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“I could have never loved you. Look at you, you’re disgusting,” the woman spits.
My own ghost is still with me, my mother watching me sadly with blank eyes.
“People say you’re like me, but I’m afraid it’s not true—you’ll never live up to me, not like this.”
I turn back to her, trying not to let this mirage break my heart.
It can’t hurt you, I tell myself, because it isn’t her.
“You’re right about that. I’m not like you.” I say to the ghost, though I doubt it can understand me. It’s nothing real, with thoughts and feelings of its own. It’s just a collection of dark spells and illusion magic, reflecting a distorted mirror of the fears in my heart. “Because you died, you went away. Me? I’m going to stick around.”
I lift my knife and scratch an x into the junction beside me.
“I’m going to live.”
I sprint back down the corridor until I hit a new fork, then make a lucky guess and find a fresh passageway I haven’t seen before. This is a process of elimination, and eventually I’ll have to be closer to the way out. My father appears to me again, imploring me to come home. I ignore him, even if I can’t block out his words entirely.
The maze surprises me again when the next dead end shows me myself. A mirror?
No, not a mirror. The apparition is me this time.
I almost laugh, because of all the people to choose to haunt me, this seems rather pointed. I step forward to examine the workmanship. It’s only copied me as I look now: exhausted, damp and bleeding. I check the hand—yes, even nine fingers. It’s a parlor trick, if an effective one.
“I know what you’re going to tell me,” I say, and the illusion looks almost annoyed behind its blank stare. “You’re going to say no one really cares about me, no one thinks I’m special. They only put up with me because they hope I can make them rich or cure them. And even then, my work is a useless waste of time.”
The apparition opens its mouth, the whispers surging out. “No one really cares about you, Eleanor. No one thinks you’re special. They only?—”
“See?” I cut it off, pleased I’ve had my theory confirmed. “You’re getting this stuff from me. From my head. But I know my insecurities better than anyone. They run around my head every night before I go to sleep. I wake up with them and eat with them. You can’t shock me.”
I focus on Dad, lonely and suffering without me, and the apparition shifts, becoming him. I think of Mom, dead and lost to me forever, and she floats up before me. These spirits are my thoughts manifested, and that means I can control them.
I hear a scuff against the stone behind me and whirl round to see Cebba there, grinning.
“Found you.”
She lifts her hands and a cloud of darkness billows from them, engulfing me. Instantly, a bolt of pain lances through me, throwing me to the ground. I moan at the feeling of my blood burning in my veins, the insides of my eyelids screaming red with agony.
This is the magic she was talking about earlier. How fortunate I didn’t miss out on it.
The wave of pain ebbs for a moment as the spell lifts. My hands are balled into fists, but there’s something in one of them: the knife. I’m still holding it. I open my eyes and hurl it at her, forcing her to dodge it. It buys me time to scramble up and throw myself down the nearest passageway. I see with relief it’s not a dead end, but a fork. Cebba’s footsteps are seconds behind me.
“No one really cares about you, Eleanor…” I mutter to myself. My ghost-self appears beside me, a perfect replica, starting to recite the same words. I move a step left, backing up beside a turning. It keeps the apparition there in the passage, in plain view, but also allows me to hide in the shadow cast by one of the walls.
Cebba comes round the corner and doesn’t hesitate—she hurls her spell at my apparition, not noticing the giveaways that she’s fighting thin air. I sidestep down one prong of the fork—not sure if she spots the movement, but not sticking around to find out.
I maybe have a few seconds before she realizes her mistake, but every one counts, because it allows me to get out of her line of sight. I take one turn—two—three, without a sign of her, and I’m starting to feel cautiously confident that I’ve lost her for now.
I nearly jump out of my skin when I meet the next apparition—tall and beautiful as the real Ruskin. I make to dart past it down the next turning.
And nearly scream my head off when it reaches out and grabs me.
Chapter 36
“Ella.” Ruskin’s voice is low and firm as he pulls me to him, nothing like the whispers of the apparitions.
I gape up at him, touching my hand to his face. It’s warm and solid.
“You’re real,” I gasp. “I thought…”
