“And that will be it, I think—” Hugh stated, as another such impulse rocked Marina and the little worldlet. A third—a fourth—if Marina had been in her own body, she knew she would have been sick into one of the dying bushes. Instead, she just felt as if she would like to be sick.
“She’s coming!” Alanna gasped—and the two spirits winked out. With no more warning than that, Marina steeled herself. But she made herself a pledge as well. No matter what the outcome—she was not going to remain here. Whether she came out of here to return to her physical body or not, she was not going to remain.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE moment after Hugh and Alanna vanished, there was a fifth convulsion, worse than all the previous ones combined. It shocked her mind; shocked it out of all thought save only that of self-awareness, and only the thinnest edge of that.
For a brief moment, everything around Marina flickered and vanished into a universal gray haze, shot through with black-green lightning. She was, for that instant, nothing more than a shining spark on the end of a long, thin silver cord, floating unanchored in that haze, desperately trying to evade those lightning-lances. Something—a black comet, ringed with that foul light, shot past her before she had time to do more than recognize that it was there.
Then it was all back; the withered garden, the ring of brambles, she herself, standing uncertainly at the edge of the circle of brown-edged grass. But there was an addition to the garden. Marina was not alone.
Standing opposite Marina, with her back to the wall of thorns, stood Madam Arachne.
She was scarcely recognizable. Over Arachne’s once-impassive face flitted a parade of expressions—rage, surprise, hate—and one that Marina almost didn’t recognize, for it seemed so foreign to Madam’s entire image.
Confusion.
Quite as if Madam did not recognize where she was, and had no idea how she had gotten here.
But the expression, if Marina actually recognized it for what it was, vanished in moments, and the usual marble-statue stillness dropped over her face like a mask.
Marina held herself silent and still, but behind the mask that she tried to clamp over her own features, her mind was racing and her heart in her mouth. Instinctively, she felt that there was something very important about that moment of nothingness that she had just passed through. And if only she could grasp it, she would have the key she needed.
And now she wanted more than just to escape—for she had realized as she watched her parents together that she wanted to return to someone. Dr. Andrew Pike, to be precise. She must have fallen in love with him without realizing it; perhaps she hadn’t recognized it until she saw her parents together.
And she knew, deep in her heart, that he wasn’t just sitting back and letting her old friends and guardians try to save her. He was in there fighting for her, himself, and it wasn’t just because he was a physician.
I have to survive to get back to him, first, she reminded herself tensely.
“Well,” Madam said dryly. “Isn’t this—interesting.”
Marina held her peace, but she felt wound up as tightly as a clock-spring, ready to shatter at a word.
Madam looked carefully around herself, taking her time gazing at what little there was to see. Then, experimentally, she pointed a long finger at a stunted and inoffensive bush.
Black-green lightning lanced from the tip of that finger and incinerated the half-dead bit of shrubbery—eerily doing so without a sound, except for a hiss and a soft puff as the bush burst into flame.
Madam stared at her finger, then at the little fountain of fire, smoke, and ash, and slowly, coldly, began to smile. When she turned that smile on Marina, Marina’s blood turned to ice.
“Bringing me here was a mistake, my girl,” Madam said silkily. “And believe me, it will be your last.”
That was when it struck Marina—what that moment of nothingness had meant. Although her spirit might be imprisoned here and unable to return to her physical self, this place and everything in it took its shape from the minds of those who were held here.
Madam had realized this fundamental fact first; only the faint rustle behind her and the sense that something was about to close on her warned Marina that Madam had launched her first attack. She ducked and whirled out of reach, barely in time to escape the clutching thorn branches that reached for her, the thorns, now foot-long, stabbing for her. She lashed out with fire of her own, and the thorns burst into cold flame, flame that turned them to ash—and she felt the power in her ebbing.
Belatedly, she realized that this could only be a diversion, turned again to face Madam, and flung up shields—behind her, the thorns scrabbled on the surface of a shield that here manifested as transparent armor—while inches from her nose, Madam’s green lightnings splashed harmlessly off the surface.
Madam smiled—and the ground opened up beneath Marina’s feet.
Andrew dismounted awkwardly from his mare’s back, and walked toward the front entrance of Oakhurst. The place was quiet. Too quiet. It was as if everything and everyone here was asleep… and he knew he was walking into a trap.
He opened the door himself, or tried to—it lodged against something, and he had to shove it open. That was when he realized that it wasn’t as if everything was asleep. For the thing that had temporarily blocked the door was the body of one of the footmen, lying so still and silent that he had to stoop and feel for a pulse before he knew for certain it was sleep that held him, and not death.
Oh, God help us… Past the entrance hall, and he came across another sleeper, the shattered vase of flowers from the hothouse beside her where she had fallen. The silence was thick enough to slice.
His heart pounded in his ears. He knew—or guessed—why every member of the household had fallen. He could only suppose that Reggie had been with or near Madam when her spirit was jerked into the limbo where she had sent Marina. Somewhere in this great house, Madam lay as silent and unresponsive as Marina, for the tie of the curse worked both ways, and as long as Marina was still alive, the magic that bound them together could be used against Madam as well as against Marina. That was the first part of what the old Master had imparted to them; that using that binding, they could throw victim and predator together into a situation where neither—theoretically—had the upper hand. Their environment took its shape equally from both of them; in a fight, they both depended on the power held only within themselves.
Theoretically. But Madam was older, treacherous, and far more ruthless… He couldn’t think about that now. Because Madam was only half of the equation; Reggie was the other half. Satanic rites demanded a Priest, not a Priestess, and it was in the hands of the Priest and Celebrant that most of the control resided. No matter what Madam thought, it was Reggie who was the dangerous one—doubly so, if he, unlike his mother, actually had the gift of Mastery of one of the four Elements. He hadn’t shown it—but he wouldn’t have to. The power stolen from all the tormented souls that he and his mother had consigned to their own peculiar hells was potentially so great that Reggie would never need to demonstrate the active form of Mastery. Only the passive, the receptive form, would be useful enough for him to wield—which was, of course, impossible to detect. But if Reggie could see power and manipulate it, rather than working blind as his mother was, he was infinitely more dangerous than she.
And if he actually believed? He could have allies on his side that no mortal could hope to overcome. The one advantage to this was that such allies were tricky at best and traitorous at worst. “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”