There was a man on the other side of the door.
He had skin that looked to be made of some kind of steel or alloy, and all-black obsidian eyes. He wore what could best be described as a child’s interpretation of a butler’s uniform, comedic in its ostentatious parts that didn’t quite go together. His coat had capped sleeves that poofed up to his ears in a balloon of fabric. It was double-buttoned, a long silver tie running down the center and extending nearly to his knees. His shorts reminded Jo of what she’d seen boys wearing to prestigious private schools when she was a kid.
“She requests your presence for dinner.” His lips barely moved when he spoke, like an automaton or a puppet, the jaw hinged at the corners of the mouth and sliding down from the chin rather than the ears.
“I am inclined to take dinner here,” Jo protested. Even if she didn’t have a choice, she didn’t want to start a habit of going willingly. She would be trouble for Pan up until the end . . . whatever and whenever that ending was.
The butler looked at her blankly and then repeated in the same sort of hollow, echoing voice, “She requests your presence for dinner.”
“I said I was inclined—”
“Jo,” Snow stopped her with a deep utterance of her name. A hand slipped around her waist, tenderly, as if seeking one final embrace before she was pulled from him. He moved to kiss her shoulder and from the corners of her eyes Jo could see that his gaze never left the threshold of the door—the barrier that confined him to his room. With just one look of frustrated resignation from him, Jo wanted to say plans be damned and shatter it now. “Go on ahead. There’s no point in fighting.”
There’s no point in fighting now, she mentally corrected. The time for fighting would be soon enough and when it came, Jo would not hesitate for a moment to unleash her full wrath on the world.
“Very well,” Jo said finally. “Take me to her.”
The man nodded. His head spun first, a full hundred and eighty degrees around to face the opposite direction. His body followed in an uncomfortable pivot. Without a word, he began walking away.
Jo gave Snow’s hand one more squeeze, and then felt it fall from her waist.
By the time she looked back, his door had already shut, and unnatural shadows had begun to obscure it from view.
Chapter 28
Dress For Dinner
She followed behind the strange creature without question.
It wasn’t that Jo didn’thaveany questions; she had quite a few, in fact, what it was and how it came to be in Pan’s service, for starters. What kept Jo silent was the fact that she didn’t think that asking her questions would actually get her anywhere. If the creature answered her, she was sure it would either be something vague and immaterial, or so specific as to be devoid of meaning for Jo—someone still learning the particulars about Age of Magic she now resided in.
But if she had to describe the man in her own terms, it would be a stone marionette. As she looked more closely at the grayish skin on the man’s arms, she realized that it was not metal, as she previously thought, but some kind of dark, smoky quartz. It looked hard, and picked up the light as though it were mirror-polished.
She was so distracted by trying to pick it and its strange magic apart that Jo didn’t notice she was now in a completely different hallway.
Gone were the halls she’d first walked through with Pan. There were no orbs to light the way, but glowing strips on either side of stone walkways where the floor met the walls. They looked like carved channels, some kind of luminescent liquid flowing down them. It cast an eerie reddish haze that caught on every bottom edge of the stone walls, which looked almost as if they were bleeding as a result.
The hallway reached a dead end and the creature came to a prompt stop.
“Where to now?” Jo reached over its shoulder, tapping on the wall. “Don’t think we can go this way, unless you want me to break it down.”
She heard a soft grinding noise as the man twisted his head once more. Jo took an involuntary step backward, still not entirely accustomed to that ability. His body followed and then he stood, immobile, for a long minute, just staring at her with those blank eyes.
“Turn, please,” he instructed.
Jo turned to find the hallway she had been walking in was no longer the same. Sure, it had the tracks of light, the bloody glow, and the stone walls. But now, clouded windows let in the orange glow of sunset along her left side. Along her right were a series of doors, all nearly identical.
“Third one, please,” the man said from behind her.
Jo took a few wide steps. Not because she was eager to get to dinner with Pan, but because she had no interest in keeping the man at her back longer than necessary. The more distance between them, the better.
“All right, Pan, let’s get this—” Jo spoke as she swung open the door, expecting some kind of dining room, but was stopped short the moment the room registered.
It was not a dining room. More like a glorified closet. A glorified,emptycloset.
There were racks to hang clothes, shelves, and shoe cubbies on every dark-wooded wall. The carpet was a plush red velvet that muffled their footfalls as Jo and her guide entered. Directly across from the door was a mirror, and hanging in front of it was a single article of clothing—a dress.
“She requests that you dress for dinner.”
