by Lisa Mangum
V nodded. “The lady of light sent me and it’s time to honor your vow,” he repeated.
Leo was all business, his words coming fast and clipped. “If you’re there on the fourth, it should give you—us—plenty of time to gather the materials for the door and start construction on the twentieth. You can live in the basement; I’ll bring you groceries or something so you can stay hidden.” He raised an eyebrow in V’s direction. “You’ll be there almost two and a half months. Can you handle that?”
V squared his broad shoulders. “Absolutely. I’ll be fine.”
Leo looked down at me. “What about you?”
“What about me?” I replied.
“Are you ready?”
I looked from Leo to V and felt my own determination rise up like a flare. “I’m beyond ready.”
Stepping back, Leo gestured to the murky river in an invitation. “The river is yours, V.”
V stepped to the edge of the island and held the binder close to his chest. The space around him stilled and seemed to thicken.
I watched as a small gap appeared in the flow of the river, right beneath V’s toes. It looked as narrow as a thread of black ink, but it was enough.
V stepped back into the river and vanished, the air where he’d been standing rippling ever so slightly.
I exhaled, suddenly exhausted. It was done. Now it only remained to be seen if it worked.
Chapter
17
I watched as the thin thread of black widened and thickened, branching back upstream into my past like an unchecked virus. I shivered at the idea.
“Will you take me home now?” I asked Leo. I was tired of being on the bank and feeling like I had to fight for every breath. And the sooner I got back, the sooner I would know if my plan had worked. And the sooner Dante would be back.
As I turned to face Leo, I swayed and my knees threatened to buckle beneath me. My eyes suddenly refused to focus.
Before I toppled over into the river, Leo swept me up in his arms, cradling me to his chest like he had done on another night, so long ago.
I felt the vibrations of his voice in his chest more than I heard his words. “Rest, Abby. Rest and know the hardest part is done.”
Closing my eyes, I surrendered myself to the sound of Leo’s voice and the strength of his arms.
***
New memories pushed into my mind, shoving out the old ones. I could almost hear them shouting at me as they were reshaped, rerouted in my brain.
I remembered the night Dante gave me my locket, but now running parallel to that was a flash of another memory—somehow not entirely mine: V standing at the back door of the Dungeon, the streetlight sparking off the gold bands around his wrists.
I remembered all the Friday nights Dante and I danced at the Dungeon, but now woven into the pulsing backbeat were other memories of V laboring away beneath my feet. The door appeared in flashes, each one revealing more and more of the final shape. There was the tall, narrow frame. There was the long, straight tunnel, like a hallway with no windows. The carvings seemed to draw themselves as my memories unspooled in new pathways: the swirling nautilus, the rising tide. Circles, crescents, and stars. The hourglass emerged from the wood in one single, curved line.
I remembered the day Dante and I went to the Dungeon and discovered the hinge had been stolen, replaced with a fake by Zo. I saw Leo standing by the door, his arms full of groceries, his eyes as ferocious as a lion’s. But now I saw more: V sitting on a cot in the basement corner, a plate of food balanced on his crossed legs. A brass hinge next to his knee with a half-sun, half-moon circle already inscribed on the first prong. He leaned his head against the wall, looking out a rectangular window by the ceiling. A fading ray of sunlight touched his hair.
My memories shivered like chimes in the wind.
I remembered the night Zo came to the Dungeon looking for me—and how my whole world changed.
I remembered more: the bank, the door, saying good-bye to Dante.
And then fire consumed them all.
***
A hot wind blew ashes into my face. I opened my eyes, squinting in the bright light. I was lying on my side in the dirt, but I felt strangely energized, as awake and alert as if I’d slept a whole day away.
Leo knelt on the ground next to me, his hands pressed to his temples and a halo of electric blue fire fading around him like an afterglow.
I sat up and touched his arm. “Leo? Are you okay?”
He nodded and then winced. “I’d rather not do that again, if it’s all the same to you.”
“With luck, we won’t have to.”
Leo rubbed his eyes one last time and then lowered his hands. “It’s strange. I have all these new memories—and I know they’re new—but at the same time I know I’ve always had them,” he said.
“I know what you mean.” I put a hand to my forehead. “My head feels . . . full.”
“Is this how you felt when Zo changed elements of your life?”
“Not exactly. The other times were a lot more painful. Maybe it’s because I asked for it this time.”
“I guess that means V did his job.”
I looked around the rubble of the Dungeon. “Then where is the door?”
Leo pushed himself to his feet, dusting his hands off against his legs. The color started to return to his face. “Probably still in the basement. That’s where the fire started, after all.”
I paused, trying to remember if I had known that before now. My memories of that night were already fragmented, outlined mostly by color: red flames, yellow sparks, black shadows. “I thought you said Zo burned down the Dungeon,” I said, frowning.
“Zo did—the first time. But you’ve changed things. And this time V started the fire.”
“But why?” I asked, my memories fighting each other inside my mind, each one claiming to be the true one.
“Because you asked him to,” Leo said quietly. He didn’t look at me, but I heard the pain in his voice. “And so I let him.”
