Ellis pulled Jenny with her back against the bookshelves, her eyes searching desperately about the library. It had grown suddenly darker, shadows filling the upper reaches of the stacks along the octagonal perimeter of the room and extending up into the dome overhead, blocking out all light from above. The Shades shifted, thick and palpable overhead in the vague shapes of long-limbed creatures with talons for fingers and embers for eyes.
Yet it was Mrs. Crow that Ellis found the most terrifying of all. The glint in the elderly woman’s eyes had turned decidedly wicked. The curl playing at the edge of her narrow smile reminded her of a little girl she once knew who took pleasure in tearing the wings off of butterflies. And more than all of that was one observation that truly chilled her to the bone.
Merrick was sweating.
He feared Mrs. Crow.
As, apparently, did both Margaret and Alicia. Margaret stood to one side of the room, her back pressed against one of the bookcases, trying hard not to be noticed. Alicia stood just slightly behind Merrick, peering around his jacket back at Ellis and Jenny.
Dr. Carmichael lay in his devilish form, his boney arms raised protectively in front of his face as he cowered against the polished stone floor in front of Ellis.
Jonas was nowhere in sight.
“I am most grateful to you, your ladyship,” Mrs. Crow said. She took deliberate, calculated steps across the floor, the hard soles of her shoes clacking against the stone with each step. “Even I, a person of great faith, began to doubt that I would ever manage success in this place.”
“Faith?” Ellis drew in a breath. “What kind of church professes your faith?”
“Surely someone of your upbringing and high station in life knows that faith has nothing to do with a church,” Mrs. Crow sneered. “One can have faith in order and punishment. One can have faith in cloaking darkness. One can certainly—oh most certainly—have faith in vengeance.”
“So you found us,” Ellis replied.
“Thanks in no small part to Alicia’s help,” Mrs. Crow said with a nod toward the girl cowering at Merrick’s back. “To your credit, Lady Ellis, the price of her betrayal was a good deal steeper than the traditional—what do you call it—thirty pieces of silver, but nevertheless a bargain.”
Ellis shot an accusing glance at Alicia, then glared at the malevolent housekeeper. “I suppose this means you’ve won the Day.”
Mrs. Crow stopped and chuckled.
“You find me amusing?” Ellis demanded as she struggled to remain calm.
“Oh, I couldn’t care less about the Day.” Mrs. Crow shrugged with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“Then why look for us at all?”
“You?” Mrs. Crow chortled. “I wasn’t looking for you at all!”
Her gaze fell on the red-brick form of Dr. Carmichael, whimpering on the floor.
“Him?”
“Oh, yes, him: Dr. Lucian Carmichael.” Mrs. Crow spat the name through clenched teeth. “You had a service to perform, didn’t you, Lucian? A calling from the Prince in Exile to garner more souls to his rightful cause. You came here at his bidding because he believed in you. And how did you repay that trust?”
“No,” Carmichael pleaded, his cloven hooves scraping against the floor as he tried to push himself away. “You don’t understand what it’s like here … what I’ve had to do!”
“Oh, I believe I understand perfectly,” Mrs. Crow continued, baring her teeth. “You saw the pretty shadows of mortality, the children playing at life. You got a taste for, if you’ll pardon the expression, well, the idea of taste … and smell and sight and touch. You found it easy to forget why you had come here, what was expected of you by the Prince in Exile and your duty. You were meant to be a powerful seduction for our cause, and what did you become? A demon with a daiquiri? Beelzebub in a boater hat?”
Ellis noticed the Shades lurking around the edge of the dome began slowly to descend. The air became palpably colder as they approached.
She pushed Jenny gently behind her, glancing about the room. The exit was on the opposite side from where they stood. Margaret stood pressed against the bookcase to one side. Alicia, Merrick, Mrs. Crow and all the Shades were between her and the door.
“There’s got to be another way out,” Ellis muttered to herself. “Think! Think of another way out!”
“Please, don’t make me go back. Not now,” Carmichael begged. The horns of his head were nearly at Ellis’s feet. “I … I’ve seen too much. Learned too much! Just leave me behind, say you never found me. It’s for your own sake, you know. I’d be a terrible, infecting presence in the Prince’s realm!”
“No, I don’t think so.” Mrs. Crow stood over him, the Shades closing in around them. Ellis could feel not just cold but the complete absence of warmth. “In fact, I don’t think you’ll be anything at all.”
