His eyes bore into me, silent and grave.
“You know something,” I whisper.
A slow smile spreads sickeningly across his face.
I feel myself go cold despite the press of bodies in the room, the stifling heat, and recycled air.
He stares down at me. “You shouldn’t have come.”
I lean back. I don’t know what’s happened, but the expression he’s wearing is deadly serious, and I don’t need to be told twice.
I turn for Levi but grab a stranger instead, a man with a slack jaw and lackluster gaze whose arm dangles from my grasp limply. His zombified impression gives me the creeps, and I quickly let go. Turning, I see Rock is already gone, but before I can find Levi, Arla’s voice comes through the speakers and a spotlight hovers over me in the crowd, pinning me to the floor like a mounted insect. Everyone turns, thousands of eyes hanging on my every move.
“Tonight, we celebrate someone very important to me,” I hear Arla boom. Heads turn and faces crane toward the ceiling, as if they’ll see her there, gliding over us like a pinup angel.
I should run, but I’m frozen in place, struck dumb by what’s unfolding around me, trapped in the spotlight. I glance toward the doors and see Sal is now inside, leaning against them, his arms crossed over his chest. It clicks then that we’re locked in, no more entries, no more exits.
The drapes sectioning off the stage from the rest of the club drop, and Arla stands alone at its heart above the heads of her acolytes. Sheer white linen falls magically from her shoulders, the sensuous curves of her body exposed beneath in a shining satin corset of the same anemic shade. She’d look like a Roman bride if not for the capelet of black panther hide cloaking her head and shoulders, its subtle markings barely visible in the light. In one hand, she’s cupping a retro silver microphone on a stand, her face and voice bright, her hair coiffed around her cheeks like ribbon candy. In the other, a black-handled sword hangs, the grip, guard, and pommel all cast dark as night itself. But the blade is brightand painful to look at, engraved down its central ridge with symbols I recognize but can’t read.
Her bloated smile lands on me and it has all the warmth of a polar front. I shiver in place.
“Judeth, the golden hour has come. Everyone, let’s give Judeth a hand getting up here!” She releases the microphone and beckons.
In response, I feel hands pressing in on me from both sides and behind, shoving me forward in a surge of bodies. From the front, people reach out and grab at my arms and clothes, tugging me on despite my resistance. I may as well be fighting the ocean tide, my feeble attempts at pushing back and turning around completely ignored.Don’t resist,I hear the voice say, and I go limp as they jostle me toward the stage.
Eventually, I am shoved onto the steps at the stage’s side and stumble up them, if only to get away from the grasping hands of the crowd. As I trip toward Arla, my eyes scan the faces below trying to locate Levi, but the lights dim on some silent cue and everyone falls into shadow, each body merging into the next until they form one shapeless, faceless mass. I pray he got out already.
Soon, Arla is beside me, her spirit rising off the floor like phosphorescent gas, taller than both of us, her hand clutching mine, dragging me to the mic. It’s then I look down and see what’s painted at our feet, the stage covered in a complex network of shapes and Aramaic. The symbol for the Fathom at its core, wrapped with a drawing of a dragon whose body is covered not in scales but in words. Behind us, an equilateral triangle is sketched, lined with writing except at its center. Pentagrams and solar crosses abound, as does a maze of curving lines that end in arrows and spirals and footed crosses. It’s nearly as dizzying as the well chamber itself. But from the floor below, they’re not visible.
“We have a very special show planned for you, and Judeth is our star!” Flames spew from dark corners, applause swelling like a roiling sea. The mass seethes and writhes, responding to her energy. “But before we begin, I want you to repeat after me,” she saysto the room, and everyone quiets as if on cue. “Yida. Khatam. Shamar. La’olam.”
Her voice echoes through the club as everyone copies her, the words foreign to their tongues, and yet they persist.
“Yida. Khatam. Shamar. La’olam,” Arla says again and the crowd sways and repeats after her. “Yida, khatam, shamar, la’olam,” she says, faster this time, the sounds of each syllable blending into the next.
From around the room, the words ring out on repeat now, a chorus of Aramaic, the meaning unknown to them as they chant in unison.
Arla beams. “Keep going, my pets!”
She holds one hand out and presses it down, encouraging them to lower their voices. They chant in low whispers but never stop. She has them completely in thrall.
Reaching over, she pulls a stretch of puddled linen from the floor, throwing it over my shoulders, then grabs a wreath of goldenrod that was beneath it and places it atop my head. In my confusion and overwhelm, I’d overlooked them. The dark tones of my shirt and jeans are muted beneath.
“Tonight, Judeth will be playing our witch!” Arla calls, the crowd chanting and cheering in response. It’s then I notice plumes of swirling, perfumed smoke misting up through the lights around the stage, a piney, green-smelling incense burning in dishes to either side. She must have lit them using my power as this was starting. They’re really getting going now. A few people cough but the chanting continues unbroken—“Yida, khatam, shamar, la’olam.”
“What’s going on?” I whisper to Arla.
“Follow my lead,” she says, a hand over the mic and her face turned away so only I can hear. “And don’t worry about them. As far they know, it’s all an act. Which is exactly what they came for, so let’s give it to them, kitten.”
A scuffling sound causes us both to turn. Twig and Rock enter the stage from behind, draped in long swaths of the same white linen, nothing but their skin glistening naked underneath, a whiffof licorice and cinnamon wafting in their wake as they pass by me. They are dragging someone between them. She is bent at the knees, feet tracing the floor, head slumped forward as if unconscious. Her wrists are bound in a red silk sash, hands wrapped so they’re poised in prayer. They stop when she’s squarely within the confines of the triangle.
My heart beats out her name, and I take a hasty step forward.
Twig responds by grabbing a fistful of silver hair and pulling her head back. It’s then I notice the ball gag buckled into her mouth, the bands of sweat and grime ringing her neck. She is bruised and dazed, the fight beaten out of her, a trickle of blood dried along the side of her face from a cut over the brow. But I’d know her anywhere. It’s Cadence.
Shock quakes through me. My arms and legs go rigid. My mouth dry. I’m so startled to see her that I lose all sense of time and place, everything tying me to reality. I am suspended. I am nowhere. I am lost.
At my back, Arla cries, “Oh look! A volunteer!”
