire into chaos.
If Tes failed, she would die. But if she succeeded, others would instead. And she might still perish anyway. Or worse, the nobleman would keep her. Put her talents to other use, or sell them to the highest bidder. Like Serival.
Tes wouldn’t let that happen, and she couldn’t do nothing, so for the moment, she focused on the work.
She scanned the medley of parts, her vision blurring as the magic tangled in her sight. Across the room, Bex was slumped in a chair, but Calin was still doing his best impression of a doorstopper. On the wall to his right was a shelf with a pitcher.
“I need a glass of water,” she said to him.
Calin didn’t move. Tes nodded at the open spellwork in her hands, even though they couldn’t see it. “It’s for the persalis.”
Calin huffed, and straightened. “Since when am I a fucking babysitter?” he said, grabbing the jug of water.
“Go and say that to the lord,” said Bex. “No, on second thought, wait until he’s here, I’d like to see his face. And yours, after he breaks it. Oh, wait,” she added, “he already did.”
“And you?” he grumbled, slamming the pitcher onto the edge of Tes’s worktop. “How’s your hand, Bex? Can you still see right through it?”
Bex rose from her chair. “Calin. I mean this with absolute sincerity—fuck off and die.”
“Will you both shut up?” snapped Tes, trying to hold the spell with one hand while drawing a tendril of light from the water with the other.
“Oh, look,” said Bex, “the pup has teeth.”
She drifted to the table. Tes could feel her watching, but she didn’t look up, couldn’t afford to drag her attention from the work. But the crimson lines of Bex’s power danced at the edges of her sight.
“Back up,” she said. “Your magic is distracting.”
The clock’s hands lay cast aside like used matchsticks on the table. Bex took one up and waggled it, clicking her tongue. “Tick tick tick,” she said. “I’d hurry up, if I were you.”
“I’d work faster,” she muttered, “if I wasn’t dying.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that,” mused Calin, “before you refused his lordship.”
At that, Tes paused. There was an edge to his tone, and it wasn’t directed solely at her. She looked up, meeting Calin’s watery gaze.
“If I fail,” she said, “what happens to the two of you? Will that vestra let you walk away?”
The killers said nothing, but she could tell she’d struck a nerve.
“You have the antidote,” Tes went on. “You could give it to me now, and give us all a better chance of living through the night.”
For a moment, she thought they’d do it. Calin’s hand even twitched toward his pocket. A muscle ticced in Bex’s jaw. They shared a silent look. But then the bootsteps sounded in the hall, and they flinched, and she knew they were more afraid of defying the nobleman than dying at his hands.
Tes dropped her head and went back to work as the vestra reappeared.
“Bex,” he said. “We have a guest downstairs. Go and keep her entertained.”
The mention of someone else in the house made Tes look up, and when she did, the air lodged in her throat.
The nobleman was burning.
Before, his magic had been only a dim coil. Now, the air around him shone with iridescent light—as if he’d gone out a man with little power, and returned an Antari.
It made no sense.
Until she saw that he was wearing a new ring. Before, his only jewelry had been a polished silver ring, sculpted to resemble a feather. Now, on his thumb he wore a golden band and every strand of his new power stemmed from there, blooming out, and winding up around his limbs like silver-white weeds.
Bex disappeared into the hall, as if grateful for the excuse to get away, as the nobleman looked to Tes, and the box open on the table. “Is it done?”
“Almost,” she lied. He seemed about to speak when the silver in the air around him gave a little pulse, and his eyes cut to the open door. The vestra cocked his head, as if listening to a music only he could hear, and then he smiled, if anyone could call it a smile. The faintest tic at the corner of his mouth.
“It appears,” he said, “I have another guest.”
With that he turned, and swept out, pulling the door shut behind him, leaving Tes alone with the half-finished persalis—and Calin.
“The antidote,” she tried again, but the assassin crossed his arms.
“First, you finish the work.”
Tes swallowed, and forced herself on. A pain had started somewhere in her chest. She tried to ignore it. She had gotten good, over the years, at working through the hurt. But moments later, a shiver ran through her and she slipped, nearly dropping several threads. She bit back a frustrated sob. One wrong move, and she could ruin the entire spell. One wrong knot, or missing string, and the doormaker wouldn’t work at all. Or worse, it—
Tes’s hands stopped moving. Her fingers hovered over the delicate web, waiting for her mind to catch up. And then it did.
There were different kinds of doors. Ones that led to different places in the same world. Ones that led to different worlds. But there was a third kind of door, wasn’t there?
One that led to the place between worlds.
One that led nowhere.
Her hands started moving again, fingers racing to finish the spell.
* * *
The house hadn’t changed.
Alucard had stood outside the Emery estate countless times on countless nights, but hadn’t been inside, not since it was rebuilt. Hadn’t been able to cross that threshold. He’d wondered, of course, if it would look the same, or if only the shell had been reconstructed, the inside a blank slate, a crypt for a dead life.
But it had been resurrected.
Every pillar, every door. Works of art hung on the walls. Even the furniture had been replaced. Rhy must have thought it a kindness, an act of love, but standing inside the house now, Alucard felt haunted.