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Do not answer the door.
13
Every nerve in Emrys’s body fired at the same time. His legs shook ferociously, and his breath caught in his lungs. Edna’s voice echoed from everywhere at once.
“No,” Serena moaned, her voice thick with despair. “Please, no …”
Emrys caught sight of the hourglass looming on the reliquary’s mantle, the thin line of blood-red sand spooling down, down, down in its ever-patient pursuit.
Serena had been right yet again. Somehow, the Wandering Hour had found them even here. If they couldn’t hide in the reliquary, where would they ever be safe?
“A space outside of space,” Edna’s voice crooned. “A time outside of time. We’re something of a matching set, aren’t we?” Emrys caught a glimpse of a large shadow undulating between the relic pedestals, but it moved too fast for him to see clearly.
“I could hunt anywhere I liked from here, now, couldn’t I?” Edna said. “No assistance necessary. And so many interesting bric-a-bracs.” Her voice was disturbingly hollow—a wide glass jar that had been gradually emptied and was now ready for refilling.
“Okay,” Serena said softly. “Okay. No more panic. No more running.”
Emrys glanced at his friend. The fear had finally left Serena’s expression, replaced by a look he liked even less.
“I’m sorry, Emrys,” Serena murmured. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “For everything. Maybe if I’d just accepted all this from the beginning, things would have been different.”
Emrys followed her gaze to the glittering shield on its pedestal—the relic she’d been studying the night before. He felt her posture shift as she prepared to run for it.
“No,” Emrys rasped, shaking his head and tightening his grip. “Serena, no. Don’t let go. I can’t help you if you let go!”
“Always trying to help the unhelpable,” Serena said with a sigh. “It’s your most annoying quality.”
But when her eyes finally found his, they were bright with tears.
“Tell Hazel I didn’t make it easy.”
“SERENA, N—”
The world distended again, time swelling as Serena wrenched herself free of his grip. Emrys’s plea stretched like starlight crossing the cold expanse of the universe, a pinpoint of heat and brilliance pulled so taut it lost its shape. Its purpose.
The plea floated listlessly, suspended in a frozen infinity.
Until, as a hand latched hard onto his ankle, time snapped violently back into place.
“—OHHH!”
Emrys was wrenched from his feet, his head cracking against the reliquary’s marble floor. The world exploded into a white-hot supernova of pain, Emrys’s field of vision suddenly full of shimmering stars.
The reliquary had changed.
Many of the plinths were toppled, their dangerous artifacts spilled haphazardly across the floor. The rug at the center of the sitting space now appeared to be on fire, and the warm, comfortable hues of the room were replaced by flickering shadows.
Emrys’s head swam. His eyes barely caught a hazy shape in the background. An enormous pale mouth opened wider than any human mouth should, and inside it …
Inside it …!
“EMRYS!”
Emrys realized that someone was screaming his name—had been screaming it this whole time. His eyes focused on Serena: on her fearful gaze, and the hand gripping his ankle, and the legs that were half-swallowed by a gigantic gullet now writhing from the darkness.
His eyes unfocused again. His head hurt so much. As his thoughts spun, he caught glimpses of the reliquary: a toppled bookshelf, an oaken table scored by flames, and above it all, a pristine hourglass untouched by the carnage. Slowly counting—slowly, slowly.
Emrys raised his hand toward the hourglass, as if he might grasp it from even this far.
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t focus.
You have an unquiet mind.
Serena! Serena needed him! But what could he do for her? He wasn’t a sorcerer. He couldn’t speak ancient languages or calculate otherworldly equations. He was just a weird kid who’d stumbled onto a facet of the world that was so much bigger and darker than even he’d ever dreamed of.
That word again.
The weird is ours to wield.
“EMRYS!”
Serena screamed his name again. She was being eaten alive and there was nothing he could …
