by Lanie Bross
“Time shifted, then?” he asked, as if it was a regular occurrence.
Relief broke in her chest. “Yeah. Exactly. Time shifted.” He still didn’t react. “I don’t know how else to explain it. I get this horrible headache and everything gets bright. Then, when I open my eyes, I’m somewhere else. A different day.”
“Go on,” Ford said.
She wrapped her fingers around the mug again. The tea—or maybe it was the whiskey—was making her limbs feel heavy, and a cozy warmth spread through her veins.
“The last day I really remember clearly is Friday. Then there’s this chunk of time just … missing. My … brother won’t tell me what happened.” Jasmine stumbled over the word brother. Luc was in trouble—she could sense it—and it was all her fault. “And there’s more. I can smell and hear and, like, sense things a thousand times better than before—sense people, even, and what they’re feeling. Except for you. Not you.” Her face was burning. She looked away from him. “I don’t understand any of it,” she finished. “I don’t know why those people are trying to hurt me.”
Ford was quiet for a minute. Then, abruptly, he stood up. “They’re Executors,” he said, taking her empty cup. “It’s what they do.”
Laughter bubbled up from deep inside Jas. What had he put in her tea? She felt light, giddy, and not quite solid. “Executors? Like ‘off with your head’ type of people?”
When he turned back to her, he was frowning. “You really don’t know, do you. About anything.” He shoved a hand through his hair.
The way he said anything sent goose bumps up her arms. Suddenly, she didn’t feel giddy anymore. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jas said quietly.
He sat down across from her with a deep sigh. His eyes searched her face, as if he was debating how much to tell her. Finally, he said, “There are forces out there charged with keeping order in the universe. They obey their laws blindly, without care or thought for others. And they don’t stop. They never stop.” His voice held such bitterness that Jas wanted to reach out and hug him. But she had too many questions.
“What do you mean, forces?” she asked. “Like … physics and stuff?” She had never been any good at math and science. Except astronomy. She knew the positions of all the stars, had memorized them with Luc when she was a little girl.
Ford shook his head impatiently. “Not forces. People. People like the girl and boy who attacked us today.”
“Executors,” Jasmine said. Ford nodded.
She inhaled sharply. It was insane. But so was everything that had happened to her. “How do you know all this?”
Ford shrugged. “The universe is big, and complicated,” he said. His eyes were like starry skies: points of light dancing in the middle of darkness. “I’ve seen many parts of it.”
She bit her lip. Not human. The words were impossible to ignore this time. “So … you don’t think I’m crazy?”
His lips turned up at the corners and he looked at her sideways. “I think you’re a little crazy. You did knee an Executor in the groin.”
“He didn’t leave me much choice.” Jas couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled. It felt good. She scooted back so that she could lean against the cement wall. Ford was still watching her with that intense look in his eyes. She looked down. “What about all the other stuff? Like … like about the Executors.” Her heart was beating fast—it was being here, in the half dark, next to him, and trying to understand. “You’re saying they’re after me, right?” She tugged at the blanket still draped around her shoulders. “But why? It doesn’t make sense. You said they keep order. It’s not like I’m some great threat to the universe.”
She waited for him to agree with her, but he merely shrugged. “I don’t know. But you’re not safe. You won’t be, until they’re dead.”
“So …” Jasmine tried to work up the courage to ask the questions she needed to. “Are you an Executor, too?”
Ford snorted. “Not likely. I don’t follow orders from anyone.” Then his voice got quiet. “But I knew an Executor once, a very, very long time ago.”
“Are you saying you’re older than you look?” He nodded. Jas squeezed her hands into fists. “Like thousand-year-vampire old? Or old-man old? I think old-man old is creepier.”
He smiled, just barely. “Older than that.”
Jas swallowed. “So, what … what are you?”
She thought he might not tell her, but after he reached over to turn the camp stove off, he grabbed the lantern and moved to sit next to her. He, too, leaned back, tilting his head so it rested against the wall. “I’m … different, like you.”
His face was only a few inches from hers. She could feel the energy flowing between them, liquid and warm. “You’re saying we’re the same?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I can’t really explain it, though; it’s complicated. We’re …”
“On different sides, yeah, I know, you said that already.” Jas pulled her knees to her chest and hugged the blanket tighter around herself.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. He looked almost angry. “I won’t ever hurt you. You can trust me.” He started to reach for her, then seemed to think better of it.
Jasmine hesitated. Then she found his hand in the dark and squeezed it. “I do trust you,” she said.
Ford turned to her and smiled. It changed his face. He became so beautiful it was almost hard to look at him. Jasmine pulled her hand away.
“You’re tired,” he said softly.
She nodded. She was tired—drowsy and warm and safe. She didn’t understand everything he had told her, but she didn’t care. She wanted to forget about the Executors and where Ford had come from. He was here, and he was protecting her.
How long had it been since she had slept? The storm was muffled by the thick walls. From here, the rain was no more than a hum. Humming … her mother was humming in the kitchen.…
“Come on,” Ford whispered. “You’re falling asleep.”
He guided Jas onto a mattress lying in the corner and tucked the blanket around her shoulders, as if she were a child.
