“Thanks,” she panted, stunned.
“’Course,” Hilo panted back, just as stunned.
Hilo got to her feet quickly, pulling Noa up. “Forward,” she reminded Noa. Noa nodded. There was no time to wait.
They approached their plank bridge. The banks of the river were not very high, so there was precious little distance between the plank and the black water rushing beneath it. The banks were also uneven, and the plank wobbled terribly. But it was their only way across.
They’d just have to be careful.
“Mortals have any balance?” Hilo asked, grinning.
Noa bit her lip but forced a smile. “If you can do it, I can do it.” She tried not to think of the many, many times she’d tripped doing absolutely nothing. Hadn’t she also managed to keep up with Callum and Judah when they were dodging Guards and magic, running from the Barracks? And what about jumping between buildings with Marena—
Marena. Noa pushed the pixie’s memory—her face, her grin—back painfully. No time for mourning. Not now.
Hilo was already stepping eagerly onto their makeshift bridge.
“Wait!” Noa said suddenly. “I need to go first!” She didn’t know why, but she wanted to be in motion, or she knew, she knew, she’d start thinking not only of Marena, but of everyone she’d left behind—
Hilo stepped back, and Noa marched onto the board. It wobbled dangerously, almost tilting into the water.
“Easy! Grace!” Hilo cried.
Noa’s heart spun wildly as she swung and swayed her hips for balance. When the board finally settled beneath her, she forced her next step to be slow and gentle. The board stayed steadier this time; unfortunately, that didn’t help her nerves.
“Forward,” Hilo murmured.
Forward, Noa thought firmly.
Noa began to move slowly and methodically over the dark, forbidding water, one step at a time. She focused on the plank alone. She knew if she looked to either side, if she even glimpsed that plunging opacity that was so unlike any water she’d ever seen—
The board wobbled violently.
“Noa!” Hilo screamed, grabbing the board from her side to try to stabilize it. Hilo knelt on it, holding it as best she could, anchoring it under her weight.
Noa swallowed. The board. Only the board. Forward!
Noa took a deep, rattling breath, then started moving slowly again. She didn’t look at the water, that strange black water like dark matter from space whose tractor beam could pull you in from your gaze alone. Noa shuddered to think what might have happened if she had followed the fake Olivia and Miles and let the water swallow her whole—
“Noa!” Hilo screamed as Noa rocked again, one side of the board dipping into the water. Noa pinwheeled her arms frantically, finally falling to a crouch. Knuckles white, she breathed in and out in frozen terror as she narrowly missed falling in.
She was halfway across.
Noa gave herself five shaking breaths. Only five, after which she would not, under any circumstances, think again of the watery doom under and beside her—
Noa cried out from her crouch as her balance wavered again. She was better than this. She was stronger than this. Or if she wasn’t, Isla was. Sasha was. And their blood was hers.
Noa forced herself up, and in sudden Sasha-impulse, sprinted down the rest of the plank, letting it rock in wider, more violent arcs, and finally sprang from it to the bank in a tumble just as the board upended.
“Noa, the board!” Hilo cried. Noa had landed on her stomach; she spun and scrambled back through the sludge on all fours to catch her end of the board before it fell back into the water. She grasped it, fully outstretched, and heaved it back, flinging her body on top of it to force it down.
Board beneath her ribs, Noa finally sank in relief into the mud.
“Holy Otec, Noa, what the gobbin’ hell was that?”
Noa didn’t even look up. She knew her hair would be a matted clump, her face caked with dripping brown and didn’t care. “That was mortal grace.”
Hilo barked a short laugh from the other side, and Noa smiled tiredly into the mud, tasting mint and oddly, sweetness. Then she scrunched up her butt, still channeling Sasha, and got to her brown-slop hands and knees.
She braced herself over the board with her hands and held it steady. “Your turn.”
“No problem,” Hilo said, twinkling a little with smugness. Noa couldn’t see Hilo precisely against the expanse of water, but she could practically hear the smirk.
