Beautiful Chaos(111)

“Demon world?” I felt the prickling of recognition. I had to tell Liv. “I know the place where the Demon world touches ours. I mean, I don’t know it, but I know her. The Lilum. The Demon Queen.”

Liv went pale, but it was John who was the most freaked out. “What are you talking about?”

“The Lilum thing—”

“There’s no Lilum here.” Liv was shaking her head. “The very presence of the Lilum in our world would mean the total destruction of existence itself.”

“What does that have to do with her?” I asked.

“Her? Is that who you were talking about? The she who told you about the Eighteenth Moon was the Lilum? The Demon Queen?” Liv knew from the look on my face that she was right.

“Great,” John muttered.

Liv froze. “Where is the place, Ethan?” She closed her eyes, which made me think she knew what I was going to say.

“I don’t know for sure. But I can find it. I’m the Wayward. The Lilum said it herself.” I touched the circles again with my hands, over and over, feeling the rough wood beneath my fingers.

The past. The present. The future that will be, and the future that will not.

The way.

The wood began to hum beneath my hands. I touched the carved circles again.

The color drained from Liv’s face. “The Lilum said that to you?”

I opened my eyes, and everything was clear. “When you look at the door, you see a door, right?”

Liv nodded.

I looked at her. “I see a path.”

It was true. Because the Temporis Porta was opening for me.

The wood turned to mist, and I slid my hand right through. Beyond it, I could see a path leading into the distance. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?” Liv grabbed my arm.

“To find Marian and Macon.” This time, I made sure to grab Liv and Lena before I stepped inside the door. Liv grabbed John’s hand.

“Hold on.” I took a breath and ducked into the mist—





12.13





Perfidia


We found ourselves nearly crushed in the center of a mob. I recognized the robes. Only I was tall enough to see over them, but it didn’t matter. I knew where we were.

It seemed like the middle of a trial, or something like one. Liv’s pencil was moving inside the red notebook as quickly as it could, trying to keep up with the words that were flying all around us.

“Perfidia. It’s Latin for ‘treason.’ They’re saying she’s going to be tried for treason.” Liv was pale, and I could barely hear her voice over the clamor of the crowd surrounding us.

“I know this place.” I recognized the tall windows with the heavy gold drapes, and the wood benches. Everything was the same—the thick noise of the crowd, the stone walls, the beamed ceiling that was so high that it seemed to go on forever. I held on to Lena’s hand, pushing my way to the front of the hall, directly under the empty wooden balcony. Liv and John threaded their way through the robed crowd behind me.

“Where’s Marian?” Lena was panicking. “And Uncle Macon? I can’t see anything over all these people.”

“I don’t like this,” Liv said quietly. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

I felt it, too.

We were standing in the center of the same crowded hall where I stood the first time I crossed through the Temporis Porta. But last time, it seemed like I was somewhere in medieval Europe, in a place from an illustration in the World History textbook we never seemed to crack at Jackson. The room was so big I’d thought it might be a ship or a cathedral. A place that transported you somewhere, whether it was across the sea or to the paradise the Sisters were always talking about.

Now it seemed different. I didn’t know where this place was, but even in their dark robes, the people—the Casters, Mortals, Keepers, or whatever they were—seemed like regular old people. The kind of people I knew something about. Because even though they were crowded on the glossy wooden bench that surrounded the perimeter of the room, they could’ve been sitting in the gym at Jackson, waiting for the Disciplinary Committee meeting to start. On the benches or the bleachers, these people were looking for the same thing. Drama.

Even worse, they were looking for blood. Someone to blame, and to punish.

It felt like the trial of the century, or a bunch of reporters waiting outside South Carolina’s Broad River Correctional Institution when someone from death row was about to get a lethal injection. The executions were covered by every TV station and newspaper. A few people showed up to protest, but they looked like they had been bused in for the day. Everyone else was hanging out, waiting to watch the spectacle. It wasn’t much different from the burning of the witches in The Crucible.

The crowd rushed forward, murmuring, just as I knew they would, and I heard the banging of a gavel. “Silentium.”

Something’s happening.

Lena grabbed my arm.

Liv pointed across the room. “I saw Macon. He’s over there.”

John looked around. “I don’t see Marian.”

Maybe she’s not here, Ethan.

She’s here.

She had to be, because I knew what was about to happen. I forced myself to look up to the balcony.