by Kelly Creagh
Lucas’s knees buckled. But Erik held him fast against the stones, fury contorting his expression past the point of recognition.
“You swore!” I shouted at him.
Erik froze. He held his crushing grip a moment longer. Then, with a roar of rage, he released Lucas and, still glaring his hate at him, backed away several steps. Gasping for breath, and before his knees could meet the frozen ground, Lucas vanished, no doubt waking up wherever he had gone to sleep.
That left Erik and me alone.
“Do you believe him?” he asked me, his voice no longer Wrath’s but his own.
Obviously, he was asking about something Lucas had said. Maybe all of it.
Slowly, with two staggering steps, Erik turned to face me. Blood poured from his chest, streaking a form no longer clad in his crimson officer’s uniform but rather in a silver brocaded waistcoat, one lined with buttons. An indication he had changed masks?
He wavered on his feet, about to go down.
“He’s right,” said Erik. “Of course he’s right. But . . . it wouldn’t matter . . . not if you didn’t believe him.”
I bolted to him, catching him by the arms before he could fall. Unable to keep him upright, though, I went down with him until both of us were kneeling in the snow and the blood.
There, Erik gripped his chest, pain seizing him.
Though I took hold of his wrist, attempting to pull his hand from the wound, he flung me off, the motion causing the world to invert and the dream to end.
SIXTY-FOUR
Lucas
I drew a ragged breath, and my lungs flooded with air—almost too much.
Someone, a girl, screamed my name. Her voice drew me backward through the darkness. And then other voices joined hers. Including one that I recognized as my own.
“Stephanie!” I shouted into the light that burst into being above me, revealing shadowy, amorphous shapes that, in the next instant, became familiar heads and faces.
“Lucas, oh my God,” gasped a teary Charlotte before she launched herself at me.
“Sheez,” said Patrick. “Eff that. We’re never doing that again.”
“Give him space,” commanded another voice, this one coming from my left. Rastin’s.
Someone peeled Charlotte off of me, and still gasping for breath, I pressed my hands into the carpet and struggled to sit up, drunk with confusion and disequilibrium. I clasped my throat, the skin of which still held the memory of being squeezed almost to the point of collapse. Then a warm, wet sensation on my bicep drew my attention to my white sleeve, now stained crimson with blood. Only when I saw the wound—the slash I’d been dealt in the dream—did the pain rip its way through my arm.
“Stay back,” commanded Rastin, his face appearing to hover over mine, contorted with worry—and anger. “What happened?”
“I didn’t get to tell her,” I said. “I didn’t get—you have to send me back.”
“No!” wailed Charlotte.
“He found you,” said Rastin, releasing a breath. “Tell me you didn’t try to fight him.”
“Send me back now,” I hissed to Rastin, locking eyes with him, my anger at last trumping my fear.
“You are not going back there,” Rastin said.
“I’ll kill him.” I pushed against the medium, trying to stand.
“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Rastin, shoving me down again.
“Get away from him!” Charlotte screeched.
“Charlotte, I will not harm him.”
“You already have!” she yelled. “Something was choking him. He stopped breathing. Look at him, he’s covered in blood!”
“He is all right,” Rastin assured her. “He will be all right. Please, calm yourself.”
“Calm myself?” sobbed Charlotte.
Above me, the turning ceiling fan sped into a swirling drain—a whirling funnel that threatened to swallow me.
Nauseated, I shut my eyes and fought the urge to puke. Shunting Rastin’s staying arm aside, I sat up.
“Charlotte,” I managed. “It’s not Rastin’s fault.”
“You almost died!” she yelled—loud enough for our sleeping hotel neighbors to hear.
“I didn’t die,” I said. Because I didn’t have an argument. Only a purpose I couldn’t walk away from. Especially now that I’d faced and confronted the monster head-on. Officially, Erik had become someone and not just something. The legend about him was true, too. He had the face of a god. Still, the face I’d seen wasn’t his real one. Not anymore.
“Someone fetch me some towels and warm water,” said Rastin. “Use the ice bucket.”
“Lucas, this has gone too far,” said Charlotte. “You can’t go in that house again.”
“Charlotte,” I said as the rotation of the room began to slow. “I have to.”
“No, you don’t,” she snapped. “Stephanie doesn’t want you to die for her.”
I scowled, not caring for Charlotte’s new stance.
“This is insanity, Lucas,” said Charlotte. “Look at us. We’re not equipped for this.” She thrust an arm toward Rastin. “He’s not equipped for this!”
“Stephanie doesn’t have anyone else,” I said, keeping my voice as reasonable as I could make it while my brain was still trying to sort through all that had happened.
“She has me,” Charlotte said, gesturing to herself.
“What?” snapped Wes.
“I will go in with Rastin and talk to her,” said Charlotte, causing a stunned silence to chill the room. I gawped at Charlotte, who didn’t leap to take her words back. “I’ll go in,” she said. “However I need to. But not you, Lucas. You’re done.”
I shook my head, baffled. “There’s no way I’m let—”
“You don’t get to let me do or not do anything,” she said. “Erik hates you. He’ll kill you the moment you step foot in his world. But he’s not going to hurt me.”
