“Don’t you think it’s wrong?” I ask.
She turns to me. “Wrong?”
“Holding it—her—like this?” My mother’s words are a gnat in my ear—Some things simply don’t fit in cages.
“What would you have me do, Jude? Release her on the city so she can finish what she started, drown us all in a tsunami and plunge us into an era of darkness?” She puts it to me in sarcastic monotone.
“No.” It’s a reasonable answer, but I can’t help thinking that Arla’s intentions aren’t as altruistic as all that.
“Why doesn’t she hurt you?” I ask, lingering. I was so eager to get into this room. Now, it feels wrong to just leave. “Escape?”
Arla lifts a hand to indicate the walls around us with their cryptic writing, and says, “She can’t, kitten. She needs me. Just like you do.”
20RESURRECTION
Outside the chamber, the basement feels darker, malevolent now that I know what’s seething at its heart, but the light trickling down the stairs is enough to split my head. I clap a hand over my eyes to shield them. The power sealed behind these walls of clay and tar and old magic is muted but not gone. I sense it within, patiently biding its time, storing its energy like an alligator before a death roll. The fissures in the brick, so fine they’re barely visible, are suddenly gaping to me, screaming proof that this man-made cell won’t hold,can’thold forever.
What then? What happens when Arla’s pet manages to free itself and goes rampaging through the city set on vengeance? What becomes of her, us, this place?
There will be hell to pay,the voice whispers to me, and it seems to come from within the room and within myself at the same time. It is the only thing I am certain of anymore.
I wait for Arla to seal the door, watching as the key simply evaporates from her hand when done, and I wonder if she feels it, too, the slow, inevitable unraveling, the creature pressing from inside to break free.
“The walls, everything written on them… that’s what’s holding her in?” We stand side by side, staring into the darkness, feeling what sleeps there.
“It’s written in Aramaic,” she says. “An utterly complex working. Painted in cremation ash and slaked lime, bat guano, and goodness knows what else. I’m still trying to work out the exact composition of the material. The most important parts of Rudzitin’s journal have been a painfully slow translation process—I’m hardly fluent in Aramaic. I’ve spent the last couple of years working on them and still only understand a fraction. But I’ve figured out where to focus my efforts, and I’m proud to say I’ve made real progress in the last few months. It binds her, the spell you might call it, but it does so much more than that. Unfortunately, I don’t have Rudzitin’s genius, but I have determination and a few things he didn’t have.”
“What’s that?” I can’t help asking.
“Time, for one,” she says with a grin, moving toward the stairs. “Money, for two. And you.”
“Me?” Her hubris is unmistakable, a bitter spice salting the air that I can practically taste. My mind goes to Cadence, what she senses that the rest of us can’t. I wonder what she knows that she isn’t sharing.
“Yes, kitten.You.The final piece on the board. Now I only need to make the plays andcheckmate.”
I was right: It’s been a game to her all along. “I don’t understand. What do I have to do with any of this?”
“You’re the fire, Jude,” she tells me, her sultry eyes sparkling. “And that’s where things are forged. Things that last.”
“You’re not making sense.” But I remember Twig’s eerie explanation to Cadence—You are the tool… You are the ingredient… We are the spell.
“I make perfect sense,” she assures me. “The Fathom gives many gifts. Water, dreams, darkness. Power, magic, energy.” She saunters toward me. “Fire… and death.” Her stare is unrelenting, even in the faint light, and a shudder runs through me at her piercing gaze. “You’re a twofer.”
She’s seen me strip Seattle’s icon of its electricity, knows I’ve been setting fires since I was a child. But she’s referring to something else. I back up a step.
“You’ve felt the heatandthe grave.” Her gaze hovers. “That means we have a full circle now. With your help, we can finish what Rudzitin started, keep her here in perpetuity.”
The full set Brennan mentioned. Is that all this is about? Continuing to hold the Fathom hostage?
“You saw the slime mold,” she continues. “It’s contained, but it’s growing. I don’t know what it means exactly, but it can’t be good. Foranyone.”
I grab her arm. “Arla, what’s down there, it’s not natural. Don’t you see? It’s beyond you, me, any of us.” My mother’s words are a ghost at my back:Don’t toy with things you don’t understand.
She jerks her arm away. “Nothing is beyond me, Jude. Not anymore. Not if we stick together.” Her face slips from snarl to smile. “And you’re wrong. The Fathom is the most natural thing in the world. More natural even than you or I. You know, I have to say, I expected something far less puritanical from you.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Frustrated, I follow her up the stairs into the storage room and immediately collapse against a wall, blinded by the lighting raining acid on my retinas.
Arla loops an arm in mine and steers me toward the club and elevator. I don’t really understand what’s happening, only that staring into that well has given me hyper-photosensitivity. The light unbearable.
