“Let’s try it together,” Will said, placing both his hands over hers.
The mirror’s surface quivered like the surface of disturbed water, then glowed with a soft blue light that spread up Zani’s arm and illuminated her face from below.
“I can almost see it,” she whispered, eyes still closed. Images began to form in her mind, dangling at the other end of the invisible strings that were wrapping tight around their fingers. She could see it more clearly now. “I see the island. People are gathering in the town for the film festival…” Zani was surprised that the vision didn’t stop there. She thought it was supposed to stop there. Instead, she felt pulled past the island, and back out to sea. She frowned, trying to understand.
“What are you picturing now?” Will asked.
“There’s a rock formation just off the coast of the island,” Zani reported, trying to describe what the stone was showing her. “It’s not too far from the harbor. It’s pretty big. I don’t know. I don’t know why it’s showing that to me. But I think that’s where we need to go?”
The dirigible hummed to life around them, brass pipes in the walls beginning to sing in a way that was too harmonically perfect to be purely mechanical. The alchemical symbols on the compass spun, and outside the windows, the dawn light melted into a swirl of colors.
“You’re doing it,” Will breathed into her ear. His hands were still tightly clasped around her own.
“We’redoing it.” Zani opened her eyes.
Will moved one hand to the captain’s wheel. He turned it slightly toward a symbol that looked like a crescent moon embracing a sun. “The eclipse,” he said. “I think if we aim for that?—”
The airship bobbed, and began to ascend. Outside the windows, both daylight and darkness melted away, flickering and alternating in rapid succession.
“How much time will we have once the eclipse reaches totality?” Will asked, his knuckles white as he gripped the captain’s wheel with one hand.
Zani glanced at the strange clock on the wall, its twelve hands moving at different speeds. “Three or four minutes tops. We should try to port in ahead of it. A couple of hours, at least.” Her stomach was in knots. It was all coming down to timing.
“I don’t even know if we have too much or too little speed,” Will muttered. “I guess I’ll try this?” He found a lever shaped like a feather and impulsively pulled it down.
The dirigible’s hum deepened to a roar, and the colors outside the windows streaked even faster. They were flying like they’d been shot from a cannon. But a few seconds later, the dirigible came to an abrupt stop, skidding across the sky like a puck on ice.
As it spun out, the swirling colors outside the portholes resolved into a clear blue sky and sparkling ocean. Catalina Island lay below them, its hills green, its harbor crowded with boats.
“We made it here,” Zani breathed once the airship had stopped spinning and righted itself. She moved to the window. Her relief, however, was short-lived.
“Uh oh! Look at the sun!” she exclaimed.
Will joined her at the porthole. The eclipse had already begun—the moon’s shadow taking its first bite from the sun’s edge. They were late. Not hours early as they’d intended. They’d arrived mere minutes before totality.
“We’re late! Why do you think the stone has brought us here? And why now?” Zani’s faith in the stone wrestled with her desire to remain in control.
“Look there!” Will opened the porthole and leaned out. He pointed to the white rock formation jutting from the water just off the coast of the island.
As the dirigible sank lower, closing in on the rock, Zani could make out a figure sprawled out on the flat surface. Even from this distance, the unnatural stillness of his body was alarming. Once they drew closer, she could see the white light of the unnatural silver flames.
“It’s Cosimo,” Zani gasped. “He’s laid himself out in the sun.”
“Merlin’s beard!” Will exclaimed. “What is he doing?”
But it was obvious what he was doing, and it was a terrible sight to see the vampire’s attempt at immolation. He was engulfed in flames atop the white rock. The stone in her hand was growing hotter and hotter as well.
Zani picked up her satchel and slung it across her body. “Cosimo must have thought we weren’t coming. I think he’s trying to destroy the stone by destroying himself.”
“We have to stop him,” Will shouted. “Fast!”
“Look!” Zani pointed to the ocean now, because there, in the water, in a brilliant flash of iridescent scales and fiery red hair, was a mermaid, speeding toward the rock. Zani rummaged for her Lunar Lenses. This time she would be prepared.
“I think that’s Ondalune! She’s here, too!” exclaimed Zani, peering through the glasses.
“Hang on. I have an idea. It could buy us a little bit of time,” Will said. He swiftly guided the dirigible lower, bringing it to hover directly over the rock, where it cast its shadow across Cosimo’s prone form. “I am eclipsing the eclipse.”
With the sun and moon blocked, the flames subsided. Cosimo was no longer burning, but he remained motionless.