“I did?” I didn’t remember telling V anything of the sort. I told him to build the door, not burn down the Dungeon. But I also remembered sitting next to Jason on my back porch, watching him write a note in the margins of the plans. There had been something important about that note. Something worth remembering.
“You said the door had to be started on the first day of spring,” Leo said.
“Right.”
“And how long did it take V to build the door?”
“Eight weeks,” I said. “The plans were very specific about the timing.”
Leo smiled sadly. “So what happened eight weeks after the first day of spring?”
I thought back, counting the days, trying to line up the timeline with my spotty memory.
And then I knew.
My hand flew to my throat, clutching the locket around my neck.
Leo saw the motion and nodded. “That’s right. That was the night the Dungeon burned.”
“That was the same fire?” As soon as I asked the question, I answered it, the pieces clicking into place. “Of course it was. The last step in the process was burning down the door. The refiner’s fire.” I looked up at Leo in horror. I reached for his arm, feeling it tremble a little under my touch. “It was my fault the Dungeon burned down. I didn’t think about that when I told V . . . Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry.”
He covered my hand with his own. “It’s all right, Abby. I understand. Sometimes all we can do is what has to be done. And it had to be done. Bisogna chiudere il cerchio.”
“You said that before. What does it mean?” I asked. “What needs to be closed?” I recognized a few of the words from Dante’s lessons.
“The loop has to be closed,” Leo repeated.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What loop?”
“Certain things have to happen because they have already happened. And if those things don’t happen one way, they have to happen another way.”
I knitted my ey
ebrows together. “I still don’t understand.”
Leo patted my hand again, looking me in the eyes. “You will.” He straightened his back, brushing his hands together, and somehow, in the process, let go of me altogether. “Now, shall we find the door that has cost us so much?” He offered me a gentle smile. “Shall we bring Dante home?”
I grinned in reply. “It’s about time.”
Leo led me across the blasted landscape to what would have been the far corner of the Dungeon’s back room. He scuffed away a mound of ash and dust with the toe of his shoe. A river of dirt broke free, pouring like a waterfall over the edge, and was swallowed up by the black hole in the ground.
I coughed into my elbow, covering my nose and mouth.
Stairs led down to the underground, and Leo tapped the first step with his foot. The top crust of soot broke away, exposing the crumbling and broken stone beneath.
Leo tested his weight on the step before turning and offering me a smile. “Be careful,” he said.
I nodded and followed him down. The air felt dry on my skin and still carried the faint smell of smoke. The staircase curved ever so slightly under my feet, and when I took those last few steps around the bend and saw what waited for me on the basement floor, I stopped entirely. My breath slipped out of me with an exhaled “Oh” of surprise and wonder.
There wasn’t much light filtering in from above, but there was enough.
V had indeed upheld his end of the bargain. The door he had built for me towered almost to the ceiling. It wasn’t as polished as Dante’s door, and the carvings were not quite as
intricate or precise. But the wood was as black as night, scorched from the fire that had simultaneously consumed it and completed it.
Three gaping squares ran along the edge like missing teeth in a jaw.
I hurried forward, brushing past Leo, who waited at the foot of the stairs, his face turned away.
The hinge sat next to the door, the polished brass catching the available light and making it easy to see. The binder—now tattered and worn around the edges—leaned next to it. A note had been written in the gray ash on the floor in front of the door.
Your turn.
—V
A set of footprints headed away from the door, leaving two or three imprints in the dust before disappearing midstride. Apparently V hadn’t bothered to wait around once he had finished his task.
I picked up the hinge. The brass machine was just as I remembered it: the color, the designs, the weight. It even felt the same in my hands as I turned it over, smoothly pulling it open almost to its full length. The sound of metal on metal was loud in the quiet basement.
Leo gently picked up the binder from the floor. His hands shook.
I collapsed the hinge and cradled it in my arms. Returning to Leo’s side, I gave him a small hug. “Thank you,” I said. “I know it hasn’t been easy, but I couldn’t have done this without you. You’ve been a good friend to me. And a good brother to Dante.”
Leo paused, and then inclined his head toward the freestanding door that dominated the room. “Do you need any help?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. If V followed the plans, everything should be fine. I should be okay.” I hesitated. “But, if you wouldn’t mind, could you wait for me outside—just in case?”
“Of course,” Leo said with a quiet dignity. “I’ll wait as long as you need me to.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Leo stepped back and turned, one foot on the steps. “Good luck, Abby.” Then he climbed the stairs to the surface, leaving me alone.
Returning to the black door, I felt a bubble of excitement and anticipation lift inside me. The last time I had stood before a door like this with a hinge in my hands, I was saying good-bye. Not this time, though. This time there would be no farewells, there would be only a welcome.
I ran my fingers over the three holes in the door, the wood surprisingly smooth and cool under my touch. My eyes followed the lines of the spirals and stars carved onto the surface. The small heart with the keyhole was missing, but I hadn’t
expected to see it. The key I held in my locket would only unlock the other side of the door. I focused on the sinuous curve of the two hourglass bulbs as they met in the center, separated by a narrow space.
I pressed my palm to the spot, feeling the rush of blood in my body that made my fingertips tingle. The only thing separating me from Dante now was a wooden door an inch thick.
