by Elise Kova
Half-jumping, half-running, Jo dashed over to the couch, her hands on the back, leaning over, and—her heart sank. Samson lay curled up, one of Eslar’s elegantly designed, elvish blankets draped over him. His red-orange hair frizzed from his tight braids and matted where it was free. Even in sleep, he looked exhausted.
Jo reached for his shoulder, shaking it some. “Samson?”
The man woke with a start. “Wh-what?” He practically fell off the couch, shrinking away from the contact, until the sleep lifted from his eyes, his mind, and vanished. “Oh, I must have fallen asleep. How odd. I think the last time that happened was. . . But good morning, Jo.”
“Have you seen Nico?” She didn’t have time to feel guilty for the way she’d woken the man. Not when there was something else far more pressing, something that demanded all of her attention.
“Nico?” Samson squinted in confusion. “He’s with you, right?”
That wasn’t the answer Jo was looking for. She looked around the room, as if something could’ve changed without her noticing, wishing something had. It was that same foreboding stillness from the moment she’d first woken. Now, the hair on her arms was on-end as well.
“What’s going on, Jo?” Samson asked.
“Nico?” she called, rushing out onto the wide patio, hoping he’d be waiting for her in their usual chairs, tablet in hand. She sprinted around, as if he could be hiding behind the outdoor grill or randomly swimming beneath the surface of the pool.
“Jo?” Samson was standing now. “What’s happening, Jo?”
She ignored him. Even on her own, Jo could barely come to terms with the truth in front of her; there was no way she could break it down for someone else, too.
“He must be in his room,” Jo mumbled to no one, her eyes glued to the bloody sunrise. “His room.”
On the last word, she turned and began to run; her heart was already racing before she took her first step. It was already in her throat, suffocating her.
Jo tripped, scrambling up the stairs to the hallway. How long had it been since she’d come back here? Everything blurred together into an agonizing slurry, sloshing between her ears where her brain once used to be.
“Are you all right?” Samson held out a hand, offering it to her.
She stared at the step before her; had she not caught herself, she would have split her skull open on it. The knuckles on the back of her hand were still bloody from punching the Door, and the way her knees ached suggested that it may not be the only split skin she was presently sporting.
“We have to get to his room,” she panted. Her voice sounded alien even to her own ears, rough and determined but also bordering on hysterical. “We have to get to his room, Samson.”
Ignoring the outstretched hand, Jo continued on. The hallway was a million miles long at the start, but only a few short steps at the end. They stopped before Nico’s door.
They stopped before what had been Nico’s door.
Jo raised a hand to the wood, running it over where his nameplate had been. The surface was smooth, unblemished. There was no scarring from where Nico’s painted bird had been scrubbed away. There was no discoloration from where the man’s name had been protecting the wood underneath for hundreds of years. It was perfect, pristine—a blank slate.
There was nothing, as if the man who’d occupied the space had never even existed.
In a disconnected sort of awareness, Jo heard Samson’s soft murmur of denial. A denial that stretched and contorted, cracked inch by inch until it shattered into equal parts disbelief, gnawing fear, and undeniable pain.
His wail barely registered though. It was a sort of guttural cry, an agony that she’d never heard the likes of in any of her lives, but still, it came from far, far away. Her hand rested on the door handle.
Open it, a voice goaded, and she listened; she had to see what was inside. She had to see it or it wouldn’t be real.
“What’s going on?” Wayne’s voice appeared from the end of the hall. Another door opened, another voice.
But the only thing Jo saw was the handle turning. The only thing she heard was the smooth whisper of well-greased metal on metal as the latch released. The hinges sighed softly and she pulled open the door.
Nothing.
It was a blank slate: white walls, white floor, a white roof that seemed to glow with its own unnatural light. She dared to take a step into that void, as if she’d somehow be able to find Nico and retrieve him from it.
But there was nothing there. The warm light of Florence, the messy, clean look—everything that had been the heart of the artist’s studio had vanished.
“What the hell?” She heard Wayne curse, the words almost managing to bring her out of the haze of her own encroaching breakdown. “I actually fell asleep for an hour and. . .”
“What is this?” Takako was behind her now too. “I was asleep too.”
“Let me through—” Eslar’s voice stopped short.
With renewed desperation, Jo turned, looking at the elf. “What does it mean?” Her voice was barely a quivering whisper.
“I—” Eslar blinked furiously, though not from the light of the void. She’d never seen so much emotion on his face, yet she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
“What does it mean?” she repeated. “You’re the oldest. You’ve been here the longest. You know magic the best, don’t you?”
Eslar looked over her head, transfixed by the nothingness. The look of fear and heartache creeping into his eyes left Jo mentally reaching out for a lifesaver no one had thrown. Still, she treaded water, refused to drown. Surely he had answers, surely somebody had answers.
“What does it mean?” she demanded, grabbing the elf’s shoulders and shaking him back to reality. “Eslar, what does it—”
“He’s gone!” The man wrenched himself from her grasp. A long moment passed, Eslar reaching out towards Nico’s door frame with shaking hands, as if he needed it to hold himself up. At first, long, dark fingers barely touched it, but then he curled in on himself, dark green fingernails scratching harsh lines into the wood. “He’s. . . He’s really gone.”
