“If you want him to live,” said her father, “you’ll descend. It’s a simple give and take.”
The darkness before her fractured with tears. The water churned, frothing now—thin white burbles of foam breaking over her feet.
“You,” she heard her father say. “What’s your name?”
“Reed” came the coarse reply. It sounded likescrew you.
“Do you have a car nearby, Reed?” He must have nodded, because her father said, “The moment she’s under, get him out of here. Take him to the nearest hospital. Am I clear?”
“Crystal,” said Reed, but there was murder in it.
“There, now do you see,” said her father, as though he’d managed to negotiate a shopping clerk down from an unreasonable starting price. “It’s handled. The boy won’t die, Vivienne, so long as you do what you’re told.”
“Vivienne—”
Her name grated out of Thomas. She heard what he couldn’t bring himself to say.Don’t do it. Let me bleed.Selfless to a fault. Unfairly gallant, all the way until the end. She hadn’t done a thing to deserve his loyalty. She thought of the little room he’d made for himself out in the garage, the lopsided birthday cupcake he’d never gotten to eat.
You do everything for me, she’d told him.And I’ve done nothing for you.
Here was her chance.
She held out her hand to him one last time, three fingers elongated with ballerina grace. Pinkie, index, thumb—offering up the answer he’d been too good, too decent to presume.
I love you.
And then, before her courage could fail her, she descended.
The day Colton Price died, he’d been playing hockey with his brother. From the shore, the icy white of Walden Pond had looked frozen all the way through. Deceptively solid. He’d felt it crack beneath him seconds before he fell. It was the subdural snap of a bone cleaving in two. Down he went, without even time to scream. The icy needle of rushing water stole the breath clear out of his lungs.
All these years later, stepping through the sky felt very much the same—like a great, icy fist had driven directly into his gut. He came out the other side gagging, or trying not to, his lungs full of water and his hands at his throat.
He’d sworn, not very long ago, that he’d never do it again.
He’d always been something of a liar.
“Okay, thank you,” said Mackenzie Beckett into her phone. Delaney’s former classmate paced along the gutter like a red-maned lion. Back and forth. Forth and back. Colton ground his teeth to keep from remarking on it. “That’s perfect, thank you. You’re amazing, I love you, goodbye.”
They were somewhere just outside Connecticut, parked on the side of a winding woodland road. Colton leaned idly against the hood and checked his watch. Already, he could feel it—the slipping of the earth out from beneath his feet. The funny quiver of shadows rearing back. Like even the darkness knew he was readying himself to return.
Directly across from him stood Lane—a spot of pale white against the dark stretch of forest behind them.Malum Navis, his port in a storm.
“That’s five,” she noted.
He humored her, sliding his hands into his pockets and arching a brow. “Five?”
“Five times you’ve checked your watch within the last minute.” It came out accusatory, but he saw worry in the deep jade of her eyes. She knew he was watching the minutes to see if they’d slowed. It was a bad habit. One he tended to slip back into, the tetchier he became.
“I’m fine.”
Her smile was unconvincing, but she let him get away with the lie. “I know.”
“Adya saw her,” said Beckett, appearing suddenly between them. “Vivienne.”
Adya Dawoud, Lane’s freshman-year roommate, had a helpful tendency to see things most people didn’t on the inside of a looking glass. She’d spent the last several hours dubiously staring into a mirror in search of Vivienne Farrow. Or, at the very least, Vivienne Farrow’s reflection, which Thomas Walsh insisted had gone missing.
It’s just not there anymore, he’d snapped into the phone, when Colton asked for clarification.I don’t know how else to explain it. Delaney’s friend is a witch, right? Can’t she find it?
Like it was perfectly normal to go rattling about the astral plane looking for a missing reflection. In any case, Beckett hadn’t known precisely what to do, but Dawoud—home for the summer in Kings County, New York—did.
