Colton lifted his glass, the face of his watch flashing gold in the light. When she raised her eyes to his, it was to find his gaze a spectral dark, black as a sepulcher. His throat corded in a swallow. He didn’t speak as he took a sip, his eyes never leaving hers.
The dead crawled at her feet.
A beast curled in her bones.
She was in a mirror world, under a mirror sky, with a boy who could walk through Hell. Nothing made sense anymore. She wasn’t sure it ever had.
“Talk,” she commanded. “It’s unnerving when you’re this quiet.”
“We’ve always been quiet,” he said, and she knew he meant the sleepy mornings in the lecture theater, the late nights studying in his living room, the endless midnights curled together in his bed.
“Yeah, well.” She nudged a loose strand of white out of her eye. “You’ve always unnerved me.”
He took another sip and regarded her carefully over the top of his glass. “What do you want me to say?”
“You said I’m not the only one you brought into Hell. Tell me who else.”
He set down the glass, his fingers flexing along the tapered neck. “Schiller,” he said. “Greg Kostopoulos. Julian Guzman. Ryan Peretti. Only, with them, we didn’t come out the other side. I guided them in, and then I came back alone.”
She thought of Nate in the meadow, the rusted penny woven into the grass. “You left them there?”
“It was part of the project,” he said, and he didn’t sound defensive. He only sounded matter-of-fact. “They were supposed to find their way out on their own.”
“But instead, they all ended up dead.”
He swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said. “They did.”
“I don’t get it. Why would anyone agree to do something so stupid?”
Colton frowned, scanning the sea of glittering people all around them. “Twenty years ago, and in our Boston, the Apostle’s wife lost a hard-fought battle with a terminal illness.” Drawing a breath, he gestured to a nearby painting. “This is her showcase.”
Delaney followed his gaze, taking in the throngs of people in cocktail attire. They milled about the space, drinks in hand, studying the elaborately framed pieces lining the vast, well-lit walls. Muted watercolors and breathtaking acrylics, all featuring landscapes too lovely to be real. Tapering pines mirrored in a glassy lake, clusters of white poplars rising up from the snow, mountains and glades and broad, sun-swept pastures. There was something unsettlingly familiar about the pieces, though there was no way Delaney could have possibly seen them before.
“The Apostle has a theory,” Colton said. “He thinks if something immortal can be harnessed and packed into the body of someone mortal, he can prevent the human body from ever suffering death.”
At a nearby table, a cluster of women gathered around a lush painting of a wooded glade, the plays of light through the wind-whipped trees done by a patient, masterful hand. The artist—or the woman she assumed was the artist—stood among them, her hair a wisp of white atop her head, her smile quietly exuberant as she accepted their praise. Delaney gripped the edge of the table, unsteady.
“He wants his wife to live forever.”
Over her shoulder, she heard Colton say, “Yes.”
Understanding slow-crept over her. “She’s no use to him here.”
“No,” he agreed. “No, she’s not.”
“That’s— God.” She turned back to him, horrified. “God, Colton. What are you telling me? You can’t just traffic a person through realities. This woman has a life here. She has a mirror version of your advisor. What would that do to him? Whoever he is, he exists in this world, too.”
“Except he doesn’t.” Colton’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “Six years ago, he drank himself into a stupor at the local pub and then got behind the wheel of his car. Died on impact. He sees this as a reunification of two people who were rent apart too soon.”
“Oh, is that how he sees it?” Delaney scoffed. “Because from where I’m standing, it’s absolutely insane.”
Something sharpened in Colton’s stare. “Is it really so unbelievable? Look at you. You’ve done it. Radiant as ever, with something immortal in your bones.”
“Look at Nate,” she shot back, sickened. “Look at the others. What about them?”
She thought of Nate in the hospital, his eyes devoid of anything remotely human. He’d gone into Hell in search of a way to circumvent death, and when he found it, it ate him alive.
“They knew what they signed up for,” Colton said. “Every single one of them had someone they’d do anything to keep alive. They pledged because they wanted to prove that death was optional. And it is. It only takes you if you let it.”
