step here, another tentative one there; gravel and cinder block and glass crunching beneath my boots. It seemed we were in a dusty, debris-scattered courtyard, with oddly shaped sheet metal stacked and leaning at every angle and high walls ribboned with whorls of cyclone wire. Glancing back, I tried to see Gregor through the breach in the wall, but all the dust stirred by our vehicle’s impact had wafted toward that opening like smoke to a chimney flue, and it was congealing there somehow, as thick and unyielding as cinder itself, swirling like concrete being poured through air.
The others were in front of me, walking single file, Warren’s gimpy gait even more pronounced as he picked his way around the sheet metal. As I rushed to catch up with him I realized the steel pieces in the yard weren’t scraps of metal at all, but signs sporting words like Normandie, Photo Shop, and Le Café. There was a life- sized cactus with chipped green paint and holes where bald and broken bulbs protruded like thorns, and a six-foot martini glass outlined by clear glass tubes. There were acres more of shattered incandescent lamps, fluorescent paint, and the historic signage that had dotted the Vegas skyline when Italian men were still running the city and flashing neon drenched the streets from dusk to dawn.
“Where are we?” I asked, glancing at scripted individual letters someone had lined up to spell Casino.
“Neon Boneyard,” Warren shot over his shoulder, picking his way past the Landmark and Dunes signs. Each letter was larger than he.
“Where the lights go to die,” Chandra said, smirking as she twirled to face me.
“Where the Light goes to rest,” Felix corrected, suddenly appearing beside me. He smiled again, and I was gratified. “It’s as close to home as you’re ever going to get again.”
We followed Warren past the Aladdin’s original genie’s lamp, and took a left at a sign that said Thunderbird in script. About an acre in we stopped in front of the largest, gaudiest piece in the yard, still magnificent, even with all its lights busted and burnt out. “Here,” Warren said.
I gazed upward, nonplussed. “The Silver Slipper?” Next to the Foxy’s Firehouse and the hundred-foot clown still standing in front of Circus Circus, the Silver Slipper had been my favorite neon landmark as a kid. As I got closer, I saw the bulbs that had once studded the bright evening shoe were long gone, their threads rusted, maintenance halted after the property was demolished. I was surprised to see it was only fifteen feet high—it had always seemed larger looming above the property on its rotating axis—but it looked to weigh at least two tons, and I watched as the others crossed to the back of the giant shoe and began to climb a rusted staircase attached to the heel.
At first I just stood there, craning my neck upward, gazing from the ground as three superheroes became silhouetted in the waning evening light. Chandra was first. She didn’t look at me or anyone else as she reached the top, but sat down unceremoniously and slid down the great, bulb-stamped pump. Just before she slid off the front of the curved toe, a light flashed and she disappeared.
“Come on,” Felix yelled down to me. “You’ll fall behind.”
Which was the last thing I wanted. Slinging my duffel over my shoulder, I scurried to the staircase and began to climb. I arrived just in time to see a path light up, much like a landing strip for an airplane.
“What do we do?” I asked, though Felix was already kneeling for his slide, which meant I was about to find out.
He smiled at me over his shoulder. “Just follow the light. It’ll lead the way.” And he let himself go, sliding down the giant slipper until—flash!—he disappeared into the toe.
“It’s like anything else,” Warren said, stepping onto the narrow platform. He extended his bad leg out in front of him first, then the good. “You take the first step with the faith you’ll end up where you want to be.” Without waiting for a reply, he too disappeared.
“Where I want to be,” I repeated, though there was no one left to hear. I was no longer sure exactly where that was…though I was relatively certain it wasn’t a hole in the ground beneath the Silver Slipper in the Neon Boneyard where discarded Las Vegas signage went to die.
I stepped back, trying to feel my way off the platform. I was afraid I’d fall but I couldn’t take my hands from my eyes long enough to look because they were tearing up in defense. I heard a sizzling sound and smelled burning. Then I tasted it, hot and cloying at the back of my throat, and realized it was coming from me.
Agony jigsawed through my skull, drilling at my temples, and I cried out and rushed forward blindly. I had no choice but to move. I was incinerating on that platform, like I was shut in a microwave, organs heating within me, roasting from the inside out.
I stepped, slipped, and slid into oblivion. The incline was like a greased luge run, and me without a sled, I thought hysterically. And while the drop into the toe was not unexpected, my breath was sucked away. Light, brilliant but miasmic, streamed past me, surrounded me…and instead of illuminating me, infected me.
I choked on the white-hot heat as it rolled like lava into my mouth, rising into the soft tissue of my brain as I fell. I was being vacuumed down into a trough of invisible flame, fire biting at my cheeks and ears, sinking in like pokers behind my eyes. I screamed, but the sound was wrenched from my mouth.
“What’s taking her so long?”
The sweltering words slid past me as I continued to fall. More heat invaded me, radiation now; attacking my fevered flesh, piercing my veins, seeking bone.
“She’s coming now. Hear that?”
Hurry, I thought, knowing I was near to blacking out.
“That was graceless,” I heard Chandra say.
I rolled onto my hands and knees, facedown, gulping down air, thinking I’d never breathed in anything so crisp, cool, balmy, or sweet in my life. It set the sores in my mouth to drying, and they crackled as I winced. They were on my lungs too, where they remained wet and aching.
“Olivia?” Hands on my shoulders. I whimpered and jerked away, and not just because my flesh sizzled at the contact. I was pissed off and feeling vulnerable; exposed and lost, dizzy and disoriented, and betrayed by the very people who were supposed to be protecting me.
And I was so very fucking hot.
Why hadn’t anyone told me what to expect? Or what to do? Why had they just left me up there, alone and burning? I couldn’t get the question out, though; not past the air I was trying to suck in. I started shaking, an improvement over the stinging paralysis, but not by much.
“What’s wrong with her?” Felix this time, voice hesitant and low.
My eyes, scalded, refused to see—I couldn’t even tell if they were open or closed—and my head throbbed where it had whipped back against the top of the slide. But that was nothing compared to the pulpy blisters I felt rising in my brain. I knelt on my haunches, curled into myself and wished for death.
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?”
“Shut up, Chandra.”
“Olivia?” Warren’s hands again. This time I let him turn me over. There was a collective gasp…which probably wasn’t good.
“What happened to her?”
“God. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Get Greta,” I heard Warren say. “Hurry.”
“We could have killed her ten times over by now,” Chandra muttered, and I felt Warren shift. “I’m just saying! It’s a weakness. The Tulpa will find out about it. He’ll use it against her.”
“He won’t find out if nobody tells him. Besides, he shares the weakness.”
“What happened?” I finally managed. The words were catching like splinters in my throat. I pushed them out anyway. “Why did that hurt so much? Why won’t my eyes stop tearing up?”
“They’re not tears,” Chandra said, and this time she sounded apologetic. “It’s blood.”
I touched a hand to my face.
“I’m so sorry, Olivia.” Warren’s voice was low but panicked, and alarm beat at my chest as I felt him hovering
