“Hal, tell me what’s wrong.”
His eyes flashed hot. His body was tight with anger. “Leave me!”
I obeyed.
I stepped into one of the shadow-mirrors, and the corridor faded around me.
I FOUND MYSELF IN AN ordinary book-world, standing under a tree on a hill. To my utter astonishment Mokosh was there, wearing a gauzy purple gown that matched her eyes.
“Echo! Where have you been? It’s ages since I saw you last. Are you going to tell me about him this time? Your mysterious other reader?” She winked at me.
I felt like a battered toy, ready to rattle apart in the barest wind. I realized I did want to tell her about Hal. I needed to talk to someone, and the wolf didn’t seem at all like the right choice.
So I told her everything, back in her palace room on her floating island, stars winking outside the window. She listened at first with a teasing interest, which morphed into a disapproving severity by the time I was finished. “I feel I should put you on your guard,” she said. She touched my knee, her brows creased with concern. “You don’t know what he wants from you.”
Her tone irked me. “He doesn’t want anything. He’s my friend.”
“Then why isn’t he honest with you? How did he get trapped in the books in the first place? Maybe he’s dangerous. Maybe the books are his prison.”
I jerked to my feet and paced to the window, buzzing with nervous energy.
“He said he was going to hurt you. He warned you himself to stay away.”
“He would never hurt me.”
“Echo, you don’t know that. You need to be careful.”
I studied her in the starlight, her beautiful eyes and shining hair, her flawless perfection, even in her own world. I was sorry I had come.
I made an excuse and left as quickly as I could, not easy again until I was safely back in the library.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I DIDN’T EXPECT TO SEE HAL again, not after he was so adamant I should leave him. But he was waiting in the first book-mirror I stepped into the next day, standing alone on a mountaintop, his eyes and face stricken. A cold wind tore through his hair. Below us rambled a wide green wood.
There was always a wood.
“Will you meet me in Shadow of Stars?” said Hal quietly. “I want to show you something.”
I nodded, and he gave me a tight smile. “There’s an old concert hall, abandoned during a war. I’ll be waiting for you there.” And then he vanished.
I commanded the library and a mirror wavered into existence. I stepped through, onto a hill under fierce stars, the shattered ruins of a war-torn city stretching into the night.
I wandered through the winding streets, stepping over rubble and dark stains I didn’t care to examine very closely. A boy with a bloody rag tied around his head pointed me to the concert hall, a huge domed building near the center of the city. Somewhere not too far off I heard shouting. Weeping. A piercing scream. I shuddered and picked my way to the hall as quickly as I could. I climbed a broken stair, stepped through the splintered remains of a door.
The ceiling soared high above me, broken glass showing slivers of stars. Four tiers of balconies leaned over a wide wooden stage, like ornately dressed eavesdroppers peering through a keyhole. Hal sat at a piano in the middle of the stage, wearing ill-fitting black trousers and a loose blue shirt that pooled silk over his wrists. His feet were bare. I suddenly remembered the careless notes he’d played on the harpsichord in The Empress’s Musician, the offhanded way he’d talked so knowledgeably about Behrend.
I walked toward the stage and settled into a seat in the very front row. Hal didn’t look at me, but he must have known I was there.
He started playing, a low octave with his left hand, his right spinning out a melody that sounded like liquid stars, beautiful and impossible and haunting. The left hand slowly climbed up to meet the right, and a fascinating counterpoint emerged out of nothing, spiraling into a wall of raging chords punctuated by a low repeated note, erratic as a fading heartbeat. The music rose and fell. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my life, but the sorrow woven into every phrase was almost too much to bear.
It ended before I was ready, but not before my cheeks grew damp with tears. I blinked up at Hal, who leaned his elbows on the keys and put his head in his hands. His shoulders shook and I jerked up from my seat and scrambled onto the stage. I sat next to him on the piano bench, slid my arm around his waist. He felt heavy beside me, his grief a solid thing.
“I wanted—I wanted you to know one thing about me,” he said. “One true thing. It was all I could think of to give you.” His voice was raw, ragged.
Ask the right questions, whispered the smoke-woman, unbidden, in my mind. “Where did you learn to play like that?”
“I learned from my friend. She wrote that piece—it was her gift to me.”
The words tore at my heart, and I tried to push away my jealousy. “What happened to her?”
“I lost her. A long time ago.” He stood from the bench in one stiff motion.
“How long ago?”
He looked at me, his eyes wet. “A moment. And an eternity.”
I rose and slipped over to him. “If there was a way to—to get everything back … to make everything right again … would you let me help you?”
“You cannot help me, Echo. You never could.”
I stared at him, my pulse overloud in my ears. “Hal—”
He stepped back, his whole body trembling.
The stage began to shake beneath our feet. Stars exploded beyond the domed ceiling, the world fractured white. I got the feeling from Hal’s sudden sharp breath that this wasn’t supposed to happen—another change in the story.
He flashed one more look in my direction, and winked out of existence.
I turned to see Mokosh standing in the midst of the hall, a pale green dress blowing about her knees in some invisible wind.
“All he does is lie to you,” she said. “Why can’t you see that?”
“Why do you only show up after he’s gone?” I snapped, unaccountably irritated with her. “Are you following me? Library, I want to stop reading.”
“Echo, I’m only watching out for you—”
But I was already stepping through the mirror. The hall faded around me. Hal’s music coiled fragile and tight around my heart.
I DREAMED I WAS DANCING with Hal in the glittering ballroom. Soldiers burst in with their rifles and bayonets, and they slit Hal’s throat in a sweep of jagged silver. He stared at me as he crumpled and fell. “You cannot help me, Echo,” he whispered. “You never could.”
And then I was kneeling in the snow and it was Rodya who lay there, red blood staining the white ground. He gasped for air and couldn’t breathe and I turned and saw my father’s bookshop, burning, burning. My father was trapped behind the window.
“Papa!” I screamed and ran toward him.
Then everything turned dark, and I stood in the room behind the black door. The baubles dropped from their strings, slicing me to pieces as they slid past. I pushed through the falling stars to the strange whirring clock, and there behind the glass was Hal’s face, his eyes wide with horror.
I WOKE WITH A GASP to the sound of someone crying. The darkness was sharp and cold around me, and I was shaky from the grip of my dreams. But I knew, as I had not wholly known before, that it wasn’t the wolf making that noise.
It couldn’t be.
Fear bit sharp. I reached out to feel for the wolf in the blankets.
But my hand touched skin, my fingers brushed against a very human arm. I gasped.
The owner of the arm woke; there was a sudden frozen stillness, the sharp intake of breath.
“Don’t touch me,” came a hoarse, desperate whisper. “You’re not supposed to touch me.”
But I didn’t pull away. My pulse raged, strong enough, wild enough, to make me burst apart.
I knew that voice. How could I know that voice?
“Please, Echo. Please.”
I let go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE