Hourglass (Page 81)

Ever been on a subway? Then you know how it works. You can travel anywhere the train stops. The things you connected to most strongly during your life? Those are the subway stops. You can go wherever those things are.

The gargoyle. How many hours had I spent staring at that thing grimacing outside my bedroom window at Evernight? Apparently I’d imprinted on it strongly enough that I could now travel back to the school whenever I wished. There would be other “subway stops” that I could find. My world had just expanded—if not back to the freedom I’d had when alive, at least a lot farther than this one house.

“The brooch,” I repeated. “Lucas took it with him. You mean—I could go to Lucas, right this second? Would I still have substance? Could he see me?”

Your bracelet wouldn’t go with you. But, hey, the brooch is jet, right? You might be able to use it once you get there.

“Jet is fossilized wood!” I grinned. Jet, too, used to be alive; that meant it was as powerful as the coral.

Vic said, “Please tell me the other half of the conversation is going to make the stuff you just said make sense.”

“Kind of.” I summarized the situation for them as best as I could, with only Maxie’s explanation to draw from. “I’m going to give it a try and see if I can do it. I need to tell Lucas we can still speak to each other—that there’s still some way—”

“Yeah, get out of here,” Vic said. “Lucas needs to see you as soon as possible, I’d guess.”

“How do I do it?” I asked Maxie.

She sounded fainter, like she resented my success too much to hang around much longer. You concentrate on it, really hard—see it in your mind’s eye—and then you ought to get there. Might take you a few tries.

I closed my eyes, determined to get it right away.

In my mind, I heard Maxie add, You can hang around the living all you want. Sooner or later, they’re going to forget you. And you’ll forget them. You’re dead, Bianca. The sooner you face it, the better.

I ignored her.

If there was one thing in the world I could picture perfectly, it was that brooch. The ornate carving—the outline of the strange, sharp-bladed flowers I’d seen in my long-ago dream—the cool weight of it in my hand, the way it fit into my palm—

Darkness.

Startled, I tried to figure out where I was. This wasn’t the terrible enveloping mist, but it wasn’t any place I recognized. No lights shone, save a few bars of red that I recognized as distant exit signs. The ceiling was high—very high—and I floated near it, trying to make out what was happening below.

Beneath me I made out movement—two people struggling. They fell to the ground, limbs in a tangle. Fear pushed me downward, and I managed to get a bit closer. Still, in the darkness, I couldn’t see much besides rows of seats, as though we were in a church. But Balthazar couldn’t possibly be fighting inside a church—

Then I realized the white wall at the far end of the building wasn’t a wall—it was a screen. This was a movie theater of some kind. Like most of the places Charity preferred, it had apparently been long abandoned. Multicolored graffiti decorated the walls, and half the seats had been ripped out.

I looked closer at the people doing battle below me. The figures pushed apart from each other, and I could see them as they faced off. One was Lucas, his T-shirt ripped and a trickle of blood on his hairline. He was breathing hard, and in his hand he held a switchblade—a weapon nearly useless against vampires.

The other half turned, so that I could see her face. Charity.

“You let the ghosts have her,” Charity taunted. Her eyes shone like a cat’s, bright and flat. “Bianca’s body is rotting, her spirit is hostage, and it’s all your fault.”

Lucas shuddered, and I knew she’d cut him to the quick. His voice was deadlier than I’d ever heard it when he said, “You’ll pay for hurting her.”

“Do you even believe what you’re saying?” Charity smiled.

“You don’t want to kill me, boy. You want to die.”

I wanted Lucas to deny it. He didn’t.

Charity laughed. “Don’t worry, Lucas. You’ll be reunited with Bianca soon enough—in your graves.”

“No!” I cried—but I wasn’t in the dark room any longer. I was back in the wine cellar. Vic and Ranulf were staring at me, even more bewildered than before.

“Bianca?” Vic said. “What happened?”

I grabbed his arm. “If we don’t get to Lucas right away, he’ll be killed.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“BALTHAZAR’S EVIL SISTER, CHECK,” VIC SAID AS we ran from the wine cellar toward his car. The streetlight nearby cut through the night to outline his thin shadow against the driveway; I no longer had a shadow. “Lucas and Balthazar at the end of their tether, check. Lots of crazy-ass vampires, check. Have I got the situation here?”

“Pretty much.” I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to explain in more depth. “I don’t know where they are, though.”

Vic grimaced. “Philly’s a big city, Bianca. Can’t you use your subway magic whatever to go back there, maybe describe the place?”

“I’ve been trying,” I snapped. Spectral traveling required concentration, apparently, and I was far too frightened to concentrate. Then it hit me that I did have one more clue to go by, one I’d have thought of earlier if I hadn’t been panicking. “It was a movie theater but one that had been abandoned a long time. Graffiti taggers had hit it hard. Does that sound familiar to you?”