Echo North(42)

A sudden longing sparked in his eyes. “I’ll try,” he said.

I let out a breath and gave him a shaky smile. “Library. I’d like to stop reading, please.”

The mirror shimmered in the air between us.

“You first,” I told Hal.

He stepped up to the glass, stretched out one hand to touch it.

But nothing happened.

“Try again. Please.”

He put both palms flat against the surface of the mirror. He stood so close his nose touched.

Nothing.

His eyes flicked to mine. “Please, Hal.” I was shaking. “Please.”

And that’s when I grabbed his hand, and ran with him toward the mirror.

He hit it with a resounding crash, and fell onto the beach in a shower of glass fragments. Blood showed bright on his arms and his face where the shards cut him.

I knelt beside him in the sand. He gripped my shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Echo. I don’t think I really exist, out there. I’m just a shadow.”

“I can’t accept that. You’re as real as I am.”

“Maybe I was, once. But I’m not anymore.”

I touched a spot of blood on his cheek, brushed it away. He sighed and sagged against me.

I fought back my rising sense of helplessness. I’d thought it would work. I’d needed it to work. “I’ll find a way to help you. To free you. We’ll fix this.” But I didn’t know if I believed that anymore.

“I hope so.”

Hal’s breath was warm against my cheek, and the nearness of him made my stomach wobble. I didn’t know quite what to do with my involuntary reaction, so I stood to my feet, pulling him up with me. “In the meantime, how about another fencing lesson?”

He grinned, though a sort of haunted blankness lingered in his eyes. “I thought you would never ask.”

We fenced for an hour along the beach, though I could tell his heart wasn’t in it any more than mine was. We finally collapsed in the sand, watching the waves whisper up onto the shore and then fall back again.

Hal’s hand found mine. I shifted closer to him.

An explosion shook the ground, and we looked back to see the market bright with flames.

Hal tightened his grip on my hand.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“That’s never happened before.”

Another explosion wrenched through the earth, shaking us apart from each other. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve read this book half a dozen times and that’s never happened. The story is changing.”

My chest tightened. My mind flew to the unraveling house, shedding rooms like snakeskin. “I have to go,” I breathed. “I have to—Library, I want to stop reading.”

“Echo, wait—”

But I was already reaching out for the mirror.



THE LIBRARY WAS SHAKING, BOOK-MIRRORS tumbling from the walls, crystals falling from the chandeliers like beautiful, deadly rain.

No. No.

Not the library.

Not Hal.

A crack splintered through the floor and one of the couches fell into it. Mirrors smashed onto the tiles. The library began to scream.

I leapt across the widening crack, stumbling on the other side, nearly falling in myself. My hand went automatically to the pouch at my hip, and I slipped on the thimble while loosing the needle and the spool of golden thread.

I refused to let the library become unbound.

I refused to lose Hal.

I flung myself toward the door, fingers scrabbling around the frame, and touched it with the thimble. My hand fell through the wall and I found the scarlet binding threads, slippery and smooth, frayed at the edges. Broken. I held tight.

The library shrieked. The shaking grew worse. Mirrors crashed and skidded around me, slivers of glass bouncing up to cut into my cheeks, my arms, while the crystals from the chandeliers sliced my neck or caught in my hair. The room tilted backward and I grabbed the door frame with one hand, my body dangling in empty space. With my other hand, I clung to the scarlet cords. My heart beat triple time: Don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.

But if I didn’t let go, I wouldn’t have both hands free for the binding stitch.

And if I let go, I would fall.

“Echo!”

I looked up into the hallway, where the wolf crouched, every hair standing on end. “Echo, reach! I will catch you!”

But I couldn’t lose Hal.

I glanced behind me, into the chaos of shattered mirrors and the widening chasm that spiraled down into the void.

It was worth being unbound, for a chance to save Hal.

I let go of the door frame. I slipped the needle into the scarlet threads.

For three heartbeats, I didn’t fall. For three heartbeats, I sewed the binding stitch, the needle humming in my hand.

And then the wolf’s teeth clamped around my arm and he was hauling me upward, over the door frame and into the safety of the corridor.

“I wasn’t finished!” I wrenched away from him, wheeling on the library.

It was still there, shaking, shuddering. But the crack didn’t open any wider. The screaming stopped.

“We can still save it,” I told the wolf.

He growled. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not giving the library up. Go to the spider room. Gather all the binding thread you can.” It was strange giving him orders, but he just dipped his head mutely and went off down the hall.