I stepped back and extended the hinge to its full height. As the hinge clicked into place, I heard a chime deep inside my inner ear. The shivering note reverberated through me, rippling and turning on itself first in a harmony, then a melody, before rising upward on a high scale of music like a choir’s shout.
Warmth wrapped around the base of my spine and I closed my eyes, acting on instinct and memory.
The hinge fit into place without protest and, as the metal met the wood, the warmth inside me licked fire along my bones. The music fell into a familiar pattern, a recognizable cadence, almost like a voice calling out. The words reached me through the music.
Love . . . always . . .
I took a deep breath, feeling the swirling energy in my body coalesce into a diamond point of light behind my heart.
Abby . . . my love . . .
Opening my eyes, I pushed the door inward with a single shove.
A wall of darkness greeted me and a gust of hard, bitter-cold air filled the room. It was the same cold that I had felt when I’d reached out to Dante through the veil of my dreams, only this time it wasn’t just my hand that flashed to numbness but my entire body. I hissed in pain as a cracking cold snapped around me, icing my joints.
I managed to stumble back a few steps, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the door. My heart was loud in my ears. I counted each beat, thinking how each one would bring me closer to Dante.
The darkness in the door moved, flexing and pulsing as though someone on the other side was struggling to push through, but couldn’t quite break free.
This was the same devouring darkness that had unraveled Tony; I wasn’t going to let it do the same to Dante. Not when he was so close.
A portion from Dante’s last letter returned to me then: “Hold on to me, Abby, to my memory, to the time we spent together and the dreams of the future we shared. That way, a part of me will still be alive with you wherever—and whenever—we are.”
I summoned my best memories of Dante: seeing him walking down the auditorium aisle at school with snow in his hair; hearing his voice reciting poetry—both his own and that from classic literature; his arms curving around me in a protective embrace that made me feel like I was safe enough to be my best self. I recalled the countless conversations we’d had about our lives, our dreams, and our hopes. I pulled to the forefront of my mind each and every time he said my name.
The darkness seemed to thin a little, turning a lighter shade of black.
I focused on the memories of all the times when he had helped me, from the large ones—like protecting me from Zo—to the small, almost unnoticed moments—like when he offered me his coat to keep me warm or when he opened a door for me. I matched up each memory with a time when I had been able to help him, when I had made him laugh, or relax, or feel like it was safe to confide in me.
Our lives were intertwined. I would not let the darkness take him away again.
The black bled to gray—like smoke, like ice, like air—and then it was gone.
In its place, a white flare flashed. I raised my hand to block out the light from my eyes. Distantly, I heard the sound of the door closing. When it clicked shut, I gasped, feeling the cold release its hold on me. The music in my body hit one final note and then faded away as well.
Blinking the light-blindness from my eyes, I lowered my hand.
Dante di Alessandro Casella stood before me.
Time immediately slowed, stretching and expanding around me—around us—encompassing the enormity of the moment. I
n that singular breath of time, I opened myself to the emotions that roared through me, welcoming the recognition that ignited a fire in my mind and gave wings to my heart. The tears I tasted on my lips were sweet with joy.
He wore the same dark jeans and heavy boots he had worn the last time I had seen him all those weeks ago.
The differences were more noticeable. His tall frame seemed thinner, leaner than before, honed like a blade that could cut shadow from bone. His shirt, once smooth and tight across his shoulders, was wrinkled and hung loose over his chest, the sleeves rolled up over his forearms. His dark hair, once bright with curls, was dull and shaggy. The planes of his face were still as familiar to me as my own, but the angles of his cheekbones were more pronounced and the muscles in his jaw tighter. His eyes were the luminous gray of rain-slicked steel, and they glimmered with the knowledge of what lay beyond the darkness and the edges of time itself.
I felt a chill drape over me. This wasn’t the same Dante I had said good-bye to on the banks of the river. This man had survived the darkness and had emerged on the other side as a master of time. This man was a hunter, a predator with the taste of his quarry’s blood already in his mouth. It couldn’t be the same man who had told me he loved me, who had kissed me so tenderly and passionately—could it?
His hands hung by his side, and banded around his wrists were the same chains branded into his flesh that he had worn for so long, though now they had changed from matte black to shimmering gold.
I swallowed hard at the sight of him, feeling the first blushing touch of heat in the pit of my stomach. I had dreamed about Dante’s hands for months. His confident hands, flipping and spinning glass bottles behind the bar of the Dungeon. His strong hands, fastening a locket around my neck. His gentle hands, writing of his love to me in a letter I had memorized by heart.
It had been the touch of his hand that had kept us connected while we had been separated by darkness and dreams.
I had imagined so many times the moment when Dante’s hands would reach out to caress me again, and now that the possibility had become reality, the heat in my belly turned molten.
And when his soft, expressive mouth, able to communicate his emotions without a single word, smiled that small smile he reserved for me, I knew that behind the predator’s eyes lived Dante’s tender, artistic spirit and beneath the hunter’s skin beat Dante’s wildly passionate heart. The chill that had frozen me in place melted and I shifted my weight forward, propelling me a step in his direction.