Doing so would be cruel.
This is his outlet.
His coping mechanism.
Twig needs a mission. He needs to believe he can tip the odds. I get it. If the roles were reversed, I’d need the same thing.
Twelve hours stretch between now and nightfall.
Jude won’t take my calls or answer his door.
So I’ll spend the time I have left with my best and oldest friend, building something wildly implausible and entirely useless.
And I’ll savor every minute.
Our last supernatural hurrah.
53
THE SPILLING OF BLOOD
Beyond the estate gates, Foggy Hollow celebrates Halloween. Porch lights glow. Witches, pirates, superheroes, and princesses dart through yards, their bags fat with candy. Teens laugh and scream their way through the Wraith Walk before gathering in the cemetery for a costume party. It’s my favorite holiday of the year, and tonight, it feels like a different world, something completely removed as I enter the music room where the rift floats like a scorch mark in midair.
Rafe waits in the dark, a rigid silhouette cut from shadow.
I take a step toward him. “Is Jude?—?”
“Alive? Why, yes.” He sets his hands on the armrests of the chair, pushes himself upright, and steps into the halo of light from the corridor. For once, he doesn’t look flippant or casual. There aredeep shadows beneath his eyes, and an unmistakable tightness in his jaw. “Are you really willing to do this?”
By this, he means helping him open the tomb. He has no idea what I’m willing to do afterward. All day, I’ve been gathering my resolve, summoning my courage. Despite all the planning and conniving I’ve done with Twig, I know there’s only one way to break this curse. “We can’t get her to undo anything if she’s trapped in the tomb.”
He looks me up and down as though measuring my commitment. Finally, with an unimpressed lift of his brow, he reaches inside his coat and removes his phone. He taps out a message and hits send, then returns the device to his pocket and draws out the ruby. It glows softly. I swear, I can hear the faint, familiar sound of Lainey’s weeping—a distraught melody seeping from the amulet. Rafe lifts it into the air, then draws it downward along the rift’s seam.
The room hums. Deep and low, vibrating through my chest like a tuning fork pressed to bone. Lainey’s weeping grows louder. And like a fresh wound all-too easily opened, a sliver of spectral light cuts through the scorch mark.
It splits open and stretches wide.
Rafe peers at me over his shoulder, then holds out his hand. With a shaky breath, I take it. And together, we step through. Into the cold. Into the dark. Into the swirling void of two worlds twisted together, coiling in and out of sync.
Removing my hand from his, I pull my coat tight and press my palm over the locket hidden beneath my shirt. I match Rafe’s long stride. Determined to keep up, to stay close, like he is safety—a testament to my terror, and the awful memory of that sucking, tentacled beast that crawled out of the fountain.
“How do you know Jude will come?” I ask.
“He won’t ignore the message I sent him.”
I look at the black abyss overhead. The blaze of Dante’s comet is the only familiar thing. Somehow, it is fully present in both realms, its white fire painting everything in sharp silver and deep shadow. I stumble, then quickly recover. “The last time we tried finding our way in this place, we got lost.”
“Last time, he didn’t have the compass.”
“And the tomb?”
“What about it?”
“He’s supposed towillinglyspill his blood.”
Rafe presses onward.
“Is it willing if he’s doing it under threat?”
