“Can you unlock it?” Teo asked.
“If we can find an entrance with the proper amount of wood around the door latch, then yes. But I don’t have enough power to rust metal unless I dissolve Elliott, and we all know why that’s a terrible idea.”
We circled the hangarlike structure until Caryl found a likely looking door at the top of a small flight of steps. She approached and gave it an exploratory touch with gloved finger-tips.
All at once she recoiled with a cry and pressed a hand to her chest. She turned and staggered down the steps toward us, leaning heavily on the rail with the hand that wasn’t curled into the fabric of her blouse.
“What is it?” I asked her in alarm.
She replied with a labored inhale, then released the rail just in time to politely cover a barrage of wet coughs. When she withdrew her hand, her glove was spattered with red.
“Oh, fuck,” I blurted, backing up a couple of steps.
Teo, on the other hand, rushed toward her. In his panic he must have completely lost his senses, because he put his hand on the nape of her neck, where her tightly bound hair left her skin exposed. Her familiar had just a slice of a second to look terrified before flying into a thousand pieces.
“Elliott!” I called out stupidly as his fragments dissipated like smoke.
Caryl stumbled a few feet away from Teo, drawing in quick, shallow breaths. Then she sank down on the pavement and clawed at her chest. “Stupid, stupid, stupid . . . ,” she gasped. “I shouldn’t have touched it!”
Teo knelt next to her. “Carrie, it’s okay. It’s not your—”
“And you shouldn’t have touched me!” She rounded on him, savagery lending her damaged voice a genuinely frightening snarl. This set off another paroxysm of coughing; this time both gloves turned gory. Teo stepped back, speechless for once.
“Well,” said Tjuan, standing very still. “Now we’re fucked.”
“We are under no circumstances fucked,” I said firmly. I took a couple of steps toward Caryl, who was struggling to take deep, even breaths. “Caryl,” I said. “What exactly happened at the door?”
“Metaspell.” She spoke urgently, snatching a breath between every few words. “I should have . . . seen the curse, but it was . . . it was lost in . . . all that warding. . . .”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she said, looking up at me with tear-filled eyes. “I’m going to die.”
45
Terror tried to rise up in me like a tide of ice water, but I clamped down on it hard. I left my glasses on, hoping they would conceal what was going on in my head. “We’re all going to die eventually,” I said evenly. “Can you give me an ETA on your demise in particular?”
Caryl’s gaze lost focus, as though she were searching inside herself. Her breaths were labored and shallow, and her lips were turning blue.
“Massive pulmonary embolism,” she said. “Blood oxygena-tion dropping rapidly—I’d say—minutes, not hours.”
I jumped to my feet and began to climb the steps to the soundstage door. “Is Vivian powering this ward?” I asked Caryl without looking at her.
“It seems to be . . . independent of her. But the curse—curses are always linked to essence.”
“Is the curse still in the ward, or did you use it up when you touched the door?” I reached out.
“I don’t know. Millie, don’t!”
But I had already put my hand on the doorknob. I felt nothing, of course; one moment the soundstage was a seething mass of bruised magic making me want to look away—the next moment it was just a building, even through my glasses. I inhaled experimentally and found myself unhurt.
“Well then,” I said. “We’re good to go.”
I turned to Caryl. When I saw her still struggling for breath, part of me crawled into a corner and died.
“Caryl,” I said flatly, “before you expire, could you be kind enough to dispense with the lock?”
“Millie!” It was Gloria, her voice blurry with tears.
Caryl sat gasping in the middle of the pavement, pulling off her gloves and wiping her bare hands on her knees with an intensity worthy of Lady Macbeth. No one knew what to do, since the person who usually gave orders was busy imploding. I moved to Caryl again and crouched nearby, leaving a bit of distance between us. I stared at the discarded gloves where they lay limp and bloody on the pavement. “Caryl, I need you to unlock that door.”
Teo advanced as though he wanted to choke me, but then stopped short, flexing his hands. “Millie, for God’s sake, let’s just get out of here before somebody gets killed.”
“I’d say we missed that boat, wouldn’t you?” I turned back to Caryl. “Are you sure the curse is lethal?”