My heart was thudding in my throat, and my stomach had clenched into a hard knot. My eyes felt hot, but I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. “He knows I’m here. He’ll know you did something to me.” Mr. Keene wouldn’t dare kill me while Ryan knew I was here. He wouldn’t want Ryan to think he was a murderer. I could call his bluff.
“He will think you ran, like your mother.”
Mom.I looked at the jewel. It seemed so innocent and inert and non-door-like. I thought of how Maximus had vanished. “What did you do to my mother?” I asked.
“It’s a simple choice, Sky. Stay here, and I will be forced to kill you to protect my family’s secrets. Or touch the Door and be reunited with your mother. Alive and safe.”
He wasn’t bluffing.
“Don’t hurt Ryan. Or my friend. Please! They’re innocent. I coerced them. It was all my idea.” The pounding was muffled. I knew Ryan couldn’t hear our voices. I wondered if he’d believe that I ran—surely he knew me better than that. “If I do this, you have to leave them alone. You don’t hurt Ryan or my friend or my family.”
“Touch the Door, Sky, and all will be well.”
Ryan hammered the door.“Sky!”
I looked at the vault door and understood, at last, why Ryan had shunned me, why he had refused to be with me, why he’d broken both our hearts. It had been to protect me from his father. And now it was my turn to protect the people I loved. Kneeling, I laid my hand on the jewel.
And the world vanished.
Shiny.
That was the one clear thought I had.
All around me, it looked like an oil slick in sunlight. It glimmered with rainbows, all streaked and smushed and twisted and—oh no, I’m twisting!I felt like a corkscrew, twisting, my arms wrapped around me, my legs pretzeled, my body…
And then I was stretched, like taffy, long and thin, but it didn’t hurt. It just felt…stretchy, as if my skin was supple plastic that bent and twisted and stretched.
It was exactly as freaky as the intro toDoctor Who.
My mom used to watch that show when I was a kid, and I’d run out of the kitchen screaming, with my hands over my ears, when the theme song came on. I have a low threshold for scary TV. Forget horror movies. You’d find me wedged underneath my bed.
Mom.
Thinking about her calmed me. A little.
I couldn’t feel my heart beating too fast.
I couldn’t feel my feet or my hands or my face. Raising my hands, I moved to touch my face—and saw my hands were streaked with the same rainbows. They burrowed through my skin, bursting out between my fingers.Gabriela would have liked this,I thought.
And then I started screaming.
Silently.
In my head.
Because I couldn’t feel my body or my throat, and now the rainbows were darkening, as if the light were dimming slowly, slowly, slowly, in blackness, and I couldn’t feel or see or hear or scream.
Thud.
Pain shot through my body. My body! I could feel it again! Groaning, I tried to open my eyes. My eyes stung as if needles had been jabbed into them. I squeezed them shut again.
“Amazing!” a voice cried. A young woman or a girl. A stranger. “On my watch! I never thought…Oh, this is incredible! Look at you! You’re whole and alive!”
“Who are you?” I tried to say, but it came out as little grunts.
“Ooh, you’re conscious! This is great! How do you feel? You must feel terrible. Don’t try to speak. Just rest. You’re safe. You’re home.”
AT LEAST WHENIwas inside the rainbow, it didn’t hurt. Now it hurt. My body felt like a dozen kindergartners had been pummeling me with their small, vicious fists. I felt like my skin must be one giant bruise. Everywhere was sore. “Ow,” I said. “Ow, ow, ow.”
