Amelia stood as rigid as stone. The angle of the door cast a deep shadow, and she forced herself to remain still and silent inside it. As Tyree spoke, it took every ounce of her will not to spring from her hiding place and attack him with her bare hands. He killed Jonas. She clenched her fists around handfuls of her skirt at his casual admission and bit down on her anger.
Terror nearly overwhelmed her when Tyree pressed the gun to Andrew’s head. She wanted to close her eyes, wanted to block out what she was about to witness, but she forced herself to keep watching. If they were to have any chance, she had to be prepared.
His threat against her sent a shudder of disgust through her, but she focused on the mention of his associates. There were at least two of them, as they’d thought. And they were young. That detail set her mind racing.
It seemed clear Harcourt wasn’t involved. If she could get up the storage room ladder and onto the roof, she could find him, convince him to help.
But there was no time. Tyree pressed the gun upward. He’d hear her as she went for the ladder, and she didn’t dare do anything to startle him with the gun where it was.
Then, as if he’d heard her thought, Andrew raised his hands and stepped away from Tyree. And away from the gun.
Acting on pure instinct, Amelia stepped forward, pushing the door open a few inches. A hinge creaked. Time stretched. She spent an endless instant watching Tyree’s head turn. His eyes met hers and widened in surprise, then narrowed. The barrel of the gun began to swing toward her.
She darted back into the storage room, raised two hands to the door, and slammed it with a crash. She whirled and dashed for the ladder. As she went, she flung her arms wide, yanking files from the shelves and sending an avalanche of boxes and papers cascading to the floor behind her.
Amelia’s steps stuttered at the gunshot’s crack, but she recovered her stride and flung herself at the ladder. She began to climb, her skirts swirling around her ankles and catching beneath her shoes. One foot—clumsy in the high shoes—slipped off a rung. Her knee slammed into the metal bar, hard enough to make her leg go numb. She caught her fall by the crook of an arm and kept going. She reached the top as she heard the door burst open behind her.
Amelia risked a glance over her shoulder and saw Tyree’s stocky form silhouetted in the doorframe, the gun still in his hand. She turned back and reached up toward the trapdoor with shaking hands, panting with fear, expecting to feel the punch of a bullet between her shoulder blades at any moment. Instead, she heard Tyree kicking his way through the debris on the floor, then a muffled curse. She shoved the door open and lunged upward, pulling herself up until she hung by the waist on the edge of the hole, desperately trying to swing her injured leg over the lip.
A hand brushed against her ankle, and she kicked back with her pointed heel. It connected with something, and Tyree let out a pained grunt as Amelia pulled herself up onto the roof.
The dome rose high and dark to her left, and to her right, out over the river, she could see the edge of the approaching front. The low, boiling clouds flickered with lightning and drew nearer with every heartbeat. Amelia ordered herself to run. Her bruised knee buckled at the first step, but she ignored the pain. If she could get to the other door and get it open, she might be able to get into Harcourt’s apartment. Perhaps she could—
The pistol cocked behind her, the click flat and loud in the humid air.
The breath rushed from her lungs. Too late. She turned, fighting the urge to cower. Tyree came toward her, his gun leveled. Blood dripped from his nose and coated his teeth, which were set in a snarl.
Jonas was already gone. She wondered if Andrew was dead as well, if his shade was even now waiting for her, standing mute and pale beside his corpse. She didn’t think she could bear to see it. But, she thought dully, if she died up here on the roof, she wouldn’t have to. Perhaps she would see them both on the other side. Perhaps she could tell them she was sorry.
Tyree drew nearer, and she forced herself not to shrink away.
“I won’t let you ruin everything,” he said. “Another year, maybe two, and I’ll have enough saved to leave this place behind me.” He raised the pistol and stretched out his arm.
The air around them hummed, and Amelia closed her eyes.
There was a blinding flash through her eyelids, and a roar of sound engulfed her. She flinched, disoriented, expecting the searing pain of the shot.
But no.
She opened her eyes to see Tyree looking up at the dome. Amelia followed his gaze. The metal spire at the top glowed orange, dying sparks falling from it as it cooled. The air crackled, thick with the smell of ozone and warm stone and hot metal. Another jagged bolt of lightning sizzled across the sky as a massive gust of wind staggered them both. The storm had arrived.
Swirls of pale mist twisted through the air around them, moving independently of the wind.
As Tyree began to turn back toward her, the wisps grew, tightened, began to coalesce. Faint outlines formed, and Amelia watched, mesmerized, as first bodies and then faces came into focus. An instant later, she realized with wonder that they were whispering to her.
Ignoring Tyree, she closed her eyes again, listening.
The wind faded. The gun, the storm—it was all distant, irrelevant. The voices were all that mattered. Young and old. Tentative and resolute. Fury and sadness and desperation, eagerness and indignation. The spirits pressed in on her—far, far more than the ones they’d found in the records. No, this had been growing, waiting—waiting for her—for years. They danced over her skin, a feathery caress. A yearning.
She opened her eyes to the yawning barrel of the gun, pointed at her head. Tyree, though, must have seen something in her face, because even as his finger began to tighten on the trigger, he looked unsure.
Yes, she thought, take me. The world shifted as the presences around her went still, then flared into sharp relief, silvery against the dark.
Amelia flung her head back and breathed them in.
Her whole body seized with an ecstatic rush. She sobbed with the force of it, staggering. Her chest thrummed. Tiny sparks jumped from her fingertips. She could feel the women, dozens of them, moving beneath her skin.
And all of them wanted only one thing.
She looked at Tyree, and his eyes narrowed.
“What are you—” He got no further.
She thrust out her hands, and with a hollow, moaning roar, the horde flung itself from her body and roiled toward him like an avalanche. Amelia fell to her knees as they left her.
Perhaps he saw their faces. Certainly he saw something, for as they came for him, his own expression was one of terror. They hit him with devastating force, hurling him backward, his arms thrown wide. The gun cracked, the bullet sizzling into the sky. Tyree tumbled over the low parapet and fell, screaming, three stories to the stone courtyard. By the time Amelia regained her feet and stumbled to the edge, fat drops of rain were splashing into the rivulets of blood leaking across the flagstones below.