“Oh, come on!” I kicked at the pipe. It shifted and began to hiss from a seam a few feet up. I might not be able to take apart the whole building, but I would do as much damage as I could before she got to me. I kicked again, and a fine mist began to spray over us.
“Please, no,” Morwen said in mock concern. “Don’t ruin the cooling lines.”
“Miss Rook, I think perhaps it would be unwise—” Jackaby began, but I drove one more kick into the pipe, and the metal split, a stream of water gushing out at once.
The fountain cascading over our heads did not splash down across the landing. It arced through the air and then defied physics to spin around us instead. It was a ribbon of whirling liquid, and then a wide band, growing thicker as more water fed it from the ruptured line. Mr. Loup chuckled thickly from the stairs. My eyes shot up. Morwen was spinning a hand lazily in the air as though stirring a pot with her fingers. I cursed inwardly. Nixie. Water spirit. I was an idiot.
“You know, I do enjoy a good evisceration, but it’s been months since I properly drowned anyone,” Morwen mused. The water was quickly spreading into a thick dome. Soon it would be enough to encapsulate us in a complete globe of water. With all of those muscular monsters waiting right outside the door, I had not expected to be killed by a bubble.
“The window,” Jackaby whispered. He nodded toward the rend, where, through the distortion of the gurgling wall of water, I could still make out the rip into our world. The hole torn through the fabric of the veil had ceased growing any larger, but the image of Mary all dressed in blue hung before us, dancing and bobbing on the far side of the wave. “We can make it if we move fast.”
“What?” I whispered back. “Even if we could, the machine is still on.”
“Three,” said Jackaby.
“Wait, we can’t—”
“Two.”
“Sir!”
“One!” Jackaby grabbed me by the hand and leapt. I felt my body slow down as we crashed through the water. For a horrifying second I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the momentum to escape its clutches, but then I was tumbling out the other side and Jackaby was pulling me to my feet. Soaking wet, we reached the edge of the demolished landing and jumped.
We leapt over the humming generators, through the glowing golden light, and into another world entirely.
Gravity shifted abruptly. Down became left and up became right and then the Blessed Virgin was shattering into a million tiny pieces all around me and rows of pews were rushing toward me. I ricocheted into the first bench hard enough to send it tumbling into the second, skidded along the floor, and came to rest in an aisle. My head spun. From the sound of it, Jackaby’s landing had been no smoother than mine.
I took a silent inventory of my injuries, wiggling my legs and arms and gingerly turning my neck this way and that before I sat up. We were in the church.
“So much for subterfuge,” said Jackaby, climbing out from under an overturned lectern at the front of the chamber. “Are you all right?”
“I have felt better,” I said, “but stiff upper lip and all that.” I winced. “And stiff everything else while we’re at it. I may have bruised parts of myself I didn’t know I had.”
I surveyed the room. It was a chapel like any other, with a large wooden cross on the wall above the dais, where Jackaby was now sitting up, and more stained glass windows around the room letting in colorful rays of filtered sunlight.
I looked back at the one through which we had made our explosive entrance. The dark tower was visible, its details hazy behind the bright green glow. I expected to see Morwen leaping after us at any moment, but the scene beyond the veil remained empty. Where was she?
Jackaby appeared to be having the same thought. “I doubt she wants to risk having her power siphoned if she comes through,” he reasoned.
“Right,” I said. “Why didn’t that thing drain us the way it drained Serif?” I asked.
“It did,” Jackaby grunted. He limped off the podium, moving toward the back of the church. “We’re human, though, not beings of magic, so the effects were not as pronounced. It was definitely pulling at our vital energies, though. If we had hung about, it would have finished the job soon enough.”
“Now that you mention it, I could use a sustaining cup of tea. Although that might come of being broadsided by a church,” I said. “And cut by a vampire, and bullied by ogres.”
“We also skipped breakfast,” Jackaby added. “It’s probably the breakfast.”
The glow coming from the rend above us dimmed, and the gap began to seal over. I blinked as the sunlight from the earthly world crept through in its place. “She’s shifted the device,” Jackaby said. “The gap is mending itself again. The next one could be anywhere. Keep alert. We need to get out of here and back to the hold at once.”
“Of course. We wouldn’t want to leave Morwen waiting.”
There was a flutter of movement from the shattered window above us. The gap was nearly closed when a streak of blue shot through it and came to land with a splash in the aisle next to me. I stumbled backward. The rend closed and unfiltered sunlight sparkled off the glistening figure rising in front of us. Morwen had ridden the burst of water into the church.
“I don’t think she’s the waiting type,” said Jackaby.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Morwen took a deep breath, water curling up around her legs like a coiling liquid snake. There was nothing between us now but empty air. The church held its breath.
And then Morwen collapsed.
The nixie dropped to her knees. Her water whip fell, splattering into a damp smear across the floorboards.
“She must have drained her magic crossing the barrier!” I said.
“No,” said Jackaby. “She turned the machine away from the gap so that she could make the jump. This is something else.”
Morwen shuddered.
“It’s the church,” Jackaby said. “The last time you met, she couldn’t touch you when your scars formed the likeness of a cross on your cheek—now she’s got apostles shining down at her from every window and that great big symbol hanging over her.” He gestured up to the massive cross on the wall above the lectern.
Morwen was straining to rise, but her eyes screwed shut and she fell again.
“Luck is on our side for once,” Jackaby added. “That’s novel.”
“Oh dear,” I said. “I have a feeling it’s not going to last.”
“What?” He followed my eyes. Emerald light was playing across the surface of the enormous cross. A new rend was forming right on top of it.
“If the veil opens there, it’s going to split the cross in two,” I said. “If the sign of the cross is what’s holding Morwen in place, I sincerely doubt it will be very effective in pieces.”
“We need to get up there the moment it does,” Jackaby declared. “That rend is our path back to the Annwyn.”
Together we upturned the nearest pew. The bench was heavy and ungainly, but we managed to lean it up against the wall with its back side up, like a ramp. A tiny hole had formed in the center of the cross, and it was growing.