He wouldn’t even let her hold on to him.
He tried to pull away and let some nightmare drag him down, through what she knew was now a hole in the floor. She knew itwas. She could see it just beyond him, like a gaping mouth. She could see things grabbing him, andgod, they were strong. She just couldn’t hold on.
Write something, she screamed at herself.
But if she stopped to do it she’d lose her grip on him.
And he wasn’t hanging on at all. “Of course it did,” he yelled over the cacophony. “I wanted you to be safe. You’ll be safe now, lovely Nancy, my beloved Nancy. How could it not be the case?”
So she answered him just as he went down.
As that hole almost swallowed him up, and took her to her knees.
“Because I love you, you fool,” she screamed back. “I love you, I love you, I love you, please let that be enough. It has to be enough. Just stop, I take it back, I take my magic back and win the game.”
But something answered back.
Cold as metal in winter, dark as a depthless well.
“Too late,” it said, half-amused. “You’re too late.”
Then she had maybe five seconds of Jack’s horrified face.
And he was gone. He was gone. He was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She couldn’t move for what felt like hours in the aftermath. Even though there was really no aftermath to see. It was as if nothing had happened at all. The floor was completely smooth and unblemished. The walls had stopped shaking, the roof was still intact. She could have almost believed she had imagined every single thing. That she had actually gone mad, and made Jack up, and this was just her coming to after a long sleep.
She might even have let that idea sink in.
If it hadn’t been for the glow still on her.
And the sound of Popcorn from the bathroom. “Mother, free me from this infernal prison immediately. I must inform you to your face what an incredible fool you have just been,” he said. All of which made letting him out both a relief and the most horrible thing ever.
Being judged by a talking pug was really not what she needed right now.
But she had to face the music. She went to the door and opened it, bracing herself. Yet all he did was rush at her and jump in a way that saidcatch me, and when she did he buried his little face in her neck. “Oh Mother, I am sorry, I am sorry, it is I who have failed you, not you, I have been foolish,” he said. As if he could havedone a single thing about this whole sorry mess. As if he should have known.
She almost wished he had berated her by the time he’d finished with the comforting. Because the tears came harder to hear it. She sobbed into her hand, knowing her ridiculous dog cared this much, and wished he had understood enough to save Jack. Jack, who he hated.
Jack, who he loved.
“You did your best,” she said. “You tried to tell me.”
“Only that breaking the spell would send him away. The rest was as mystifying to me as it was to you. I was sure he did not truly care. That you did not truly care. It seemed to me only a pleasurable game that humans play.”
“Because it is one. We do it all the time. It’s called never risk your heart, in case you cannot stand the pain of losing it,” she said, then wanted to scream into her hands. She wanted to go back and back and remake every single thing about herself, so she would never be like this. So afraid of being let down that she’d lost it all anyway.
And she couldn’t even say the same for Jack.
He’d been scared, just like her. He’d had even more reason to be.
But he had tried to tell her in a thousand different ways. He’d bent the rules as far as they would go, given her every chance there was. Said it again and again:If you were her, if you wanted me, if this was how things were, what would they be?
He’d even given her the answer she needed to the question she’d once asked herself—If he feels it for me, why wouldn’t he just say?Because he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he had told her he was bound into not, and she still hadn’t understood. So wrapped in surety that it had to be someone else, someone better, someone whole, that she just hadn’t seen.
Doubt is the worst thing about being human, he’d said.
