Rocking back and forth, she pushed steadily against the flow of power, pushed it down and away until she was sure she was in control again. It took all she had to force it back, which left her vulnerable to the thing playing at her mind. Mouse bent over and laid her head on the floor. She was shaking.
“Mouse, will you please just get the box and come out?” Angelo’s anger had passed instantly at the moment Mouse had muzzled her power. Now his fear came rushing back.
“I don’t think I can.” She sounded so small, so lost. “Bricks and mortar will not stay, will not stay, will not stay,” she sang. “My fair lady.”
“Cazzo!” Angelo yelled, but then he took a breath and tried again, forcing calm into his voice. “I don’t understand, Mouse.”
“I think it will fall down.” In her state she couldn’t explain it any better. Her father’s power held the walls together—the spells he used far beyond her own understanding—but it made sense that if she didn’t play his game, there would be consequences. The bricks had crumbled when she touched the box. She doubted that she and Angelo would have time to climb out before it all fell down on them.
“You mean the monastery?”
“Yes. I have to finish first. There are two more pictures.” After she had touched the portrait of her father, all the light had run out of it, its power rushing into her. That part of the wall was now dark, but the other two still pulsed hypnotically with their strange glow.
“Okay, Mouse. You do what you need to and then you come out. I’ll be right here.”
“You should go. It might get bad.”
“I’m staying with you.”
“Okay.” The vowels rolled long and high from her mouth and echoed through the tiny opening. Mouse stood and began tracing her father’s copy of the Heavenly City, as she did with the first fresco. This time, instead of flowing into her, the power dancing in the picture pulled her in. She threw her hands out like she was falling and closed her eyes, waiting for the pain of impact. But all she felt was cold. She opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by the gray stone buildings and orange brick walls of the Heavenly City she had painted for the Devil’s Bible.
This one, like the one trapped on the parchment page, was empty. Mouse was alone. But then she heard a baby’s coo; it sounded just like Nicholas’s. She took off running, turned down alley after alley and looked in vacant buildings with the doors flung open. Her footsteps echoed in the valley between towers. The peal of a child’s laughter lured her down one street; cries of “Mama! Mama!” hurried her down another. She walked for hours it seemed, but could not find her son. She found no one. The ache of longing crushed her, and the cold and overpowering loneliness told her it would always be so. She would be alone forever.
She was sure her father was waiting for her, if only she would call for him. He would come as he had done before, and he would bring her presents and kiss her forehead and tell her he was proud of her. She only needed to call his name. But she wouldn’t; she stumbled down the empty streets softly weeping.
Angelo heard her cries, and he was afraid. “Mouse, I’m here.” He meant it as a prayer.
Through her tears, Mouse saw a flash of blue flutter along the horizon, just past the labyrinth of streets. She followed it and turned the corner and found a park. She saw a little birdbath where two indigo buntings splashed together in the water. She smiled, remembering Angelo’s kiss.
Her father’s spell broke without warning. The dank cell came jarringly back into focus. Disoriented, Mouse knelt, breathing in deep and slow. Whatever had been playing with her mind was gone, and she was finally able to think clearly, to strategize a way to win. Her father’s game was thus far remarkably unoriginal—tempting her to use her power, showing her all she might have if she joined him; these were the same things her father had offered his other adversary so long ago. But that one had had the angels on his side. Mouse didn’t think she’d be so lucky.
She looked up at the third picture. She’d never seen it before, but its meaning was clear—and it wasn’t about choices. This one was about consequences.
Mouse knew it was time to finish the game.
“Angelo?” she called.
“Thank God,” he said. “You were so quiet, I thought—”
“It’s all right. Are you okay?”
“I will be if you come out now.”
“Soon.”
“You sound different. Before, you sounded—”
“It was something my father did to try to trick me. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“Come out now.”
“I will. Soon.” She wanted to keep talking to him, but she had no idea how quickly everything would happen when she touched the last fresco, and she wanted Angelo safely away. “I’m going to slide something out to you, but don’t open it. Okay?”
“What is it?” He sounded so tired.
“A box that I think has my father’s manuscript in it. We can’t open it here—it’s too dangerous. Do you understand?”
“Why can’t you bring it out?”
“I have something to do first. There’s one more painting.”
“Of what?”
She looked at the picture on the wall again. It had the same columns framing it as the other two; her father liked symmetry. A figure lay curled at the foot of the columns, one arm across her face and the other lifted in a plea. The fresco was a mirror image of the cell—the portrait of her father and the empty Heavenly City fading into the black edges behind the fallen girl. Mouse knew the figure on the floor begged for death.
“It doesn’t matter. But as soon as you get the box, you have to get out, Angelo. I’m afraid the monastery will start to fall.”
“I’m not leaving you.” His voice shook with fear.
Mouse couldn’t see any other way. Her father would have assumed that she would come here alone. It’s one of the things they shared—eternal loneliness. So he wouldn’t have anticipated Mouse having someone else there to take the box while she finished the game. It was his mistake and her chance to win.
