Cursed (29 page)

I stayed silent, walking by Luna’s side; I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was crying. I felt pure hatred towards Martin. I try to give newbies to the magical world a chance, I really do. But Martin had crossed the line.

“There’s something else,” I said at last. “I know it’s not a good time but it’s got to be done.”

Luna wiped her eyes, her voice muffled. “What?”

“I’m going to get you out of there,” I said. “One way or another. But once that’s done … we’re going to have to decide if you’ll stay.”

Luna looked up, confused. “I’ve been treating you like a half apprentice,” I said. “I’ve been teaching you but without everything else that goes with it, and it’s not working. I realised that yesterday. Belthas was able to get to Arachne through you and I got captured trying to find you. By going with Martin you put all three of us in danger.”

“But—” Luna looked stricken. “I didn’t—”

I shook my head. “I’m not blaming you for what Belthas and Martin did. But you should have listened when I warned you off. I nearly got killed trying to get you out of there and I can’t keep doing that. If I do, sooner or later I’ll end up dead, and probably you will too.”

Luna and I walked for a little while in silence. “So what am I supposed to do?” Luna said at last.

“You’ve got a choice,” I said. “We can stop the training. No more work, no more late-night outings. We can still be friends. Go on as before.”

“Or?”

“Or you become my apprentice—this time for real. I’ll teach you what I know, introduce you to my contacts, bring you into mage society. The Light mages have a teaching structure. You’ll have classes and tests. You’ll meet other apprentices. But there’s a price. I’ll be your master—not
your friend. If I tell you to do something, you’ll do it. And I won’t be the only one. You’ll be under the authority of every other Light mage you meet. You won’t get second chances either. Disobey me and you’re out. And you won’t be able to come back.”

Luna stared at me, then opened her mouth to speak. I held up a finger. “Don’t answer yet. Once we’re out of this, take some time and think about it. Right now, we’ve got other things to worry about.”

Luna kept her eyes on me, searching my face as if looking for something, then finally nodded. “Okay.”

“Good.” I stopped. “I think we’re here.”

We’d reached a hallway lined with doors. Shafts of light fell through from small windows high above but the shadows between them were dark and cold. The door Luna had led us to looked no different from the others, yet somehow I felt reluctant to touch it. It was made of black crystal, almost translucent enough to see through but not quite. The whispers had stopped.

As I stood looking at the door I caught the flicker of movement again and snapped my head around. This time I was sure I saw something: a flash of white vanishing back into the hall from which we’d entered. The hallway was silent. I kept my eyes on the entrance but nothing moved.

“Alex?” Luna asked.

I hesitated for a second. Luna might know what it was but this landscape was shaped by thought. Drawing her attention to our pursuer could be a very bad idea. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Do it.”

Luna reached for the door, paused for a second, then put her hand to it. It opened at a touch, the doors swinging silently back.

Beyond was swirling darkness, exactly like a cloud of smoke with every bit of light drained out of it. Tendrils of shadow drifted towards us and Luna stepped back hurriedly.

“Um,” Luna said after we’d both stared into the blackness for a few seconds. “What is that?”

“I have no idea,” I said honestly.

“I thought this was supposed to be Deleo’s dreams?”

“Maybe it is,” I said. Something about that darkness scared me. I had the creepy feeling it was just waiting for us to get within reach. I took another step back.

We stared a bit longer. “Do we go in?” Luna said eventually.

“God no.”

We stood there. “Well, we have to do something,” Luna said.

“I’m thinking,” I said. I didn’t know if it was my imagination, but it felt as though the cloud of darkness were edging towards us.

Then a voice spoke from the darkness, focused and cold. “What are you doing here?” A second later, its owner stepped into view—and she wasn’t alone.

Rachel is average height, with bright blue eyes. When I first knew her she was good-looking, even cute. She’s changed a lot since then. It’s rare now to see her with her mask off and when I do her face makes me think of sculpted ice, beautiful and cold. The darkness shrank from her, curling about her feet.

