The woman shrugged. Suddenly, she seemed to lose interest in him. “Corinthe can tell you. If you can trust her, that is.”
Rage ate away at him, made him want to punch her. Riddles. This was clearly some kind of sick game to her. “How do I find Corinthe, then? What the hell is this place?”
She smiled again, and the rage turned to fear. There was something vicious about her smile—it was the way a cat might look at a mouse.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Corinthe will find you.”
Another chill went down Luc’s spine, despite the sweltering heat. He took a step toward her, but she turned and then simply vanished into the thick air, which shimmered with heat. Then Luc remembered the woman he had seen when he was riding the bus, the woman who had simply materialized from the steam.
Was she following him?
Several seconds later, he thought he saw her again at the base of the cliffs. She raised her hand and waved to him. The sun glinted off her finger. A ring, maybe. The glare stung his eyes and he had to look away. When he glanced back, the light was gone, and so was she. Then a figure appeared at the top of the cliffs, silhouetted in the brightness.
How the hell had she gotten up there so fast?
It didn’t matter, because she knew where his sister was, and when he caught up with the woman, she was damned well going to tell him how to find her. He wasn’t going to wait for Corinthe to find him. She would probably try to skewer him again.
Crazy. This whole thing was crazy.
He had to find Jas.
Without thinking too much about what he was doing, he tucked the knife into his belt and started to climb. He wrapped his hand around a bit of rock, found a toehold, and hauled. He tried to ignore the pain from his cut and bleeding fingers.
This was far more intense than any training he’d ever done for soccer. At the Y, they’d made him strap into a harness before letting him climb the rock wall. Here, there was nothing to catch him if he fell.
Still, he climbed, hand over hand, feet scrambling for purchase. The suns beat down on his back, pushed sweat into his eyes until he could barely see, and yet he went on.
After what felt like an hour of climbing, he pulled himself onto a small ledge and took a break. The progress was agonizingly slow, a diagonal path across the sheer cliff face. One wrong step would send him tumbling down to the sand. He wiped his face, feeling the sting of salt in his torn-up hands.
The cliffs seemed higher than when he started. The hopelessness of it all made his shoulders shake. Just above him, a swollen belly of rock jutted out over the black ocean. There was no way around it. Carefully, he found handholds and curled his fingers into them. Fresh waves of pain radiated up his arms, and blood trickled down his wrists.
Judging by the heat, the sun—well, suns—were directly overhead now, so he kept his eyes on the gray rocks in front of him. Gray, the color of Corinthe’s eyes. The woman on the beach had said Corinthe was responsible for his sister’s … imprisonment?
His foot slipped and he barely caught himself.
Focus, damn it.
His biceps burned as he fought to keep his grip. His fingers were on fire. His foot slipped again, and it took everything he had to lift it back onto a small ledge.
He clung to the side of the cliff as rough rocks scraped his skin. Sweat rolled into his eyes, blinding him as he tried to blink away the burning sensation.
His arms shook, and his fingers slipped another inch. He fought to reclaim his balance and dug deep down into the place where survival instincts took over.
He had to hold on.
For Jasmine.
He let out a breath through clenched teeth and closed his eyes, rested his forehead against the rock. The suns weighed down on him, blistering and stifling, as if they were trying to force him into the black ocean.
Cramps seized his legs, and his left foot slipped off the ledge. The momentum pulled him off center, and his fingers began to slip.
He couldn’t hold on. No strength left. His body gave up and stopped fighting even as his mind screamed to keep going.
His other foot slipped.
And he fell.
Above him, the two suns hung side by side, twin bloated faces leering in victory. It was the last thing he saw.
He hit the water and went under. Blackness.
A water that was not like water.
He floated in it, into a creeping, airless coolness. Was this death? It was more peaceful than he ever imagined it would be.
Then … his lungs began to burn and instinct kicked in. He found strength he didn’t know he had. He flailed. He fought for the surface. He went nowhere. The water seemed to be full of silken hands—touching him, groping him.
His entire body burned from the lack of oxygen, a new kind of pain that reached down into his core, and his mind grew fuzzy. His limbs turned heavy. He allowed himself to float through the darkness, memories swimming next to him.
“Don’t worry, baby. It was just a bad dream.”
Mom stood next to his bed, smoothing her hand over his sweat-covered forehead. There was a pressure on his chest—his heart felt as if it were going to burst open. Light from the hallway spilled into the room he and Jasmine shared. His baby sister stood wide-eyed in her crib, watching him.
“You were gone,” Luc said; his throat felt rough and swollen. “I couldn’t find you. It was so dark.”
“I’m right here,” his mother said. She made soft shushing noises and he began to relax back into the pillow, his heartbeat slowing to normal. Finally, his eyes drifted closed and he heard her whisper: “It was just a bad dream. … You’re okay. … You’re safe. …”
10
Hands, rough like sandpaper, jerked Corinthe awake. A rush of pain made her gasp. Her stomach rolled, and for a second, she thought she was going to be sick.
She opened her eyes. She was lying on packed dirt on the ground. A stubby candle, enclosed by a smudgy glass-topped lantern, flickered next to her.
The smallest man Corinthe had ever seen—the size of a toddler, if that—knelt over her, holding what looked like a pair of large tweezers in his fingers, muttering to himself. He reached out with his tweezers; she felt a small tug on her arm and an icy-cold flash. She gasped and tried to sit up, but found she had no control over her limbs. Panic slid down her back.
Why couldn’t she move?
The man continued muttering to himself. He held up a dirty glass jar and dropped the stinger into it. Suddenly, he began to giggle. When he looked at her, his sunken eyes were lit up with excitement. “Hornet venom,” he cackled. “Small doses, they make strong. Make safe from more stings!”
He laughed until he wheezed—a raspy, wet sound that made Corinthe’s stomach turn over. When he opened his mouth, he exposed rows of blackened teeth. Each one came to a dull point, and she fought against the image of him taking a huge bite out of her.
A gnome. Had to be. Corinthe had seen their likenesses only a few times, in marbles that were not her charges. And gnomes lived in the Forest of Blood Nymphs, too—she had forgotten that. They were neither good nor bad, just very self-serving. They communicated in strange, circular ways that were hard to follow. Bargaining with a gnome took a lot of skill.
“Where am I?” she demanded. Her voice, at least, was still in her control—still steady. “Who are you?”
“This my home. I be Beatis, at your service.” He bowed, then stood and dragged the edge of a crusty sleeve over his dripping nose.
It was dark and smoky in the roughly circular room, which was only a few feet wider than the length of her body. Near her feet, crudely built shelves lined with dirty bottles teetered toward the ceiling. On her left was a pile of dried grass, sticks, and leaves—a makeshift bed, Corinthe imagined.