Page 109 of The Mirror of Beasts

Caitriona gripped her pale spear as she made her way toward the door between the worlds. A breeze pushed the loose strands of silver hair away from her face. Dark tendrils of magic drifted out, wrapping around her, drawing her in. She didn’t look back—she simply surrendered to it, and was drawn into its depths.

Neve followed, reaching into her fanny pack for her wand, pointing the knife end out in front of her as she stepped through. Remembering the first unpleasant trip, I hung back, trying to settle my nerves.

Go, Tamsin, I told myself. Go.

Squaring my shoulders, I stepped forward, waiting for the darkness to take me. One by one, its fingers stretched out, sliding around my throat, my wrists, my hips. I felt my hair lift from the back of my neck, and loud sniffing filled my ears.

The doorway tugged me forward, but Rosydd let out a shrill noise of panic, trying to grip the fistful of my hair again.

“No,” she said, “wait—!”

But the passage had me, and I was already gone.

GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT

The sound of crashing glass and bellowing laughter rose from the floor below. Another moment blurring into the next in a tide of endless hours.

He’d been on benders before, but they were child’s play compared to the way the riders of the Wild Hunt had unleashed themselves on Summerland House. They drank liquor, cackling as it ran through their immaterial bodies. They knocked candles over, hoping something interesting might catch and turn into an amusing blaze. They sang bawdy songs and retold stories of the kills they’d claimed—the way one sorceress had pled for her life, or how one had tried to hide within the walls of her decrepit house, the old one they’d run down in Wales who’d really thought she might escape.

Each hunt only sent them deeper into the frenzy. Even Endymion Dye had become something of an animal, eagerly clawing at the walls of his ancestral home as if to destroy that last tie to his humanity.

He turned over on the narrow bed, drawing his knees up toward his center, listening as they hacked at the chandelier in the entry. The roar of shattering crystal against marble made him curl his fists against his ears.

As the only living member of the horde aside from his master, he was the only one who required rest, a fact the hunters never allowed him to forget. Rather than take one of the stuffy guest rooms, he’d found a bare-walled room off the main corridor, barely bigger than a closet. It was clearly meant for a servant, which suited him fine. That was what he was. That was what he was meant to be.

But he had half a mind to find Emrys Dye’s room and take a piss in his bed after what had happened at Rivenoak. When he hadn’t appeared at the merging of the worlds, the seneschal had assumed the kid had died.

He’d said nothing about seeing Emrys to the others, especially Endymion. He was coming to appreciate that secrets were their own currency. Their own type of power. But as always in his life, he was barely scraping by. The hunters were circling ever closer to Lord Death, trying to bend his ear, trying to win his favor; he would have to work harder now to ensure that his place at his lord’s side wasn’t wrested away from him by another.

His hesitation to relinquish that final piece of Cabell in the library had cost him.

The pit of his stomach turned sour. Tremors crawled up and down his body and wouldn’t stop, not when the sweat broke out across his neck and chest, not even as he heaved himself upright, setting his feet on the floor.

He doubled over, bracing his elbows against his knees, and his forehead against his fists. As the heat spread, his bones shifted, snapped, slipped like snakes under his skin. His lungs struggled for breath.

His hands reeked of metal, but it was the scattering of ash on the sleeve of his shirt that made him rear back, rip it off him, throw it into the shadowy corner of the room.

The house leaned in around him, creaking—he’d had the feeling it had been watching him this whole time, learning his ways.

“What are ye doing?”

The girl watched him from across the room, scowling. He could see through her translucent shape to the mirror behind her. She had no reflection, but his own face was chalk white.

He closed his eyes, rubbing at his temples, and when he risked another look, she was still standing there. Still eyeing him like he was scum to be scraped off her boot.

“You’re not real,” he said hoarsely.

He was exhausted. The nonstop raids, Rivenoak, and then—

The memory was a snake coiling around his throat. He flexed his hands over his knees, remembering the weight of his sword, the strength it had taken to drive the steel through the automaton’s body.

Young Lark … ?

He growled, furious with himself. That wasn’t his name. That had never been his true name.

“You’re not real,” he repeated, feeling suddenly feverish. An infection of unwanted emotion swelled in him.

“What did ye do?” she asked, her voice fluttering around the room like the frantic wings of a baby bird.

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