Next to her, Colton was uncharacteristically agitated. “Where else?”
“This is an empty alley.”
“Which makes it the perfect place to step through the sky unnoticed.” He ignored the shock on her face in favor of glancing down at his watch. “Let’s get started. I don’t have you scheduled for another moral crisis for at least three minutes.”
Placing a hand on the small of her back, he guided her deeper into the windswept alley. A car went past, briefly igniting the soot-addled bricks. Slicing across the dark in a silver freeze-frame. She drew back from him, her vision webbed in floaters.
“I don’t hear anything. We’re not on a ley line.”
“That’s correct,” he said. His fist opened and closed like he was working out a cramp.
“I thought that just was a rumor. About you being able to open doors with your bare hands.”
His features were muddled beneath the elusive blue of newly fallen night. She caught the corners of a wry smile as he said, “We all have our talents.”
“And you can take me with you?”
“I can.” He stood farther from her than usual, his stare dark as Erebus. “But there’s a caveat. Going through two previously opened doors and creating an entirely new set of doors are vastly different experiences.”
“How so?”
“At Ronson’s, the way is already opened for you. You pass right through two abutting thresholds. Easy in, easy out.” He pressed his palms together. “Do you follow?”
She frowned. “I follow.”
“Tonight’s different. We’ll need to cross through the space between the doors.” He pried his hands apart, leaving a wide gap of dark between his palms. “It’ll be different than what you’re used to.”
“Okay.” She tried not to let her nerves show. “Have you done this before? Taken someone else through with you, I mean.”
Colton’s brows drew together. “Yes,” he admitted.
“Oh.” She drew her lower lip between her teeth. “Does it hurt?”
A humorless grin knifed across his face. “Like hell.”
“Well, great.” Restless, she fiddled with the straps of her purse. “Let’s get it over with.”
Colton regarded her for a moment more, his eyes inscrutable in the gathering dark. Finally, he held out both his hands. His fingers lay flat, and twin silvers winked up at her in his open palms. It took her a second to realize they were nickels.
“I’ll need two things from you,” he said. “First, no matter what happens, the coins cannot fall. Not until we’re all the way through.”
“Okay.” Slowly, she placed her hands over his. The coins were cold against her palms. His hands were colder. There was something odd in his expression, something nameless in the flinted dark of his stare. “What’s the second thing?”
“You might be tempted to look around. Don’t do it. Look only at me.”
“Okay,” she said, again.
“Only at me, Delaney.”
“I heard you. I won’t look around.”
“Good.” His jaw set. Over his shoulder, there was brick and there was dark. She couldn’t even feel the hum of an open sky. Nothing twanged through her. Nothing rattled, nothing whined. Inside her head, the voice was silent. Evenly—as though he were explaining how to parallel park—Colton said, “I’m going to step through. I’ll draw you in after me.”
His elbows crooked and he guided her gently into him. Palms pressed tight, they melded together like lovers on a dance floor. First, there was nothing. Only the distant honk of a horn, the muffled rush of city traffic, the faraway mewl of a siren.
And then she heard it. The hum along her bones.
A soft staccato. A tug, like she was strung all up like a marionette. Colton’s face had gone white as a ghost, the lines of him cut steel. The air around them grew thin as vellum and he took a single step backward. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash, a rush of movement, like something running toward her.
