“Break your oath to the leggerock. Take the freedom of the lyre.”
He held the instrument out toward me. All I had to do was take it. All I had to do was reach out and pull it from his hands. I could pluck the strings and sing a song that lasted for eternity.
“Take the lyre. You’re free of the leggerock.”
I lifted my hand. A lightning bolt of pain slammed into me. It scorched my blood. It electrocuted my bones. It ravaged my insides and ripped away the song of the lyre. It tore the beauty free and unmasked the hatred of hell.
I screamed, and the black walls of my mind collapsed.
I woke to the smell of garlic and basil. I sniffed, expecting the scent to have faded, but it grew even stronger. I stretched gingerly, waiting for pain that didn’t come.
When I opened my eyes, Jacob was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the obsidian room. So we were still in my mind, but somehow, he’d brought in a pizza.
The cardboard box was on the floor next to him, along with two bottles of water. He didn’t know I was awake. He opened the lid of the pizza box, and when steam puffed out, he smiled.
“Where’d you get pizza?” I asked, and my voice came out in a raw, caw-like gasp.
He turned, hiding his surprise. “You’re awake. Are you free?”
I shook my head and pushed myself up into a sitting position. “No. Definitely no. Please don’t ever do that again.”
“That bad?”
“That thing should be burned.” I shuddered. “I would’ve killed my own mother for it.”
We looked at each other as my words sank in. It was just a phrase, but it had taken on a whole mountain of meaning. My mother was his mother. Our mother.
“We’ll try something else,” he said.
At the same time, I asked, “What’s she like?”
“Mom?”
I nodded.
He nudged the pizza box toward me, and I frowned. Grease lined the sides of the box, and it smelled amazing. “Where’d you get it? How can I eat pizza in my mind?”
“I ordered delivery,” Jacob said, and at my look, he grinned. “To the pier. They delivered to the pier. I just hopped down. I pulled it in through the walls, but the real pizza is out there. But whatever you do here, your body does there. It . . . works. In reality, we’re both sitting on the floor of the ornithopter, the pizza between us. If you eat this here, you eat it there.” He paused, then he said less confidently, “You looked like you could use some dinner.”
I pried open the box and looked at him in surprise. “Plain? No meat?”
He blinked at me. “Oh. That’s my favorite. I didn’t think?—”
“That’s my favorite too.” I smiled at him, then I took a huge bite. The cheese was melty and stringy. The tomato sauce was sweet and garlicky. The crust was doughy and golden-crisp. There was the perfect amount of garlic and basil, and even a dusting of parmesan. It was perfect.
He was staring at me with a strange, indecipherable expression. “She’s forgetful.”
I swallowed another bite. “What?”
“Mom. She’s forgetful. She’ll put cookies in the dishwasher or her shoes in the refrigerator.” He smiled and shook his head. “She likes routine. Tea in the afternoon. Dinner at six. In bed by eight o’ clock. She’s not very affectionate, but sometimes, she’ll come out and say something so surprising that you know . . . well, you know. Everyone says she lost her mind when I destroyed my mirror, but she’s always been like that. It’s just no one outside our family noticed it until after. I think she has a room of her own in her head, and I imagine it’s very comfortable, because I think she stays there more than she stays in the physical world. I don’t blame her. A lot of the time, the worlds in our minds are better than . . .”
He trailed off when he realized I’d stopped eating. The pizza slice hung in the air, forgotten in my hand.
“Is that why your body was more of a mom to you?”
Even though I hadn’t wanted to overhear Jacob and his body during the Clark game, I’d been there for their last conversation. She’d been the mother of his heart.
He looked away, and I saw a flinch of pain and a tightening of his mouth.
