arms, “become the Lightbringer.” Walkers held him on each side, half supporting him. “Please.”
“I can’t,” Wendy whispered. “I can’t do that to you. I’m not ready for you to go.” More than Piotr’s closeness, however, was the matter of the Lost. They had risen to their feet now, each straining against the bonds that held them. The Walkers on each side of the group held a long chain in their hands. All they had to do was drop the chain and the hollow-eyed Lost would be upon her, feeding.
“Winifred, not even a hello?” asked the White Lady, stepping beside Wendy. “How rude!” In her hand she held a syringe filled with a bubbling, oozing black liquid. “Spirit pollen,” she explained. “And seeds, of course. You’ve seen my topiary outside?”
“Yes,” Wendy said through lips gone numb from the intense cold emanating from the woman beside her. “It’s foul.”
“Briar Rose’s citadel had a field of pricking rosebushes,” the White Lady said, nonplussed. “European castles had moats. I thought my palace could use some protection to keep the riffraff out. It appears that I was right.” She drifted across the room to James’ side.
“This one,” she said, ruffling his dreadlocks, “isn’t as stealthy as he thinks, hmm? He’s been spotted in my territory a number of times ‘doing his rounds’ when they were looking for the children, just never this deep in. So we decided to make it a little more challenging for him.”
She gestured to the Walkers around her. “I had no end of volunteers for the germination process. I’m told it’s quite painful.” She laughed at that and Wendy was once more reminded how insane the White Lady really was, despite her air of rationality.
“You’re sick,” Wendy yelled over the tittering laughter. “Sick and twisted. Let them go, everyone here, or else.”
“Or else what, dear?” The White Lady crossed her arms over her chest, her giggles finally tapering off. “You’ll awaken that pathetic little ability that slumbers deep inside? I’ve seen how long it takes you to rouse the Lightbringer. I could have every last one of them ripped to shreds before you even unlocked your Light.”
“Think so?” Wendy bluffed. “I’ve been practicing.”
The White Lady rolled her eyes. “Please dear, you’re embarrassing yourself. There is absolutely no way the likes of you has sped up in a mere day or so.” Casually she reached out and took Wendy by the chin, turning her face from side to side as she examined her. “No, no, dear, my initial assessment still stands. You will never show half the power of the other Lightbringers, I’m afraid. Pity, that.”
Piotr moaned and his vision fluttered; when it did so, the strands of spirit web began to smoke and burn, catching fire and puffing away in a whiff of smoke. The Walkers hissed but held on; they’d not been told to let go.
Catching sight of the web burning, Wendy shifted so the White Lady’s back was to the blaze. If she could just keep her distracted long enough for Piotr to figure out a way to wrestle free…
“Let go of me!” Thinking of nothing more than keeping the White Lady’s attention, Wendy jerked her chin away. She could still feel the press of those icy fingers, a million times more horrible in real life than in her dreams, burning against her flesh. “I swear, no matter what it takes, I’m going to make you regret—”
“Threats, threats, threats,” the White Lady said, waving a dismissive hand. “All you do is threaten! In my day we didn’t threaten or boast or complain, we just
“Where’s Eddie?” Wendy snapped, carefully keeping her gaze away from Piotr. “What have you done with him? And my mom?”
“Eddie’s close.” The White Lady snapped her fingers and two more Walkers, larger than the others, appeared from the darkness, shambling forward until their stench filled the air and they were only a few feet from Wendy’s side. “But first, we have a little business to transact. A bit of a trade to handle.”
“Go to hell,” Wendy snapped. “I’m never helping you, and if you think you’re getting Piotr, it’s going to be over my dead body.”
“That,” the White Lady said sweetly, grabbing Wendy by the back of the neck so that smoky steam billowed at her touch, “is exactly what I had in mind.”
The Walkers, one at each side, attacked.
Wendy screamed, throwing up her arms to block, but she was still in human shape and the Walkers were very quick, very strong. Drawing visible essence from the White Lady in arcs like lightning, their sharpened bones punched through the tender skin of Wendy’s midsection, ripping through her skin like tissue paper and spearing the organs beneath.
Framed in curls of silver smoke, Wendy sank to the floor. Her fingers, blood-bright in the dimming light, curled around her side, pinky curving against the fine copper chain at her waist, thumb indenting the flesh just under her ribs. She was bone pale in that final gasp of day, the warm red that had leached from her cheeks now spilling slowly through her fingers.
“I did warn you that some ghosts can touch the living,” the White Lady said. “You should have listened.”
“WENDY! WENDY! WENDY!”
Pushing against his captors, Piotr struggled against the hands holding him, but these Walkers were old and tough, prepared for his wriggling. He could not wrestle free.
The White Lady shook her head. “Too late, Rider. Look past her.”
“Tsk, tsk, language! Still, I suppose circumstances are a little volatile. Look.”
Despite himself, Piotr stilled and did as she ordered.
There, just beyond the curve of ballroom wall, was a shaft of light where before there had been none. At first it seemed the light was the last glimmer of the fading day peeking through some hole in the ceiling, but that notion was quickly abandoned. The rest of the building was solid and strong, both in real life and in the Never. This light was coming from somewhere else.
Piotr moaned and the White Lady sighed. The light was vibrant, shimmering, and where it struck the air, it danced with shivering, whirling motes. “The Lightbringer’s time has come.”
“Yes.” Calm and assured now, the White Lady danced to the ever-shifting stage and settled herself on an ornate chair at the edge. She drew the folds of her robe around her, rubbing her rotting hands together until they sounded like a cicada song. “Now we wait.”
For long moments nothing happened. The shaft of light—no, Piotr had to admit to himself, that glow was not light but rather Light—fairly hummed with serenity. He tested the strength of the Walkers again; still their grip did not loosen.
Then, faintly, Wendy’s body began to glow. It was not her regular brilliant Light but a gentle, glimmering haze, pale green around the edges and faint white at the center. The strength flowed from Piotr’s legs and he wilted to the ground, the Walkers finally releasing him as he sagged to hands and knees, only barely able to hold up his head. “No. Wendy…
Wendy sat up, leaving her body behind. In her hands was a small glass ball, shining with mindless pulsing fire. Was it her soul or something more? Piotr did not know, but the orb was painful to look at, like her tattoos; its depths glimmered with Light.
Behind her the Light grew brighter, more insistent, and a low humming, both terrible and inexpressibly lovely, began to fill the room. The volume rose in a slow, sensuous sweep of sound like a radio being gradually turned up in some distant room, until Piotr’s head was ringing with the gorgeous-painful chords. If the Walkers or White Lady heard the cry of the Light, they paid no attention. The Lost were unmoved, the other Riders unconscious and cocooned with the spirit webs. If Wendy heard she paid no mind. Only Piotr, with the song of Wendy’s Light vibrating his very teeth, was bent in pain.
Wendy stood and the sound, blessedly, began to subside. She held out one hand and twisted it back and forth, palm up-palm down, then patted her face, her shoulder, her hip. She ran fingers across her lips, curled her fingers into a fist, and tapped the chair beside her, the one her body still lay beside. Her hand slid through the rotting wood easily.
She nodded once, her suspicions confirmed. “Well, hell. That sucks.”
“Good afternoon,” the White Lady said. “How are you finding your death thus far?”
“Can’t say that I like it.” Wendy wrinkled her nose. “Everything smells like rot.”
