It wouldn’t be tomorrow.
“If anyone ever had reason to panic, I think we qualify,” Rosier told me. “But there’s no such thing as an impregnable prison. If there’s a way in, there’s a way out. And, as I was about to say, we do know two things that apply here.”
I ran a hand over my eyes. “What?”
“I can’t shift out, and neither can you.”
“And that means?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I can tell you this: in four millennia, I have never been anywhere that did not permit me to shift back to my home. Therefore this is either somewhere I’ve never been, or it’s some type of illusion.”
I looked up at the ceiling, where a Cassie-shaped blob looked back at me. This place wasn’t mirrored, but it was vaguely reflective. Meaning that I saw indistinct versions of me and Rosier everywhere.
This one looked disapproving.
I looked away. “You can’t see through illusions?”
“With my power intact, certainly. Without it . . .” He looked around. “I would still expect to be able to.”
“But you can’t.”
“No. If this is an illusion, it’s a damn fine one.”
“Then you’re voting for real?”
“If it weren’t for that one thing, yes. But it doesn’t take power for me to shift home; it takes a certain amount of effort for me to stay in your realm, and resist the pull back to mine. Therefore the dam the council put on my power should make no difference.”
“Then . . . maybe she’s blocking you somehow. Gertie, I mean. Or the Circle—”
Rosier laughed. It was scornful. “The Circle. They rather overestimate their abilities, particularly in regard to my kind.”
“They’ve trapped demons before—”
“Not a member of council,” he said shortly. “And not in bodily form. In any case, this doesn’t feel like a trap—not the magical variety.”
And no, it didn’t. It didn’t look like one, either, and I should know, having spent time recently in one of the Circle’s little snares. It had been featureless inside, too, but just black, to the point that I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or not. Like floating in a sea of nothingness, which had been damn disturbing.
But less so than this, because I could shift out of those. I couldn’t shift out of this. I didn’t even know what this was!
I felt my fingers try to dig into the surface of the floor beneath me. It was cool, and smooth as glass, showing me back a vague reflection of my palm. Like the Cassie-blob that resided in the opposite wall.
It looked defeated.
And I couldn’t be that, not when there was still a chance.
I got up and began pacing, as far as the maybe eight-by-ten space would allow. I didn’t usually suffer from claustrophobia, but this . . . was getting to me. I felt like a caged animal. To the point that I could see myself throwing my body at the walls before long, beating my hands against them until they were bloody, yelling myself hoarse. Until I eventually went crazy, because who wouldn’t in a place like this?
Maybe that was what Gertie had meant, when she said I might prefer death to my fate otherwise. Stuck in some featureless void, abandoned and forgotten. Conscious but unable to do anything, to help anything, while Pritkin died and the world went to hell and I waited for the gods to return and rip it apart, freeing me right before they killed me!
Goddamn it!
A ghostly knife speared the opposite wall, flung there out of sheer frustration, but it didn’t help. Any more than it had helped the last time I did it, more deliberately, shortly after waking up. It also didn’t bounce around, making a hazard for the two of us, or even so much as crack the surface.
It just . . . disappeared.
“This can’t be real,” I told Rosier. “My knife would have dinged it if it was.”
“Then you’re voting for illusion.”
“I don’t know what I’m voting for. I just want out.”
I let my forehead rest against the wall for a moment, staring at my reflection, trying to think.
This time, it looked surprised.
I frowned.
It didn’t.
What the—
I sprang backward from the shiny surface, and the reflection I’d been looking at abruptly disappeared. But not before I saw differences I hadn’t seen up close: like the fact that the curls were gray, not blond, and the face was lined, not youthful, and the eyes were blue, yes.
But they weren’t mine.
So, not a reflection, then. Somebody was on the other side of the wall. Somebody who had been peering in at us curiously. Somebody who might know a lot more about this place than I did.
And there was only one way to reach her.
“Stay here,” I told Rosier shortly.
“What?” He looked from me to the wall I was still staring at. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going outside.”
“I thought you couldn’t shift?”
“I can’t.”
“Then how—” His eyes got wide. “No.”
“I won’t be long.”
“No!”
“I’ll come right back.”
“And if you don’t? I’ll be left in here with a corpse, and we’ll have no chance, no chance—”
“We have no chance now! You said two days maximum until Pritkin’s soul arrives. It’s already been most of one. We have to get out of here—”
“But that Gertie woman is coming to question us!” He grabbed me. “She has to wonder what we’ve been up to. It’s human nature—”
“Unless you’re a Pythia, who’s been trained to be seriously uncurious about the future,” I said, trying to pry his hand off my leg. “Agnes went so far as to stick her fingers in her ears once, so I couldn’t tell her anything, just in case she did something to change it. Gertie isn’t coming, Rosier.”
“She has to!” His previous calm was showing cracks now, like that was what he’d been counting on. That she’d show up and we’d bash her over the head or something. “She has to!”
“She won’t.”
“But there’s no food. Someone has to bring food—”
“Rosier. Let go and step back.”
“—and no toilet! How can you have a prison cell with no bloody toilet?”
“The same way you can have one with no door. We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I said, and stepped through the wall.
I felt my body fall away, unable to follow, but the other part of me had no such trouble. The part that had gone zooming around the drag with Billy Joe. The part that had just stepped out into . . .
I had no freaking idea.
There was a lot of darkness, but not total. Vague outlines of things were visible, here and there, faint and grayish white, like lines on an X-ray. Including a distant horizon, with flashes that looked like lightning.
I looked up, but there were no stars. Down, but the ground beneath my feet was just the same noncolor and vaguely rocky. Behind me—and finally, something looked more or less the same. Only from the other side.
Because I could see through the walls now.
Which was how I saw a figure flitting away on the opposite side of the cell, toward a long line of them, stretching toward the horizon.