Cracks appeared in the foundation of the cathedral, spreading upward like the thin veins in a feather or a leaf. Another shock wave rumbled deep underground, the stones groaning as they rubbed against each other.
“It’s not safe here,” Valerie said, tugging on my arm. “We should go.”
“Go where?” Orlando asked.
They both looked at me for an answer, a decision. But I didn’t know what to say. Zo and Dante could have gone anywhere. But where? When? The river had been rocked to its foundation. Where would Zo have dared to go with the river already so dangerously unstable?
I looked up in sudden certainty. “The only place we can.” I grabbed Orlando’s hand with mine, linking the three of us together, and then I traveled to the bank.
Where I saw Zo waiting for me.
• • •
“So good to see you again, Abby,” Zo said, a twitch pulling at the corner of his eye. A dark shape lay beneath his feet. Dante was sprawled on his back on the bank, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow.
I felt my breath freeze in my lungs. He was the mirror reflection of the Dante I had left behind in the dungeon. Both wounded. Both bleeding. But both still holding on to a thread of life.
“You’ll have to excuse Dante’s poor manners. He’s not feeling like himself at the moment.” Zo stepped over Dante’s body and sauntered toward me.
I tensed. I wanted nothing more than to bolt past Zo and head directly for Dante’s side, but Valerie tightened her grip on my arm and held me in place.
“Don’t go near him,” she growled. “He’ll hurt you.” She bared her teeth at Zo, glaring.
Being this close to Zo made the stubborn black spot in my mind flicker to life again. The link wasn’t as strong as before, but I could still feel the dark buzz of it echoing through me. I pointedly ignored it.
Orlando stepped forward to block Zo’s approach, his chin raised, his mouth a flat line.
Zo stopped, a grin blazing across his face like a scorch mark. He looked at the three of us, one after the other, before his gaze came to rest on me. “I know what you’re thinking, Abby. You’ve always been so blessedly transparent. And the answer is yes, I know exactly what I’ve done—what I’m doing.”
Now that he was closer, I could see that he had cleaned off most of the blood from his face, but dark smears lingered around his mouth and nose. He held his right hand carefully, his two broken fingers still bent at awkward angles. His dark hair hung in sweat-dried clumps, the white fringe making him look like an old man.
“How did you get away?” I asked. “Dante knocked you out at the cemetery.”
“Down. Dante knocked me down, not out. And while he was right about how much it hurts to travel when you’re injured, he was wrong about it being impossible.” Zo shrugged, scratching at his arm. Bits of his skin flaked off under his nails. “I heard him tell you to go to the dungeon. It was a simple trick to be where I needed to be and do what I needed to do.” His grin burned. “I didn’t even have to do anything to Dante. I simply left. I knew he wouldn’t follow me and risk seeing his other self in the dungeon.” He tossed a sneer over his shoulder at Dante’s prone body. “Coward.”
“What about you?” Orlando asked. “Weren’t you afraid to see your other self?”
Zo’s grin grew even wider. “I wasn’t in any danger. My other self was already in the machine. For once, the timing worked to my advantage.”
Valerie shook her head, muttering, “You shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have hurt the River Policeman.”
Zo ignored her. “When I went back to the cemetery, I expected some kind of retaliation, but Dante was as you see him. Useless.” Zo spat the word at Orlando, who bristled, nostrils flaring. “I didn’t much care. It made it easier to bring him here. And, I’ll be honest, it was kind of nice knowing I’d killed two birds with one stone,” he said. “Or, in this case, two Dantes with one knife.”
“He’s not dead,” I shouted. “Either one of them.”
Zo shrugged as if that were a minor point.
“But why bring him to the bank?” Orlando asked.
“Why?” Zo repeated, astonished. “I knew if I brought Dante here, the rest of you would follow like obedient little sheep.” He waved his left hand to include Orlando and Valerie. “And that’s what I wanted. I wanted all of you to see this.” He gestured toward the river and laughed, the noise falling somewhere between a sharp cough and a chittering giggle.
My stomach turned, both at the sound of his sickness and at the sight of the river.
The river was a disaster. The once-powerful flow of time now gurgled and spat, a foamy film popping on the surface like bubbles of tar. Streams and spiral eddies branched out in all directions, creating a swamp of gray and white, of past and present. The bank felt soft underfoot, almost like quicksand. A flat light hung low over the bank and flickered madly in random patterns that made my eyes hurt.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? Take a good look, as I doubt there will be a repeat performance tomorrow.” He laughed again. “I doubt there will be a tomorrow.”
A stench rose up from the sluggish river, and sulfur coated my nose and throat with the taste of rotten eggs, making me gag.
Valerie covered her mouth, her skin turning a sickly shade of green.