Ellis tried to draw in a breath.
In an instant, the glass of the overhead dome shattered to dust with a crash.
The Shades’ screams pierced Ellis, running through her head with painful intensity.
Light exploded into the library from above. Ellis was momentarily blinded by its intensity. The rush of flapping wings filled the air. Ellis instinctively raised her arms in front of her face, hoping it would shield her against whatever new horror was raining down around her. She turned, pressing against Jenny, trying to shield her as well.
“Ellis!”
Jonas. Jonas’s voice.
She turned and opened her eyes. Jonas was rushing toward her around the edge of the library floor. He was just passing Margaret as Ellis looked up.
The air was still glittering with the glass particles whirling about the rotunda, driven into the air by the flapping of enormous wings of brilliant white.
“Angels,” Ellis breathed. “My angels.”
The bright, winged forms of beauty swung, bounded and soared about the rotunda, their brilliance muted and shuttered by the figures of the Shades that were devoid of light. They pursued each other about the open space, light crashing into darkness and darkness tearing at the light in turn. Each fought desperately to contain the other, bind it against its will and prevent its dominance in the room. One of the Shades was successfully bound only to be released by another.
Beneath the raging battle overhead, Mrs. Crow uttered an anguished, angry cry. Leathery wings erupted from her back, tearing the cloth of the dress as they unfolded. Her plump, rosy cheeks grew sunken and sallow. The white hair of her head tore loose from its restraint, writhing about her head in snaky tendrils. The fingers of her hands elongated into talons as she turned again to face Carmichael.
“Now!” Jonas shouted, pulling at Ellis’s arm. “Come on!”
Ellis grasped Jenny’s thin arm in turn, following Jonas’s lead around the edge of the room. Margaret watched them from the opposite side, her gaze untroubled and somehow knowing. Ellis did not pause, but continued around the library rotunda, the door now only a few steps away.
Merrick shoved Alicia to the side as he stepped back into the doorway, rage quivering his body as he suddenly blocked their way.
“NO!” he shouted.
The angels and the Shades suddenly slowed in their flight, coming to a stop in midair. Ellis’s Soldiers were still bright with light but she could see now that they still wore the uniforms she had pictured them in when she had encountered them in the hospital. Their beautiful, feathered wings of white were outstretched as they hung suspended in the air. So, too, it was with the Shades, parts of whom she could now see more clearly than she had before. The hands were identical to the transformed Mrs. Crow—long with talons—and each head was covered in a distinctive cowl trimmed in intricate ornamentation. Though the faces remained uncomfortably out of focus the eyes were shining pinpricks of blackness visible only when they looked directly at the observer. The particles of glass were suspended in the air, glinting at Ellis as she haltingly stopped. Even Mrs. Crow’s gargoyle form and the demonically transformed Dr. Carmichael were fixed as though time no longer moved forward.
“You!” Merrick shouted, his hand extended toward Jonas.
Jonas took a step back in surprise and confusion. “How? How are you doing this?”
“This is MY Day, Jonas!” Merrick screamed as he stepped purposefully forward.
Jonas stumbled backward, pushing Ellis and Jenny against the bookshelves lining the wall. “But you are forbidden from interfering with the Soldiers or the Shades when they—”
Merrick’s hand shot out to Jonas’s neck. It clamped around his throat, choking off the soldier’s voice mid-sentence.
“How dare you bring war into my house!” Merrick raged. He lifted Jonas up from the ground with one arm, his grip tight on the man’s larynx. “I, who have done so much for these souls, who led them to a place of safety … a refuge from your idealistic squabbling and conflict … will I permit one heartsick trespasser to bring the war to ME and MY PEOPLE?”
“No, Merrick,” Jenny pleaded. “Stop!”
“I haven’t yet gotten started!” Merrick railed.
He tossed Jonas through the air as though he were a doll. The young soldier flew toward the center of the library. He held his arms across his face only moments before he dove head-first into the suspended glass particles in the room. Jonas screamed in agony. The glass particles gave way reluctantly, each one raking across his skin, scouring it raw. By the time Jonas slammed against the opposite wall of books, the backs of his hands were bleeding.
Ellis watched as Merrick rounded the outer perimeter of the rotunda, stalking Jonas where he lay. She glanced toward the door, contemplating how she might slip past Merrick, desperate to somehow find help.
