As he felt for some kind of opening, he noticed the painting on the wall.
It was a strange painting, unusually macabre for the setting. The college was filled with portraits of scholars and kings, paintings of pastoral settings and historic battles, mythological lovers and religious idols. The usual. But this painting was bizarre.
There was a banquet in the woods, a group of figures seated at a table under the trees. It wasn’t unlike the place where they dined with the fairies. In fact, it was exactly like that place. The more that Keir looked at it, the more that he recognized. There were Mab and Genn, although that wasn’t truly surprising. There were legends of fairies living forever in their fairy realms, and if Keir had learned one thing this year, it was that most legends were true.
But there was the dwarf he’d danced with. And there, was that Idris? Rinka, Alison, everyone there but him.
The plates on the table were full, but it wasn’t the feast he knew.
It was a body, dismembered and bloody, each plate filled with a different limb or organ.
In front of Alison was his head.
At this, he laughed. “You should have gone with the heart,” said Keir to the unseen presence. “It would have been a better choice, metaphorically speaking.”
The painting ignited.
Excellent work,Keir thought.You’ve angered the ghost.
“I take it back,” he said, looking around the room for something to put the fire out. Flames had covered the entire frame in the matter of seconds. “It was a very good scare. Very creepy.”
Smoke was beginning to fill the room. He didn’t know if this was real—he suspected it wasn’t—but it wouldn’t matter if he passed out before he could save himself from the fire.
“Alison!” he shouted. He searched through the door for her presence, and this time, through a hole the flames had burnt, he found it.
“Keir, I’m here,” she said. Her voice was so quiet he could barely make it out. “I can’t get the door open.”
“It’s magic,” he said.
“I know,” said Alison. “But I can’t stop it. I can’t feel you. I can’t feel anything. There was something here before, but it’s gone now.”
“It’s in the room with me,” he said. “And the fire.”
“Fire? Keir!”
Keir could feel her beating against the magical barrier to no avail. It wasn’t here for her.
It was here for him.
“Stay there, I’m going to try something,” said Keir.
The flames were consuming the floral wallpaper and crawling down the panels of wood. Everything in this room was made to burn.
Keir reached out into the hallway. Alison’s magic was there, cool and calming as a mirror-still lake on a summer’s day. Thismoment frightened him more than anything this presence, this ghost, had shown him.
He needed to do this. Not just to save his own life, although that was a powerful motivator. He couldn’t leave Alison alone. He saw her beautiful face standing over him. Saw the tears spring into her blue eyes. Heard her anguished cry. He knew what would happen if he failed.
He could not fail.
He grabbed onto the magic. He felt Alison’s power flow through him, felt the surge of it through his body.
He turned to the flames and snuffed them out.
He turned to the door and wrenched it open.
The air changed. The presence had gone. Keir picked up the candlestick from where he’d left it on the floor. Nothing was burnt. The painting on the wall was untarnished—a scene of an elvish ship on stormy seas.
Alison ran into the room, practically knocking the candle from his hand.
