There were only two ways to go—upstairs, deeper into the palace and the unknown, or downstairs, toward the exit. Pao knew she had only seconds before Ondina righted herself and made another door, so she did what any stupid, brave hero would do. She forsook the passage back to the courtyard and took the stairs up, where she hoped she would find Dante.
“PAOLA!” The shriek was so loud, the glass chandelier rattled above her. But Pao didn’t stop. She didn’t answer, either. She just kept running. Two steps at a time, then three, and whether it was her speed or her victorious feeling from tricking Ondina, the stairs didn’t seem to want any of the energy she was putting out.
“PAOLA!” Ondina was at the bottom of the stairs now, but Pao had almost reached the top. “You have no idea what you’re messing with,” Ondina said, her footsteps too loud behind Pao.
How can I find Dante? Pao wondered. I don’t even know where he is. She pushed herself harder, but fear was creeping in, and the walls started to pulse with their hunger for it.
At the top of the stairs was a long, high-ceilinged hallway full of cells with slotted glass doors, all glowing green. Pao barreled toward the first one, and it zapped her with an electric shock when she got too close.
How had they managed to get glass to conduct electricity? Pao wondered briefly. But that was a mystery she’d have to solve later…if she got out of here in one piece.
She jumped back just in time to see Ondina coming up behind her, her normally pale cheeks flushed, her dark eyebrows drawn in an angry expression Pao had seen more than once in her own reflection.
“Give it up, Santiago,” said Ondina, her voice disturbingly low and calm. “You did your best. But your best isn’t as good as mine, and it never, ever will be.”
Behind the glass that had almost electrocuted Pao, something hissed. All around her, void creatures were coming up to the slats in their cell doors, sniffing, beginning to growl and screech as they smelled a living human in their midst.
Ondina walked slowly toward Pao, her hands extended like she had won a contest and was approaching to accept her prize. “It’s time to come with me now,” Ondina said in an eerie, flat voice.
That’s when Pao realized what was going on. Ondina was trying not to upset her. She had certainly never cared about upsetting Pao before—in fact, she’d seemed to relish it. So what was different?
Pao looked at the ground below her feet as Ondina advanced with careful steps. Of course, Pao thought. They’d never been in a life-force-draining palace before. Pao’s eyes snapped to Ondina’s, which were wide and cautious. The other girl didn’t want the glass to bleed Pao dry.
But why?
Right now, that didn’t matter. Ondina couldn’t risk moving quickly. She couldn’t anger Pao too much. And that gave Pao just the advantage she needed.
She reversed directions abruptly and charged full tilt at Ondina. The girl threw up her hands in surprise as Pao crashed into her, gripping her cold shoulders and pushing her back, back, back.
The monsters went wild, the corridor filling with the sounds of their frenzy.
In the commotion, Pao heard a whine that stopped her in her tracks. Sure enough, in the cage just behind Ondina was a familiar little face, his green eyes round as coins instead of narrowed in anger and fear. When he saw Pao, he yelped with joy.
“Bruto!” Pao cried, and her own joy gave her the strength to counteract Ondina’s lunge.
Pao pushed Ondina’s back right up to the door, then rammed her into it as hard as she could.
But Ondina apparently wasn’t susceptible to shocks. Instead, her body killed the current, and the door opened wide as Pao—armed with the surprising results of her most recent experiment—changed her strategy.
Bruto rushed out and tried to jump on Pao, but he only succeeded in scratching Ondina’s legs. The other girl’s hands were still locked on Pao’s shoulders, pushing back with all her strength, but her collision with the door seemed to have weakened her.
“Good boy!” Pao said, steering Ondina toward the next cell.
“I’m not a hotel key card!” Ondina growled, resisting harder, digging with her fingernails in a way Pao was sure would leave marks.
Just when it seemed like Ondina would finally gain control, the two of them connected with the next slotted door. The three skeletal bird-people from the stairs stepped out as it opened, stretching their necks and wings.
