Whatever the old man had been doing was now undone. Jacob Marber, with a sudden explosive force, hurled the gigantic talent backward, and then a cloud of dust overwhelmed the others so that Alice could no longer see them.
It was the speed of all of this, the speed at which it all happened, that amazed her most. It seemed only a matter of minutes since he’d appeared. She glanced wildly over at the kids and saw they too hadn’t had time to move, to do anything, and only stared in horror as that black storm of dust overwhelmed everything in its path.
“What is happening?” barked Miss Davenshaw.
“Where are they?” the Japanese girl cried out. “Do you see them?”
But no one did. There was only a great roaring storm of dust, cycloning over the field. For a long moment nothing happened. And then, striding forth out of the maelstrom, his eyes fixed directly on them, came Jacob Marber, the litch like a hound at his heels. The old talents were dead.
“We need to go,” Alice said sharply. She spun around.
It was only then she realized Mrs. Harrogate was gone.
* * *
Charlie had watched Mrs. Harrogate wheel herself silently backward and away, off into the darkness, heading down toward the loch, the long knives like crescents of darkness in her lap. When Alice turned in surprise he didn’t answer, he didn’t speak up, tell her what he’d seen, where she’d gone. He didn’t have to. They all knew.
But what Charlie was thinking, what he couldn’t stop thinking about, was the spirit dead in that other world, listless, shimmering, gathered rank-upon-rank in a great thick fog on the far side of the orsine. Waiting. As if drawn to the heat of the living. His recollection of it was hazy but he had a sense of being swarmed, of a terrible cold seeping into his chest, of an unslaked hunger. He did not know what his world would be if they came through.
It wasn’t a clear thought and it was gone as fast as it came because Alice was shoving him, shoving all of them, back toward the manor.
“Go, go!” she was shouting. “Hurry!” She was waving back the other students too. And then all were scrambling through the kitchen, past the big copper vats of stew and soup, cold now, maybe fifteen kids in total, spilling out into the dining room, crockery smashing in their wake as they hurtled past, into the foyer, up the stairs. Charlie glimpsed Mr. Smythe and his wards hurrying in the other direction but they were too far to call out to and anyway there wasn’t time.
Upstairs, Cairndale Manor was quiet and still. They crept on. Through the windows the orange glow of the fires stained the walls and their faces and their hands with light. They heard a sudden shattering of glass behind them, and screams. Then the screaming stopped.
“He’s coming,” hissed Alice.
The other kids, the unnamed ones, had scattered into various rooms, shutting the doors, huddling in silence. But Charlie, glancing back, saw a shadow skitter across the walls, far behind, and knew there was no hiding. Not from the litch. It frightened him as much as anything in this world ever had and he started to shake. They were in a long straight hallway and the creature was coming fast.
“We need to face them,” Komako whispered angrily. “We can’t hide.”
“Where’s Miss Davenshaw?” said Oskar.
Charlie looked around. They’d lost her too somewhere, somehow.
“Son of a bitch,” Alice snapped.
Everything was going wrong. Alice started to go back but just then the manor shuddered, the walls trembling, as if something were trying to bring it down around them. Charlie saw her hesitate. Then she pulled out a long key from her pocket and ran her hands over it desperately. He thought maybe she was losing it. But then a cat leaped lightly onto the sill of an open window almost as if summoned and Alice stared at it fiercely.
“Took your damned time,” she snapped.
At the cat.
He stared. But he had no time to think about this. There came a sudden whooshing roar and Charlie glanced out the window and saw the other wing of the manor—the wing with Berghast’s study—going up in flames. A darkness was whirling out there, blotting out the sky, and he realized it was dust. Jacob Marber’s dust, surrounding them, enclosing them. They had to get to Berghast’s study and into the tunnels before the fires made the going impassable. But then he felt Ribs’s grip on his sleeve and he stumbled and turned. The litch was crawling toward them down the hall. As it went it swept the candles from their sconces. In one claw it held a lantern and Charlie watched as it swung the light high and then shattered it against a door. A splash of flames lit up the wood.
They would all be burned alive.
“We’ve got to go, now!” Alice shouted. They were sprinting then, heading for the turn in the hallway, a corner. Alice was glaring back in fury. “Why hasn’t it attacked us yet?” she demanded. “It’s faster than us, it should be here. It’s almost like—like…”
Her voice trailed off in horror as they came around the corner.
“Like it’s herding us somewhere,” finished Komako, in a whisper.
Charlie followed her gaze. There ahead of them stood Jacob Marber, blocking their way out, the dark dust in ropes cycloning around his fists. Charlie couldn’t make out his eyes because of the shadows but his chin was down so that his beard spilled out over his chest like an apron of darkness. A torn cheek flapped bloodily. He was walking slowly, unhurriedly, toward them.
“Charlie!” Komako hissed. She seized him by the wrist so that he turned to her and she said, in a calm cold voice: “You have to get to the glyphic, you have to seal the orsine. We can handle this. You need to go.”
Charlie looked in a panic from Jacob Marber to Komako and back. “I don’t … I don’t think I can,” he said. Far behind them, the litch’s long claws scraped the walls.
Alice had overheard and pushed forward. “You heal, right?” she said sharply. “That’s what you do?”
He nodded, confused. “Yes—”
And without waiting to hear more, she seized the scruff of his collar and turned him sharply toward the window and pushed him through. And then Charlie and the shattering glass and the splintered pieces of the wood frame all plummeted down into the fiery courtyard below.
* * *
Henry Berghast dropped the child onto the floor of the chamber.
He reminded himself not to rush. He’d hooked the lantern outside the door as he unlocked it and had forgotten it there but it did not matter, the chamber was lit by the blue glow of the orsine. Still, he must be more careful. He would not get a second chance.
It was then he realized they were not alone.
There were figures in the slumped in the gloom, dim silhouettes, as gray as dust, standing with their faces turned to the orsine and their shoulders rolled and their arms lifeless at their sides. Six in all. They took no notice of Berghast or the child.
The spirit dead.
Berghast crouched, glaring. As he watched, a seventh waded sleepily up out of the orsine. Its feet left wet prints on the stone floor. It stumbled a few feet away and then turned, and peered back at the shining blue surface, and went still.
Quietly, his heart pounding, he began to prepare what he needed. He was remembering the words he had glimpsed in the glove, the incantation, and he began to murmur them now, softly, under his breath. He was not one to believe in the spiritual or the unseen by nature and knew much of what the ancients had believed was nonsense and superstition, but he’d do as the glove had shown him. Better to be cautious.
He heard the child stir.
“You hit me,” the boy whimpered.
Berghast allowed himself a quick brief frown. “You left me no choice,” he murmured. “I did not like doing it. Do not make me hurt you again. Now hush; we are not alone.”
The little boy must have seen them then, too, for he went silent.