The dog stared deep into Charlie’s eyes, and then in a flash of milky white fur it was gone, and Charlie was alone again.
Back beneath the towering yew tree, Morwen gasped. The little brown stone on her necklace splintered and fell apart, nothing but tan pebbles and rock dust trickling through her fingers and down the shimmering blue-green dress. “No!” she shrieked. Her hex broken and her minions free, the nixie panicked. She fumbled with the pouch at her side, pulling out a handful of acorns.
The whole world was still spinning around me, but up close I could see that scraps of folded paper had been stuffed inside each of them. More hexes. She loosed one at me and I managed to duck away from it without falling over. Morwen snarled and let fly the whole handful. There was no chance that I could dodge them all.
A sudden gust of wind whipped up before the projectiles could reach me, sending them tumbling harmlessly into the roots. “LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE.” Jenny was nowhere to be seen, but her voice was everywhere and hard as steel. Dust began to form little eddies as the air spun all around us.
Morwen cursed and ran for the machine, slapping the brass fixtures into their traveling straps clumsily and folding the legs shut. Across the clearing I could see Jackaby’s body still trapped in the grip of the giant’s unyielding fingers, and Finstern still fighting his own limbs.
“Sister!” Finstern cried. “Help me!”
“We needed a demonstration,” she called across the windy clearing. “And you have provided that. Father will be very pleased with your efforts on our behalf, dear brother. I’ll take your little toy, but your presence”—she secured the last strap and hefted the device over her shoulder—“is not required.”
Finstern cried out desperately, but Morwen turned her back on him and ran for the forest. I willed the world to hold still and flung the silver knife at her as hard as I could. The blade whipped through the air. It caught her leg a glancing blow, slicing a hole in her shimmering skirts and bouncing off into the roots. She glared back at me icily for just a moment, but the attack did not even slow her down. In another moment she had vanished into the woods.
Jenny Cavanaugh materialized in the center of the clearing. Freezing wind whipped around her.
“Jenny!” called out a familiar voice through Finstern’s mouth.
The inventor’s foot stumbled across the threshold just as Jenny turned. She eyed Finstern angrily. “Jackaby?” she said. “Are you in there?”
Finstern shook his head violently. “Argh! Get out! Get him out of my head!” he hollered furiously in his own Welsh accent. Then, in an American voice much softer and kinder than that of the insufferable cretin we had come to know, the man spoke again. “No. Not Jackaby. It’s me, Jennybean.”
The wind stopped.
I realized what had pushed me across the threshold, what was fighting Finstern in his own skin. Howard Carson. He had followed me after all, only to rush into the path of the machine and channel his own soul into the mad inventor’s body.
Jenny’s eyes were wide. She hung motionless in the air. For several seconds the only sounds were the creaks of molten rock gradually solidifying in ashy lumps beside us. Swirling tendrils of blue-black mist were beginning to creep up out of the cave in the tree. One of the wisps of the Terminus, the End Soul, clung to Finstern’s foot and climbed his leg, winding upward like a smoky snake.
“Howard?” whispered Jenny.
“Keep back,” he said. “I can’t stay. It’s already pulling me down. I can feel it. ”
“Howard? Howard—I looked for you. I waited for so long.” Jenny’s voice shook.
“Don’t wait any longer,” he said. “You’ve lost enough time waiting, and it’s all my fault. I should have listened to you from the start. I would give your whole life back to you if I could, and mine right along with it.” The mist grew thicker, moving, swirling, undulating all the time as it coiled around the inventor’s waist. “I can’t. What I can give you is a little more time. Use it well. Every second. Find Poplin. Mayor Poplin was the only one of us to meet the council face-to-face. Find Poplin and you’ll find your answers.”
“I don’t want you to go,” Jenny breathed. “I’m not strong enough to lose you again.”
“You’re stronger than you think. You always have been. Listen to me now—losing Finstern will only slow them down. It won’t stop them.” The shadowy tendrils had coiled around his chest. “Stop waiting,” he said. “You’ve always been strong for me. It’s time for you to be strong for you.”
“Howard—”
“Good-bye, Jennybean. Be amazing.”
And then Owen Finstern fell backward across the threshold.
His arms flailed once, as though he were waking from a nightmare, and his startled scream was cut short mid-breath as his body collapsed to the ground, just as mine had done when I crossed over. Above the man’s still corpse not one but two spectral figures appeared. The spirit of Howard Carson drifted serenely backward into the darkness of the yew tree. He reached into his pocket and flicked a single coin in the air and caught it. The obol I had given him. He had managed to keep it after all. He stared lovingly at Jenny until the mist had claimed him.
The departure of Owen Finstern’s soul was not so peaceful. His mouth broke open in an anguished snarl, and it was clear he was fighting forces against which he could not win. Behind him, in the shadows of the great tree, a figure appeared, dressed in an impeccable black suit. The stranger watched as Finstern’s soul spasmed, watched as his head shot back. It was as though invisible chains were dragging the inventor’s ghost forward and backward at the same time. He twitched and bucked, then shuddered wretchedly, coming apart at the seams. By the time his broken soul finally tumbled backward into the hole, it did not look much like a man anymore. Something else—no more than a sliver of darkness—skittered away into the roots in the opposite direction like an angry black insect.
Charon had warned us. The part of Finstern that was inhuman could not enter, and the part of him that was human could not escape. The crossing had completely torn Finstern apart.
“What will become of them?” I called to the dark stranger in the shadows. “Will Mr. Carson get to go back to his afterlife?” The stranger did not answer right away. “Is Owen Finstern just gone, now? Does whatever is left of his humanity get its own special place in the underworld? Does he join the End Soul?”
“Ask me those questions,” said the echoing voice, “when next we meet again, little mortal.” And then the shadows were empty. The stranger was gone.
With a clatter of crumbling stones, Jackaby finally kicked his way free of the Alloch’s ruined hand. He brushed off his coat and crossed the clearing to stand beside Jenny Cavanaugh.
“Jenny?” he said.
“I told you there was no other woman,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the tree.