Up close, without the drain of the stairs making her hazy, Pao could see that the bird-people were female. Their leathery skin was gray and sagging, their faces cruel with razor-sharp beaks.
Lechuzas—shape-shifting witches. The drawings Pao had seen in her mom’s books hadn’t done them a bit of justice. They were terrifying—much more so than the chupacabras or Manos Pachonas. Maybe even more than the ahogados.
One of them let out an earsplitting screech, summoning from the cell a cloud of bats that attacked the girls with abandon, not caring who they scratched or bit or beat with their wings. Pao screamed and let go of Ondina to cover her head with her hands.
“Stop this at once!” Ondina shouted, waving her hands at the bird-women as though she could open a door in the air and send them through it. But whatever authority she’d once had over the creatures seemed to have evaporated after their who-knows-how-long stay in the electric cells. One took flight and circled overhead in the cavernous space while the other two just stood there, watching and cackling, waiting for their turn to strike.
Pao pressed herself against the wall opposite the cells as Bruto leaped into the air, biting at the bats whenever they got too close. Pao knew she had to get out of here while Ondina was distracted, take the stairs, find Dante. But she couldn’t leave without her demon puppy, not when they’d only just been reunited.
“Bruto!” Pao called, remembering with dread their training work and his limited talent for it. This time, he looked up at the sound of his name, cocking his head, and she could have sworn his big green eyes darted to the pocket where she kept her Starbursts.
Ondina was still warding off about ten murderous bats with her arms, squealing as they twisted her hair into a tangle on top of her head. But Pao knew she wouldn’t be waylaid for long.
Time slowed as Pao locked eyes with her puppy. “Bruto, come!” she said firmly, loud enough that he could hear her over all the squeaking, shrieking commotion.
His head tilted again, and a wayward bat talon caught his ear.
“Come!” Pao said in the same tone, though she wanted to scream it in panic. Another bat dive-bombed her, and she barely missed being cuffed with a wing that looked big enough to break her neck.
But then a miracle happened. A real, honest-to-God, clouds-parting, rainbows-arcing miracle.
Bruto came.
He trotted across the glass, his nails tapping on the surface as if it were a rich lady’s parquet floor.
She wanted to shout Good boy until she was blue in the face, but all the reputable dog-training sites said to wait until they’d actually accomplished the task. Even if there were a swarm of bloodthirsty bats and three bird-women ready to strip the meat from your bones.
Well, she assumed they would have said that, anyway.
She waited, and her proud little puppy broke into a run, not stopping despite a billion distractions until he was right in front of her.
With a smile that looked much too smirk-like to be on the face of a dog, he plopped down on his haunches right at her feet.
“GOOD BOY!” Pao shouted at the top of her lungs, startling several of the bats. She gave herself a moment of peace as she patted his head with one hand and dug around in her pocket with the other for the very last yellow Starburst in the magical underworld.
She tossed it to him, testing her luck, and because this was still a miracle, he caught it neatly in his mouth.
“Now let’s go!” she said, running toward the stairs.
Bruto followed behind, barking and snapping at the bats that chased them. Ondina was still preoc
cupied with the bird-women by the deactivated cell door. The fourth floor was so close….
“No!” Ondina shrieked from behind them. “You idiots! They’re getting away!” And then: “Not the hair!”
Pao laughed, and Bruto let out a happy puppy yip like she was throwing a Frisbee for him at the park.
“When we get out of here, buddy,” she said as he took the stairs two at a time beside her, “I’m definitely gonna show you a park. And a Frisbee. And all kinds of other awesome dog stuff.”
If she made it back from this alive, her mom could hardly refuse her the void beast that had gotten her through the rift, could she?
The fourth floor came into view, the glass walls darker up there, like the tinted windows of the cars that drove through Pao’s neighborhood at night. The temperature was lower, and Pao felt the drain pulling at her again—harder than ever before, like her energy was a milkshake someone was trying to get the last slurp of.
