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  “That was never going to kill him.”

  “Yeah, and neither would sticking him with a knife, but I don’t stab him every time I say hello.”

  “It’s . . . complicated.” Shireen shook her head. “Stop distracting me! Maybe that isn’t your fault, but what happened with Richard is!”

  “Not arguing that.”

  “You tricked her! Now Richard hates her! She’s been cut loose!”

  “You wanted me to break her free of Richard,” I pointed out. “Seems to me I did exactly what you asked.”

  “She needed to leave Richard because she wanted to! Instead she got thrown out! Richard told her that she could fix her mess or die trying, so now that’s what she’s trying to do! She’s going crazy!”

  “Come on,” I said. “You really expected me to talk Rachel into wanting to leave Richard? She would never have done that. Never in a million years. I saw exactly one way to break her away from Richard and keep myself alive into the bargain, and I took it. And honestly, you should be grateful for what you’ve got, because you and Cinder are the only reasons I haven’t killed her already.”

  “She used to be your friend!”

  “She sat around filing her nails while I was getting tortured in Richard’s basement,” I snapped. “She’s tried to murder me so many times I’ve lost count. She watched what Richard did to Anne, and laughed. She is not my friend, and I don’t owe her shit.”

  “You owe me.”

  “And that’s why she’s still alive.”

  We glared at each other across the cracked flagstones. “How can you be this selfish?” Shireen demanded. “I thought you were trying to be better than this?”

  “I try to be better when I’m dealing with people who deserve it,” I said. “Which Rachel most definitely does not. I have known her for a really long time, and I can honestly say that she’s one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met. She’s sadistic, unstable, totally self-centred, and she doesn’t have the slightest trace of kindness or honour to balance it out. Her only redeeming features are her relationships with you and Cinder, and she tried to kill Cinder and she did kill you! I don’t understand why the two of you haven’t given up on her by now. What is it going to take to make you write her off?”

  “I can’t,” Shireen said. “She’s why I’m here. As long as there’s a chance, I have to try.”

  I stared at Shireen, and all of a sudden it struck me that maybe she meant that literally. She’d described herself once as a shadow. Maybe that was how she’d been preserved, as some kind of embodiment of Rachel’s guilty conscience. She literally couldn’t stop, any more than a heart could stop beating.

  “Okay, Shireen,” I said. “I’ll give you your chance. Tomorrow. I’ll be there, and so will Cinder. Get ready to talk to Rachel and make your case. Because one way or the other, I’m ending this. Rachel’s going to have to choose a side, once and for all.”

  “Tomorrow where?” Alarm flashed in Shireen’s eyes. “No, Alex, what are you planning? She won’t listen to me. It has to be you.”

  “She’s going to listen to someone. Only question is who.”

  “Wait!”

  “Tomorrow, Shireen,” I said. “It’s time to end this.” I stepped out of Elsewhere, and back into my own dreams.

  chapter 9

  The next day dawned hot. It was September, but the summer weather had lingered, and the morning sun shone down out of a brilliant blue sky. Even this early, it was warm: come midday, it would be scorching. I stood in the shade at the edge of the woods, looking across the grassy valley.

  We were in Wales, at Richard’s mansion. Or what was left of it. The once-elegant building was a mass of rubble and shattered walls, so thoroughly destroyed that you couldn’t even tell where the rooms had been. It looked as if a bomb had hit it, which it had. The front lawn was wild and overgrown, scattered with pieces of tile and stone that had been thrown outwards in the blast. A pair of crows hopped between the rocks, pecking at the ground.

  To me, Richard’s mansion had been many things. A home, a school, a prison, a graveyard. I’d loved it and feared it and hated it with a burning passion. Seventeen years ago, for the four of us, this was where it had all begun. Today, this was where it would end.

  A muffled footstep announced Cinder’s presence. He moved quietly for such a big man. “So?” he said.

  “We’re clear.”

