“I do not require your word. I have your last living relatives. Being of such finite duration, humans care deeply about such things. Alina told me her parents died in a car wreck when she was fifteen. Yet another lie. Makes one wonder, does it not? I would never have thought to look for them had you not led me here. ”
How had I led him here? How had he followed me to Ashford? Could he track V’lane? Was V’lane duplicitous? Working with the Lord Master? “They’re not my relatives,” I said coolly. “My relatives are dead. When you killed Alina, you wiped out the last of my line, except for me. ” I was hoping to make my parents’ value seem a little less than it really was. It always worked in the movies. “We were adopted. ”
I snatched a quick look at my mom, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Great. She disapproved of everything about me, and now I’d hurt her feelings. I was batting a thousand.
The Lord Master didn’t say a word. Just walked over to my dad and slammed him in the face with his fist. My daddy’s head snapped back and blood spurted from his nose. He gave a dazed shake, and his eyes said, Get out of here, baby.
“All right!” I shouted. “I lied! Leave him alone!”
The Lord Master turned back to me. “Mortality is the consummate weakness. It shapes your entire existence. Your every breath. Is it any wonder the Fae have always been gods to your kind?”
“Never to me. ”
“Drop your weapons. ”
I let my automatic slip to the ground, yanked the pistol from the back of my pants, dropped the switchblade from the cuff of my jacket, and extracted a knife from each boot.
“The spear. ”
I stared. If I tried to throw the spear the forty feet that separated us, what good would it do? Even if I hit him dead in the heart, he was part human and wouldn’t die right away. I had no doubt at least one of my parents would be dead seconds after I’d thrown it, if not both.
Stall, Barrons had said.
I pulled the spear from my holster and slid it from beneath my coat. The moment I uncovered it, it crackled and sparked, shooting jagged white charges into the air. Alabaster, it blazed with almost blinding luminosity, as if drawing power from the Fae realm around it.
I couldn’t make my hand let go of it. My fingers wouldn’t unclench.
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“Drop it now. ” He turned toward my mother and drew back his fist.
I snarled as I flung the spear away from me. It lodged in the wall of the sleek pink tunnel. The fleshy canal shuddered, as if with pain. “Leave. Her. Alone,” I gritted.
“Kick away the weapons and show me the stones. ”
“Seriously, Barrons said not to. ”
“Now. ”
Sighing, I withdrew the stones from the pouch and peeled back the velvet cloth they were wrapped in.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent: The tunnel spasmed, moaning deep in its wet walls, and the floor shuddered beneath me. The stones blazed with blue-black light. The walls contracted and expanded, as if laboring to expel me, and suddenly I was blinded by baleful light, deaf to all but the rushing of wind and water. I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare. There was nothing to hold on to. I clutched the stones, trying to cover them, and nearly lost the velvet cloth to the gale. My backpack banged against my shins and was torn from my grasp.
I howled into the wind, calling for my parents, for Barrons—hell, even for the Lord Master! I felt like I was being ripped in ten different directions. My coat was being torn from my shoulders, rippling in the hard breeze. I struggled to shove the stones back into the pouch.
Abruptly, all was still.
“I told you,” I growled, keeping my eyes closed, waiting for the retinal burn to fade, “Barrons advised against it. But did you listen? No. ” There was no answer. “Hello?” I said warily. Still no answer.
I opened my eyes.
Gone was the pink membranous canal.
I stood in a hall of purest gold.
Gold walls, gold floors—I tipped my head back—gold that stretched up as far as I could see. If there was a ceiling, it was beyond my vision. Soaring, towering golden walls to nowhere.
I was alone.
No Lord Master. No guards. No parents.
I looked down, hoping to find my gun, knives, and backpack.
There was nothing but smooth, endless gold floor.
I glanced at the walls, searching frantically for my spear.
There was no glint of alabaster to be found.
In fact, I realized, as I turned in a slow circle, there was nothing on those gold walls at all except hundreds, no, thousands, no—I stared; they went all the way up, vanishing beyond my vision—billions of mirrors.
Trying to absorb it, I tasted infinity. I was a minuscule dot on a linear depiction of time that stretched endlessly in both directions, rendering me of utter and absolute inconsequence.
“Oh, shit, shit, shit. ”
I knew where I was.
The Hall of All Days.
I have no idea how long I sat.
Time, in this place, would become an impossible thing for me to gauge.
I sat in the middle of the Hall of All Days—knees tucked up, staring down at the golden floor because looking around made me feel small and vertiginous—trying to take stock of my situation.
Problem: Somewhere out there in the real world, in my living room, in Ashford, Georgia, the Lord Master still had my parents.
I imagined he was seriously pissed off.
It wasn’t my fault. He was the one who’d insisted I show him the stones. I’d cautioned against it. But fault was as irrelevant as my presence in this vast, indifferent place of all days.
He still had my parents. That was relevant.
Hopefully, Barrons was even now speeding his way to them through the reconfigured Silver in his study, and hopefully his comrades were storming in through the mirror at 1247 LaRuhe, and hopefully that slippery pink tunnel that had too closely resembled a portion of the female anatomy for my comfort was still intact and I had merely been expelled by its labor pains, and hopefully within moments my parents would be safe.