“Would you hold me? Just until I fall asleep?” She barely knew what she was saying. She was cold and he was warm. She was swaying, rocking on a dark ocean. He lay down and slid one arm carefully under her head and the other around her waist.
The contact was electric. She could feel his breath in her hair.… She wanted to kiss him.… She pressed against him and he held her tight.
Please don’t wake up yesterday. She wanted to be right there, with Ford, when she opened her eyes again.
In the safety of his arms, for the first time in days, she slept.
She woke up sometime in the middle of the night and saw Ford standing in the shadows on the far side of the room. The lamp had been extinguished. It was almost completely dark, except for the silvery light of the moon, which shone faintly through a small window set high in the wall. It had stopped raining, but water was still dripping rhythmically to the ground next to Ford’s bare feet, leaking from some invisible spot above him.
Jasmine watched him twist and jab, almost as if he were shadowboxing. But his palms were flat, and as he moved, the water simply rose from the pool at his feet; it stopped dripping and hung suspended. Drops of water, dark as ink, began spinning when Ford closed his fingers into a fist.
Jasmine was suddenly awake, and terrified.
Then, just as quickly, he stopped moving. All the water fell, splashing down onto the concrete, and the steady dripping resumed. He turned and Jasmine quickly shut her eyes so he wouldn’t know she’d been watching him.
She heard his footsteps approaching the mattress. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, willing her heart to slow down. He tucked himself back behind her, draping an arm over her waist. Soon she heard the even rhythm of his breathing.
Slowly, she began to calm down.
She was probably imagining things.
She was probably dream
ing.
She would ask Ford about it in the morning.
They went in silence through the world of glass.
Each step was agonizingly slow; each time Luc stepped down, he feared that all the glass would shatter and he would plummet into nothingness. Miranda didn’t speak. When he had tried to question her further, she had merely placed a finger to her lips.
The terrain changed gradually. They moved into a vast network of glass stalagmites that reached for the sky. The glass spires were dazzling in the setting sun: red and gold fires seemed to smolder in their surfaces, and Luc had to shield his eyes to keep from being blinded. It was like being inside a many-faceted crystal, or at the bottom of a cavernous maze built entirely of ice.
Luc was aching for sound, for motion, for anything alive. This place was even worse than the world of snow—even quieter, the air vibrating with things unsaid and sounds begging for release.
They broke free, at last, of the maze, only to find themselves at the base of a towering mountain of glass. Writhing wisps of what looked like steam curled upward from the top and stretched to the sky. Overhead, colors twisted into each other, creating the most amazing blown-glass effect.
It reminded Luc of watching a glass blower at the art center last year. How the glass had turned molten, pliable enough for puffs of air to be blown into the center. The man had dipped and blown and shaped the glass until it became a multicolored orb that looked almost otherworldly.
Molten glass was rolling down from the top of the mountain, giant tear-shaped beads that then hardened and formed ridges that made the side of the slope look like the back of an enormous glass reptile. The ground beneath them vibrated with a low and constant hum, and another sound, fainter but still discernible. A steady beating rhythm.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Then came a crackling noise, like massive bones being roused from a deep sleep. The entire mountain seemed to move, and Luc took a step back.
“You see, Luc, how the guardian of fire hungers.” Miranda whispered so quietly, he was forced to lean in to hear her, even though being close to her made his skin crawl. “He needs souls to feed the flame.”
“What are you talk …”
The question died in his throat. Because as he spoke, as he watched, the mountain moved. It was slight, but Luc was sure of it.
And Luc saw it wasn’t a mountain at all, but an enormous monster—with teeth as sharp and glittering as icicles, and a dark cave of a mouth, and a tail spiked with glass as sharp as a razor.
Each of its legs was as wide as a house. As it rose, a huge shadow fell over Luc, a darkness that blotted out the sun smoldering on the horizon. It had no eyes that Luc could see, but that didn’t matter. The monster knew where he was. It swung its vast head, that enormous surface of planes and angles and pitted shadows, toward him. Its mouth gaped, large as a tunnel.
He needs souls to feed the flame.
The monster reared back. Luc scrambled out of the way before a giant glass foot came down inches from where he stood. Luc glanced at Miranda. The monster was ignoring her, almost as if he couldn’t sense her at all.
Of course. She was a Radical. She had no soul.
Now Luc understood: She had led him here to be bait. She had led him here to be killed.
Next time—if he ever got a next time—he would slit her throat.
The monster’s foot came down again, this time barely missing his head. He couldn’t save Corinthe if he was dead. With one last murderous glare at Miranda, he started to run toward the forest of stalagmites.
Luc ran. Every time his feet pounded on the ground, cracks webbed out from under his sneakers. It was like running over a pond that hasn’t had enough time to freeze. Luc risked a glance behind him and crashed straight into a giant glass stalagmite. As it toppled, Luc felt a quick pressure, almost like the touch of the wind. The glass at his feet was stained a bright red. It took him a second to realize he was bleeding.
The monster was already on top of him again. It had caught up without having to try.
