Page 50 of The Mask Falling

In the bathroom, I locked the door, then hacked something thick and yellowish into the sink. With a shudder, I rinsed the stuff away. It was just a cough. It would go in the end.

By the time I got to bed, Arcturus had tucked a heat pad under the duvet. For once, it did nothing to drive out my chill. I lay sleepless, nerves in knots, exhausted past the point of no return.

Tomorrow I would enter another Scion building. The news was not conducive to a restful night. Every time I thought I might drift off, memories of my torture crested.

By half past eleven, I was desperate. I needed sleep. If I was tired in the morning, I would never be able to dreamwalk. After half an hour, still wide awake, I hauled myself back out of bed.

Jaxon had always slept like a stiff after his nightcap. I could take one leaf out of his book. I took a glass from the cabinet and opened a decanter of what looked like red wine.

I took tiny sips at first. Just enough to sedate me. But the wine was rich and sweet, and suddenly I had drained the whole glass, and I was warm all the way through. As I poured out more, I remembered long nights with the gang. Their laughter and companionship. The family I had found in London.

I was a ghost untethered from its haunt. Having Arcturus with me had stifled the homesickness, but now I was alone, it burst its banks. I missed Maria. I missed Eliza. Most of all, I missed Nick, my best friend, my rock, who had also been snatched away to work for Domino. A splintered part of me, buried deep and leaking shame, even missed Jaxon Hall.

And then I missed Ireland. It had been twelve years. Twelve years since I had last seen my grandparents. I drank until I could see the bottom, then flooded the glass with red-black comfort again.

“Paige.”

I raised my spinning head. Arcturus was in the doorway, hair tousled from the pillow.

“Hello, you.” My words slid out a little too fast. “Can’t sleep?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” I held up the glass. “Thought this might help.”

“It might also dull your gift.” Arcturus picked up the decanter. Only a small amount of wine was left. “This is a fortified wine.”

“Good. I need fortification.” With a heavy-eyed smile, I patted the couch. “Keep me company?”

“If you refrain from finishing that glass.”

I placed it dutifully on the coffee table. Arcturus sat beside me.

“I might ask why you would risk drinking so much,” he said.

“Why do you?” I asked slackly.

“To quell pain. Perhaps you are trying to do the same.”

“Think you’re onto something there.” I slumped deeper into the couch. “I was thinking about the fact that I don’t have a home any more. Wondering if I’ll ever have one again.”

Arcturus looked toward the window. “I wonder the same.”

His home was in decay, and mine lay in the shadow of the anchor. Scion had made wanderers of us.

“Humans cannot remember their own births. An oneiromancer forgets nothing,” he said. “I emerged into a forest, under eternal dusk. Amaranth made wreaths around the trees, and chol-birds sang.”

The light from the streetlamp washed him in blue. He was all clouded edges and strange beauty. Carved in a human shape—yet this close, I could see the fine details that set him apart.

“Except for the birds, there was a silence I have never found on this side of the veil,” he said. “A stream flowed through the forest. After passing through the domain of the Mesarthim, it reunited with the Grieving and poured into the Fall.”

“Fall?”

“The door to the æther from our realm. When spirits were ready to accept their deaths—to go to the last light—we would lead them to this chasm, and they would cast themselves over.”

“Sometimes I wonder what comes after it,” I said, sobering up a little. His intention, perhaps. “If there’s a final resting place.”

“The Mothallath claimed to know. They told us they were sent from it by higher beings—the Anakim, the creators of the æther— and compelled us to worship them. Some Rephaim resented being told they were inferior. Nashira was the most outspoken of these dissidents.”

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