Standing on Rachel’s right was a girl with dark-red hair. She was smaller and younger than Rachel and felt far more alive, full of vitality and movement. She’d been dead for ten years, but in Elsewhere that doesn’t make as much difference as you’d think. She wasn’t looking at Rachel and Rachel wasn’t looking at her, but they seemed aware of each other somehow, as if they knew exactly where the other was without needing to see.

And on Rachel’s left was something that wasn’t human at all, faceless and eyeless, made of living shadow. Its body blended with the darkness around, making it almost impossible to pick out its shape, but I had the vague impression of
something tall and slender, unnaturally still. Even twenty feet away, I could feel the cold radiating from it.

But it was the redheaded girl who held my attention. “Shireen,” I said quietly.

Shireen gave me a wave. “Hey, Alex! Long time no see.”

“Shut up,” Rachel said in irritation. “You know why he’s here.”

“We
don’t
know why he’s here,” Shireen pointed out reasonably.

Rachel snarled. “Belthas couldn’t get what he wanted while we were awake. Now he’s trying dreams.”

“You know that’s not how this place works. Just because he’s here doesn’t mean he’s there.”

“Um,” I said.

“You think we should give up?” Rachel said. “Tell him what we know?”

“I didn’t say that,” Shireen said mildly.

“That’s what it means!”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You know he’s probably already got all he needs,” Shireen said. “Otherwise he would have been back by now.”

“Maybe he
wouldn’t
have what he needs if
you
didn’t—”

“HEY!”
I shouted.

Shireen and Rachel turned to me in faint surprise as if they’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, right,” Shireen said. “Sorry.”

Luna was looking between Shireen and Rachel with the expression of someone who’s reconsidering whether this was a good idea. I was just as confused as she was but didn’t let myself show it. Why was Shireen in Rachel’s dreams? I mean, I knew why she could be in her
dreams
, but—I shook it off. This wasn’t the time. “Rachel—”

“That’s not my name.”

I sighed inwardly. “Deleo. I need to know where you are.”

Rachel looked at me. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

I looked back at her.

“You’re working for Belthas,” Rachel said coldly. “Go ask him.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not working for Belthas anymore.”

“Good.” Rachel took a step back.

“Wait!” I called. “Look, Rachel, I’m trying to help you. If I was working for Belthas, why would I need to know where you are? I’d just ask him!”

Shireen cocked her head at Rachel. She’d kept pace with Rachel, and the darkness was starting to shroud the two of them again. “He’s got a point.”

“Shut up,” Rachel said. “He led them to us! It’s a trick!”

“I hate to point this out,” Shireen said, “but we’re not really in a position to turn down help.”

Rachel hesitated, then looked to her left at the shadow and her face hardened. “No.”

I knew Rachel was about to step back into the darkness, and once she was in there, she wouldn’t come out. “Cinder’s with me.”

Luna looked at me. Rachel paused. “What?”

“We made a deal,” I said. “I’m going there for Luna, he’s going there for you, and we’ve both got a score to settle with Belthas. He’s with me back in the real world. We’re coming but we need to know where Belthas is.”

Rachel hesitated. “Look, what have you got to lose?” I said. “If I’m working for Belthas, it doesn’t make any difference to you if I know where his base is. But if I’m telling the truth, this is the best chance you’ll get of letting Cinder find you.”

I could see Rachel thinking about it. Shireen waited, silent; maybe she knew trying to push Rachel now wouldn’t help. The shadow didn’t move but I could feel it watching me.

“Scotland,” Rachel said at last. “Northern Highlands.”

“You saw it?”

“I know it. An old manor on the Black Craeg mountain.”

“Does Cinder know where it is?”

“You’ve got the name.”

“Anything else?”

“How would I know? It’s a manor. It’s got cells. Belthas is there and so are his soldiers.”

I nodded. “All right. We’ll be there soon.”

“Then
if
you’re telling the truth,” Rachel said, “you might want to hurry up. Belthas has started the ritual. Once it’s done he won’t need me
or
your precious little apprentice.”

I felt Luna flinch but didn’t look at her. “Can you help us find a way out?”

Rachel laughed. “In your dreams.”

