“What?”
“All you need is your magic.” Pan cackled at the confusion that was no doubt still painted across her face. “Make the Door.”
“I-I can’t.”
Pan took a slow step forward. “Make it, and see the truth.”
Jo shook her head again, eyes pressing closed.That was where she knew the darkness from. She’d been seeing it all along. It had been behind her eyelids, steadily growing, from the first moment she’d walked into the Society.
It was in her.It was her.
“Do it, it’s what you’re made for.”
“No.”
“Be mine,” Pan whispered, now just a step away. Jo could feel the ripples of magic off the woman’s body. Her clothes swayed, seeming to fray, transforming before Jo’s eyes into the bindings of multicolored leathers she’d seen before. “Come back to me.”
Jo shook her head violently, neck straining. “I . . . I will not. The only thing I was made to destroy, is you.”
“Impossible, with the Society around us. But you can fix that too, can’t you?” Pan egged on eagerly. “Now, go and show me, Jo. Show me your magic, Destruction.”
“Never!” Jo screamed, a voice she’d once had pouring out of her mouth.
Pan was forced back, stumbling, falling to the floor in gleeful laughter. There before Jo, obscuring the woman on the floor, was the Door. She didn’t know how it was possible, or why. But there it was, hovering mid-air.
She was too afraid to question and knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Jo didn’t even bother with the pin-code. She pushed on the handle, wrenching open the Door. A cackle of sheer madness covered up any sound that the metal may have made as it opened.
“The box is the key to ending this. Do it, Josephina. Or I will see everything you love come undone with glorious chaos, one way or another.”
The words echoed between Jo’s ears as she breathlessly sprinted into the hallway, slamming into the wall on the other side. She spun, but the black door was as it had always been: closed tight. Yet that same feeling of being watched lingered alongside the echo of Pan’s laughter.
Jo turned in a rush of fear and adrenaline, and bolted through Snow’s door.
Chapter 25
Finally
He’d said she could come and go as she needed, but Jo didn’t think he’d intended for it to be like this.
Wrenching Snow’s door open, Jo felt tethers trying to keep it shut snapping under her brute force. She paused, looking at the open frame.What had that been?Some kind of protective ward to keep Pan and her watchful gaze out, perhaps?
And she had broken them.
Which meant now, whenever she wanted to, Pan could waltz right in and take what she had been looking for the whole time. Jo walked over to the box, her earlier conversation with Snow replaying loudly in her ears. She had told him she wouldn’t touch it. She had also vowed to end the Society.
Jo looked back to the door, half expecting to see Pan ready to pounce.
But her promise was before she’d broken his wards. Did he already know? Could he sense her destruction? Was he on his way? She turned back to the box.
Even if he was coming for her, to investigate the meaning behind the destruction of his protections, she would have to keep away Pan until he arrived—if Pan even came to begin with. Perhaps she should wait it out? Or perhaps she was just waiting to lose everything.
Another thought entered Jo’s mind—once more, the idea of destroying the Society, of ending everything. With this power, she could. Pan had told her she could.
One way or another, Pan had said.
One way or another, it would all end.
Jo didn’t think, just followed the pull in her gut. This was her power, and with it, she might have a chance. She’d take it and go far away, open it safely, hide while she was vulnerable, learn her magic—formulate a plan at the very least.
