I took a deep breath, shaking out my fingers and trying to steady my nerves. Zo and Dante seemed to be moving around a pivot point in the center of the floor. Each appearance brought them not only closer together but also one step forward around the circle. That was good. It meant that Dante had gotten my message and was moving Zo into place.
Between flashes, I darted to the center of the spiral, standing still and counting out a steady rhythm. If it worked for Zo and for Dante, I hoped it would work for me too.
“What are you doing?” Orlando called out, his frustration clear in his voice.
“What I have to,” I called back.
“Can I help?”
I shook my head. “Just stay there. And whatever happens, don’t come any closer.” I felt bad enough putting Dante at risk without his knowledge; I didn’t want to put Orlando in danger as well.
Concentrate, I told myself. Count. Find that in-between space.
I listened to the quick heartbeat sound of Dante’s boots hitting the ground a moment before Zo’s did—thump-thump, thump-thump. I listened to the slower rhythmic thud of Valerie’s head hitting the wall as she tried to rock away her pain. I listened to the screaming rush of blood in my ears, of the air moving in and out of my lungs, and I felt more than heard a distant chime begin to play inside of me.
There it was. That was what I needed. The music of time. I held on to that shimmering chime, focusing all my will on keeping it ringing, keeping it whole and unbroken.
I had heard such music before—when I had opened the black hourglass door for the first time and again when I had walked my own path through time—but now the music was different. It was almost as though I could hear words taking shape beneath the chimes. A hidden language I remembered from a long-ago time—or a time yet to be. A language I felt I could speak. Almost.
The edges of my vision rippled with the sound waves that echoed through me. I breathed. I concentrated. I counted.
Thump-thump. Thud. Thump-thump. Thud.
The contents of the shop wavered, then bled away in a smear of color and light, only to be replaced by the vast, unwelcome expanse of the bank. I could see it; I was nearly there.
Thump-thump. Thud.
A stillness engulfed me, and I was in between.
Exactly where I wanted to be.
It felt similar to the times I’d dreamed my way to the bank, but not quite. I was mostly still here—in the apothecary shop—but I was also partly there—on the bank. I could feel keenly the sharp divide between the river and bank, a knifepoint pressed to my ribs, painful but not puncturing. The pressure made it hard to breathe.
I saw the black shadow of Dante flicker into the shop, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him appear in the distance along the bank. Tracking his movements there and back made my head hurt. The strange double vision made my eyes water and throb.
Zo was half a heartbeat behind Dante, and gaining. I didn’t have much time left. If my plan was going to work, I had to pull the trigger. Now.
I thought back to when I’d been trapped in that glass shell of time—how it felt, how it looked. I felt a rising wave of claustrophobic panic. No. Not now. I pushed it aside, filling the resulting void with anger and action.
Pulling a deep breath into my lungs, I concentrated on finding that moment when time shifted into timelessness. Shadows of Zo and Dante blurred in my vision—first here, then there. The sounds around me turned loud and brassy, but brittle, as though they would come crashing down at the first wild shout.
Where was it? The moment—I needed to find that one moment where I could change things. Now, before it was too late. Before I lost my courage.
There. I had found it. And what filled my ears was different from the endless ringing of time or even the roar of the river. It was a quietness. An absence. A stillness that reminded me of Dante.
In that timeless moment, the stillness inside of me was balanced perfectly against the stillness outside of me. And then, rising up out of the depths of my mind, I heard again the music of time and the strange language that rippled beneath it.
Without knowing how, I spoke a delicate sound—half-word, half-chime—and at my call, a small bubble of time rose up from the river, a clear droplet made up of the moment before. The moment between.
Thump-thump. Zo. Dante.
I reached out for that bubble, holding my breath. What would happen when I touched it? Was I crazy for even thinking this was possible?
Thump-thump. Dante. Zo.
The bubble shivered at my touch, turning soft and pliable. It quivered in my hand, but it didn’t disappear. It didn’t break.
Thump—Zo.
I opened my eyes, focusing on the here and now, and saw the lean shape of Zo standing before me directly in the spot I’d indicated to Dante.
Thump—Dante.
Without hesitation, I pulled that moment of time free from that in-between place and hurled it at Zo. It hit him square in the chest, and he looked down in surprise. A clear substance stuck to his shirt, bending and shifting in rhythm with his breathing. He brushed at the small pearl of time with the back of his hand. But instead of flicking away, the clear spot shimmered and began to spread across his chest and over his arms. The more Zo tried to push it away, the more persistent it became, growing like ice on a lake, like mold.
I watched in amazed horror as a shield of glass appeared between us, rising up high over Zo’s head and simultaneously wrapping wide around his body. The clear edges met and fused together in a seamless stretch of captured time.