With the grace only a pixie could have, Hilo danced out onto the plank soundlessly, as if she weighed nothing, each step a graceful flourish. Noa eased her hold on the board a little, rolling her eyes.
When Hilo reached dead center, she paused, body like a ballet dancer midpirouette. She looked around slowly.
“Come on, Hilo, we don’t have all day, remember? Enough with the showboating.”
But Hilo didn’t appear to hear her. She bent lithely, gracefully, to look more closely at the water.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s so pretty Noa. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Hilo’s voice sounded strange—soft, and full of awe.
“Probably because you’ve never seen death water before. Come on.”
But Hilo didn’t move another step, instead leaning even closer toward the water. “It’s so dark and rich….” She began to stretch an arm toward it.
“Hilo! Stop!” Noa cried urgently.
Hilo looked up briefly in annoyance. “Why?”
“Because it will kill you or something worse, remember?”
Hilo’s face became petulant. “But I want to. I want to touch it, I want to drink it—it’s all I can think about—”
Noa felt her face drain as the pieces fell into place. She, too, had been unbalanced, pulled toward that horrible water when she’d tried to cross the plank. It was so obvious now; she saw it so clearly in Hilo—
“Hilo, you have to trust me! Stop! Stop! Please freeze!”
Hilo’s fingers froze a millimeter from the water; she turned her head in mild curiosity at Noa’s obvious distress.
Noa tried to say it as clearly as she could. “It’s Red, Hilo. It isn’t your thought to touch the water. It’s Red.”
Hilo’s face wrinkled in confusion, but her hand at least remained frozen. “But it’ll be fun, like making the bridge. I thought you were brave.” She scowled at Noa, then turned back to the water, arm outstretched.
Noa had no choice. She rattled the board, hard. Hilo’s pixie reflexes made her stand back up to catch her balance.
“Hey!” Hilo called. “Don’t be a gobbin’ brat!”
Noa racked her brain. If Hilo couldn’t feel the foreignness of implanted Red thought, Noa would to outsmart it.
“Just wait for me then! Don’t leave me out!” Noa called desperately. “I want to have fun too!”
Hilo glared skeptically.
“Judah wouldn’t want you to leave me out, Hilo! You know he wouldn’t!”
Hilo put her hands on her hips, sighing. “Fine, but hurry it up!”
Cringing, Noa slowly made her way back to the one place she really didn’t want to go: back onto the board over the death-river.
And this time with no one on either side to hold it steady.
The board immediately began rocking, but at least this time Noa knew to be on her guard for Red fascination with the water. When it came—and it did, pulling her mind and eyes downward—she could see the thought’s foreign shape so clearly, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t spotted it before.
But whoever was doing this—whatever hidden Reds—didn’t know Noa could spot it now.
“Ooh, I see what you mean,” Noa cooed, trying to match Hilo’s strange tone, hoping to keep their assailants’ attention divided. If the Reds had to focus on Suggest
ing the fascination to her, they would have to lessen their focus on Hilo. Noa saw the amoeba-like thoughts in her mind, coming from all sides, at the same time as Hilo’s certainty seemed to flicker.
It was working.
“What?” Hilo asked, blinking. “Oh —oh yes. I told you so, didn’t I?”
“But first,” Noa said quickly, tauntingly, remembering Hilo’s mischief smile, “I’ll race you to the other bank. Go!”
Sending up a prayer, Noa spun and ran back down the board. It tipped and turned so high she had to jump off the end to make the bank and knew there would be no saving it. She heard the board splash into the water as she belly-flopped into mud and prayed Hilo had made it too, but she didn’t dare to look.
At first there was only silence. Then Noa felt something. Someone. She looked up to see Hilo, beaming down at her.
“I won,” the pixie gloated.
A sizzling sound split the air, and Hilo and Noa turned to see the board bubbling into seething nothing, like flesh melted by acid. The sight of it shook Hilo free from the Red compulsion; Noa saw the fierce wariness return to her face.