The monastery would likely start to fall the moment the box was removed; finishing this last task was Mouse’s only chance of putting off that inevitability, at least until Angelo was safely outside. Regardless of what happened to her, Angelo could take the box back to Bishop Sebastian, and hopefully they could find whatever was in the manuscript and use it to stop her father. The last shimmering picture on the wall didn’t leave much hope that Mouse would be joining them.
“I need you to take the box out. For me,” she said. She wished she could see his face. She wanted to tell him things, but there wasn’t time. Mouse nudged the box closer to the opening in short bursts; each time she touched it, a brick crumbled. The cell was so small, it only took three shoves to get it to the edge of the opening. “Will you promise, Angelo?”
“No.”
“I’ll come to you when I can, but you have to get out with the box. It’s our only chance. Please promise me.” Mouse stretched wide, one hand hovering over the box to give it a last shove toward Angelo, and the other almost but not quite touching the final fresco.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
He reached in and she slid her palm lightly over his hand as he pulled the box through the hole.
“Angelo? Thank you for everything.”
“Damn it, Mouse. Stop talking like you’re saying good-bye.”
“Go!” she said as the outer wall of the cell began to crumble. She heard Angelo scrambling on the other side of the opening and listened to the echo of his footfalls and the pings of loose stone as he started to climb the staircase.
Mouse was alone.
She laid her trembling hand against the glowing light of the unfamiliar image on the wall and all the bricks went still. She felt nothing, no heat or cold as she had with the other pictures, and the light never wavered. Not until her hand hovered over the drawn figure crumpled on the fresco’s floor. Then the ghostly glow beg
an to pulse, running like rain across the stone wall into the image of the girl who begged for death, a father’s portrait of his daughter.
Slowly Mouse moved her hand over the girl’s face in the epicenter of the swirling light. Like lightning, it jumped from the wall, sending a finger of power into Mouse’s outstretched palm, snaking its way inside her. Mouse cried out in pain.
And just as quickly as it had struck, the power snapped back into the fresco, leaving only a tiny point of light in the wall, and stripping Mouse of everything—breath, hope, strength. Her head slammed into the floor as she fell, unable to summon even enough energy to catch herself.
She lay unmoving as blood and saliva spread in small puddles between her face and the stone floor, and then she saw something in the corner near her feet glinting in the dim light as it moved.
A wet darkness was oozing from the cracks in the floor and sliding slowly toward her. Mouse cried out as she felt the wetness wrap around her ankle and then tickle her leg as it crawled upward, but in its wake, her body went numb.
Mouse twitched as the dark thing twined around her waist and slipped between her breasts and up her neck. The black ooze would soon crawl into her mouth, close over her nose. She would be left here to suffocate, alone and shrouded in the dark. Mouse tried to pull slow breaths in against the growing claustrophobia, but her chest was numb and the air stuck in her throat with shallow gasps.
There was no one to help her. Angelo was gone.
She might still call for her father. She didn’t know what would happen if he came, but at least she wouldn’t be alone, buried alive.
Mouse shook her head, pressing her forehead to the floor, and shoved her hand against the cold stone, turning onto her back as the ooze feathered down her arm like a glove. She pushed back against the fear; she would not call for her father no matter what happened.
The walls of the cell shuddered. A mist of centuries-old dust rained down on her. Mouse wondered if that meant Angelo had gotten out with the box and that her father’s spells were unraveling. Or maybe this was part of his plan—to cover her with ooze like some demonic resin to preserve her, powerless and dormant, and then bury her in the rubble until he came to collect her.
Mouse felt the dark, wet thing slide along her neck and run a slick finger on her lips. The last of the light from the wall went out.
Angelo had taken the box up to the surface as she had asked, but he had no intention of leaving her alone. He was already at the foot of the staircase, coming back down to her, when he heard her scream. The sound was guttural, primitive. He ran back to the hole and wedged himself in as far as he could, dug his feet into the crevices where the stones on the floor joined as he tried to get leverage. He could almost touch her foot.
“Mouse, please. I . . . I can’t get to you. Come a little closer.”
Mouse’s hair scratched against the uneven stone as she twisted her head trying to keep her nose and mouth away from the smothering wetness spreading over her chin. The back wall of the cell collapsed and the ceiling on that side crashed down against the rubble.
“I’m too big. I can’t get in!” Angelo said.
The dark, wet thing slid up her nose and between her gritted teeth.
Mouse’s gurgling whimpers filtered through the tunnel-like opening. Angelo jerked free of the hole, tears blinding him as he looked around desperately for a large stone or piece of wood he could use. He found nothing.
The walls were heaving. He threw himself back toward the hole, pounding the stone around the opening into the cell with the butt of the flashlight. He could hardly see what he was doing, but small flecks of rock showered down. The light flickered. Angelo shoved himself deeper into the hole, his left arm and shoulder stretching into the cell and his face scraping and burning against the ragged stone at the top of the opening.