  I started walking down the slope, and Cinder fell in beside me. The morning sun lit us up, casting bright shadows behind us. “Council?” Cinder asked.

  “They won’t interfere.”

  “Thought they wanted you.”

  “Two days ago, they were hunting me,” I said. “Day after tomorrow, they might be doing it again. But not today.”

  From across the valley, the ruins looked as if they could have been made yesterday. Up close was a different story. Grass had grown around the scattered tiles and bricks, and new bushes and saplings marked where last year’s battle had scorched the earth. The crows took off as we approached, flapping away down the slope, cawing in their harsh voices: arrh, arrh, arrh.

  Cinder nodded at the rubble. “Dig through?”

  “Don’t have to,” I said. “Council earth mages cleared a way.”

  “Basement might have caved in.”

  “I was the one who called in that airstrike, and I was the first one down into the basement. It’s still there.”

  “Anyone moved in?”

  “Who the hell would want to?”

  We climbed over some rubble, skirted the remains of a chimney stack, and found ourselves at the top of a set of stairs leading down into darkness. It was easy to miss: in the bright daylight the stairway was a small shadow with nothing to mark it out. Searching with my magesight, I couldn’t see many auras. The summoning trap was long gone, and the gate wards that had once protected the mansion were ragged and patchy, many of their nodes destroyed. They would hamper gate magic, but wouldn’t prevent it.

  Cinder called up a light and we descended into darkness, leaving the warmth and sun behind. Our footsteps echoed on the stone steps as we went deeper. At the bottom of the stairs the dark red of Cinder’s light illuminated a door.

  We didn’t go far. One short corridor and we came out into the room the four of us had once called the chapel. The statues in the corners had been removed at some point, but the murals were still there, strange and unsettling. The archway by which we’d entered led back into the corridor and up the stairs. A second archway at the far end led deeper into darkness. I walked to the middle of the room and stopped.

  “This is it?” Cinder asked.

  I nodded.

  Cinder’s light lit his face from below, casting strange shadows from his features. “So?”

  I began to lean against one of the walls, then saw the murals and thought better of it. “Now we wait.”

  Cinder looked at me. “Wait?”

  “What, you thought I was going to use the fateweaver?” I said. “Lure her in?”

  “Can you?”

  “I’ve seen her twice the past few days,” I said. “Once in Tibet, once in London. Both times she gated in on me. Know what I did to lure her in?”

  Cinder looked at me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was trying to deal with other problems, and both times Rachel somehow managed to show up at exactly the time and place to make my life as difficult as possible. So no, I’m not going to lure her, or do any kind of fancy tricks. I’m just going to hang around somewhere suspicious, like here, and wait for her to show up and ruin my day. Because that’s what she does.”

  Cinder studied me. “Called her Rachel.”

  “I did?”

  Cinder gave a nod.

  I shrugged irritably. “Slip of the tongue.”

  “You sit here, she shows up?”

  �
��Best guess.”

  “So why’d you wait so long?”

  “Because bringing her here is all I can do,” I said, and pointed up and out. “You and I have been allies two and a half years now. The deal was that you’d help me out if I got R—split her from Richard. Well, I’ve done it. But you wanted more. You want things back the way they used to be. Right?”

  Cinder looked at me for a second, then nodded again.

  “And that I can’t promise,” I said. “Right now, she walks down those stairs and sees me, she’s just going to kick off and we’re back to square one. The way I see it, the only thing that has a chance of turning her off the path she’s on right now . . . is you. And it has to be now, because I can’t keep doing this. She’s been trying to kill me too long, got close too many times. If after you’ve said your piece she still goes for me . . . then it’ll be the last time.”

  Cinder looked at me silently.

  “You okay with that? I can’t keep softballing any longer.”

  “Enough chances,” Cinder said. “I get it.”

  We stood in silence for a little while. The chapel was dark and cold. We would only have to turn and walk up those steps to return to the warmth and the morning light, but somehow it felt very far away.