No one seemed able to say anything for a while. They all stood paralyzed in that ominous glow of nothingness, a glow that suddenly seemed to cast new light on the hopelessness of their situation.
And yet.
“No, he can’t be.” Jo refused to believe it. It seemed too inconceivably horrible to fathom. “He can’t be, because, because the recreation room still had his watch on the shelf.” They all stared as if she’d spoken in a language that no magic could enable them to understand. It was the tether she’d been looking for, something she could cling to with a desperation she’d never felt in her life. Not even when she’d sacrificed herself for the sake of Yuusuke. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you!”
In an all-out sprint, she was flying across the mansion once more. There were hurried footfalls behind her, as hasty as hers, but Jo didn’t look to see who was following. She leapt down the stairs, clearing half, stumbling the rest, before scrambling up the other set. Jo didn’t trip this time.
“There it is!” she shouted, finally looking over her shoulder. She could hear the unnatural crack to her voice, a pitch so many decibels away from calm that it was almost pathetic. But still, she kept her arm steady. Still, she pointed to the rec room shelf. “See, I told you.” Everyone was in tow. “His watch is still here.” Jo flung wide the door. It was the same studio she remembered waking up in. Even with his actual room wiped clean, surely this meant something. Surely he was still here. Somewhere. “Nico!” she called.
The rest of them caught up, Wayne huffing and puffing. Eslar hardly seemed winded, so it was the elf who first inspected the watch. Jo made to take a desperate step into the room, but what he said next froze her stride.
“It’s broken,” he whispered.
Everyone stilled, hanging on his next words, but there were none. There was nothing more to be said, only to be inspected.
“Julia,” Samson whispered, his understanding full of aching intimacy. They’d spent hundreds of years together, after all.
1:17, the time Julia had died. It made so much sense now, gave meaning to Nico’s request. He’d asked Snow for a specific time, wished for a last connection to his love, and someone had obliged.
“He’s really, g-gone, isn’t he?” Samson forced through tears. No one seemed willing to capture anyone else’s gaze; everyone kept their eyes pinned on the last remaining fragments of the man they’d all come to care for.
No one could answer, and that was answer enough.
Takako leaned against the far wall, unwilling to touch anyone. Eslar wrapped an arm around Samson, pulling him close. Wayne just stared at the watch, lips parted, and eyes glossy. The hurt in everyone’s expressions was obvious; the exhaustion even more so. The pain Jo felt slowly began to molt into hatred.
“It’s her fault,” Jo whispered.
In her periphery, Jo could see Eslar shake his head. “It’s all of our faults, we didn’t close the Severity of—”
“Don’t give me that!” The words were out before she could stop them. Jo didn’t want to scream at Eslar, but she also didn’t want Nico to be dead. She wanted revenge but she also wanted to curl up into a ball and pretend none of this had happened. Everything felt beyond her control, and she couldn’t stand it. “Don’t you even dare give me that! We didn’t know.”
“If we’d known, would that have changed anything?” Eslar shouted back. Samson cringed in his arms.
Jo opened her mouth and closed it, angry. She searched for facts, for arguments, digging deep for some explanation for all this, but in the end could do no more than fold her arms over her chest and try to stop the shaking. They’d done all they could; that was the hardest part. They’d done all they could and now, this.
“She could’ve let us say goodbye, at least,” Wayne whispered, staring into the room.
It has been an honor working alongside you, Josephina Espinosa.
Jo spun in place. That was it. That was the thing causing the creeping dread since the first moment Jo had woken.
She hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.
Jo pulled away from the group at once, her fist meeting Pan’s door and banging frantically. “I know you’re in there,” she shouted at the unwavering expanse of black. She heard the rest of her team come up behind her, but she ignored them, slamming wounded knuckles against wood.
“Jo, stop!” Wayne called.
“Open up. Open up and own up to what you did!” Jo banged harder. Her voice was beginning to waver and crack yet again. The anger was threatening to give way to the bottomless sadness that had hollowed out the cavity of her chest. “How could you? How could you? You knew it was coming, didn’t you?”
The white door at Jo’s right opened suddenly; Snow stood in its frame. He looked no better than the rest of them. A long shirt hung rumpled from his shoulders, falling over tight-fitting trousers.
“What’s going on?” His voice echoed through the hall with an air of authority. Jo ignored that too.
“We were just going back,” Eslar began to say. But Jo cut him off before any other weak explanation could be given. She wasn’t going to sweep this under the rug.
“We want answers!”
Snow’s gaze turned to her.
“We want answers from her.” Jo punctuated the statement with a pound on Pan’s door. She turned towards Snow, seething, snarling. “But she’s too much of a damned coward to give us any.”
“That’s enough, Jo,” Snow scolded, and Jo couldn’t help but bristle.
“Don’t say that!” she screamed back. “Don’t act like you’re not hurting at the fact that one of us was murdered under your roof, under your care. I see it Snow, I see it!”