Zo spun on his heel, but Dante stood behind him, blocking his escape. The muscles in his body flexed as he tried to jump away, but nothing happened. He turned back to face me, his eyes black holes of frustrated anger.
I looked past Zo to Dante and felt the beginnings of a smile curve my mouth. My impossible plan had worked.
And then Zo took a step forward, his hands reaching for my throat, and he hit the curve of the shell with a sound like a struck bell.
My entire body resonated with the impact. I stumbled back, my mouth open. Unexpected pain shot through me.
Zo cocked his head, watching me with a considering look in his eyes, the anger shadowed with wariness. He hit the shell a second time, and I fell to my knees on the hard floor.
As the pain intensified, I knew that Zo was trapped in time, just as I had hoped.
But I also knew he wasn’t the only one caught in the trap.
The price of my plan had come due, and I feared it would be higher than I could pay.
Chapter 14
I had never felt such pain before. Not when I had nearly died in the Dungeon fire, not when Zo had redirected the river and erased my family, not even when Zo had stolen my memories and left me scarred and forgotten.
The pain started in the bottom of my feet, sharp pricks like needlepoint stitching a layer of heat onto my skin. I sucked in a hard breath and reached down to rub at my ankles and toes, but it seemed like wherever I touched, the pain spread, a hot red that swept up my legs, my hips, my chest, and down my arms.
“Abby?” Dante asked, his voice drifting to me from an ocean away. His gray eyes clouded over to white. A frown pulled at his forehead. “What’s wrong?”
I shook his words away, afraid that if I opened my mouth only a cry would emerge. Or a scream.
He crossed the room in two long strides. When he reached my side, he brushed his hand against my back, but I hissed at even that light contact, and he pulled away. The frown deepened.
Heat bubbled up inside me like a blister, smooth and liquid.
“Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
I leaned forward, my palms flat against the floor. I twisted my head away from him a moment before my body convulsed in pain and I vomited up a clear liquid. I drew in short, shallow breaths and squeezed my eyes shut as another needle threaded through my side. I felt like I’d been running for hours. Sweat beaded across my forehead, dripped down my temples. I cou
ld taste the salt on my lips.
Dante reached for me anyway, his hands searching to see something his eyes could not.
As much as I wanted to lean into him, let his cool hands touch me and soothe the fires that consumed me, I didn’t dare. The pain spread through me like an infection; I didn’t want to pass it along to Dante. I rocked away from him. My joints protested the movement and I had to bite down on my lip to hold back a moan. The taste of blood mixed with the salt in my mouth.
“Abby.” Dante’s voice held a note of command that I could not ignore.
“I . . . I don’t know what’s happening.” I gasped as my bones felt the twist of a sudden torque. The whimper that had been building finally escaped, along with a sharp exhalation. “It hurts.” It was all I could manage. My tears that fell were edged with ice, a coldness that burned worse than the blistering heat.
Through my blurred vision, I saw Zo pull back and punch at the shell surrounding him with knuckles that were raw and red with blood.
Already on my knees, I felt my arms fold beneath me. I curled into a small ball, hoping to protect myself from additional, unspeakable agony. With that last blow, I finally understood what was happening to me. I’d constructed the prison that now held Zo, which meant that I was connected to it. I feared that Zo’s attempts to break free would break me instead.
I looked up at Dante. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it wasn’t enough, but not knowing what else to say.
Dante set his mouth in a thin line and, in one quick motion, grasped my wrists and pulled me to my feet.
I let out a small yelp of surprise, but he held me in his arms and wouldn’t let me go. The pain flared once, white-hot, and then the heat started lessening, dissipating in waves as suddenly as it had arrived. The agony that had swallowed me whole drifted away, leaving a cool relief in its place that felt like early-morning dew.
It was only then that I realized Dante had been whispering in my ear. He spoke the string of words so fast and low as to be almost unintelligible, but I managed to capture the echo of a few phrases:
I can take this pain.
I can take this time.
I will break this chain.
I will make this mine.
The rough poem lacked his usual grace and fluency, but the rhythm did its job. As before, when Dante’s words had driven the darkness from my mind, now they drove the pain from my body. Blinking to clear my vision, I thought I saw the golden bands around his wrists glow brighter the longer he chanted his impromptu rhyme.
“I can take this pain. I can take this time,” he repeated, his voice urgent and firm.
I pulled in a deep breath, grateful to feel the normal expansion of my lungs instead of the tightness that had locked me in place.
“I will break this chain. I will make this mine,” he finished.
Looking over Dante’s shoulder, I saw Zo smash his fist against the shell, but this time I didn’t feel any pain. The bond between us had been broken.