  “Mind if I ask you something?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never asked how you two got to be partners. Figure it’s not my business. But I really want to know why you haven’t given up on her.”

  Cinder didn’t answer.

  “I mean, maybe it’s just me, but if a girl I knew was shooting disintegration spells at my chest, I’d take that as a pretty strong indicator that we were officially broken up.”

  Silence.

  “Look, at the end of the day, it’s your life. I’m just wondering.”

  “You ever stop asking questions?”

  “Not really.”

  More silence.

  “So?”

  “Just do your job.”

  “I am doing my job,” I said. “But until Rachel shows, we’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “Bloody hell,” Cinder said. “You do not take a hint.”

  I shrugged. “Diviner curiosity. Used to think it would get me killed someday. Turns out a lot of other stuff is going to beat it to the punch. But right now, I’m here and you’re here, so . . . ?”

  “I’ll tell you if you’ll just shut up.”

  “Deal.”

  “Del and I made a promise, long time ago,” Cinder said. “She’d have my back, I’d have hers.”

  I waited for Cinder to go on. “That’s it?” I asked when he didn’t.

  Cinder shrugged.

  Trying to get Cinder to open up is like prying apart a stone wall with a chisel. “Well, I suppose that was pretty much how things were when we first met. When it was you, Deleo, and Khazad. Khazad sold her out soon as it got convenient. You didn’t.”

  “Khazad was an arsehole.”

  “But that all changed when Richard came back, didn’t it? She got drawn back in.”

  “Yeah.”

  I studied Cinder. “I don’t buy it.”

  Cinder shot me a glare. “What?”

  “I can believe you’re the kind to keep that sort of promise,” I said. “You’ve kept every deal you’ve made with me. But that’s because I’ve kept every deal I’ve made with you. If I’d stabbed you in the back, you would not be trying to save me like this.”

  Cinder didn’t answer.

  “Now, maybe you think I just don’t look as good as she does,” I said. “But you never really struck me as the kind to care that much about looks. And you might be playing some kind of complicated game where she’s a piece on the board, except you never really struck me as that kind of person, either. So we’re back to the same question.”

  Another silence, but this one of a different kind. I could feel the futures shifting and knew that Cinder was going to speak. I waited for him to decide what to say.

  “Every time I used to see you, you’d have some kid around,” Cinder said. “That apprentice of yours, that Council time mage, the Indian kid, that life girl . . . even with that spider, you’d made friends.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lot of Dark mages think that’s dumb,” Cinder said. “They stay cold. No attachments. Travel light, travel fast.” He paused. “But you do that, you got nothing when you get there. People like that . . . they don’t last.”

  I looked at Cinder curiously. “Was that why you bonded Kyle?”

  “Del doesn’t have that,” Cinder said, ignoring me. “Used to. Had that friend, Shireen. Even you, sounded like. Until Drakh. She couldn’t let him go.”

  “He doesn’t care about her,” I said. “I’m not sure he cares about anyone. As far as he’s concerned, at this point, she’s just a failed experiment.”

  Cinder grunted. “Told her that.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “Not well.”

  “So why—?” I paused. “Oh. Out of time.”

  Cinder shifted, straightening, and walked to the centre of the room. I moved to the archway at the far end. The passage beyond led into the laboratories and cells of the mansion’s basement complex. I had plenty of memories of them, few good, but I wouldn’t be going there today.

  Silence. Minutes ticked by. I scanned through futures and learned little—normally my divination gives me some idea of how a conversation is likely to go, but Rachel’s just too unpredictable. I began to channel through my dreamstone, carefully weaving together pieces of a spell that I hoped I wouldn’t need.

  I felt a flash of gate magic from above and knew Rachel had arrived. I’d wondered if she’d hesitate, suspecting something, but as the futures moved it became clear she was coming straight down. “Thirty seconds,” I told Cinder.

