Page 142 of The Mask Falling

I shielded my eyes. My ears were full of a muffled roar, my skin clammy. Somewhere, Jaxon was shouting. I half crawled toward the doors, smearing blood in my wake. The poltergeist bore down on me, and I could feel an incorporeal hand on my throat, cold as winter, thefingernailsof Jack the Ripper . . .

A huge, intricate spool hurtled over me, driving the poltergeist right out of the gallery. Then Arcturus was there, and I was up, and we were careering away from the Hall of Mirrors.

“Find me again, darling,” Jaxon called. “Choose voyants, not Ranthen. I’ll be waiting for you, somewhere in this world. Dotryto take care of my dollymop, now, Arcturus!”

His laughter chased us out of the gallery. With a livid spike of strength, I lashed out my spirit and dealt him a blow hard enough to silence his crowing and bowl him to the ground.

Arcturus just about managed to hold onto me and one of the swords. The other glinted in our wake. I had thought that cutting down Jaxon might stop the Ripper, but it was still following his last command. My back was wet, my head ringing. I had failed, and Ducos would soon know.

That meant I had nothing left to lose.

Drops of sweat froze to diamonds in my hair. Somehow, by dint of propping each other up, we reached the broken doors to the south wing. Instinct made me pull them shut behind us. Halfway to the staircase, Arcturus collapsed, and I went right down with him.

“No, no.” My breath gusted, thick and white. “Arcturus, get up. We have to keep moving—”

“Free the prisoners. Leave me, Paige.”

Behind us, the doors flew off their hinges. As the poltergeist screamed toward us again, I gave in to the rush of anger and fear. Throwing away the last of my self-preservation, I ran to meet the spirit, my left hand outstretched so the three letters carved into my palm were on display.

KIN

“Go,” I commanded, as I had when I faced the spirit in Senshield. “Be gone into the outer darkness—”

Pressure detonated from the scars. It was like the force that thrummed from me when I dislocated, but far stronger. The poltergeist slowed. Though I was just about holding it back, the waves of defense only served to incense it. I harnessed the power that seemed to come from nowhere.

“Fine,” I shouted at it. The pressure intensified. The Ripper forged onward, a shrieking mouth in the æther. “Come on, then, Jack. Come and get your dreamwalker at last.”

I thought it would do just that, that it would smash me between the walls until I was nothing but gore and shards of bone. Instead, the poltergeist was suddenly reeled away, as if caught on a line. The pressure ceased at once, and I buckled against the wall, light-headed.

Outside, the flare had guttered out. With gritted teeth, I took a flaming torch from the wall and thrust it into the nearest curtain. Fire raced up the fabric, to the wood-paneled ceiling. I set every curtain in the corridor alight, then the portraits: Georges Benoît Ménard, Frank Weaver, Abel Mayfield, Irène Tourneur, the whole ghastly theatre of marionettes who had made all of this possible. As their faces melted, I took the flashlight and hurled it into a tapestry.

Burn that place to the fucking ground.

Flame painted the corridor with fitful light and shadow. I ran back to Arcturus and towed his arm around my neck, but his frame was so large, and mine was so fragile. With a sound of frustration, I folded back to my knees beside him.

“Arcturus.” I grasped him by the shoulders. His body was rigid. “Come on, I can’t lift you—”

“I know.” Tendons strained against his glove. “Run, Paige. Save yourself.”

“No.”

And then—even though the ceiling was on fire, even though I knew I was a moonstruck fool for doing it—I framed his face between my hands and forced him to look at me.

“Do you still want me?”

The light in his eyes had almost gone, but now it returned.

“Tell me you do.” I kept hold of him, breathed the words against his lips. “Tell me you’ll fight.”

Fire burned at my back. Nowhere had ever been less safe. Yet in that single moment, there was only us, together in the cradle of another revolution, just as we had been when all this had begun. Arcturus cupped my cheek and pressed his brow against mine, his body softening, a wordless surrender. He didn’t tell me, but I knew. Because I knew him.

“Get up,” I whispered, “and come with me to Paris.”

This time, when I rose, he rose with me.

He led me down the stairs, away from the blaze. It was so hot. Smoke hung in the air. “Stay here and keep a lookout.” I coughed into my sleeve. “I’ll get the prisoners.”

Leaving him by the stairs, I dug the keys from my pocket and ran down the corridor, past room after deserted room, weaving around four unconscious Vigiles. When I reached the gathering of dreamscapes, I slewed to a stop and opened the nearest door. A paraffin lamp guttered on a guéridon beyond.

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