The Price Guide to the Occult(53)

“It is,” Charlie answered shakily. “Or at least, it was.”

She brandished her dagger at one of the Resurrected, looming menacingly over Pike’s prone body. Gage pushed Nor behind him.

“They’re here for me,” Nor said to Gage.

“They’re not getting you,” he grunted, wielding the knife clutched in his hand.

But a sharp object meant nothing to the dead. One grabbed hold of Savvy’s blue braids and yanked her to the ground. Sena Crowe lunged at it with his knife, but the blade sank right through its dead gray skin like it was slicing into rotten fruit. Black sludge leaked out of the wound and onto the ground. Savvy whimpered as the creature swiped its blackened tongue across her cheek. Scared tears spilled down her cheeks.

Nor had become all too familiar with fear. Too many times it had coated Nor’s insides black and filled her throat with its bile. Too often it marked the faces in her dreams and nightmares: Wintersweet right before a fern had wrapped itself around her throat. Bliss Sweeney right before she’d been killed.

In anger, Nor pulled away from Gage. “Let her go,” she commanded, speaking to the Resurrected that was terrorizing Savvy.

“Nor, what the hell are you doing?” Gage hissed.

I’m not sure, Nor thought to herself. But if her unexpected and unbidden gifts were any sign, she might be able to do something. She had to take that chance.

“I’ll come with you,” she said to the Resurrected. “I’m the one she wants.” The one clutching Savvy’s hair loosened its grip. It turned toward Nor, staring at her with its black dead eyes. She had piqued their interest. Savvy took a tentative step back toward Sena Crowe — and then the ground began to quake.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The lady from the fountain had come to stand in front of Nor, to use her giant bowl to shield Nor. Her thunderous arrival knocked Nor to the ground, and she brought the overturned bowl down over Nor to trap her there. Nor’s face skidded against the rocks and dirt.

“Savvy!” Nor cried. Nor rolled over and beat her hands and feet against the top of the bowl. It was no use. The shield wouldn’t budge.

From under the bowl, she could hear screaming and the sound of people running. And then she heard nothing but her own ragged breath, her own pulse drumming in her ears.

Finally the statue lifted the bowl a bit and peered in at Nor.

“Let me go,” Nor commanded in a voice so irate and so determined, she hardly recognized it as her own. With reluctance, the aegis lifted the bowl completely, setting Nor free.

Nor scrambled out, slipping on wet leaves and muddy ashes. Pike, still unconscious, lay a few yards away. Charlie was beside him, one cheek sliced open, one leg bent at an odd angle. Before Nor had a chance to go to her, Gage came crashing toward her through the trees.

“They took Savvy,” he said, panting. “Those ghouls, or whatever they were. Sena Crowe, too.”

Nor closed her eyes and thought of her best friend, beaten and bloody and afraid. Nor could hear Savvy’s screams so clearly in her head it was as if she hadn’t stopped screaming. Maybe she hadn’t. “I’m going after them.”

“If you were right that they came for you,” Gage said, “that your mother just wants you, then this is probably a trap.”

“All the more reason for me to go,” Nor said. “She’ll kill them if I don’t. You know she will.” She looked at Gage, expecting him to try to dissuade her.

But all he said was, “I’m in.”

Nor looked back at Charlie uncertainly. How could she leave her and Pike to fend for themselves?

“What are you waiting for?” Charlie barked, giving Nor her answer. “Go!”

Gage and Nor took off toward the woods. On the way, Nor spotted Reed, standing on the other side of the compound where only a few flames still burned. He had Bijou cradled in one arm and the other wrapped around Grayson’s shoulder protectively. The look on Reed’s face was one of bewilderment and disorientation, and Nor was struck with guilt and remorse.

She had brought him — and everyone else around her — nothing but terror and pain.

But that stopped now. Nor darted after Gage.

The aegises shuffled back to their posts and stiffened into lifeless statues once more, the face of the woman in the fountain turned forlornly toward where Nor had disappeared into the trees.

Gage and Nor made their way down a curved trail in the woods. With every step, Nor could feel the sheathed knife Charlie had insisting on sliding into the side of her boot. The saphenous vein in Nor’s ankle pulsed against it; the mere possibility of spilled blood had woken it up.

The trail Nor and Gage were on had been familiar once, but as the woods were now, Nor didn’t recognize it at all. The trees were warped like deformed skeletons. Black moss dripped from branches like mourning veils. Instead of the distant cascade of Lilting Falls, she heard a sound like a dull grinding, as if someone were wading through miles of broken glass. And when the lake came into view, Nor saw why.

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

Celestial Lake had turned to ice. A wall of ice, to be exact. A wall that stood as high as a grown man’s hip. It crept its eerie way toward shore, and as it went it sprouted thin crystal fingers that groped at whatever was in its path. It reminded Nor of the mythical River Styx and the desperate hands of the damned reaching, pleading for salvation in the wake of Charon’s ferry.