He shrugged, thinking about the boy he’d gotten to know through his memories. “I want it to be true,” he admitted. Above her mask, Maggie’s eyes softened, but then she turned to face the door to his lab.
Arthur placed his hand on the doorknob, and, on Maggie’s nod, he swung it open wide, revealing the blinding fissure.
Like the rest of the third floor, the pall in this room had grown soupier, too. The unsettled dead that collected around the fissure were frozen in place, tiny pinpricks of light like a constellation of stars that Maggie and Arthur carefully angled their bodies around. Each one burned with an entire life. Each one was a memory. An echo. A person. And they all needed to go home.
Seeing the unsettled made it easier to put aside his heartbreak. They fell into their easy rhythm as if nothing had changed. They measured the distance they would need to complete the complicated rune and, starting at opposite corners, began drawing their careful lines with the chalk paint infused with the gloaming creeper decoction. Even before they muttered any incantation, the chalk shimmered iridescent, not unlike the layer of pall slime that coated most surfaces, growing thicker by the minute.
Maggie and Arthur concentrated on their lines, careful to avoid the touch of any of the unsettled dead. It wasn’t long before the unsettled were awakened and attracted by the allure of the magic pulsing from the rune, drawn to the energy, or maybe even to the promise of home. They began to glide through the thickened pall, concentrating closer and closer to where Maggie and Arthur were working.
“Shoo, shoo,” Maggie muttered, trying to wave the dots of light away and creating small ripples in the pall. “We need to change our plan. One of us draws, the other waves them away.”
“I’ll keep drawing. Then when it’s time to do the incantation, we’ll switch,” Arthur said, and Maggie slid through the pall slime until they stood back-to-back. He wasn’t surprised to find that her presence behind him was still a calming balm as she gently scooped her palms and scooted the unsettled dead away from them. It didn’t take long for the pinpricks of light to try to return, but she waved them away again and again until he was done.
When the final line of the rune was drawn, the purple chalk glimmered in the light, a single line of illumination snaking from end to end. Arthur let out his breath, some of the pressure in his chest easing for the first time in months. “I think this is going to work,” he said, turning to see Maggie’s auburn hair aglow with the shine of the rune. “Ready?”
In answer, she set her palm on top of the lines he had drawn and then looked at him expectantly. He needed to touch her for the incantation, but he hesitated with his hand outstretched. Before, he would have placed his palm over her hand, lacing their fingers together with a reassuring squeeze. Now, he didn’t know what to do. Was she feeling the same agony he was?
In the end, he gripped her shoulder. It felt safer than holding her hand, but as she began the incantation and power flowed through them, she gasped and brought her other hand to Arthur’s on her shoulder, squeezing him hard. Gods below.
Diadhan word after Diadhan word fell from Maggie’s mouth. When Arthur spoke Diadhan incantations, the words felt likecotton in his mouth, fuzzy and imperfect. His incantations were passable, his knowledge of grammar better than average, but he always had collaborators help him develop de novo spells. But Maggie? He felt the power in every word, every sound. This was what she was meant to do. This was her art. He marveled at the changes she had made to the incantation, pulling phrasing from a Diadhan poem about a flowing river and a trail of stars to mirror the convergence powering the pall. If Arthur hadn’t already been in love with her, this would have done him in, in an instant.
Love. He tried to push that thought away, but how could he when the vise around his chest was loosening only because Maggie held his hand? He needed to stay focused, but Arthur’s brain grew muddy again with exhaustion. His calculations were complete, his runes drawn. He just needed to lend his support to Maggie by keeping his grip on her shoulder tight. They were still in a world of danger as the pall around them grew more and more chaotic with each word in Maggie’s incantation. Shadows collected behind him and above him, the dust and grime and pinpricks of lights of the unsettled dead swirled, and the loud sound coming from the fissure only grew louder.
Through his muddy thoughts, Arthur felt a strange tug toward the fissure, like something was waiting for him on the other side. He felt a peculiar curiosity about it, felt drawn to its darkness. He tried to ignore the unsettling thrall of the fissure, but as Maggie neared the end of the incantation, the purple iridescence in the chalk paint growing brighter beneath her palm, the urge grew more insistent. Without thinking, he yanked his hand out of Maggie’s grip, ignoring the gasp and pause in her incantation. He just needed to know what was waiting for him…
He took a step toward it, then another. Maggie tried to pull him back, tugging on his hands, and then wrapping her arms around his middle. There was a part of him that knew this wasn’t right, a small voice that was trying to drown out his curiosity with warning, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“Arthur, stop!” Maggie cried, but the sound was far away, and he was so close to the fissure, his hand outstretched to touch its blurring edges. He thought maybe Maggie was yelling, but he couldn’t be sure.