That was four too many “hopefullys” for my taste.
It didn’t matter. I’d been effectively neutralized. Plucked from the number set and tossed into the quantum hall of variables, none of which computed into the only equation I understood and cared about.
There were billions of mirrors around me. Billions of portals. And I had a tough time choosing between fifteen shades of pink.
After a while, I checked my watch. It was stuck at 1:14 P. M.
I slipped off my coat and began to strip, tucking the pouch containing the stones in my waistband. The Hall was too warm for the layers I was wearing. I removed my sweater and long-sleeved knit jersey, and tied them around my waist, then put my coat back on.
I performed an inventory of items on my person.
One knife—an antique Scottish dirk—that the LM hadn’t known about, pilfered from the Baubles portion of Barrons Books and strapped to my left forearm.
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One baby-food jar full of wriggling Unseelie flesh in my left coat pocket.
Two protein bars tucked into an inner coat pocket, squished.
One MacHalo, still strapped beneath my chin.
One cell phone.
I took inventory of what I didn’t have.
No batteries or flashlights.
No water.
No spear.
I stopped there. That was bad enough.
I pulled my cell phone from my back pocket and punched up Barrons’ number. I’ve become so accustomed to his invincibility that I expected it to ring, and when it didn’t, I was flabbergasted. Apparently even his cell service had dead spots, and if it wasn’t going to work somewhere, I could understand it not
working here. Even if I’d had V’lane’s name, I doubted it would have worked in this place.
My own mind nearly didn’t work here. The longer I sat, the odder I began to feel.
The Hall wasn’t merely the confluence of infinite doorways to alternate places and times. The many portals made the Hall live and breathe, ebb and flow. The Hall was time. It was ancient and young, past and present and future, all in one.
BB&B exuded a sense of spatial distortion from harboring a single Silver in Barrons’ study.
These billions of mirrors opening onto the same hall created an exponentially compounded effect, both spatially and temporally. Time here wasn’t linear, it was … My mind couldn’t focus on it, but I was part of it, and I didn’t get that at all. I didn’t matter. I was essential. I was a child. I was a withered old woman. I was death. I was the source of all creation. I was the Hall and the Hall was me. A tiny bit of me seemed to bleed into every doorway.
Duality didn’t begin to describe it. Like this place itself, I was all possibles. It was the most terrifying feeling I’d ever felt.
I tried IYCGM.
No service.
I stared at IYD for a long time.
Ryodan had said he’d kill me if I used it when I didn’t need it.
My first thought was, I’d like to see him get here and try. My second thought was that I wouldn’t, because then he’d be here, too, and he really might kill me.
I couldn’t begin to present a convincing argument that I was dying. I might not like my current situation, but there was no arguing that I was in perfect health, with no apparent threat to my life in the immediate vicinity. Although I seemed to be growing more … confused by the moment.
Memories from my childhood had begun to stir in my mind, seeming too vivid and tantalizing for mere memories.
I skipped lightly over them, found one I liked.
My tenth birthday: Mom and Dad had thrown a surprise party for me.
The moment I chose to focus on it, it swelled with dramatic appeal, and there were my friends, laughing and holding presents, real, so real, waiting for me to join them in the dining room, where they were having cake and ice cream. I saw it all happening, right there in the molten gold of the floor I was staring down at. I traced my fingers over the vision. The gold rippled in the wake of my fingertips, and I was touching our dining room table, about to sink into it, slip inside my ten-year-old body in the chair, laughing at something Alina said.
Alina was dead. This was not now. This was not real.
I jerked my gaze away.
In the air in front of me, a new memory took shape: my first shopping trip to Atlanta with my aunts. It had left a serious impression on me. We were in Bloomingdale’s. I was eleven. I wandered, staring up at all the pretty things, no longer seeing the gold walls and mirrors.
I closed my eyes, stood, and shoved the cell phone into my back pocket.
I had to get out of this place. It was messing with my mind.
But where?
I opened my eyes and began moving. The moment I did, the memories vanished from the air around me and my mind was clear again.
A thought occurred to me. Frowning, I walked a few yards and stopped.
The memories resumed.
My daddy was cheering at my first ever—and last—softball game. He’d bought me a pink mitt with magenta stitching. My mom had embroidered my name and flowers on it. The boys were laughing at me and my mitt. I ran to catch a ground ball to prove to them how tough I was. It popped up and slammed me in the face, bloodying my nose and chipping a tooth.
I winced.
They laughed harder, pointing.
I manipulated the memory, fast-rewound, caught the ball perfectly threw out the runner at home plate, and got it there in plenty of time for the catcher to take out the runner at third.
The boys were awed by my ball-playing prowess.
My daddy puffed with pride.
It was a lie, but an oh-so-sweet one.
I began walking again.
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The memory exploded into pink-mitt dust and sprinkled the floor.
Stopping in the Hall was dangerous, perhaps even deadly.
