A sudden longing sparked in his eyes. “I’ll try,” he said.
I let out a breath and gave him a shaky smile. “Library. I’d like to stop reading, please.”
The mirror shimmered in the air between us.
“You first,” I told Hal.
He stepped up to the glass, stretched out one hand to touch it.
But nothing happened.
“Try again. Please.”
He put both palms flat against the surface of the mirror. He stood so close his nose touched.
Nothing.
His eyes flicked to mine. “Please, Hal.” I was shaking. “Please.”
And that’s when I grabbed his hand, and ran with him toward the mirror.
He hit it with a resounding crash, and fell onto the beach in a shower of glass fragments. Blood showed bright on his arms and his face where the shards cut him.
I knelt beside him in the sand. He gripped my shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Echo. I don’t think I really exist, out there. I’m just a shadow.”
“I can’t accept that. You’re as real as I am.”
“Maybe I was, once. But I’m not anymore.”
I touched a spot of blood on his cheek, brushed it away. He sighed and sagged against me.
I fought back my rising sense of helplessness. I’d thought it would work. I’d needed it to work. “I’ll find a way to help you. To free you. We’ll fix this.” But I didn’t know if I believed that anymore.
“I hope so.”
Hal’s breath was warm against my cheek, and the nearness of him made my stomach wobble. I didn’t know quite what to do with my involuntary reaction, so I stood to my feet, pulling him up with me. “In the meantime, how about another fencing lesson?”
He grinned, though a sort of haunted blankness lingered in his eyes. “I thought you would never ask.”
We fenced for an hour along the beach, though I could tell his heart wasn’t in it any more than mine was. We finally collapsed in the sand, watching the waves whisper up onto the shore and then fall back again.
Hal’s hand found mine. I shifted closer to him.
An explosion shook the ground, and we looked back to see the market bright with flames.
Hal tightened his grip on my hand.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“That’s never happened before.”
Another explosion wrenched through the earth, shaking us apart from each other. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve read this book half a dozen times and that’s never happened. The story is changing.”
My chest tightened. My mind flew to the unraveling house, shedding rooms like snakeskin. “I have to go,” I breathed. “I have to—Library, I want to stop reading.”
“Echo, wait—”
But I was already reaching out for the mirror.
THE LIBRARY WAS SHAKING, BOOK-MIRRORS tumbling from the walls, crystals falling from the chandeliers like beautiful, deadly rain.
No. No.
Not the library.
Not Hal.
A crack splintered through the floor and one of the couches fell into it. Mirrors smashed onto the tiles. The library began to scream.
I leapt across the widening crack, stumbling on the other side, nearly falling in myself. My hand went automatically to the pouch at my hip, and I slipped on the thimble while loosing the needle and the spool of golden thread.
I refused to let the library become unbound.
I refused to lose Hal.
I flung myself toward the door, fingers scrabbling around the frame, and touched it with the thimble. My hand fell through the wall and I found the scarlet binding threads, slippery and smooth, frayed at the edges. Broken. I held tight.
The library shrieked. The shaking grew worse. Mirrors crashed and skidded around me, slivers of glass bouncing up to cut into my cheeks, my arms, while the crystals from the chandeliers sliced my neck or caught in my hair. The room tilted backward and I grabbed the door frame with one hand, my body dangling in empty space. With my other hand, I clung to the scarlet cords. My heart beat triple time: Don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.
But if I didn’t let go, I wouldn’t have both hands free for the binding stitch.
And if I let go, I would fall.
“Echo!”
I looked up into the hallway, where the wolf crouched, every hair standing on end. “Echo, reach! I will catch you!”
But I couldn’t lose Hal.
I glanced behind me, into the chaos of shattered mirrors and the widening chasm that spiraled down into the void.
It was worth being unbound, for a chance to save Hal.
I let go of the door frame. I slipped the needle into the scarlet threads.
For three heartbeats, I didn’t fall. For three heartbeats, I sewed the binding stitch, the needle humming in my hand.
And then the wolf’s teeth clamped around my arm and he was hauling me upward, over the door frame and into the safety of the corridor.
“I wasn’t finished!” I wrenched away from him, wheeling on the library.
It was still there, shaking, shuddering. But the crack didn’t open any wider. The screaming stopped.
“We can still save it,” I told the wolf.
He growled. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m not giving the library up. Go to the spider room. Gather all the binding thread you can.” It was strange giving him orders, but he just dipped his head mutely and went off down the hall.
I brushed my hand around the door frame, willing the library to grow still. “By the old magic,” I said softly, “I command you to stay.”
And somehow the room quieted. Somehow, the shaking ceased.
The wolf was back the next moment, hauling a basket full of thread in his teeth. I grabbed it and hopped down into the library before he could protest.
I glanced back. “Aren’t you going to help?”
He grunted but leapt down as well, careful to avoid the crack in the floor.
“We can fix this,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. I tried not to look at all the book-mirrors, tried not to register the fact that most of them—if not all—were clearly broken beyond repair.
I knelt beside the crack and pushed the needle into the floor. It went in easily, the thread sighing and singing. Without any warning, I leapt across to the other side, skidding to a stop in a shower of broken glass. The wolf giving a sharp bark of alarm.
“I’m fine,” I assured him.
He stayed where he was, glowering at me.
I ignored him and pushed the needle into the floor on that side, preparing to leap back across.
“Throw me the needle, Echo,” said the wolf drily. “I will make the stitches over here.”
That certainly sounded less exhausting than leaping across the crack over and over all the way down the room. I threw it to him.
It took hours to mend the library, hundreds of stitches on either side of the crack. When we’d finished stitching, I joined the wolf on his side, and we seized the thread together and pulled the seam shut, the whole house groaning and grinding beneath us. After that, I made more binding stitches around the door frame, and we pulled the room up to its proper level again.
There was nothing to be done about the book-mirrors.
“The house may be able to fix them,” the wolf told me, following my mournful glance.
I didn’t believe him, but I hoped he was right. I fought the urge to dig among the slivers of glass, piece together a book-mirror, and step through to see if Hal was all right.
The air in the hallway turned suddenly icy; the lamp grew a tail and floated down from the wall—it was nearly midnight.
“Come, Echo. We’ve done all we can.”
The wolf caught my eye, and I sagged against him. “Thank you for helping me.”
He cocked his head. “I would never have left you to do it alone.”
We paced down the corridor as we had done that first night, my hand wound in the scruff of his fur, the wolf pressed up warm against my knee.
I dreamed that Hal shattered to pieces like the book-mirrors, and spun away into the darkness where I could never reach him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IN THE MORNING, I WENT STRAIGHT to the library. To my staggering relief, it was still there. I sewed six binding stitches around the door frame, just to be sure, and then stepped inside.