“We die, you die.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m going with you. You found a way in. You find the way out.” She glanced from me to Luna. “Don’t come back.” Rachel stepped back; the darkness flowed over her and she was gone. Shireen had time for a quick wave before she vanished too. Silently and smoothly, the black crystal door swung closed, shutting with a click. The last wisps of darkness faded and we were alone.

“Well,” I said after a moment. “That went about as well as could be expected.”

“You’re working with Cinder?” Luna asked.

“For now … We got what we came for. Time to go.”

Luna looked around at the doorways. “So where … ?”

I looked down at her, eyebrows raised. Luna sighed. “I get it, I get it. Up to me, right?”

Luna thought for a minute, then crossed the hall, heading for one of the doors. “But word of warning,” I said. “Finding someone’s dreams in Elsewhere isn’t hard. Leaving is.”

The door Luna had picked was blue crystal. It opened at a touch to reveal a rounded corridor lit with a pale light. I waited for Luna to step in, then shut the door behind us, taking a quick look around before I did. “You know, if there’s anything else you know about this place,” Luna said as I caught her up, “now might be a good time to tell me.”

“I don’t know how Elsewhere works,” I said. “Nobody
does. There are books about it but they’re not much more than guesses.”

“You’ve been here before, right?” Luna said. “How did you get out?”

I shrugged. “Instinct? Luck? I don’t know. There are a few rules that work for me but I don’t know if they’ll work for you.”

“I think I need all the help I can get.”

“All right,” I said. “Don’t stray off the path. Don’t strike the first blow. And always look before you leap.”

Luna looked at me. “That’s not really all that specific.”

“Sorry.”

We walked for a little while. The corridor was growing lighter and there were slit windows appearing in the side alcoves, bright light streaming through them. “Maybe there’s one more thing,” I said. “I read a few chapters once out of a much longer book about Elsewhere. The author spent years studying it, getting stories from people who’d been there, and he never found a constant. In the end he decided Elsewhere was shaped by the traveller: What you found there would always link back to you. He found something else as well. How much power a mage had didn’t seem to have anything to do with how well he did in Elsewhere. The ones who did best were the ones with the most … self-awareness, I guess. The ones most comfortable with who they were.”

“Oh,” Luna said. She thought about it briefly. “What happens if you …
don’t
do well in Elsewhere?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Why?”

“Because they never wake up.”

Luna fell silent. We kept walking.

“Who was she?” Luna asked.

I knew who she meant. “Shireen.”

“You know her?”

“Yes.”

“And … she was in Deleo’s dreams, right?”

I didn’t answer.

“Is that supposed to happen?”

“No.”

“You … knew her from before?”

“Luna, I don’t want to talk about this,” I said. “Not now. Focus on getting us out of here.”

Luna looked like she was about to argue, but she didn’t. It didn’t help me get the same thing out of my head. Why had Shireen been there and what had that shadow been?

The corridor ended in another door. Luna opened it without asking—

And we stepped into a city street. Semidetached houses, yellow brick with hedges and front gardens, formed a line in front of us with hatchbacks and sedans parked by the side of the road. Instead of the unnatural silence of Elsewhere or the whispers of before, I could hear the familiar low buzz of city traffic, though the street itself was still. The sky overhead was still cloudy but lighter, the sun glowing through the white canopy. I looked back to see more houses behind us. The door had vanished.

Looking around, I realised that the city felt like London. It’s hard to say exactly what it was—it’s not as though city houses look all that different—but I’ve lived all my life in London and something about the bricks and the trees made me think of a London suburb, though not one I’d ever been to. “Huh.”

Luna didn’t respond. I looked to see her staring at the house in front of us. It was three storeys high and had a red door with the number 17 on the front. The front yard had a privet hedge and two pot plants.

A flicker of movement made me glance up sharply. “Luna.”

Luna started and seemed to come awake. “There’s something here,” I said quietly. I couldn’t see what it was but my instincts were telling me we were being watched.

Luna shrank back against me, staring at the door as though it were going to bite her. I stood tense, trying to watch every direction. I was starting to think that the creature following me
wanted
us to know it was there. The glances I was getting were too deliberate, the disappearances too quick. But this time I couldn’t see a thing.