An ugly laugh welled in Sid’s throat. “We’re not. I wouldn’t let it happen.”
“But you won’t let that stop you ever again, will you?” Nim pushed him, less gently than Jonah. “Find her. Find Thorne. We’ll find you.”
He stumbled away from them but glanced back. “How can I—?”
Nim swore at him. “Go!”
He ran.
He ran as his mother must have run after him that night, frightened, desperate to get to him. She’d died because no one had been there for her, and in his pounding heart, he knew he would rather die than not be there again.
At least he knew why he was running, and where. To Alyce. What he’d say when he got there …
“I love you,” he whispered as the gray closed around him. He could not claim it either liked him or feared him; it was just hungry, though surely not as hungry as he. “Alyce, I love you.”
She slipped sideways through the etheric winds that tore around her. Among the shadows, she surrounded herself with the twisting gray, just one of the nothing.
She remembered this. It was not so different from the electricity that had burned through her brain and silenced everything—at least for a time, before the dread demon slowly coiled in her again.
The void seemed to realize it had ingested a little irritant. The gray heaved around her, like a hanged man kicked against the noose. And the next thing she knew, the etheric winds spat her out, thus proving she was not as powerful as a rope, in case anyone was taking notes.
She rolled and came to a hard stop against a … pumpkin?
Her head rang from the blow and confusion. Slowly, she levered herself upright, without the teshuva’s assistance.
The pumpkin was huge, its pale orange bulk curving higher than her waist. She couldn’t even begin to guess how much it must weigh, although a sign beside it said GUESS MY WEIGHT!
She looked around. She was in the Crystal Gardens atrium. The airy interior was decorated for the upcoming holiday with orange tea lights, little paper ghosts dangling from the trees … and a roiling storm of tenebrae circling the panes of glass six stories overhead.
But they hadn’t descended—not yet.
So much for her assurances to Sidney. Here she was, alone again.
A small blue imp bolted around the pumpkin and nearly bowled Alyce down. They both gasped.
“Hello,” said the imp.
“Hello,” Alyce said. It was a child—a blue child with bulbous black and white eyes on top of its head and its face peering out from the gaping maw lined in black felt, but a child, not a tenebrae.
“You look like a princess,” the child said. “Mostly. But an evil princess.”
Alyce considered. “And you look mostly like a monster. But a nice monster.”
“I’m Cookie Monster,” the child crowed. “Cookies are nice.”
Alyce blinked. “Why would anyone think cookies are monstrous?”
“Sugar,” the child said promptly. “Mommy says sugar makes me a monster.”
Alyce glanced around. “Where is your mother?” Where was everyone? The atrium was empty, though it was clear from the burning candles and gurgling punch fountain that the party had been in full swing.
The child waved one blue arm in a vague arc. “She’s over on the other side, watching the juggler. She told me I should play hide-and-seek instead.”
“What kind of juggler?” Alyce peered suspiciously around the pumpkin.
“He’s not very good. He has only one thing to juggle. A sword. He had some black balloons too, but that’s not really juggling, is it?”
Alyce’s heart pounded. No wonder her demon was still quiet. Thorne was near. “I think you should keep playing hide-and-seek.”
“With you?”
“Yes. You hide. I’ll seek.”
“Okay. But close your eyes.”
Alyce did, because the horror pulsing through her made her feel faint. All those people … If Thorne stripped their souls to feed the tenebraeternum, the verge would expand again, swallowing the whole pier and everyone on it: herself, the child, the crowd at the diner, the talyan, Sidney. …
None of them would be strong enough to stand against the verge.
When she opened her eyes, the child was gone.
With luck—and talyan—Cookie Monster would never know how close the real monsters had been.
Alyce crept around the pumpkin and scuttled to the nearest concrete planter. Palm trees—almost as otherworldly in Chicago as the demon realm—spread the serrated blades of their leaves against the gleaming steel and dark sky beyond. The threatening storm cloud of salambes drifted lower. Alyce was suddenly glad her dread teshuva was in hiding; she didn’t need the tenebrae raising the alarm.
Not until some screaming might be useful, anyway.
She braced her hand on the concrete, ready to launch herself to the next barrier … and realized her ring was gone.
She froze.
A cold sleet of fear prickled across her skin, completely divorced from the teshuva. Divorced. She swallowed back a panicked giggle. Without the ring, she was as good as divorced from the demon. That little bit of self-control she’d focused through the talisman was lost—again.
Whispers of dark thoughts threaded through the room in the tenebrae wake, like the pale strings of fake spiderwebs spread around the Halloween decorations. The insidious murmurs wrapped her tighter than the white jackets of the asylum.
The rivet was lost. The demon was lost. Sidney was lost.
She was lost. And it hurt so much worse than before because now she remembered every precious moment.
The gray haze of the tenebraeternum was so close. So easy to sink into it, to become one with the shadows. They wanted her. Maybe she’d always been meant for the darkness.
A flash of golden light pierced her vision. The teshuva was dormant inside her, but she flinched from the remembered pain in her leg.
An angel’s sword.
The angelic light wasn’t like anything else—not like the twinkle lights, not like the candles. It was like sunlight glowing through water, maybe, yet more pure. The light was its own thing, even surrounded by the drifting tendrils of the tenebraeternum.
The shard buried in her knee had been only the tiniest piece, and it had changed her life. What could an entire sword of the stuff do?
She really didn’t want to know.
That, more than anything, made her think it was no wonder the demon had taken her.
She didn’t want to do this; she couldn’t do this. She’d seen an angelic sword in action before, and the vision had been the crack in her soul that made her a flawed vessel for the teshuva. She’d spent three centuries fighting back the tenebrae, not for any righteous purpose or even a selfish one, but because she’d been too confused to do otherwise.
She wasn’t addled Alyce anymore.
Except she crept one more planter forward, just to see. Where did insanity and curiosity meet?
Somewhere just a little closer to the action, apparently.
From the last planter, her view was blocked by a folding screen. The painted panels showed a monochrome parade of spooks and goblins and witches under a bloodred moon. Alyce thought it might give her nightmares. Although, considering the view it probably blocked …
Taking a deep breath, she peeked around the end panel.
The smaller side room of the atrium bumped out toward a patio. In warmer weather, the tables and chairs might have been a nice retreat. On a cold October night, the crowds had stayed toward the lights of the park and promenade.
No one would see what was going on here until it was too late.
Too late. Too late. Why did those words keep coming back to haunt her? Was three hundred years not enough time to get the experiment of her life right?