Luc spun around. He couldn’t outrun this thing; he’d have to figure out a way to fight it. Behind it, Luc could see Miranda moving across the now-empty landscape, the large blank sweep of space where the monster had been perched. In the distance, a small glowing orb the size of a football sat in a spun-glass nest. The eternal flame—it had to be.
And Luc knew: Miranda would win. Corinthe would be lost. Jasmine would be alone.
The monster lowered its head, razor-sharp glass teeth glinting in the dying light, the vast cavern of its mouth open to swallow him.
Luc took off his backpack, the only weapon he had. As the monster lunged for him, Luc swung, shattering a large chunk of glass from its jaw. He swung again, feeling a surge of hope, aiming for one of its teeth. But the teeth were too sharp; the monster sliced the backpack easily in half, scattering its contents—the protein bars, his phone, Rhys’s book—just out of reach over the glassy ground.
Rhys’s book.
Whispers came from the pages—secrets, snippets of Rhys’s whole life, disappearing in the thin air. The monster opened its huge jaws again. This time Luc had nothing left—nowhere to run, and nothing he could use as a weapon.
But instead of devouring him, the beast stopped.
And swung its huge head toward the book. Its vast shadow passed over Luc. It huffed out a breath that crystallized in the air, a million tiny prisms, before falling.
Suddenly, Luc realized: the book. The Library of the Dead flashed into his mind. All its books held the souls of the dead. And if Rhys’s book held his soul within its pages …
He had to try.
Luc ran. As he did, the monster’s blind gaze returned to him, and Luc felt the silence of its roar, as deafening as any sound—the air compressed around him, as if a giant palm were crushing him from all sides. He couldn’t breathe. His vision went black. He reached out blindly and felt glass and more glass, shards cutting his palms and fingers.
And then his hand closed around the book.
He cocked his arm and threw as hard as he could. That silent roar hit him from all sides again, drove him to his stomach. He felt the icy explosion of the monster’s breath—and then a weight like an airplane soaring an inch from his head, keeping him flattened.
He was dead. Or dying.
But all at once, the weight released. The roar ended. Luc sat up, sucking in air, as the monster’s tail passed over him.
Luc saw the book land.
The beast lunged, tearing into the pages. It had worked.
There would be only seconds before the beast was done. Luc had to get away fast.
He heard a sigh behind him, a string of words, Rhys’s soft voice—time shadows forgotten when I last—Mira—and then he heard nothing at all.
Miranda was gone.
He knew she must have made for the Crossroad. Where else could she go? The monster, sated, ignored him as he stumbled through the maze of glass. Luc was bleeding. He took off his sweatshirt as he jogged and used it to stanch the cuts in his palms and between his fingers. He couldn’t even feel the pain.
He was too focused on one thing: revenge.
Within minutes, he caught sight of Miranda’s long black hair as she weaved among the glass peaks. The sun was gone now. The glass glowed blue and purple against the twilight sky, and Luc thought of Corinthe’s eyes, and the way she’d clung to him, desperately, as she died. All of it, everything, was for Corinthe.
He moved faster, going as quickly as he could while stepping lightly, closing the distance between himself and Miranda. She was holding the glowing flame, blue and round, like a baby in her arms. She moved carefully, as if she was afraid of dropping it. She wasn’t expecting to be pursued; she obviously thought Luc was dead.
When he attacked, he shoved her with all his weight from behind. She fell forward so hard that the flame skidded across the ground, stopping several feet away. Luc saw it begin to melt the ice around it. How much time did he
have before it melted right through this world?
Miranda was strong, much stronger than he was, and she easily shook him off.
They both jumped to their feet, facing each other like wrestling opponents.
“Corinthe trusted you,” he said. At the mention of her name, Luc heard a snapping sound, much like the first cracks of thin ice beginning to break.
“You stupid boy,” Miranda said, watching the crack spread. “You said her name aloud.”
“What does her name have to do with this?” he asked. As if to agitate her, he continued: “Corinthe … CORINTHE!”
The fissure grew larger, and a low rumble sounded. Miranda looked around wildly and Luc lunged for her. She sidestepped, but he kicked out at the last minute and hit the back of her leg. She went down but pushed herself nimbly to her feet almost instantly; she flew at him and wound her fingers around his neck. “Stop. Saying. Her. Name.”
She squeezed her elegant hands harder around his throat and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.
“The glass here is special. It’s strong because it absorbs the anger of the universe—but when it hears something beautiful, it breaks.” At the last word she tightened her grip. Luc felt his throat collapsing. Corinthe, he longed to say.
“But my anger, my bitterness—it makes it whole again. See?” She shoved his face down to watch as the glass cracks healed themselves. “Your love is not stronger than my resentment. You won’t win this war. Not against me.”
“He can’t, Miranda. But I can.”
Miranda released Luc and spun around. Even as Luc doubled over, gasping for breath, he couldn’t believe it: Tess. Tess was alive and had come back, this time to save him.
“You can’t stop me,” Miranda said.
Tess shook her head. She looked almost sad. “I told you I wouldn’t let you continue with your plan.”
Miranda laughed. The sound was hollow. “You helped me escape.”