“We have to stop this,” Orlando said to me in a low voice.
“I’d like to see you try,” Zo challenged with a hard glint in his eye. “The river—like so many of us—is dying.” He turned on his heel and walked back to the edge of the river. “And if the river is going to die, then I want to watch every last moment of it, up close and in person with my good friends by my side.” He nudged Dante with the toe of his boot; Dante’s arm rolled off his chest, his hand landing next to the river.
I bit my lip. Dante’s body was dangerously close to the border where bank met river. I knew that if he fell in, or if any one of the many silvery-gray threads of time touched him, he would be pulled back into the river. And if he was in the river when it stopped flowing . . .
I turned to Orlando, pitching my voice low so Zo wouldn’t hear it. “You get Dante,” I said. “I’ll take care of the river.”
Orlando had already taken two steps before I finished speaking.
I reached out for the music that I knew lived in the ebb and flow of the river. Even though it was slow and soft, I knew there was still power there.
“And, Abby?” Zo said without turning around. “If I hear one word—one note, one sound—from you, I swear I’ll push him in.” He wedged his foot beneath Dante’s shoulder and lifted. Dante rolled even closer to the edge. A thread broke away from the main river with a snap, the grayish trickle heading for Dante’s hand.
The words died on my tongue.
Dante suddenly moved, twisting back around to clamp his hand around Zo’s ankle. “You do,” Dante rasped, “and I’ll take you with me.”
Zo stepped back in surprise. Dante let go and rolled to his feet in a single fluid motion. He stayed hunched over, ready to move whichever direction Zo did.
Orlando skidded to a stop and attempted to grab Zo by the shoulders, but Zo ducked and backed away, out of reach of both brothers.
Orlando lunged forward and Zo danced away, preserving the distance between them.
Zo winced in sudden pain, pressing his hand to his head. A grimace pulled his mouth tight.
Dante touched his chest, rubbing a small circle over his heart. He tried to mask the ragged pattern of his breathing, but I could tell he was in pain. He and Zo glared at each other for another moment. Then, still wary and on edge, Dante and Orlando stepped back, their aggressive stance softening slightly.
It was as if an invisible barrier had sprung up between them, a line neither side was willing to cross just yet.
The river wheezed in the background, the last gasp of a dying man.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Dante.” Zo’s laugh rasped in his throat. “But I’m afraid it’s too littl
e, too late. The meeting at the dungeon didn’t happen. So even if you and your little friends think that you can somehow manage to heal the river, you’ve still missed your chance. You’ll die in prison, or you’ll be sent through the time machine with your sanity already broken. Either way, the river dies, and I win.”
I took another look at the sluggish stream. The images that once had flowed past faster than the eye could follow now drifted in slow eddies, random moments out of focus and smeared with color. Even the music that I could hear in my inner ear sounded softer, slower. The words had lost their meaning, the sounds communicating only pain.
“But if the river dies, then so will all of us—including you,” I said to Zo.
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. You are not part of the river anymore, Abby. You and Valerie and Orlando are tied to the bank. Dante and I—well, we have gone beyond the river. As long as we are on the bank when time dies, we’ll be just fine. We’ll survive.”
“But then we’ll all be stuck on the bank—forever,” I said. I swallowed hard and forced myself not to look at Valerie. I knew what happened to people who stayed on the bank too long. Zo and Dante didn’t have that threat hanging over them anymore, but the rest of us did. I felt a little like we had just walked into a trap.
Zo shrugged. “It may not be the life I would have chosen, but it will still be a life. And it will still be my life.” He rubbed the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
“The Pirate King never forgets, and the Pirate King never regrets, yet we all will pay for the Pirate King’s debts,” Valerie sang in a small voice.
“Why?” Orlando asked. “Why do this, Zo? Killing the river . . .” He shook his head in confusion and horror.
“He tried to control the river and failed,” Dante answered bitterly before Zo could speak. “He even tried to redirect it to be something else and failed. There was nothing left he could do but this.”
Zo’s face darkened, a snarl hovering at the corner of his mouth. “If I can’t have it, no one can.”
Valerie shook her head. “But it doesn’t belong to you. It doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“I am a Master of Time,” he shouted. “It all belongs to me!”
“No,” Valerie said. “Not everything.”
I caught her eyes and saw a bright light rising up in their depths. I recognized that light. I’d seen it on occasion before when the old Valerie—the Valerie before the bank—had been able to peek through the cracks in her mind. For the moment, she was as sane as she had ever been.
Valerie started giggling, a slow hint of amusement that built into a loud laugh, shaking her shoulders and bringing tears to her eyes.
“Stop laughing,” Zo snapped, his eyes flat with rage.