She called him out with a certainty she hadn’t possessed until that moment. Because, until then, she hadn’t quite grasped it. But as their “leader” stood there, helpless and hurting, he was no better than the rest of them. Jo turned back to the door.
“Open up and face us, you coward! Face your actions!” Jo screamed at nothing, her voice echoing sharply down the hall.
“Jo, please. That’s enough,” Wayne tried to console, taking a step forward.
“I don’t want to hear it from you,” she lashed out. If no one would help her, then everyone was her enemy.
“Jo, let’s—” Takako didn’t get to finish her statement.
Jo’s stomach shot into her pelvis at the brief experience of weightlessness, returning when a shoulder pressed unexpectedly into her gut. Snow’s arms wrapped around her as he carried her, over his shoulder, to his room; the familiar smell of cloves threatened to soothe her anger just enough that the sorrow would win.
She couldn’t have that—wouldn’t be able to handle that. She’d break.
“Don’t you dare, Snow!” Jo cried out instead. “I deserve vindication, an explanation, something. She didn’t even let us say goodbye, Snow. She didn’t—she didn’t even let us say goodbye!”
Jo could feel the rage slowly unraveling beneath the rough demands of her voice, the dam of her own resolve slowly crumbling to dust. She could see the rest of her team watching her be carried away, their eyes wet, their teeth gritted, their fists clenched in anger. But no words were spoken in retaliation. Their lack of fight eroded hers.
She could feel her cries shredding themselves beneath the sharp claws of unrelenting devastation, the pounding of her fists against Snow’s back quickly losing strength and purpose as her tears regained their own.
The slamming of Snow’s door punctuated her sobs, cutting their echo short to the remaining four members of the Society.
Pan’s door never budged.
Chapter 37
Goodbye
JO DIDN’T KNOW how long she cried, curled up in Snow’s bed like a child. It could have been hours, could have been days, but it didn’t matter. Once the dam had been broken, there was no stopping the tears from flowing even if she tried.
And what use was there in trying?
She had vague recollections of Snow trying to talk to her, of his hand on her back and his lips against her temple, of soft attempts at comfort, reassurances that at least the wish had been granted and they were safe, even softer admittances of understanding. But she could find none of her own sympathies, every verbal grasp of Snow’s falling on deaf and unaccepting ears.
She wasn’t ready to hear any of it, not when it all ended with the same brutal and unforgivable truth.
Nico was gone. Pan had taken him from them, and he wasn’t coming back.
She thought, during one of the times she’d cried herself into a daze, in and out of sleep with her chest aching and eyes sore (sleep was something Jo never wanted to do again), that Snow tried to apologize. But even with anger boiling her blood, and distress gripping tight at her heart, she couldn’t find it in her heart to blame him. Not when he’d looked at her with such shame, seemingly sharing every ounce of their heartache.
No. This wasn’t about forgiving Snow; a pawn needed no forgiving for the whims of his queen. This was about mourning Nico, about maybe one day soon, avenging him.
So it was after an indistinguishable amount of time that Jo sat herself up, leaning into Snow’s touch when he instantly responded to her presence. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been waiting at her side, coming and going to check on her, but she was eternally grateful. Even if she couldn’t find it in herself to say so.
“She did this,” Jo muttered first in blatant repetition, clutching tight to Snow’s arms as he wrapped them around her waist and held her close to his chest. It almost made her want to start crying all over again, but she did her best to hold herself back.
>
“I know,” he said, whispering the agreement into her neck. Jo swallowed back the whimper of renewed regret that the words threatened to pull from the center of her chest. Instead, she distracted herself with the feel of his forehead pressing firm into the juncture of her shoulder.
Without meaning to, Jo exhaled a shaky, “It’s not fair.” When Snow said nothing in reply, Jo turned herself as best she could into his embrace and hugged him closer. “It’s okay,” she said once she could feel her lips pressed loosely against the shell of his ear. She felt him shiver, heard him choke back the first broken sob of his own. “I know it’s not your fault.”
Snow stiffened in her arms, obviously surprised, but then settled, hugging her like he might fall apart without her body there to keep him together. He stayed silent, but somehow Jo could tell he was grateful; it was clear in the huff of his breaths against her skin and the dig of his fingers into her waist.
Eventually, no matter how much she wanted to ride out the rest of her mourning in his grasp, she couldn’t deny the immense desire she had to get back to her team. It didn’t seem right that she got comfort from their leader when everyone else was forced to handle their grief on their on.
But as much as she wanted to be strong, she was only human.
“Will you come with me?” she heard herself ask, surprised internally at her own forwardness. She did her best to school her expression into something more confident than she felt. The words, however, were more hopeful and real than any she ever remembered speaking. “I don’t know if I can go back out there alone.”
Another brief pause, another quiet breath against her neck, and then—
“Whatever you need.”
It took a while for Jo to work up the courage. Sitting up and voicing her concerns was one thing, but actually pulling herself away from the safety of Snow’s bed was another. Eventually, however, she managed to drag herself back out into the hall, Snow not far behind.