“Are you insane?” I asked her. “Of course he’d try to hurt you!”
“There are no certainties when it comes to Erik,” said Rastin, cutting in quickly, his eyes straying to me with a reluctance I didn’t like. “But . . . knowing what I do about him, I believe Charlotte’s theory is sound. He may just allow Charlotte to speak to her.”
“No,” I told him, before repeating the word to her. “No. There’s no way.”
“I don’t like it either,” said Patrick, “but I think we should hear Charlotte out on this one.”
“No,” said Wes. “I’m with Lucas. That’s a bad idea.”
“This is a bad idea!” hissed Charlotte as she gestured to my arm.
“You hate Stephanie,” I reminded her.
“Who said I hated her?”
“Why this change?” I pressed. “Why, all of a sudden, do you want to be the one to risk going after her?”
“Because I . . . because I didn’t ask her why she wasn’t saying anything. That day we went into the house. I knew something was the matter. I felt there was something she wanted to say. I should have asked her. I wanted to. But . . . I didn’t.”
Silence swept in between us all. Everyone stared hard at Charlotte. Me hardest of all. Because she was talking about that day in the coffee shop. When I’d briefed everyone on what had happened at Moldavia after the chandelier incident.
“That was my fault,” I told her. “I was the one who told her not to—”
“It doesn’t matter what you told her,” said Charlotte. “I could tell something was wrong just by looking at her, and I could have pulled her aside and asked her and I didn’t. Instead, I let a stupid grudge get in the way. She would have told me about Erik if I’d asked her. Probably everything.”
“What do you mean by ‘everything’?” I challenged.
“There’s something else going on here,” said Charlotte. “You don’t want
to see it, but there’s some part of this we’re missing. And it has everything to do with Stephanie.”
“If there was, she would have told me.”
“No, she wouldn’t have,” said Charlotte, shaking her head. “You’re not going to understand, Lucas, so stop trying.”
“Why—”
“Because!” She threw her arms open. “You love her. It’s obvious to everyone how you feel about her. But it’s also clear that you’re letting that blind you.”
“To what?”
“Lucas, she went back in for him,” Charlotte said, like I was missing something that stood out as painfully obvious to her. “She told you that straight. But you didn’t tell us. And that’s because you preferred to believe that it was some kind of demon you could smudge out of existence instead of someone who she truly cared for.”
“She doesn’t,” I said, my words coming out strangled.
Charlotte shook her head at me. “You’re still not ready to hear it. This is crazy, Lucas. You are crazy. And I’m not going to stand around and wait for you to get killed because you think you’re the only one with a stake in this.”
With that, Charlotte turned and stormed out the door.
I struggled to stand, to go after her, but Rastin again stayed me. This time, I let him. Because the room was starting to spin again.
“Patrick,” said Wes. “Where are you going?”
Glancing up, I saw a scowling Patrick stop en route to the door.
Though I wanted to believe he was going to retrieve Charlotte, or at least talk her down, the reluctant way he pivoted toward us told me otherwise.
“Look,” said Patrick. “I’d be lying if I told you Charlotte hadn’t just said out loud everything I was thinking.”
“So, what? You’re leaving, too?” asked Wes. “Now?”
“All Charlotte’s trying to do is get you to ask yourselves a question,” said Patrick as he scanned the three of us with an accusing finger. “And that’s whether or not Stephanie’s got some part in this we’re not seeing. And you.” He shifted his finger to me. “Whether you want to see it or not, you’re getting more and more reckless. This isn’t just about Stephanie anymore. Not for you. Or else you would start listening to someone other than yourself.”
Inside my chest, my already thundering heart plummeted into my gut.
Before I could demand that Patrick retract what he’d just said, the door to Rastin’s hotel room swung shut a second time. And while there was a small check of comfort in knowing that Charlotte would not be alone in her abandonment of the group—of me—there was a deeper pain surrounding the fear that Patrick might just have a point.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t deny that Charlotte had one. We were in over our heads. That alone made me want to look back and question everything that had brought us to this moment.
I didn’t want to think Charlotte could be right about Stephanie and Erik either, but hadn’t I just seen for myself that there was something between them? Why, until this moment, had I not questioned what that something could be? Rastin had already told us Erik had fallen in love with Stephanie. Was that something that could occur without her encouragement? The dreams Stephanie hadn’t told me about until that day we went into Moldavia—what had happened in those dreams?
Erik. With a face like that, I could imagine any number of things happening between them.
What hadn’t Stephanie told me? And why had she insisted that I not come for her? She’d been afraid for me. But there’d been a silent exchange that had happened between her and Erik, too. She’d alluded to an oath. Whatever it had been, she had either made it for me. Or . . . she had made it for him.
“She’s right . . . isn’t she?” I asked Rastin in a quiet voice as Wes returned with the requested towels, one of which the medium pressed to my still-bleeding arm.
“She . . . raises an interesting concern,” conceded Rastin. “One I admit I had not considered. One that . . . might offer an explanation for an odd occurrence.”
