We carefully pick our way through the debris to reach a door right behind the counter.
“Jack must have gone through here,” I say. “What’s he doing and why didn’t he wait for us?”
Aster just shakes his head as we stumble further forward through the door.
I blink hard. The walls look strange through here, like melted candle wax, and I rub my eyes, trying to clear my vision. When I open my eyes again, the walls look normal, but there’s a staircase in front of me that wasn’t there a moment ago. I take a tentative step forward, expecting to step down, but my foot meets the solid floor.
“What is going on?”
I’m still holding Aster’s hand, and it’s only because of that I don’t fall flat on my face.
He peers around with his brow furrowed. “There’s magic here. I can feel it.”
“What kind of magic?” I ask. “The kind that absorbs people into the walls?”
Where else could Jack have gone? He was only a few seconds in front of us, so how does it seem like he’s disappeared entirely?
“I think it’s a glamour. Distorting reality.”
Well, that does make more sense than the walls having eaten Jack.
Aster frowns, drawing me closer and tracing words against the skin on my forearm. “I can try to break the glamour, if you’ll speak the words for me?”
“Maybe you should save your magic,” I say.
Who knows what else we’ll be coming up against. But then I take another step and almost go tumbling down the set of stairs disguised as a solid floor.
Yet again, Aster’s the only thing tethering me to solid ground, and I plop down on the top step, letting out a defeated sigh.
“All right, let’s try breaking the glamour. We might find Jack right in front, but we just can’t see or hear him.”
“I’ve never tried this before,”Aster says, taking a seat beside me.“I suppose I can’t make it worse. Now, close your eyes and repeat after me.”He licks his lips, leaning forward to press his forehead against mine. “Noch Leyna.”
I dutifully shut my eyes and repeat the word, my hand warming in Aster’s as a tingle travels from my palm along my wrist, traveling along my chest until it reaches my lips.
“You can open them again.”
Blinking, I then squint my eyes open as light floods in.
The lights overhead are glaring and overly bright, burning my retinas. In front of us is a steep, spiral staircase leading down, and a wave of vertigo hits me. If I’d kept going and fallen down, I’d have broken my damn neck.
“Do you think Jack’s all right?” I ask as we descend, going as quickly as we can without risking losing our footing.
We’re both panting, and my legs are shuddering with the strain by the time we reach the bottom. Down here, there’s a single white door, and I raise an eyebrow at Aster, squaring my shoulders before pushing it open.
“I’m not looking forward to climbing them back up,” I mutter, earning me a soft smile from Aster. The door opens easily, and we step through.
Thump, thump.
The heartbeat is loud enough to feel right into the deepest parts of my chest until it hits my spine.
“I think he’s close,” I tell Aster as we approach another set of doors.
We step through and—
Nothing.
The heartbeat cuts off, and the silence is so thick it feels like I’ve suddenly gone deaf. We’re now in a narrow, white hallway lined with glaring white lights and metal doors with a single grille at eye-level.
