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“Keep collecting debris,” she said. “And tell Terrible to watch out. When I send them all back it will probably create a vacuum in here. So, um, when I give the word, grab on to something, okay?”
His stomach lurched. Was she serious?
Stupid question; he should stop asking it. Yes, she was serious, and yes, Terrible might kill him if the ghosts didn’t manage it first, and yes, this whole thing was a big mistake, and yes, if he made it out of there alive he was going to punch his brother-in-law in the mouth.
She touched his arm, gave him a sort of soft quiet smile. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
He nodded.
Over the sound of his own footsteps as he half-ran, half-limped around the attic collecting more potential weapons, he heard her voice, low and smooth like music playing in another room. The blood leaking from his thigh excited the ghosts, just as Chess had said it would. They swarmed him, followed him, spun around him in a dizzying pattern of light. The cold wouldn’t go away, even for a second. The feeling of them passing through him, as if he were one of them, or as though he didn’t really even exist, wasn’t really there, grew more and more unpleasant.
But not as unpleasant as the sound of the wardrobe scraping across the floor again.
He looked in that direction. Not just a few ghosts behind it now. At least a dozen or so of them, pushing the heavy piece of furniture. Pushing it right toward Chess. They must have figured out what she was doing.
As they picked up speed, more ghosts joined them. Within seconds, it seemed, he stood almost alone, watching the wardrobe slide across the floor.
“Chess! Chess, look out!”
Instantly he heard Terrible roaring her name from below. No time to try to shout back, and Rick supposed it didn’t matter anyway. With a feeling rather like jumping in front of a loaded gun, he ran to the corner where she was, trying to catch the wardrobe before it hit her.
He’d just reached her side when her voice rose. Not in fear; it wasn’t a scream. It was simply her saying those words, those itchy-sounding, tumbly words.
Light flashed from the center of the wreath, a second of bright bluewhite light, and then—the space grew. He didn’t understand how it could happen, but the wreath widened until the doorway or portal or whatever stretched from floor to ceiling.
That was when his feet started sliding across the floor.
Grabbing the wardrobe was instinct. So was grabbing Chess’s hand.
Ghosts flew back through the portal, slowly at first, then faster as the vacuum increased. They, too, tried to catch the wardrobe, to hold on to him and Chess, but they couldn’t seem to solidify enough to do so.
Chess started walking toward him, going hand-over-hand up his arm, until she, too, could clutch the wardrobe. The vacuum sucked at him, sucked in some odd way he didn’t really understand. It wasn’t a physical pull—well, it was physical, obviously, but the sensation seemed to come from inside him rather than outside.
“It feels weird,” he managed. Holding the wardrobe with both hands necessitated pressing Chess between himself and the wood, almost spooning against her. She didn’t seem to mind, which was nice.
“It’s your soul.”
“What?” Damn it, there it was again.
“It’s your soul. The portal is trying to pull spirits back into itself, and it can’t differentiate very well between disembodied ones and living people. Just hang on. Do you see any more ghosts in here?”
He craned his neck to the left. Was that glow a ghost or—
He lost his grip on the wardrobe.
As if in slow motion he felt himself falling backward, his head hitting the floor with a painful thud. Felt the rough wood floor beneath him scraping his back as he slid across it.
Chess grabbed his feet. He managed to force his head off the ground long enough to see her feet hooked on the edge of the wardrobe.
And long enough to turn around and see the portal only inches from his face, to see the cold darkness within, the black silhouettes and torch flames. Faces appeared in it and then disappeared, greedy eyes focusing on him, bony fingers trying to reach out and grab him.
He could practically see saliva dripping from their dead lips as they waited for him, ready to steal his life, to try to feed on that power. He had no idea what exactly they would do to him, but he bet it would be painful.
Chess shifted her grip, crooking her elbow around his feet and reaching into her bag. A second or two later she threw something at the portal, shouted something that sounded like “Belium dishwasher!”
The portal closed.
HE DIDN’T THINKhe’d ever been so grateful for a beer in his life. Beneath all of the bottles of water in the cooler were a dozen or so of them, chilled to perfection, and he wished he could suck every one back at once.
Not only did he think he deserved a damn drink, he thought it would help a bit with the pain as Chess dug the glass shard out of his thigh.
He was wrong about that one. He just barely managed to stay silent. But at least it didn’t take long, and when her hands touched his skin as she applied butterfly closures and some kind of ointment, covering it all with a bandage . . . well, that was nice, even though he felt shaky and weak from the loss of adrenaline.
Terrible stood in the corner, watching the wreath reduce to ash. Rick looked at him for a second, then turned back to Chess.
“So, um . . . maybe you’d like to go out to di
Terrible snorted.
Chess smiled, the kind of smile Rick knew meant noeven before she opened her mouth, and started cleaning his scraped fingers with a baby wipe. “Sorry. I’m with someone.”
“Oh. Oh, um . . . is it serious?”
She squeezed more ointment onto the place where the splinters had been, slowly like she was trying to gather her thoughts. She glanced at Terrible, a quick little eye-dart before looking down again; Rick figured she didn’t want him to overhear. “He’s my family,” she said finally. Quietly. “He’s everything.”
“Oh,” he said again, rummaging in his tired mind for a new topic of conversation. “So that thing I saw through the portal, was that the City of Eternity? Like, for real?”
Chess smoothed a Band-Aid over his finger. “Not really. Well, it is, but it’s actually more like a tu
He took his hand back, took another swallow of his beer.
“All burned out here,” Terrible said.
Chess looked over at him. “Good. Can you scoop up the ashes? We’ll dump them down the sink later.”
“You can’t just leave them here?” Rick asked.
She shrugged. “Probably. But I’d rather be safe. You never know what can happen with stuff like that. Mistletoe is very powerful—as you saw—and there are a couple of spells that use mistletoe ash, so . . . better to just dump them.”
“Because whoever set that thing up might come back and try again?”
“What? No, nobody set that up. That was your fault.”
He jerked upright. “My fault? How did I—”
A heavy hand slammed down on his shoulder. How the hell had Terrible gotten there so fast? Rick hadn’t even heard his footsteps.
“Oh, calm down. Both of you. Nobody deliberately set that thing off. It was you being here that attracted them.”
Rick must have looked confused, because she sighed. “Think of it this way. All these years that wreath has been up there, but the house was empty. There was no energy inside it, you know? No life. But then you guys came in here tonight, and your energy activated the mistletoe and made a portal.”
Terrible let go of Rick, shifted his weight. “Shit.”
“Yes, shit. This is why you’re supposed to let me look through these places first, right? Please? Next time?”
Terrible nodded.
“Good.” She slapped her palms down onto her thighs and stood up. “Okay, are we all ready to go now?”