She looked at Noa in disbelief. “You could have been killed, saving me like that!”
“And now you both will be.”
Noa and Hilo turned—a gnarled, filthy mass, a creature of hair and cloak and spit and mist, opened its maw and roared back. The blue ball of light that exploded outward with the sound blinded them to everything else. The orb thundered directly for Noa.
Noa froze. This was it. The end. The orb was on her—
But someone—Hilo—leapt on top of her, shoved her over, fell into her place—
And took the blast herself.
Noa screamed, skittered out from under Hilo’s gangling body as it slumped into the mud. Noa’s eyes took a snapshot her brain refused to develop—the ice that had been Hilo’s eyes, the crystal that had been Hilo’s skin, still and lifeless and completely, utterly dead—
And the monster that had done it was coming for Noa.
It wasn’t that Noa couldn’t run; it was that the slowness of the wraith descending upon her was paralyzing, inexorable, inevitable—as deadly as anticipation itself. It limped and scratched toward her, taking its time because it knew, like she knew, there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one left alive to save her.
As the creature approached, Noa realized, to her shock, it was an ancient, twisted woman—or once had been a woman—hair like sand struck clear by lightning, skin stained to scales by green-brown grime. A woman gone mad, gone rotten, if any woman was left—her blackened rip-like mouth open wide to screech.
The woman’s reptilian hands raised upward, lizard-pupils swallowing her eyes, and Noa knew it was over. She couldn’t move, couldn’t run, and the only words that came to her were from a memory that echoed now like a premonition. The words of another about to die pointlessly and cruelly before monsters in the darkness.
Noa and Geezer opened their bitter mouths together, spoke the words again now in their defeat:
“Hail harmony.”
• • •
Nothing.
Noa opened her eyes—she still had eyes, just as she still had limbs—and saw the old woman poised to strike but still. Her lizard eyes flickered wide.
“How,” she hissed, not moving a muscle, “did you know my name?”
• • •
“Go get him, go get him,” Judah whimpered on the third night, unable to fight anymore. He hated that his voice was small, that his body was again a little boy’s bent from shame and dirty with secrets. He couldn’t bear now to look at Callum’s eyes—still so calm, so proud with blinded purpose. Judah and Callum were matryoshka dolls, both of them—who they were, who they’d been, what they’d done and who they’d never be—all nested one inside the other inside the other, painted smiles and unseeing eyes. Judah knew each buried doll, each smaller cast, but he couldn’t bear to see them anymore. If Callum wouldn’t see with him, Judah could not bear the burden alone. It hurt too much to be the only one who saw.
Judah was done.
Judah sagged against his birdcage, didn’t look up even when he heard the door open, the footsteps. He waited until he heard Kells dismiss Callum.
Kells was smiling. Waiting.
“Just take him away,” Judah croaked, broken. “Send me back alone to the mortal realm, or to my own In Between prison, whatever you want. Just get me away from him. I can’t … I can’t look at him anymore. Please.”
Kells’ eyes twinkled. He cocked his head. “Do you really think it is that easy? To just open a Portal, an In Between?”
“Isn’t it? You’re still the Gatekeeper, aren’t you?” Judah wanted to yell. Wasn’t stupid Kells good for anything?
“Even I don’t have that power, boy. Portals rip worlds! That requires blood bonds of the greatest sacrifice. Did your father never tell you that? The price he paid?” Kells shook his head with a sneer, continuing, “I’m just one Fae. I could maybe, maybe make a temporary window, and that”—he shook his head again at the ridiculousness of the idea—“would be so unstable, and last so little time, it would surely destroy anything and anyone who went inside—”
“Then Banish me somewhere else! I don’t need a stupid magic lesson, I just need to be away! Don’t leave him alone with me! You wanted me to beg and you’ve won, okay? I’m begging!”