“We need to find Dante,” Pao said, the words visible as puffs of air in the cold. But it couldn’t have been clearer—Dante wasn’t on this floor. No one was. The glass was dark and ominous, and the hair on the back of Pao’s neck tingled.
Bruto whined, and for the first time since they’d entered the palace, he sounded afraid.
“It’s okay,” she tried to say. “We’ll go back…. This was the wrong way….”
But when she looked behind her, the floor was uninterrupted dark glass. The stairs were gone.
That’s when the screaming started.
It was soft at first, but it built on itself, echoing around the now-sealed chamber like a hurricane wind picking up.
As the sound slid up the octaves into a desperate wail, Bruto yelped and pawed at his ears. Pao covered her own with her hands, but it did little to muffle the screeching, which continued to increase in volume until Pao was sure she’d lose her mind.
But then, just as abruptly as it had started, it stopped, and the momentary silence was somehow worse.
Don’t think this has anything to do with your resourcefulness, said a woman’s voice, as layered and echoing and terrible as the wailing had been, though Pao saw no one else in the room. It’s all because of her failure. A dark diamond rose from the floor, Ondina writhing in its center. The crystal turned to liquid that splashed across the floor, disgorging Ondina and soaking Pao’s sneakers.
“I’m sorry.” Ondina was on her hands and knees, sobbing and coughing.
Sorry won’t save you. The voice echoed in Pao’s skull. Only I can do that. I’ll be back for you. For both of you.
After that, the voice stopped, the silence left behind broken only by Ondina’s sniffling. Meanwhile, Pao’s whole body had gone cold. If the owner of the voice could reduce Ondina to this, what chance did Pao have of getting out of here? Much less of finding Dante and Emma.
Franco had been right. There was a Source in the rift—someone who could intimidate and control the void’s most fearsome creatures. But who was it?
It had seemed so hypothetical before, an interesting puzzle. But now Pao had the horrible feeling she’d just been trapped in a glass cage by the very general the Niños had been looking for.
And she didn’t have the first idea how to get out.
“Can’t you just open a door in the wall?” Pao asked when she’d gotten sick of Ondina’s whimpering and her own spiraling, hopeless thoughts. “You were walking around like you owned this place like an hour ago. Or was that all just an attempt to impress me?”
“You’re an idiot,” Ondina said, but the insult carried less weight in her I’ve been crying voice, and she seemed to know it. “I can’t open a room she’s sealed…. Not without sending us somewhere even worse.”
“So…you’re not the mighty overlord of this creepy palace?”
Ondina just glared.
“I just want to hear you say it once: I’m not in control.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll punch you.”
“Are you sure you have the authority to do that?”
Bruto licked Pao’s hand, which she figured was his version of giving her a high five, but before Pao could scratch his ears, Ondina lunged at her, tackling her to the ground.
“This is all. Your. Fault,” she said as they rolled over and over on the slick glass floor, slapping and elbowing and pummeling each other in a good old-fashioned playground brawl. Bruto circled and barked in a vain attempt to get them to stop fighting.
Ondina grabbed one of Pao’s braids, but Pao got a fistful of Ondina’s long curls, right at the nape of her neck.
“Ow!”
“Serves you right, coward!” Pao screeched, unwilling to admit Ondina’s grip on her braid hurt even though her eyes were watering.
“Oh, I’m the coward?”
Pao rolled over again, pulling Ondina with her until she finally let go of the braid.
Both girls sat up, panting and disheveled, Pao’s face flushed. Ondina’s remained pale.
“Yes,” Ondina said. “You’re the coward.”
“I’m not seeing your logic,” Pao said between winces as she blotted at her bloody lip with the collar of her T-shirt. “You’re the one taking orders from some disembodied voice. Do you even want to be a junior overlord? Why don’t you just leave?”
Ondina shot her a withering glare. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, tell me, then!” Pao said, a plan starting to form like crystals in the bottom of a beaker, absorbing all her fear for the moment.
“I can’t,” Ondina said, but she was staring off into space like something horrible was barreling toward her. Pao knew that feeling. She could work with it.
