Riley’s mouth turned down. “Um. No. Could you?”
“Maybe.” James tilted his head, as if to get a better look at the door. “The art community here is pretty eclectic. I would bet that someone I know has one stashed away somewhere. Probably using it to cut steel or something.”
“So we could do this,” Cora said. Her eyes were wide, and there was hope in her face Dee had never seen before. “We could really pull this off—get our hearts back, never worry about the Daemon again.”
“Well,” said Riley, “that would be ‘again’ for all of you. I’ve never really had to deal with him.”
“No more voids,” said James, a little dreamily. “And I could just put my heart on a shelf somewhere, maybe paint it.”
Dee snorted. “Or, you know, it could go back in your chest. Where it belongs.”
James shrugged. “Maybe I like being heartless.”
Of course he would, she thought. He liked being contrary like that.
She was about to answer, but the words caught in her throat.
It was the rat. The one she’d seen before. It had darted forward into the darkened hallway and vanished.
Dee blinked. Hard. Sure she was seeing things.
With a small pop, the rat reappeared, flung backward by some invisible force. It toppled over, squeaking wildly, then wobbled unsteadily away.
Dee took a step forward.
None of them had seen it. This corridor was too dark, their flashlights too focused on the shiny bright metal of the vault door.
The air shimmered like heat waves.
“Guys,” said Dee, and her voice quavered, too high and thin for them to hear.
James was saying something about a sculptor he knew, Cora ribbing him about saying he knew everyone in the city, but the words blurred in her ears, drowned out by her own ragged breathing. It was like a dream where she spoke too quietly, couldn’t be heard no matter how she screamed for help.
Her voice finally cracked out. “Void,” she said. “There’s a void.”
Cora crossed her arms, brow wrinkling. “What? What do you—”
Riley looked similarly confused.
Only James reacted like Dee had; he moved onto the balls of his feet, looking down the dark corridor.
The void rippled, and for some reason all Dee could think of was plastic wrap, how she used to press her fingers to it as a kid, seeing how far she could push until the plastic warped and snapped.
Something was pushing through the mouth of the void.
A probing extremity pressed, and Dee saw the air warp around it, twisting and straining until—
She didn’t hear it exactly. It was more like the thrum of a bass; she felt the sensation go through her bones: ahum, asnap.
Arms closed around Dee. She made a noise, high in her throat. James. He held her, staggered backward, and she was suddenly so grateful to him. Absurdly, she felt safer in his arms but she shouldn’t, because whatever that thing was, it meant none of them were safe.
She watched as the thing tore itself free—
It was not human. It was not animal, either. She could never have given it a name; its nature was unearthly, indescribably wrong.
It was shaped like something from beneath the ocean—long limbed, boneless, and it did not seem to have eyes. There was a clacking sound as it raised its… head? She saw again those illustrations in the Lovecraft books at the library, drawings of creatures rising from the depths, of monsters long forgotten from human memory.
Out of the corner of her eye, Dee saw Cora try to run. She skipped back two steps, eyes never leaving the creature, but her heel snagged on a piece of debris. She stumbled, a panicked whine caught in her throat, and she fell to one side. She looked up, terrified, likely thinking she had just doomed herself.
