The Mirrored Shard

and seeing his face I realized how pale the imitation that Nylarthotep had cooked up had been.

“There’s no arguing,” I said. “I came here to get you, more than anything, and I’m at least going to do that.”

“No,” Dean insisted. “I have to stay here, Aoife, and you have to get back.”

The Catacombs vibrated around us again, and a rush of souls flowed past the door like a flash flood.

“It’s not your choice,” I told Dean, and gripped his hands. I felt my Weird tug at me and realized that the shaking was not Nylarthotep but the thin tether that held me to the living world via the seance machine. Chang had said spending too much time in the Deadlands would make me harder to bring back, decay my living soul until it died, and I could feel it happening even as I wrapped my arms around Dean, even as he struggled, protested, tried to save me.

“It’s not your turn to save me!” I shouted as the cell collapsed around us with a great roar and blinding white light seared my vision into nothingness. “I have to save you!”

16 Awake

AT FIRST I thought I was in the void of nothing, the same place that contained the Old Ones. I saw flashes of their great eyes and limpid bodies, drifting between galaxies, between supernovas, on and on, until one turned to look at me and I thought if I could just hold its gaze, I would know all the secrets of the stars. But I couldn’t, and meeting the great eye burned me like staring into the surface of the sun.

I screamed, and the burning coalesced into the center of my chest, until I thrashed with pain and fell onto a hard floor.

“She’s back,” Chang said. He put away two small paddles hooked up to a battery run off the Tesla coil.

I rolled to the side, feeling my throat and guts constrict, and vomited.

“You’re all right,” another voice said, and I felt Conrad’s hand rub my back. “She’s all right, isn’t she?”

“We’ll have to see,” Chang said. “She was under for much longer than I’ve ever seen anyone survive.”

“She’s tough,” Cal’s voice broke in. My head was throbbing, and in that moment, prostrate on a cold floor and covered in my own sick, I felt miles away from tough.

“Good thing, because we have to move,” Conrad said. “Those boys outside aren’t going to wait much longer.”

Over the drone of the Tesla coil and my own blood humming in my ears, I heard a voice echo off the front of the building. “We know you’re in there, Miss Grayson! Come out with your hands up!”

Chang, Cal and Conrad jumped, but all I could do was take a deep breath and let it out. It hurt, like somebody had taken a bat and smacked me across the chest, but it was the best pain I’d ever felt. I could feel the blood moving through my veins again, my heart thrumming, electricity shooting through my nerves just like it hummed through the Tesla coil.

Tesla. He’d told me I had to endure. I had no choice now, because here I was, right back in the grasp of the Iron Land.

“Who’s out there?” I rasped. My voice sounded as if I’d scraped it across gravel, and speaking sent hot fire down my throat.

“Who do you think?”

This voice was the one I’d been dreaming about. The one that had the power to set me sobbing or inspire joy. It was for this that I’d endured all the pain and nightmares.

I sat up and looked into his eyes. “Dean?”

“Hey, princess.” He crouched next to me, brushing sweaty hair out of my eyes with his rough, sure fingers. He looked pale and sick too, but he was holding it together much better than I was. “You sure are a sight for sore eyes, you know that?”

I said nothing; I just grabbed him and wrapped him in my arms and pressed my face into his neck, smelling his sweat and his skin and feeling him warm and alive against me.

In that moment, everything was perfect, every bit of suffering had been worth it, and nothing, not even the encroachment of the Old Ones, could render me completely hopeless.

And just as quickly, it all shattered again.

“Miss Grayson!” Pounding started up on the door, and Chang shot a nervous glance toward it.

“The Brotherhood?” I guessed, looking to Cal and Conrad for confirmation.

“They showed up a few minutes ago,” Cal said. “Guess they got tired of watching the door. That’s why Chang had to shock you.”

Conrad was still staring at Dean. “How are you here? I thought you were dead, and you just—pop up here. What the hell is going on?” His brow furrowed. “You were dead. I saw your body.”

Dean gave Conrad a grim smile. “Dead as a doornail, man. And by the way, it’s great to see you, too.”

“I hate to interrupt this tender reunion,” I said, clambering to my feet. Even though I felt sick and my heart was throbbing, part of me was elated. My mother hadn’t been completely crazy after all. Dean was here, and he was holding my arm when I started to sway, and he had his time back—all of the thread that he should have had, the thread that had been cut because of me, repaired. I used him to hold myself steady. He was here, body and spirit. Here with me. “But we have a decision to make.”

“What’s the decision?” Cal said. “We’re out the back and we disappear into Chinatown. And let’s do it now, before they bust the front door down.”

“They’ll have agents at the back,” Conrad said. “Trust me, I’ve spent months with these people. They’re organized, and they’re not stupid.”

“This place have a basement?” Cal asked Chang, but Chang shook his head.

“No basement,” he said. “Too close to the bay.”

Everyone erupted into arguing and shouting, but I took a step toward the front door, and then another.

Dean caught my hand, and I turned back to him and shook my head. “Don’t try to stop me,” I told him. “You know this is the only way we all get out of here alive.”

“Wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Just trying to make sure you stay out of trouble.”

I put my hand on the rough wood of the door and tried to smile at Dean. “If I hadn’t just thrown up, I’d kiss you right now.”

He winked at me. “Rain check, princess. When all this is said and done.”

Conrad realized what I was about to do, and he came bolting through the front of the store, but it was too late. I’d grabbed the doorknob and twisted, throwing the door open into a welter of raindrops, sodium lights and shock pistols pointed at my face.

Did I think it was the right decision? I thought it was stupid. I was sure I was being foolish. But I also knew it was the only way to keep my brother, Cal, Dean and myself alive. Not to mention Chang and anyone else who crossed the Brotherhood’s path.

I stepped onto the front stoop and held up my hands. Dean did the same.

“Don’t move!” someone bellowed from behind the spotlight. It hissed as the raindrops burned up against its blinding brilliance, and steam drifted around us, obscuring the rest of the street. I was in my own world, just Dean and me—and the Brotherhood, even now advancing to clap iron shackles around my wrists.

“You don’t have to do that,” I told them. “I’ll come peacefully.”

“Orders, Miss Grayson,” the man said. He didn’t sound much older than me, his face obscured by a fedora and his coat collar turned up. “I’m sorry. I know about your abilities.”

Another agent, a woman, handcuffed Dean, and when I looked back into the house, it was empty. My brother, Chang and Cal had gone. I trusted that Conrad would be smart enough to keep the rest of them out of harm’s way, especially Cal.

They put us into separate jitneys, and the last I saw of Dean before the door closed was his reassuring smile.

I sighed as I watched the lights of Chinatown recede behind the jitney’s treads. I wished I shared Dean’s