“Why not?” she asked, trying to sound casual. “I mean, if you and disembodied boss lady have your way, I’ll be dead soon anyway. Or some horrible soulless ghoul. Might as well get it off your chest.”
“I don’t need to confess to you,” Ondina snapped. “I’m not troubled. I’m just…acclimating.”
“To what?”
“You’re relentless—has anyone ever told you that?”
“Has anyone ever told you that?”
Pao was just firing back, bantering, hoping to get the girl’s guard down. But the words seemed to have more of an effect on Ondina than she’d expected. The other girl deflated, her eyes dropping to her shoes.
“What?” Pao asked. “Being relentless isn’t so bad.”
“It’s not that,” Ondina said, and then her eyes snapped to Pao’s. “Stop trying to get me to talk to you. We’re stuck in this room together—that doesn’t mean we have to braid each other’s hair.”
“Fine,” Pao said. “I suck at braiding anyway. My mom always does mine. And for what it’s worth? Whatever your boss has on you isn’t worth all this. You don’t seem like that evil a person—a little annoying, and definitely completely narcissistic, but not evil.”
Ondina narrowed her eyes, but the expression was halfhearted.
“You could just get out of here…and help me in the process,” Pao said, knowing she was overplaying her hand, but she was running out of time. She could feel it. The glass all around them was getting darker, and the blood from Pao’s lip sat on top of the floor. It wasn’t draining her anymore. Instead, it was saving her for later, like leftover pizza. But for what?
Or worse, whom?
“I can’t ‘get out of here,’” Ondina said. “There is no me out of here. At least…not yet.”
“So that’s what she promised you?” Pao asked. “To turn you from a…whatever you are…into a real girl?” Pao still hadn’t figured out what Ondina was exactly. All she knew was that she packed a mean punch. “How do you even know she can do what she says?”
“Because she’s done it before,” Ondina said, her mouth set, her eyes still fixed on the shiny patent leather of her shoes.
“So…do I have something to do with this magical girl-making ritual?” Pao asked, cold dread creeping in around her plan like a fog.
; Ondina’s stony silence said it all.
“And you think, once she does whatever thing she’s gonna do, she’ll let you walk out of here and live your life?” Pao asked. “No more lecturing you about failure, or dragging you through the walls, or locking you in rooms you can’t get out of?”
“You don’t know her,” Ondina said, but suddenly she didn’t look so sure.
“I don’t,” Pao admitted. “But I’ve been wandering around this weird place long enough to get the gist. Do what you want with me and my friends—I can’t stop you. But don’t be disappointed when things don’t change. I’ve read enough books to know that evil overlords don’t just give up their minions.”
“I’m not her minion.”
“Oh, definitely not,” Pao said. “Running weird dream errands to lure people into her lair. Shuttling said people around the palace. Checking on her demon pets. Doesn’t sound like minion behavior at all.”
“It’s not minion behavior; it’s—”
“Wait, let me guess. She’s a benevolent overlord and you’re doing all this because you love her…but totally not in a clichéd, brainwashed kind of way.”
Ondina was getting angry—Pao could tell by the way her fingernails pressed into her palms. And anger could be useful, as Pao knew better than anyone. She kept going. “Just so you know, that’s what every single overlord says to their min—”
“She’s my mother, you half-wit!” Ondina said, the words exploding out of her. “She’s my mother, okay? I’m not her minion—I’m her daughter.”
Pao whistled long and low. “Ghost princess of the spooky underwater palace? No wonder you’re such a brat.”
“I’m not…You know what? Think what you want about me. My mother made a promise to me, and I made one to her. We’ve been waiting a long time for this moment, and I’m not going to let you or your incessant questions mess it up for me.”
But Pao barely heard her, because the mush at the bottom of her beaker was crystallizing again.
Marisa had dismissed Pao’s theory about who the general was. Of course starry-eyed Marisa would take Franco’s word over a tourist’s.
Paola Santiago and the River of Tears Page 24