“I have to go,” I said curtly. “I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry I bothered you, I’m sorry I came but now I have to—”
I was halfway across the room before I stopped.
Exactly how was I to go? I looked around, dazed. Balthazar shook his head.
“You can’t go back,” he said. “Not to Bolerium. Please, Lit. You don’t really comprehend any of this—how could you? He wants you to return—he needs you, without you there will be no apotheosis. Without you he cannot be reborn—”
I looked at him as though he were nuts. “Jamie?”
“No! Axel Kern—”
“But he is born—I mean, he’s there, he’s not—”
“Not Axel Kern. He is just the avatar; the vessel. It is Dionysos who seeks to be born, and Kern will be discarded as though he were a ruined statue. He needs you, Lit. You’re a lightning rod for him—you and your rage, your energy—that is what gives him power. It has always been like this. The god and his initiates are intimately linked—without them, any sacrifice is merely another death.
“But with them—with the girl who serves as his consort, and slayer—with you, it all begins again.”
I listened, then asked in a low voice, “Is that what happened to Kissy Hardwick?”
“Yes. And to Laura Stone, Kern’s mistress, and to others. Many others. If you go to him, Lit, you will die, just as they did.”
“I don’t believe that.” I didn’t care that he could hear how my voice shook, or see how my entire body was trembling. “I don’t believe any of it. Because if you’re right, and I’m somehow connected to your Giulietta, then I’m different from all of them—”
My hand shot out to point at the books strewn across the table and floor. “Is Kissy Hardwick in there?” I demanded. “Is there a painting of Laura Stone in the Villa of the Mysteries? Is there?”
For one long moment I stood and waited. Waited for him to tell me, Yes, they’re all in those books, there’s nothing so special about you at all, waited for him to say, Hush, Lit, wake up, wake up…
Balthazar Warnick said nothing. Behind him clouds started to gather above the mountaintop. Far below, the river darkened from silver to lead. Finally I turned, looking for a way out; looking for the way back to Bolerium.
There was none. Or rather, there was only one, and I knew what that was.
I would have to leave the same way I had arrived. My heart began to pound, but I focused all my will on keeping my hands steady, raising them in front of me and staring at the wall. There was no window in it, no door. I had seen two doors in that room, the one Kirsten had entered by, and another, battered door of wood set into a recessed wall and topped by a lintel with Latin words painted in faded letters—
As I stared at the door the words seemed to glow, and I heard Ralph Casson’s disdainful voice—
They call themselves The Good Walkers—Those Who Do Well—
And just as suddenly the meaning of the Latin words came to me, spoken by another, kinder, voice—
All things are good with good men.
“Join us,” whispered Balthazar. The battered door glowed brighter, the radiance of a thousand suns striving to reach me.
But I would not go that way. Instead I wrenched my gaze from the door and turned back to the far wall, the shelves bowed beneath the weight of all the secrets they held, an entire world captured between leather and vellum and cloth covers. I held my arms straight, making my entire body go rigid until my arms and shoulders ached. I stood there and stared at the wall, willing my escape from the Orphic Lodge; willing the portal to come.
And it came. Like flame stitching the edges of a parchment, its outlines appeared before me: a ragged doorway with a threshold that burned so fiercely I blinked, then cried out as I almost lost the image to the darker silhouettes of shelves and wainscoting—
“Lit! No!”
Tears streamed from my eyes as I struggled not to blink again. Like a shipwreck rising from dark water the shape of the passage burned through the wall. Its perimeter glowed dazzlingly, but at its center was a blackness at once terrible and terrifyingly beautiful, a glittering penumbra like the remnant of a shattered star. Even as I fought to remain standing I was drawn toward it, sucked down as though I were toppling into the abyss. There was a roaring in my ears, the thunder of a raging fire. Behind me I could hear Balthazar’s voice, faint and ineffectual as a sigh—
“Lit! Don’t! You don’t know—”
I was falling forward. Howling wind raked me, sent my hair streaming outward into ashes and smoke as I plunged into the portal.
“—you don’t—”
“Get back!” I screamed.
The flesh along my arms rippled and burned, the darkness seared my throat but somehow I found the will to laugh. Because I had done it—I had created it, the portal was there and even if it destroyed me, even if I never drew another breath to tell anyone what I had seen, the making of it was mine. Around me was nothing but flame and heat and the void, and I shrieked even as the abyss took me and Balthazar’s warning voice came one last time—
“You don’t know what you’re doing—”
As I fell, laughing, and shouted back at him through the darkness—
“Then I’ll learn the hard way.”
14. Harvest
THIS TIME IT WAS not like crashing, but waking. There was no pain. Darkness and flame alike receded into a muted gray expanse that held the promise of vast space, an unseen ocean beyond the fog. The mist grew brighter, feathered with electric blue and violet. I blinked, blinked again as the realization dawned that I could blink; that I was alive, and awake, and definitely no longer in the Orphic Lodge. There was something familiar about the surface under my back, something that was soft without actually being very comfortable; something cold.
“Hello?”
It took a second to register that this was my own voice, croaky and tentative.
“Hello?” I said again, louder. There was no answer. I rubbed my eyes, trying to dispel the sense that the air was somehow fuzzy, along with everything else. It took another moment, but then I knew. I was in the room where I’d last seen Hillary and Ali; the room with the black light and the stereo and the sun spider. I was in Bolerium.
“It worked,” I breathed. Beside me the sheet was bunched up, weighted by a knot of blankets. Without looking I elbowed it aside, then rolled to the other end of the mattress, groaning, and stood. “God, I can’t believe it worked…”
My legs trembled as though I’d been on a roller coaster. Underfoot was the same rough carpet of acorns and twigs and poppy pods, above me the same ultraviolet light buzzing ominously in its plaster medallion, like a wasp in a rose.
And there was another sound as well, the monotonous click and scratch of a needle stuck on vinyl. I crossed to where the stereo sat in the corner, surrounded by a desolation of album sleeves and loose records, marijuana seeds and a broken syringe. I picked up the stereo arm, replaced it and switched the OFF button; then slid the album from its spindle, tilting it so that I could read the label.
I grinned wryly: that would have been Ali’s choice. I glanced around for the cover but didn’t see it. I stuck the record atop a stack of albums, turned and tripped over something round and smooth.