“And much as that delights me, that isn’t quite what I wanted. I didn’t want your allegiance. I wanted your love.”
Judah swallowed a scream. “Fine! It’s yours!”
Kells laughed. “My powers may be gone, but even I know that lacked the proper feeling. Or maybe you never learned. Letting someone break you isn’t the same as letting someone love you. I want the real victory.”
“Jailing me won’t win my love,” Judah spat.
“And hugs and kisses will? Ha!” Kells growled. “I gave up on the sentiment route long ago, when my Light was crusted out of me by your dear old dad. But you already know that. You already know I have another way in store for you.”
Even broken, even without any strength left at all, Judah found he could still shudder.
Kells smiled a smile that, had it reached his eyes, would have actually looked sincere.
“Ready for my weapon?”
• • •
“How do you know my name? Tell me!” the woman repeated, lizard eyes seething, lizard-tongue darting, but making no move to strike.
Noa didn’t understand; the words sounded like nonsense, gibberish, and there was Hilo beside her, absurdly like Isla in her coffin. Same blond hair, same fair skin, the ethereal sparkle gone and just a girl, a dead young girl lying still. (Their eyes were different colors but then Isla’s eyes had been closed in her coffin, hadn’t they, not open like Hilo’s now, open and frozen and blue. Isla’s eyes had been more gray than blue, imperial, like the sea in storm—)
“Girl! Get out of the way!” Crinkly hands like both slime and sandpaper shoved Noa off her fallen friend. She hadn’t realized she’d fallen weeping on top of Hilo, barely felt it now as her body slid back, unresisting, a rag doll in the mud. She let the mud suckle at her skin. She couldn’t stop the tears and didn’t want to—not even when she felt a familiar presence at her shoulder, not even when she knew that if she looked, she might see Isla’s ghost—because the real Isla was gone, and that was who she cried for now, and also Hilo, the real Hilo whom a part of Noa hated, because there had been times she’d hated Isla, even though she loved her—
“N-Noa?”
Noa looked up from her slop, her sobs, her mud, her hands. Hilo was blinking, sitting up, wincing in pain in a bluish haze. The woman—the wraith who had killed Hilo—was now somehow reviving her. Except right now she didn’t look so monstrous—more short and crumpled, and old.
But Noa didn’t care about her righ
t now.
“Hilo!” Noa crashed across the mud to tackle Hilo in a hug. Hilo fell back with a wince, then they locked eyes and laughed, both surprised at the intensity of their delight. Then the crinkly, slimy hands—now talon-sharp and strong—shoved them apart and pinned them down.
“I’ll kill you both and leave you dead unless you tell me now—who told you my name?”
Hilo looked in bewildered fear at Noa; Noa struggled to search her shell-shocked brain. “H-Harmony?” Noa asked finally. “Your name is Harmony. ‘Hail Harmony.’ It was a name.”
“An unspeakable name.”
“You’re the Seer,” Hilo breathed. “It’s true, you’re real.”
Harmony glared at Hilo and shoved her backward with one hand at the throat. She raised her other claw to Noa. Its nails were pointed, like she’d evolved that way. “Speak.”
The words tumbled clumsily, rapidly. “An old man, a cell mate, I was in prison … He sacrificed himself for me, I don’t know why, gave his life to help me escape even though he hated me—when they were dragging him out, when he knew he was about to die, he looked at me and said, ‘Hail Harmony.’ I thought he meant something about the revolution, that’s why he wanted me to escape—”
“Petty revolutions are of no concern to me.”
“Are you the Seer, or aren’t you?” Hilo demanded.
The woman squeezed Hilo’s throat in punishment, cutting off her breath. “Stop saying Seer. Only children believe in Seers. All I see is the past.”
“But you’re the Attendant who ran from the Temple?” Noa pleaded, watching Hilo’s face turn red then blue. “You’ve read the Scrolls and studied the gifts. We need your help—please, she didn’t mean it. Please—”
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