My suspicion was confirmed a short time later when I passed a skeleton sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against the gold wall between mirrors. Its posture evidenced no signs of struggle, gave no hint of agony in death. The face of the skull had—inasmuch as a skull could—a peaceful look to its bones. Had it starved to death? Or had it lived a hundred years, lost in dreams? I felt no hunger pangs, and should have, considering all I’d had since yesterday afternoon was coffee, hours ago. Did one even need to eat here, where time wasn’t what one expected at all?
I began glancing into the mirrors as I passed.
Some of the things in the mirrors glanced back, looking startled and confused. It seemed some of them could see me as clearly as I could see them.
I was going to have to make a choice, and sooner was probably wiser than later. I was beginning to think gold was the most peaceful, right, perfect color I’d ever seen. And the floor—so inviting! Warm, smooth, I could stretch out and rest my eyes a bit … gather my strength for what was certain to be an arduous journey.
First danger of the Hall of All Days: When you can live any day over again in your mind—and live it right—why leave at all? I could save my sister here. Save the world. Never know the difference after a while.
Second danger of the Hall of All Days: When anything is possible, how do you choose?
There were tropical vistas of white beaches that stretched for miles, with aqua waves so clear that coral reefs of rainbow hues shimmered through, glinting in the sun, and tiny silver fish leaped and played in the swells.
There were streets of fabulous mansions. Deserts and vast plains. There were ancient reptilian beasts in verdant valleys and postapocalyptic cities. There were underwater worlds and Silvers that opened directly onto open space, black and deep, glittering with stars. There were doorways to nebulae and even one that led straight to the event horizon of a black hole. I tried to fathom the mind that would want to go there. An immortal that had done everything else? A Fae that could never die and wanted to know what it felt like to be sucked up by one? The more I saw in the Hall of All Days, the more I understood that I understood nothing about the immortal race that had created this place.
There were mirrors that opened onto images so terrible I looked away the instant I caught a glimpse of what was going on. We’ve done some of those things. Apparently other beings on other worlds have, too. In one, a man performing a horrific experiment saw me, grinned, and lunged for me. I took off in a mad dash, heart pounding, and ran without stopping for a long, long time. Finally, I glanced behind me. I was alone. I concluded that Silver must have been one-way. Thankfully! I wondered if all the mirrors in the Hall were, or if some of them still worked both ways. If I stepped through one, could I immediately return if I didn’t like the world? From what Barrons had told me, unpredictability was the name of the game in here.
How had I gotten to the Hall? What had the stones done to rip me from the tunnel of a set of Silvers and dump me into the vortex of the entire network? Did they work as a homing beacon, and would uncovering them always bring me here?
I walked. I looked. I looked away.
Pain, pleasure, delight, torture, love, hate, laughter, despair, beauty, horror, hope, grief—all of it was available here in the Hall of All Days.
There were the surreal mirrors with Dalí-esque landscapes, so similar to his paintings that I wondered if they hadn’t been hung here and animated. There were doorways to dreamscapes so alien I couldn’t even give name to what I was seeing.
I looked into mirror after mirror, growing more uncertain by the moment. I had no idea if any of the portals actually opened into my world at all. Were they different planets? Di
fferent dimensions? Once I entered one, would I be committing to a perilous journey through an unbeatable maze?
Billions. There were billions of choices. How was I ever going to find my way home?
I walked for what felt like days. Who knows? It might have been. Time has no meaning in the Hall. Nothing does. Tiny me. Huge corridor. An occasional skeleton—the rare human one. Silence except for the sound of my boots on gold. I began to sing. I went through every song I knew, staring into Silvers. Running from some.
Then one stopped me cold in my tracks.
I stared. “Christian?” I exploded disbelievingly. His back was to me as he walked through a dark forest, but the moon in his mirror was bright, and there was no mistaking his build and walk. Those long legs in faded jeans. The dark hair pulled back in a queue. The broad shoulders and confident gait.
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His head whipped around. There was a line of crimson and black tattoos down the side of his neck that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.
Mac? His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear him. I stepped closer.
“Is it really you?”
Apparently he could hear me. Elation and relief battled with anxiety in the gorgeous Scotsman’s eyes. He stared at me, leaned closer, looked confused, then shook his head. No, Mac. Stay wherever you are. Don’t come here. Go back.
“I don’t know how to go back. ”
Where are you?
“Can’t you see?”
He shook his head. You seem to be inside a large cactus. For a moment, I thought you were here with me. How are you seeing me?
I had to make him repeat it several times. I’m not the best lip-reader. The word “cactus” threw me. I couldn’t see a single cactus in the forest. “I’m in the Hall of All Days. ”
Tiger eyes flared. Don’t stay long! It messes with you.
“I kind of figured that out. ” A moment ago, my pink mitt had reappeared in my hand, and I could hear the sounds of the ballpark around me. I began to jog in place. The Hall was not fooled. The mitt remained on my hand. I jogged a tight circle in front of the mirror. Glove and memory vanished.
It’s a dangerous place. I was there for a time. I had to choose a Silver. I chose badly. They are not what they seem. What they show you is not where they lead.
“Are you kidding me?” I nearly went ballistic. If I entered a tropical beach, would I end up in Nazi Germany with my highly inconvenient black hair?