Then, before he could touch the fissure, a tiny pearl of light collided with his open palm, exploding in a burst of bright rays, and then Arthur felt nothing, nothing, nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Arthur collapsed in Maggie’s arms, pulling her down to the floor with him. Maggie yelped as the thrumming magic of the fissure, dark and otherworldly, seemed to burn closer to them. If it kept growing, she was afraid it would swallow them both whole. She tried to drag Arthur back, but she wasn’t strong enough with the extra drag of the pall, so she kicked a toppled desk that was close by until it was almost shielding them.
With the barest of protection, she turned to Arthur, her heart crashing in her chest. She ran her hands over him, finding a beating pulse and feeling his chest rise and fall with too-fast breaths. She nearly cried with relief.
What the fuck had happened? One minute, Arthur was holding her shoulder, grounding her and lending her his energy and power to complete the incantation, and the next he was gone, walking toward the fissure like he had a death wish. She had frantically tied off the incantation, pausing the magic to prevent another pall-feeding error. As she’d held him back, she felt how weak she was compared to his strength, even in his strange, mindless state, and she knew it was only a matter of time before he broke free from her grasp. She had been so afraid in that moment that she was going to lose him to the fissure that now she was doubled over and trembling.
She sat back on her heels, looking around at the state of the lab. Everything was getting worse. Wraiths were gathering in the corners until they swarmed with shadows, unsettled dead pinging off walls in slow-moving crash courses, endless slime and sludge pouring from the fissure until she was worried Arthur would drown in it. She needed to get him out of here and fast, but she had no idea how.
Her mind raced as she tried to come up with a plan. Maggie could attempt to finish the incantation without Arthur. If she was successful, Dahlia could call the infirmary to send up a stretcher, but the pall had been stronger than them in every instance. She worried that without his power amplification, the spell would fizzle, doing nothing to rid Ilex Hall of this dangerous magic to clear the way for his rescue. Alone, neither of them had been enough. They needed each other.
She sat hunched behind the desk, watching Arthur to make sure his condition didn’t deteriorate. He looked younger somehow, even with the dark circles under his eyes. She knew it was her fault he was so tired. She hadn’t been able to sleep, either, as she’d replayed every terrible thing she’d said. It didn’t matter how much she tried to remind herself why she’d made the decision she did, it felt wrong. And now…because he was tired, because he was hungover, something horrible had happened to him. She curled in on herself, her stomach aching with fear.
Gods below, she didn’t know what to do. “Please wake up,” she begged. “I need you.”
After a breath, Arthur stirred, groaning.
“Arthur?” she asked tentatively, but then he looked at her with unfocused, unseeing eyes and turned back toward the fissureagain, pulling himself along the tiled floors. Maggie leaped forward, putting all of her body weight onto Arthur, who strained against her. “Arthur,” she pleaded again, and, for just a moment, she thought he knew her. But it fizzled as quickly as it came.
Maggie held Arthur’s head in her hands, bringing their faces closer together until she could feel his breath on her skin. Above and below, she hadn’t expected calling things off with Arthur would be easy, but she’d had no idea how much it would hurt. Her entire body ached with his loss, and now, being this close to him again, was salt in the wound. “Arthur,” she repeated, and she saw the flash of something in his eyes.
Talk to him, she thought.Tell him. “Arthur, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you cannot disappear through that fissure. I won’t let you.” She had thought that yelling at him would wake him up, but there was no recognition in his gaze, not even after she repeated his name. “What about Simon and Rory?” she asked, and ah, there it was, a brief brightening of his expression that told her that Arthur was in there somewhere.
As she cradled his head in her lap, she stroked his cheeks with the pads of her fingers. “C’mon, Arthur. You can’t leave me here to do this by myself,” she whispered, her voice catching as her eyes welled up.
Arthur’s body strained toward the fissure again, but weakly, and she was able to hold him against her. “Your family needs you. Gods below, we all need you.Ineed you here.”
