“Yeah. You were mad at me. I saw that fire in you from day one. Don’t tell me that fire’s gone out ’cause of some little thing called death? You’re still Catherine fucking Earnshaw. You’re that bitch.”
She narrows her eyes at the wordbitch, so I say it again. “You’re the bitch who loves life…really loves it…but you barely had a chance to enjoy it. You didn’t get to travel, to dine at fancy-ass restaurants, to see the wonders of the world. You didn’t get to leave Wicklow with me. How does that make you feel?”
Her small fists clench. “Angry.”
“That’s right. You get fucking angry.” I ram my fist against the glass. “Because you don’t belong here, Cathy Earnshaw. You belong in the living world with me. You are a banshee. You announce death, you scream for it, but you do not fuckingyieldto it, do you understand me?”
“Do not go gentle into that good night,” she says.
“What?”
“It’s a poem. Dylan Thomas. I memorized it because I liked it so much and because it was short. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day—rage, rage against the dying of the light.’” Her voice rises, stronger, shriller. “Wild women ’who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learned, too late, they grieved it on its way, do not go gentle into that good night!’”
I’m beside myself, my chest swelling with her rage, with my love, my fists beating on the glass. The sluagh who followed me has been joined by several more, but they don’t speak. They cluster in silence, watching without eyes, listening without ears.
“I am a wild woman,” Cathy says, eyes flaming, her hair billowing around her. “I sang under the sun, I grieved under the moon, and I refuse—Irefuseto go gently into the dark!”
And she screams.
She screams with such power, I slam both hands over my ears, as if it would make a difference, as if the earth-shattering power of her scream could reach right into the living world and burst both my eardrums. Maybe it could.
The sluaghs flee, shrieking, into the maze. Cathy’s voice shrills higher, louder, filling the entirety of the Vague. The thick glass of the wall between us splits, forked cracks spreading wide before it explodes in fireworks of colored glass.
The bits of glass freeze in midair, and Cathy passes through them, untouched by a single shard.
I reach for her, pull her in. Clasp her. Mine, in my arms. My heartbeat stutters, and at first I think it’s joy, but then I realize we’re out of time. My body is failing, and I must get her back to hers.
As I turn to follow the line back to its source, a heavy, booming thunder reverberates through the maze. It’s as deep as the void in which Cathy was floating, immense as a mountain. It’s the rumble of something awakened.
Everything trembles.
This isn’t thunder from the living world. This is happening in the Vague.
Cathy’s clutching me, her arms wound around my neck. I’m facing the chasm, where something is shifting in the dark. Something so huge, the sight of it nearly shuts down my brain.
Antlers. Antlers branching out as wide as the entire length of a mountain range. Rising higher.
I don’t want to see the head they’re attached to, so I turn, with Cathy in my arms, and I run.
Boom. Another reverberation through the Vague.Boom. Boom.The slow pounding of my heart when it should be fast. Fuck—I’m not going to make it.
I’m stumbling along faceted boulders, sliding down slopes and then somehow slidingup. Clawing my way through shivering ropes of crystal. Climbing, running, while the maze shakes and mirrors shatter intermittently around us.
Cathy’s soul weighs next to nothing. If she were corporeal, there’s no way I could make it back. But I’m almost at the root of the line, where it disappears into a mirror that isn’t a mirror, becausethrough it I can see my corporeal self, kneeling in the dreary graveyard with my palms on the matching tattoos.
My spirit is slowing, shuddering. Each step more sluggish than the last.
Just a little farther…
But my feet are rooted, my mind paralyzed. Buckland warned me about this. He saw it happen once—a Lockwood overextended herself, and she died along with the soul she was supposed to save.
“Heathcliff.” Cathy pats my face frantically. “Heathcliff.” Her voice shrills suddenly, the frenzy of pure terror. “Heathcliff, behind you!”
Her shriek stirs me, propels me forward again. I don’t look back to see what she sees. I only stumble forward.
As I take the final step toward the mirror, a hideous sense ofwrongnessfloods my consciousness. There’s a drag on our spirit forms, a sodden weight that shouldn’t be there. Like something trying to pull us back.
Lunging forward, I leap through the mirror. And as I do, I realize that the dragging force isn’t trying to keep us in the Vague—it’s trying to come along.
