Page 103 of Strange Lights

“What’s wrong with her?” Meredith whimpers.

“She jumped. She jumped into the void,” Zara says. Her voice, calm and hollowed out. Clinical almost, a doctor doling out an unpleasant diagnosis. “We didn’t catch her in time.”

The hope that was momentarily rising inside me tamps back down.

“Carpathia,” Luca whispers.

“What did you say?” I ask, tearing my gaze from Reggie to meet his eyes. There’s a strange tone to his voice.

“Carpathia,” Luca says, “Carpathia, Carpathia!”

He’s shouting now, and a broad smile is spreading across his face.

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s what she shouted at me before she jumped.”

“So?”

“This isn’t the fucking Titanic!” Luca shouts. He grips his head with his hands, his eyes feverish. “Man the lifeboats! We’re the lifeboats!”

I’m completely lost, sharing concerned looks with the others.

“Luca, we’re in the desert,” I say hopelessly. “Reggie is gone, in some magical other realm.”

“Calvin.” Luca grabs me by my shoulders. “The Carpathia was the ship that came to save the survivors when the Titanic sank. The rescuers. We’re her Carpathia. She wants us to come to save her.”

“Reggie said we have one thing Adele never had⁠—tethers,” Zara says.

“Exactly,” Luca says.

“We tether each other and go after her,” I say as sudden understanding floods my body with adrenaline. “Adele said when she fell into the magic void that she held on and climbed back out. Reggie must be trying to do the same now.”

“We have to be the rescue ship that retrieves her soul from that realm before she falls too far to come back to her body,” Luca says.

I grasp one of Reggie’s hands in my own; Luca holds the other. Meredith slips her hand in mine, as Orion takes Luca’s. I let myself feel them, reach out and grab hold. Meredith and Zara lend unfamiliar and unflinching support. Orion and Eldi are more otherworldly, harder to hold on to, but they throw their strength toward me with all their might. Luca meets my eyes, leans forward over Reggie, to press his forehead against mine.

“Trust me,” he whispers. Question or command, it doesn’t matter; the answer is the same.

“Yes.”

Luca’s tether wraps around me, stronger than any I’ve felt aside from Reggie’s. He is familiar, as wild and restless as Reggie’s soul. But he’s steadier, more settled and sure than Reggie has ever been.

For a split second, I see double. A cliffside in Nevada, six of us crouched around the center of a universe of our own making, an alien ship in the sky. Luca’s hand on a doorknob, yanking open a doorway, a vast darkness looming just through it.

“Hold on, Reggie; we’re coming,” I say as I close my eyes.

When I open them, I’m awestruck. The universe unfurls around me. Luca stands beside me. A vast abyss stretching endlessly down has replaced the desert cliffside.

“Where’s everyone else?” I ask.

Luca gestures to a rope coiled next to us that stretches back through the doorway. “Tethering us,” he says, reaching to pick up the coil of rope. “So do we draw straws or what?” Luca huffs, looking toward the edge.

“I’m going after her,” I say without hesitation.

“I know,” Luca says wryly. “And anyway, you need someone up here to anchor you. Safety first.” He yanks at me, turns me back from the edge, and I’m about to resist until I realize what he’s up to. I’m wearing a rock-climbing harness, Luca deftly tightening and adjusting the straps.

“Didn’t anticipate how handy this hobby of mine would be,” he says with a shrug. He ties knots, fastens clips, rigs up some sort of pulley as he gives me instructions.