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I didn’t answer. Instead, I turned around and stared at all the porthole-looking doorways, each of which had a different symbol around it. Only there was so much smoke and potion residue drifting around that I couldn’t make most of them out. But if I could have . . .
“Dory.” A touch on my shoulder. “You okay?”
Yeah, I thought. Yeah! I whirled around, got dizzy, straightened up, and grabbed Rufus. “Can you do a reveal spell?”
“What?”
“Can you?”
“Y-yes, of course.” He blinked at me. “On what?”
“On them.” I gestured outward. “Can you make the little symbols on the doorways light up?”
Rufus looked like he was about to ask why, then seemed to decide it would be quicker just to oblige. And, all of a sudden, every door in the place was ringed in a circle of brilliant symbols, glowing brightly against all that white: blue swordfish, pink hammerheads, teal mermen, some weird black snakelike things—
“What are you doing?” Ray demanded.
—gray whales, yellow sea lions, and some purple three-tailed creature that ought to be on a coffee cup—
“Dory!”
“I’m looking for fish!”
“What? Why?”
“Because fish, tracks, door!”
Ray looked at me worriedly. “You do know you’re not making sense, right?”
“There!” And there they were, aqua-colored fish tracking around a door on the fourth balcony up, all the way in the corner. “That’s i
t! Ray, I think that’s it!”
“That’s what? What are you—”
He broke off abruptly. I was still staring at the door, so it took me a second to wonder why. And then I turned around.
And didn’t have to wonder.
Ray was still standing there, but I wasn’t sure how. Because somebody had just punched all the way through his middle, leaving me looking at a gory fist and Ray’s shocked eyes. And then the fist was jerked back out again—
Along with his spine.
But that wasn’t what had me frozen in shock.
No, that was because of who had done it.
“Louis-Cesare,” I said blankly.
And then Dorina threw us over the railing.
* * *
—
The vampire was fast—I’d give him that. As I sailed into space I felt his fingertips brush me, warm against the skin of my arm. And then I was gone, grabbing one of the camera balls that had been speeding past and reaching for my phone to alert the one they call Marlowe.
And having it knocked from my fingers.