He couldn’t see, but he groped frantically until his fingers made contact with something solid; it was Mouse’s boot. He grabbed at it and pulled it slowly toward him. He wrapped his hand around her calf muscle and pulled her another few inches toward the opening. When her body jerked once more, spasming, Angelo clamped down hard on her lower thigh, fearing he’d lose her again. He reached in and grabbed her other leg and finally pulled her out through the opening.
Angelo shined the failing light in her face. She was pale and cold to the touch, but she was alive. Her mouth was smeared with blood and something black was running off her and dripping like oil onto the floor. He lifted her into his arms and took off. The stone walls squealed as they shivered and shook. Angelo dodged falling debris as he carried Mouse up the staircase. At the top of the landing, he laid her gently on the floor and backed his way through the opening at the mound, pulling her with him. Once outside, he leaned her against a log. She rolled to her side, retching, the last of the black ooze streaming from her mouth and nose. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
“Box.”
He barely heard her. “It’s here.” He reached beside the log where he had hidden the box under some leaves.
Mouse clasped it tightly with both hands like it was a grenade.
“We have to get out of here now,” she said.
They heard a rumble like thunder as they reached the car, and the ground trembled. The ruins had collapsed. Someone would find it now and build a career picking through the debris.
Mouse hoped the ghosts of Podlažice had no more secrets to tell.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Along the horizon, the lights of Chrudim flared against the low-hanging clouds and sent phantom figures creeping across the night sky. Mouse was still shaking. Angelo had one hand on the wheel and the other wound tightly in hers.
“I’d give anything if you’d talk to me right now,” he said.
“Will you play the guitar for me?” she asked quietly. He caught the smile on her lips.
“Done.” His voice nearly broke with relief.
Mouse laid her head down on the console between them and tightened her grip on the copper box in her lap.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” he asked.
She shook her head, waves of fear washing over her again, but she was too tired to sit up and keep watch for pursuers.
“There’s a station in Pardubice. Let’s take the train back to Prague. We can open it while we’re on the move.” Her words were slurred, and she blinked slowly as she tried to fight through the exhaustion to strategize.
Her father would be sending someone. Mouse needed to be ready.
At the Pardubice station half an hour later, Mouse kept her back to Angelo as he bought the tickets. She wanted to keep herself between him and whatever might be coming. The platform was crowded with commuters from Prague and partygoers headed out for a night in the city.
Someone screamed, and Mouse shoved Angelo back.
“It’s just those kids messing around, Mouse.” He turned back to her, tickets in hand, and rubbed his side where it had slammed into the counter. “Come on.” He tried to take her hand, but Mouse needed to be free. She knew it was only a matter of when, not if, the danger would come. Angelo still had no idea about the real nature of the enemy they faced.
Though Mouse had told him nearly all of her secrets, some were too painful to share. She had not told him about the power she had to see souls, for fear of the hope it might reawaken in him that she was an emissary from God. And if Angelo was wishing for an angel, how could Mouse ever tell him what she really was? No, the truth about what she had done at Marchfeld, the truth about her father—those were secrets she meant to keep.
As Angelo shut the door to their private berth, Mouse moved quickly to the window so she could watch the people boarding. Any one of them could belong to her father; all of them were a threat. When the train finally lurched toward Prague, she dropped onto the bench, her head and shoulders sagging with fatigue, and she pulled the copper box out of her bag along with a small leather pouch and a metal fingernail file she’d picked up at the station in Vienna.
&
nbsp; “What’s that for?” Angelo asked as he stepped back from the washbasin holding a rag to his scraped face.
“We’re not safe. My father will be looking for us. Or sending someone,” she said as she unfastened the pouch. “There are things I can do to protect us. Spells.”
“Like a witch?” Even he smiled at the word, not really knowing what he was asking.
“No.” She chuckled as he sat down beside her. “Believe it or not, I learned these spells from a priest.”
She had been eight years old when the hollow-eyed children had followed her home from the baby cemetery where all the unbaptized infants had been laid to rest. Father Lucas was gone on one of his trips. Mouse had tried to tell Mother Kazi about them, but the old woman told her they were just the normal nightmares all children had. When Father Lucas finally came home and found his little Mouse thin and dark-eyed, he knew the truth. He, too, knew what lived in the dark, and he gave Mouse the first protection spell to guard her while she slept.
“So these spells are fully sanctioned by the Church.” She’d meant it as a joke, but she saw the shadow that crossed Angelo’s face. “Anyway, you might need to do this, too, at some point. If I’m not with you.” Mouse understood the danger she had put him in, even if he didn’t. And she might not always be there to protect him. She wanted to give Angelo the tools to protect himself, as Father Lucas had done for her. “I’ll show you how to do it.”
She took a handful of salt from the pouch and stood up. “Different spells use different materials. This one is simple but powerful. Salt from the Dead Sea. It works like a conduit.” Mouse let it trickle from her fingers as she moved her hand deliberately in a pattern.
“It’s a fish, like the ancient Christians used.”
Mouse nodded. “Certain shapes have power. A circle quartered by a cross, the Celtic swirl, a pentagram, and this one, among others.” She stopped talking as she finished the pattern on the floor and then leaned over to pick up the fingernail file.
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