When I didn’t react to Zo’s violence, he lowered his hand, his eyes turning to black slits of shadow. His body relaxed out of the intensity of attack into the casual slouch of a predator before the pounce.
The room was silent except for the constant stream of poetry flowing from Dante.
I touched my finger to his lips, stopping his words. “You did it. You broke the chain. It’s gone. I’m better.” The tears continued to flow, but now they were free and clean.
“What did you do?” Orlando asked quietly.
I turned in the curve of Dante’s arms—I wasn’t quite ready to leave his protection yet—and looked at Orlando.
True to his word, he hadn’t come any closer to me. I could see the toll his obedience had taken, though. Deep lines of anxiety cut into his forehead and around his mouth. His eyes had darkened to a deep blue. He looked visibly older than he was, and I had a sudden memory flash of Leo standing over me as an inferno swallowed up the Dungeon. He had the same expression of worry on his face now as he did then. Or would, in all those years to come. It was getting harder to keep the past and the future in their proper places.
“She did the impossible,” Dante said, a touch of wonder in his voice. “What made you think of it?” he asked me.
“Well, it’s happened before. Not like this, of course,” I added. “But I thought it was worth a try.”
Orlando approached the shell of time, his eyes narrowed in thought.
Zo lounged against the far curve, his legs crossed at the ankles, his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his pants.
It unnerved me to see him leaning up against what appeared to be nothing but air.
“Can he hear us, do you think?” Orlando asked.
“Of course I can.” Zo flipped the hair out of his eyes with a casual toss of his head. “I’m trapped, not dead.”
“Not yet.” Orlando’s lip curled in a sneer.
“Not ever,” Zo shot back, but I saw him look at Dante with hooded eyes when he said it.
A scrabbling sound pulled my attention away from the standoff between Zo and Orlando. Valerie stood up from behind the counter, swaying on her feet. She held on to the edge of the counter with hands that visibly shook. Her ragged hair was matted by sweat, and tears streaked her face. She blinked, looking from me to Dante to Orlando before her eyes came to rest on Zo.
I braced myself for her reaction, for her to fly across the room in another attack, but Valerie simply drew in a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. An expression of true peace—the first I’d seen on her face in a long time—softened the tension in her forehead, her shoulders, her back. She exhaled a sigh.
“Valerie?” I called to her softly. “Are you all right? Do you need help?”
She opened her eyes and brushed at her bathrobe as though she could dislodge the ground-in dirt with a few swipes. She tied the belt around her waist. Rubbing her hands over her cheeks, she wiped away the last of her dried tears and then fluffed her hair with her fingers.
Gliding from behind the counter, she made her way across the room with slow and measured steps. She stopped in front of me and Dante and curtseyed as low and graceful as a noble-born lady.
“I must thank you, my darling River Policeman,” she said, looking up at Dante with adoring eyes. “You held true to your promise. You found him and you caught him and you put him in prison, where he belongs. I am in your debt.”
“You’re welcome,” Dante said gently. “But I had help.” He tightened his arms around me. “Your thanks should extend to her as well.”
Valerie immediately threw her arms around both of us. “My angels,” she whispered.
I untangled myself from Dante’s arms so I could embrace Valerie in a proper hug. I wondered how long it had been since I’d been able to hug my friend like this—too long, I knew.
“Abby?” Zo’s voice slithered into the stillness. “Can I have a hug too?”
I turned around and saw Zo standing with his arms open and his eyes soft and vulnerable. His pose didn’t last long; a smirk cut through the façade, turning into a full-fledged grin.
The three of us joined Orlando next to the shell of time, lining up in a row in front of Zo. He lowered his arms, laughing. Orlando reached out toward the shell.
“No! Don’t!” I grabbed his hand before he could make contact. “If you touch it—if any of us touch it—we’ll break it open and set him free. Plus, I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“So does that mean you want me to be hurt?” Zo asked. He shook his head in mock sorrow. “I thought we were friends, Abby.”
“What gave you that idea?” I snapped.
Zo arched an eyebrow. “You were so nice to me at the cathedral. You trusted me.”
“I only trusted you because you made me.” My skin crawled even being this close to him. I moved away from the edge of the glass, wanting to put as much space between me and Zo as possible.
He quirked his lips as though that were a minor point, as though he hadn’t been th
e cause of my fractured memory. “Still—it was nice.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“You would be wise to stay quiet,” Orlando snapped at Zo.
“Or what?” Zo asked. “You’ll come in here and make me?”
“He won’t,” Dante said quietly. “But I will.”
Zo swallowed down his sneer and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“You should be careful,” Valerie whispered to Dante in a voice loud enough for all of us to hear. “He’s not to be trusted.”