  “Great,” Cinder said. “Now keep your mouth shut.”

  Footsteps sounded from the archway. A moment later, sea-green light, dark and flickering, illuminated the steps. Rachel’s feet appeared, then her body, and finally her face. The black domino mask hid her expression, but I saw her eyes flicker past Cinder to me and felt the futures spike as she called up her magic.

  “NO!” Cinder roared. Dark flame billowed with a hungry whoosh. It didn’t strike either of us but it did make us jump. Rachel’s spell faltered and she looked at Cinder in surprise.

  “We are NOT DOING THIS!” With his back turned, I couldn’t see Cinder’s face, but his voice held an intensity I’d never heard from him before. “I do not have TIME for your shit right now. You are going to LISTEN.”

  Rachel drew back slightly. I think she was surprised. I certainly was.

  “This shit with Verus?” Cinder said. “It ends. No more hunting him. He goes his way and so do you.”

  “Why are you on his side?” Rachel snapped. But for now at least, there were no futures of her resuming her attack. Cinder seemed to be holding her by sheer force of personality.

  “How many times have you tried this?” Cinder demanded. “Over and over, and you missed every time! You think the hundredth is going to work?”

  “I have to!” Rachel shouted back.

  “Why?”

  “Because—Richard—”

  “Drakh’s not your master!”

  “Because of him!” Rachel shouted. “He tricked me!”

  “Drakh was using you,” Cinder said. “Every time he got someone new, he put them above you. Wasn’t going to change.”

  “No!” Rachel’s voice cracked. “I’m his Chosen. It—it would have been fine if he hadn’t—”

  Cinder just looked at her.

  “Stop looking at me like that! It’s his fault!”

  “Del,” Cinder said. He didn’t shout this time; he spoke clearly, simply. “Drakh’s not taking you back.”
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br />   “No.” Rachel’s voice wavered. “No, he told me. He told me this was my last chance. If I proved . . .”

  “You’ve served him long enough,” Cinder said. “It’s time to stop.”

  Rachel drew a breath, looked away. Then she turned back, suddenly calmer, and I felt the futures shift. “Maybe,” she said. “But not till I kill him.”

  Uh-oh. I sped up my working through the dreamstone.

  Cinder’s voice was flat. “Not an option.”

  “No, I have to, you see?” Rachel’s voice was suddenly bright, persuasive. “He’s the one who set all this up. You just can’t see it because he’s fooled you too. He does it to everyone, except me. He’s laughing at you right now. Look!”

  “Forget. About. Verus.”

  “You should call him Alex,” Rachel said absently. “I don’t—oh. Wait.” She turned and stared into empty space, her head tilted.

  I felt a chill. Shireen.

  “I thought you couldn’t come when he was around?” Rachel asked. She paused, then nodded. “Oh, that makes sense. But you see, don’t you? He killed Tobruk and he killed you. So I have to kill him. I’m all that’s left.”

  “He didn’t kill Shireen, Del.”

  “Yes, he did.” Rachel sounded as if she were explaining things to a child. “If it hadn’t been for him, she’d be fine.” She paused, frowned. “Well, you would say that.”

  This isn’t working. I finished the shaping through the dreamstone. The gate was almost ready. All it would need was a push.

  “This ends,” Cinder said. “Today. You got two choices. Back up the stairs with me. Or—”

  “Or through that other archway and go after Alex,” Rachel said. “You know, there’s a reason I got bored of you.”

  “Del—”

  “Shh.” Rachel put a finger to her lips. “No more talking.”

  Rachel took a step towards Cinder, then another, smiling to herself. I tensed.

  “We made a promise,” Cinder said quietly. He didn’t move as Rachel closed in.

  Rachel laid her hands on Cinder’s shoulders. She had to reach up to do it. Blue eyes gazed up at Cinder’s face. “I know,” she said. “And I always keep my promises.”