“I don’t have to do what you say.” Valerie wiped at her eyes and sauntered toward Zo, daring to breach the no-man’s- land separating us. “The River Policeman said that the chains between us are broken. So, you see, you’re wrong. Not everything belongs to you.” She stood in front of Zo and spread her arms wide like wings. “I don’t. And being free of you feels wonderful. In fact,” she purred as she walked all ten of her fingers up the front of his shirt, “I think the only thing that can make me feel any better is this.”
She pulled her hand back and slashed her nails across his cheek. Four red welts rose up in parallel rows. A hard mask descended over her face. “You hurt me.” She cut him again, this time across his other cheek. “You hurt my friends,” she said, all laughter gone from her voice. She grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. “Never again.”
Zo gaped at her, blood trickling down his face.
As Valerie turned and began walking away, she smiled at me in victory.
With her back to Zo, she didn’t see him straighten to his full height. She didn’t see him curl his one good hand into a fist. She didn’t see him spring forward with murder in his eyes.
Chapter 26
I didn’t stop to think. I shouted “No!” at the same time that Dante sprang forward, attempting to block Zo’s attack. “Stop!” But this time, the word that came out of my mouth carried with it the shimmering chimes of the language of time, and the music that had been mumbling in the background came to life at my call.
Valerie had a moment to look at me in startled surprise before Orlando wrapped his hand around her arm and yanked her forward into his arms. He immediately pivoted on his heel, using his body and his back as a shield.
Dante swung at Zo, but instead of hitting muscle or bone, his fist hit the leading edge of a fast-moving, shimmering wall of light that rose up in front of Zo and wrapped around him, trapping him in a column of music and light.
Zo skidded to a stop, cautious and wary. He looked up at the open top of his prison where the ends of the strands of light wavered and rippled like a curtain.
Dante stepped back. He looked at me in surprise. “Abby?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t intended for that to happen. The column didn’t seem as strong as the shell of time I had summoned back at the apothecary shop.
Zo kept his eyes on me as he touched the flowing light with a tentative finger. When I didn’t react, he pushed his whole hand into the light. I could see the curtain bending around the pressure, and I knew it would break at any moment.
I may have stopped Zo, but I hadn’t contained him.
“No!” I yelled. I couldn’t let him break free. I reached for the music, for the stillness of time that had answered my call in the past. But the river was weak—fragile and spent. I knew I couldn’t do it alone. “Dante, I need your help.”
Dante was at my side in an instant. He took my hand. Our fingers touched, gripped, held.
Still, I hesitated. Dante was wounded; more, he was linked to his other self, who was also wounded. If I lost either one of them, I would lose both. Could I honestly ask him to risk his past and his future to help me?
Dante met my eyes, and I didn’t have to say a word. “Tell me what you need,” he said quietly, “and it’s yours.”
Power thrummed through him, and I felt more than saw a shimmering arc of light flare into life around the two of us, linked by our joined hands, from head to foot. It seemed to burn the brightest over his heart.
“I am yours,” he said. “Always.”
I nodded, grateful for Dante’s strength and his unwavering belief in me. I concentrated, listening for the secret language of the music of time, drawing the notes I needed to me like filings to a magnet.
Contain. Imprison. Block.
As each word blended into the next, creating one unbroken sound, I could feel the music grow stronger around me. The roar in my ears sounded like a scream. I hoped it wasn’t mine.
The curtain surrounding Zo flickered. He was almost through.
It wasn’t enough. I needed more. We would need more in order to build a strong enough shell to stop Zo.
Remove. Erase. Eliminate.
I felt Dante gripping my hand tighter and tighter, but the feeling was a distant pressure buried beneath the endless stream of the river of time that flowed into him, through him, and onward into me.
Though I felt weak, I knew that Dante, as a Master of Time, could handle the raging influx of power I was channeling through him. The balance was perfect. Each of us relying on the other to provide support and strength. Each of us drawing power from the other, and both of us offering up the best of what we had.
I closed my eyes, focusing on finding the precise moment, the word that would resonate with enough power to stop Zo once and for all.
Finish.
The music responded with a sound like a lock clicking into place. I felt Dante spring the trap and heard the crash of the newly formed shell as it hit the ground.
The sound of Zo’s rage roared past me like a train.
I opened my eyes to see that the curtain of light was gone, replaced by a clear but solid wall that had arced up and over Zo, trapping him in a thick shell.
Zo glared at us,
pacing the small footprint of his domed prison. His body shook with barely contained rage. He pressed his hands flat against the curved wall. Without breaking eye contact with us, he smashed his fist against the shimmering wall that separated us.
Dante and I both winced, but nothing happened.
I think Zo was as surprised as I was. He shook out his hand, looking from Dante to me with suspicion.
“What happened?” I asked. “Usually it hurts when he does that.”