“Which odd occurrence?” asked Wes bleakly.
“When Erik attacked me yesterday,” Rastin said, “I detected his presence within the house as usual. I knew he was still without a heart, because I could not pinpoint his whereabouts. But . . . I also felt Stephanie’s presence on his side. Her whereabouts I could detect. Until now, I felt sure that my awareness of her had more to do with the fact that her soul is out of place in his world. Now, though . . .”
“Now, though, what?” I asked through a growl, daring him to say what he ought to know not to.
“I’m not sure,” said Rastin, glancing toward the door through which Charlotte had left. “But . . . if Charlotte makes a point, so do you. Stephanie and Erik. They have no one else.”
Stephanie and Erik. With those words, I shifted my deadened stare to Wes. I found his gaze already there, waiting for mine.
I sent him a question with my eyes only, one I needed an answer to tonight.
Wes pressed his lips together.
Hands going to his hips, he dropped his head.
And just when I thought I had my answer to whether he, too, would abandon me to side with Charlotte, Wes—my biggest critic, the biggest pain in my ass—looked up . . . and made his stance clear.
“For those of us still on Team Lucas, we get T-shirts, right?”
SIXTY-FIVE
Stephanie
I awoke with a start, sitting up in Myriam’s bed, to which Erik must have returned me after the incident with his mask, Wrath’s mask. Which miraculously still lay under my hand.
He hadn’t taken it back.
My fear didn’t subside, though. Instead, it grew, magnified by the sight of Myriam’s room tinted in tones of red.
A fiery glow emanated from the window, casting everything in an eerie luminescence.
Leaving the silver skull mask amid the covers, I pushed myself to sit on the edge of the bed. All around, black shadows clogged the corners of my room as though hiding from the glow.
Confused, I stood, bare feet hitting the frozen floorboards that I’d half expected to find burning—like everything else seemed to be. But the cold did little to ground me.
I grabbed the long white dressing gown that draped the vanity’s chair and drew it on, tying its satin ribbon at the waist. Next, I rounded the bed, heading toward the garnet window, folding my arms against the freezing air as I went.
A blizzard raged outside, reams of tattered clouds shooting across the sky.
Beyond the bluster, the normally silver moon blazed blood red, its glow casting the snow-covered grounds a gory pink.
But . . . something wasn’t right with the way the snow currents fell. That’s when I realized the snow wasn’t falling. It was rising—the innumerable flecks of white flying upward into the sky that, sometime during the last few hours, had transformed itself into a bloody maw.
I left the window and hurried to the nightstand, fumbling for the oil lantern that always doused itself when I relit it. Lighting it again, I grabbed it and made for the door. My hand halted just shy of the knob, though—stalled by the soft sound of sobbing in the hall.
A woman.
The sound . . . It had to be coming from a mask. But, as far as female masks went, I’d only encountered the three.
Reminding myself that the masks weren’t separate people but separate shards of one person, I took the knob again and, turning it, opened my door.
I stuck my head out first, surveying the empty hallway and red-tinted darkness swathing the landing as I tuned one ear to the soft sound of wailing. My bare feet sank into the plush carpet runner then as I made my way down the hall, stopping only when I rounded the top newel post.
She sat in the center of the steps, head in her hands, shoulders shaking, her emerald skirts fanned out around her, making her look like a toppled creampuff.
/> Gathering the skirt of my nightgown in my free hand, I steeled myself for whatever sort of interaction I was about to have with this mask . . . and began to descend.
Either oblivious or indifferent to my approach, Envy didn’t budge or lift her head. She didn’t stop crying, either. Not even when I came to stand beside her, the circle of light I’d brought with me no doubt alerting her to my presence.
“What’s happening?” I asked her in the whisper that the surrounding silence demanded.
I lifted the oil lamp so that I could survey the bottom of the stairway and the foyer. Though I searched for Spite—Envy’s until-now constant companion—I found no trace of her anywhere.
Just when I was starting to think this place had a normal . . .
Swallowing with sudden and growing unease, I returned my attention to the weeping masked figure at my feet.
“Answer me.”
Immediately, she stopped crying and peered up at me, her grasshopper eyes actually glistening in the glow of my lantern.
“You love him . . . don’t you?” asked the mask.
I froze with the question.
“Of course, why wouldn’t you?” she snipped, turning her head away. “Clearly, he would die for you.”
My knees weakening, I sank to perch on the step above hers.
“You mean Luc—”
Her hands rushed to cover her ears. “Don’t say his name.”
Frowning, I peered behind us, to the vacant foyer and the parlor’s pocket doors, but I saw no sign of Erik.
“Tell me what’s happening,” I demanded of the mask who had gone back to crying.
“It’s our heart,” said someone else.
I swiveled my head up toward where the second female voice had come from. And though I expected to see Spite, a different mask occupied the top step. None other than the one who had appeared to me in the open basement door that night. The one who had extended her gloved hand to me—a hand I had almost allowed to take mine.
She now stood hovering over us, garbed in an opulent white-lace wedding gown.
