Right. Time—the one thing Baz had power over.
He grasped the threads of it, bending the tide to his will. The next wave paused before it could reach them, frozen in time, and the three of them worked around it to heave things out of the water. It still amazed Baz how easy it was to reach for his magic. Once, this big a feat would have appearedtoobig, the kind of magic he would have feared might bring about his Collapsing.
But this was only a drop in the ocean of what he could do.
When they’d secured everything, Baz let go of the magic, and the tide resumed its unnatural battering against the shore. Panting, the three of them watched the sea in silence, not daring to voice the eerie reality of what they were seeing.
Baz looked at his watch for confirmation. It was midnight—thepoint at which the tide should be at its lowest. If there was one thing they could always count on, it was the rise and fall of the tide, the science behind it. There truly had to be something wrong with the world for it to be so out of sorts.
And Baz couldn’t help but think it had something to do with Dovermere, and the door they had opened within its depths.
4EMORY
“WHAT THE FUCK,” ROMIE WHISPERED.“What the fuck?”
“So I wasn’t imagining things?” Emory asked, closing the door to their parlor behind her. “The spiral—”
“It makes no sense. How can it be the same?”
The resemblance to their own spiral mark was too striking, tooimpossible, to be mere coincidence. In their world, the Sacred Spiral was attributed to the Tides, but here, it sounded like it was the mark of the witches’ own deity, the Sculptress.
“And don’t even get me started on the ascension,” Romie said with a hysterical laugh. She started pacing, tracking mud on the floor. “How long do you think that poor girl was buried for? I can’t believe theybury their children alivefor them to ascend into their power. And then to suggest exorcism!” Another gruff laugh. “And Mrs. Amberyl had the audacity to callmebarbaric when I explained bloodletting to her.”
Emory remembered that conversation well. Mrs. Amberyl hadsneered at Romie’s description of the bloodletting practice those of their world relied on to use magic outside of their ruling moon phase. “How incredibly barbaric.”
A laughable statement now that they’d seen how a witch’s magic came about.
Emory kept seeing Bryony’s blackened eyes, hearing that strange voice come out of her. “Demonic possession,” she said in a horrified murmur. “That can’t be possible, right?”
“Sure looked like it.” Romie plopped down on the divan. “But that voice—I’ve heard it before.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to freak you out, but… there’s something really weird happening with the sleepscape.”
The blood rushed from Emory’s face. “Weird how?”
“You know I can sense umbrae hovering at the edges of dreams, right? That’s usually my cue to leave, to come back to the waking world before they devour the dream I’m in. But ever since we’ve been here, I’ve felt somethingdarkerthan the umbrae hovering at the edges of the star-lined path.” Romie worried her lip. “That’s where I heard that voice. From that dark presence, whispering in that strange tongue. I can’t shake this idea that whatever it is, it’s trying to escape the sleepscape.”
“You think what possessed Bryony was an umbra?”
“Demon, umbra… Is there really a difference?”
Emory thought back to the umbrae that had attacked them in the sleepscape right before they came here. The way she’dhealedall of them—how such power should have made her Collapse but had left her totally and utterly fine.
What had Kai said to her once? That umbrae were attracted to new magic. Like the kind of magic she’d used. Perhaps it had gotten the attention of something worse, too.
She frowned. “But how could an umbrapossessa witch like that?”
“What Mrs. Amberyl said, about their rotting woods… What if it really is our fault? We opened the door between this realm and the sleepscape. Maybe a crack was left open for all kinds of horrors to slip through.”
A nervous laugh bubbled out of Emory. She felt on the verge of tears, and there was an unpleasant acidity in her mouth that tasted very much like fear. “Let’s not admit to our possible guilt out loud when they’re talking aboutpurging the evilfrom their world. They want to get rid of us, Ro.”
“Well, it’s not like we’re planning to stay here, anyway. We’ll just have to leave before the new moon.” Romie eyed her with that wariness again. “What I’m saying is, whatever you did in the sleepscape must have caught the umbrae’s attention, and now that we’re here… maybe they’re coming after us.”
Emory ignored the blame in those words. “All the more reason we have to find a way home.”
“No, you don’t get it. I think the forces within the sleepscape are after us because they want tostopus.”
