Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2)(122)

“Didn’t I tel you I was going to help you find your door?

Now, you’re wasting time. Look at how much sand you’ve already lost.”

We al glanced at the slowly fil ing bottom globe of the hourglass.

“What time is it counting down to?” I asked.

As when Falin had asked, Kyran only smiled. Then he threw his arms high over his head and stretched. “Ask me again. Maybe I’l tel you next time.”

Right. I turned to Desmond. “You said you could get us Right. I turned to Desmond. “You said you could get us out of here?”

He nodded.

“Wait!” Kyran leapt off his throne. “The barghest can lead you out of this realm, but he cannot lead you to what you seek. Let me find your door, and it wil be the one you want.”

“And why would you do that?” Falin asked, sizing up the nightmare kingling. Now that he was actual y standing up straight and not slouching or leaning over the hourglass, he proved to be as tal as Falin, but thin, as if someone had stretched him to that height.

Kyran smiled. “So suspicious, but then, look at whom you serve. You’ve reason to be.” He walked around Falin in large, exaggerated steps without bending his knees.

“Perhaps my goal is to be remembered kindly by Faerie’s youngest planeweaver. Would that explanation have enough political maneuvering to ring true for you?”

It wouldn’t surprise me, though he hadn’t actual y said that was his purpose.

“If you find me my door, I wil owe you nothing? I’m not asking for your help,” I told him, and he gave me a smal bow.

“Of course not. You wil take on no debt to me.”

I stared at him, looking for the loopholes in his statement, but if he would real y help us just to earn my goodwil , I didn’t see a downside to that.

“How does it work?” I asked, stil cautious as I searched for the catch.

“Simple. The nightmare realm touches every dark shadow where anyone has ever feared what might be hiding in the depths or believed was cast by a monster—

which means as long as your room has a shadow, I can find the door.”

“And we’l come to no harm by going through the door?”

“My vow on it,” he said, holding up his hand in an oath. I glanced at Falin. He stil looked skeptical, but he shrugged.

glanced at Falin. He stil looked skeptical, but he shrugged.

It was my decision.

Final y I nodded. “Okay.”

“Splendid,” Kyran said at the same time Desmond stepped closer to me.

“If you fol ow his path I wil not fol ow,” the barghest said.

I studied him. I didn’t know his motives for helping me either, but I was interested in his opinions. “Is his path dangerous?”

“Not more than any other,” he said, and then took a step back. “Be safe, old friend of my Shadow Girl. She needs you.” He fel forward and by the time his hands hit the sand they weren’t hands but paws and he was the same oversized black dog I’d first met. Then he turned and was gone.

“I’l stil need the charm,” Kyran said, holding out his hand again.

The amulet was the only link I had to Hol y, and my only chance of finding her and the accomplice. If something happened to it . . . I chewed at my bottom lip.

“You’l return it?”

“I think you’re even more skeptical than he is. You’re too young for that,” he said, but when I stil didn’t hand it over he glanced at the sand in the hourglass and then said, “Yes, damn it, I’l return it. In the same condition and a timely manner even. Happy?”

Taking a deep breath, I unclasped Hol y’s amulet and handed it over. As Kyran’s hand closed around the ruby, the shadows around us shifted, racing past. I expected the nightmares to return and grab us, but eventual y the shadows settled again. Directly in front of me stood a vaguely rectangular shadow, as if it were being cast by an unseen dresser.

“This would be the one, I believe,” he said, handing me back the amulet.

I wrapped my fingers around it. He was right. The amulet pointed toward the rectangular shadow.

pointed toward the rectangular shadow.

“Now what?” Falin asked, and I noticed his daggers had appeared again. He must have also thought the nightmares were returning.

“Now we step through.” Kyran held out his hands to us.

We were going to walk through a shadow? Wel , why not? Since arriving in Faerie I’d walked through wal s, doorways that didn’t show the correct room beyond their thresholds, and a hole in reality. Why not walk through a shadow?

I clasped the amulet back onto my bracelet before accepting the kingling’s hand. “I suggest a deep breath,” he said. “This wil be cold.” Then he stepped forward and the shadow overtook us.

Disorientation hit hard as between one step and the next my boots left sand and landed on crimson-colored carpet.

My stomach flipped, like the moment at the top of a rol er coaster when you’re hanging upside down but gravity hasn’t caught on yet so you hang suspended before crashing into the shoulder harness. If I’d looked around and discovered I was standing on the ceiling, waiting for reality to realize it and drop me, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But I wasn’t on the ceiling. I was in a plain, sparsely decorated room.