“Your deficits will catch up to you soon, though,” said another.
“You descend on everyone eventually,” said another.
“Why would it be any different when it comes to you?” challenged yet another.
“And then.”
“Everything.”
“Will.”
“Fade.”
“To.”
“Black.”
“Enough!” roared Grim as he sliced through one group of doubles, dispersing them before turning his scythe—and fury—on another. All while Cedric laughed softly in my ear.
Despite Grim’s efforts, the green smoke regathered,moredoubles taking shape and splitting off from one another, their black-clad forms cramming the emptied restaurant.
Above us, the lights flickered while, outside, the wailing sirens screamed nearer—close to closing in on us.
“Phineas,” hissed one of the doubles before the same name fell hushed from the lips of another—and then another.
Grim flinched, his distress growing as the room filled with whispers, enough that the name itself became lost—indiscernible in the rushing and unrelenting hush of sibilant syllables.
“Stop it!” I demanded, wrenching in Cedric’s grasp again, trying to get to Grim, who, grimacing, braced his free hand on his brow, eyes screwing shut like the voices had invaded his head now. “Why is this hurting him? Who or what is Phineas?”
“Must admit I haven’t the slightest,” said Cedric, whose grip loosened by a fraction, the blade of his dagger no longer threatening to break skin. “My minions are mirror chimeras, capable only of reflecting what they’re fed by the subject they’re instructed to torment. I’ve… never seen him like this.”
Torment. Torture.
Though I’d been Cedric’s target earlier, everything he’d done since entering had been enacted with the aim of hurting Grim. Including, I now suspected, threatening me.
Maybe I couldn’t save Grim like he’d saved me. Maybe I had no more power to stop a wizard than I did death. But I could, if I was lucky, bring the reaper back to himself and remind him… of howhecould.
“Grim!” I called, and as if my voice had somehow broken through all the others, he opened his eyes, head snapping my way.
His gaze locked with mine as I bore down on the wizard’s immovable arm, fingernails digging into the fabric of his sleeve. “I think Cedric couldreallyuse a seat belt.”
The barrage of whispers ceased. Grim’s expression changed, the heat of his anger giving way to a much colder—and more frightening—rage as the fumes that had wafted about him returned. The wisps swelled to sweep his hood up and over his head, securing his face once more behind the darkest mask of black shadow—butnot before I caught a glimpse of the transformation that, in one fell swoop, overtook him.
Just as his eyes vanished into darkness, the flesh of his jaw and chin evaporated to reveal a skeleton’s grin. In that split second, I had my answer to what he looked like inthisform—even if I’d already assumed.
“Shit,” said Cedric.
After that, everything happened too fast to track. A legion of hissing vaporous vines shot forward like striking vipers.
A sickening snap of bone—loud in the ear Cedric had whispered into—froze the blood in my veins.
The wizard’s grip on me fell limp. His dagger went crashing to the floor—followed by his body.
Then those dark smoke tentacles had ahold ofme. Cold but also dry, like the breath of a ghost, they wrapped my wrists, my arms, my waist, giving me no choice but to surrender as they drew me to him.
As sirens howled in the parking lot, red and blue lights flashing through the big windows, Grim swept me up in bony arms while those tendrils loosened their grips to gather and, as one, dive into my chest.
His invasion didn’t hurt. On the contrary, the sensation that filled my rib cage could have been likened to drinking fresh water on a blistering summer’s day.