The doorway was gone. A bookshelf stood in its place. The exit had vanished. There was no way out.
“Even the Tween has rules you must obey,” Jonas choked out between his coughs. He struggled to get his feet back under him. “You cannot stop the Soldiers or the Shades!”
“Oh, I haven’t stopped them,” Merrick sneered. “I’ve slowed them down is all; slow enough so that everything that happens here will take place between breaths. Time enough for me to banish you to the Umbra!”
“You cannot do it,” Jonas said, even as Merrick gathered up the front of his uniform in his hands and dragged him up off of the stained marble floor. “You have no such power over the angels or the demons in the Tween.”
“Oh, that’s quite true,” Merrick said. “But, then, those rules don’t actually apply to you, do they?”
Jonas’s eyes went wide.
“Leave him alone, Merrick,” Ellis demanded.
“But your guide and rescuer has a little secret, Ellis,” Merrick continued as he picked Jonas up bodily from the floor by the tunic. “You see, the rules don’t actually apply to him. Can you guess why?”
“Because.” Ellis drew in her own quick breath. “Because he isn’t really that kind of Soldier, is he?”
“He’s a sneak and a thief.” Merrick nodded. “He waited by the Gate until he saw his chance and then he stole you from me. Then, when you returned, he couldn’t just wait by the Gate again. Oh, no. He had to find a way in—any way in—so that he could steal you like the thief he is all over again.”
A glint of light from one of the glass particles suspended in the air flashed in Ellis’s eye … then a second and a third.
“This time I’m sending you to a place from which you can never return,” Merrick snarled.
Overhead, a deep sound resonated through the rotunda. Ellis looked up and saw the Umbra.
At its edges it appeared to be a spinning vortex of purple light upon which it was impossible to focus. In its center it was a chilling absence of existence. It was not just black, for black is something, but rather a totality of not being: a space devoid of not just the senses but of time or experience. Its contemplation alone was terrifying.
“No one escapes the Umbra until I say they can be released,” Merrick sneered. “And I’ll never permit you to leave.”
“So long as it is your Day,” Alicia corrected.
More of the glass particles flashed in the lamplight of the room. Suddenly, the stone tiles beneath Merrick cracked. Tendrils of vines erupted from beneath Merrick, reaching up with astonishing swiftness, entwining his legs.
“What is this?” Merrick demanded, looking at Ellis. “What have you done?”
The vines continued to grow out from between the shattered tiles, thickening around his legs and reaching up his body toward his arms, still holding Jonas suspended in the air.
“You cannot stop me, Ellis,” Merrick shouted.
“But I’m not!” Ellis cried out. “It’s not me!”
“She’s right, Merrick,” Alicia said with deadly calm as she stepped around the vines weaving tightly around Merrick. “My help for winning the Day. That was the bargain Mrs. Crow offered me on your behalf. You get Ellis and Jenny, the housekeeper takes Dr. Carmichael away as a trophy to her master and I get to rule the Day. Not even you can break such a bargain, Merrick! It’s a founding rule of the Tween; a rule that cannot be broken without sundering the Tween—your precious pretense of existence—with it.”
“Alicia,” Ellis said with caution in her voice. She could see that Jonas was still struggling against Merrick’s grip but was quickly weakening. “Keep the Day. Just let us go.”
“Let you go?” Alicia laughed, a maniacal edge in the sound. “Oh, no, my dear Ellis. After all the Games you made me play? After an eternity of doing what you wanted to do? This is my Day.”
“You fool!” Merrick said. “I never made such a bargain!”
“You did!” Alicia shot back. “Mrs. Crow said—”
“Mrs. Crow?” Merrick scoffed. “She lied!”
Alicia’s form grew transparent. Ellis could see particles of her drifting upward, dustlike pieces of her falling upward toward the Umbra overhead.
“No!” Alicia cried as her body dissolved upward into the nothing. “It’s my Day! I’m the one! It’s me!”
Her last words as she dissolved were still echoing in the hall when another voice spoke.
“No, it’s me,” said Margaret. The forgotten servant was stepping into the center of the floor as the vines also reached outward, wrapping around the pillars at the perimeter of the room and upward into the dome. The vines began to spring into blossoms, rare and beautiful. “It’s me!”
She was carrying a Book.
It was the Book of her Day.