Chapter 19

19

EVANGELINE

S tupid, stupid, stupid. I should have known my pendant wouldn't work while we were inside the witch's home. Her magic was soaked into every inch of the place.

Nanny Murk lurched toward us with surprising speed, strings of spittle flying from her jagged black teeth. The cleaver she clutched in her bony hand gleamed a sickly, acid-green in the dim light. Frozen in place, I stared her down. The room was too cluttered to dodge. Half of me was absolutely livid with the other half. Of all the times to go full-on deer-in--headlights, it had to be now?

Firm, cool hands grabbed me. The world lurched, and then my feet were off the floor. Gabriel pulled me into his arms, ran directly at Nanny Murk, then leaped over her head. She howled with rage as her cleaver sliced through the empty air and wheeled around to face us.

"Tricksy little rats," she spat.

I scrambled down from Gabriel's arms, and we ran, pelting down the hallway toward the front door. The witch bellowed, and the house heaved around us, tattered tapestries stripping away from the walls and reaching out for us. Things began to rise up from the heaps of junk to chase us, moth-eaten taxidermy running after us on desiccated paws while ancient newspapers flapped around us like birds.

My heart was in my throat. The strange warping of the hallway made sounds seem odd. First it sounded like Nanny Murk was far away, then like she was right behind us, then like she was far away again. I didn't dare look back to see how close she actually was.

The scar on my arm was stinging. I'd been barely twenty, cocky and reckless when Nanny Murk had given it to me. I'd gone in unprepared, and she had found me, brought me to one of her experiments. If she caught me again…

I shook myself. No, no, that wouldn't happen. Not again. I was stronger now, and I had backup. A massive spike whizzed past us and slammed into the wall, shuddering from the impact. I yelped, and the witch laughed, low and throaty.

"We have unfinished business, don't we, little rat?" she snarled. The hallway stretched out impossibly long in front of us. One of the tapestries tore itself off the wall and flapped into our path. It showed a man with old-fashioned clothes, maybe 1850s, holding a cudgel. He began to peel away from the fabric behind him, reaching out for us with woven hands. I blasted a small dart of fire through his flat chest, and he began to burn with the pop and hiss of damp twigs. Gabriel threw him behind us, and there was the crackle of fire beginning to spread.

Finally, finally , we reached the end of the hallway, bursting out into the entryway. An armoire threw a door open into our path, but Gabriel shoved it out of the way with a snarl and the sound of splintering wood. We vaulted a pile of old bird cages and ran for the door. Gabriel reached it first, but as soon as he touched the doorknob, the entire door glowed a bright shade of green, and he flew backward, slamming into the far wall with a sickening crunch. His landing was softened by another tapestry, which was a mixed blessing. The three little children on it, all with identical gaunt faces and little blue pinafores, grabbed at him with cloth hands, keeping him pinned halfway up the wall.

Nanny Murk rounded the corner. I looked back and forth frantically between Gabriel and the door. The wards on the door were familiar, but there were enough of them layered up and twisted over each other that it would take time and attention to break them, and I didn't have either of those to spare at the moment.

"Stay still," Gabriel mouthed at me urgently, and I did, freezing in place. The tapestry children called out for Nanny Murk with voiceless mouths, managing to make a sound like denim on denim. She swung toward them; her head cocked to the side.

"Caught one, did you, my lovelies?" she cooed, petting the corner of the tapestry like it was a favored child's hair. "Good work, good work, such very, very good work…" She leaned close, barely an inch away from Gabriel, and sniffed loudly. "Not the little witchling," she said, shaking her head in disappointment. "No matter. She can't escape me for long, no, can't escape Nanny."

She held up the cleaver, and I sprang into action, firing a bolt of magic at the rusty chain above the room's dust-fuzzed chandelier. The little projectile hit perfectly, and there was a quiet, ominous creak that made the old witch's head snap up. Then the chain gave up the ghost, and the whole thing crashed down to the floor, sending fragments of glass and metal everywhere.

Nanny Murk jerked back with a shriek as shards of glass buried themselves in the thin skin of her hands and face. It gave Gabriel just enough time to fight his way free from the small cloth hands keeping him pinned, and he landed silently on the floor.

Flames licked down the hallway we'd run through, casting the whole place in a grimy orange glow. It raced along the carpet, making a trail for itself into the atrium and reaching eagerly up a stack of mildewed cardboard boxes. Nanny Murk let out an enraged hiss, stomping her feet so hard that the ground jumped and trembled beneath us. Somewhere in the boxes, glass broke, and a cloying mix of pungent herbal smells filled the air.

Nanny Murk stomped and stomped, shrieking with rage. With each stomp the building twisted, windows sliding around, and doorways shifting. A staircase began to jut out of the wall, barely a foot wide, but enough to get up to the second floor. Gabriel and I ran for it at the same time, taking advantage of the hiss and sputter of the fire as it reached a huge dead plant in one corner of the room.

We scrambled up the stairs, grabbing onto the wall for stability. The fire was close behind us, and when we managed to get up to the strange little balcony, Gabriel grabbed my arm.

"Muffling spell," he murmured, barely loud enough for me to hear, and I nodded, pulling the spell up around us. He turned and kicked down hard on the top few stairs, splintering them away and sending them crashing down to the mess beneath us. It wouldn't buy us much time, but it would stop the fire from going up the stairs.

Three hallways twisted away from the balcony, all equally unwelcoming. We picked one at random and ran. The witch's magic chased after us, twisting the room into a jagged zigzag and sending framed paintings flying off the walls at us. A large landscape caught Gabriel in the side, and he staggered into me. I managed to brace him, and we kept moving.

From behind us, there came a laugh and the sound of nails on wood. I glanced back just long enough to see the large, dark shape of the witch scuttling along the wall like a massive bug, and I pushed Gabriel into a side room, flinging up the muffling spell so I could close the door silently behind us.

The room we were in was dark and made a faint, rhythmic thunking noise, barely audible over my own shuddering breaths. A window set into one wall let in a tiny bit of light, but it was the sickly gray-orange of a months-old Jack-O-lantern. Once my breathing slowed, I lit up a small orb of warm golden light, just bright enough to illuminate the vampire standing next to me.

Gabriel looked grim. His hair was falling into his face, and a bruise was blooming on his cheek.

"Are you all right?" we both said at the same time.

Gabriel huffed out a quiet laugh. "I'm fine."

"So am I." I rubbed a hand over the scar on my arm. "I'll be better once we find a way out, though."

There was a crash and a shriek from the hallway outside, and I held my breath as I heard Nanny Murk rush past. I waited a few seconds and then brightened the light in my hand enough to fill the whole room. I had to clap a hand over my mouth to stay quiet when I realized where we were. I'd been here before.

The room was large, filled with the bulky, angular shapes of looms. There were at least a dozen, all hung with more tapestries like the ones that had attacked us downstairs. Woven faces stared down at us from all angles—men, women, and children trapped in string. In one corner of the room, the biggest of the looms was weaving all by itself. The thunking noise came from its mechanisms sliding around, sending a wooden shuttle the length of my entire arm slamming back and forth through the threads.

Next to the loom was a large chair, roughly made of stained wood. There was a man in it—or at least the remains of one. The man had a broad, weathered face, and brown eyes that stared blankly up at nothing. His hi-vis vest was tattered, and the Department of Sanitation badge clipped to it was covered in grime. It looked as though he'd been dead for a few days, but with magic in play, it was hard to tell. Thick, leather bands were wrapped around him, keeping him strapped down to the chair, with his arms stretched out onto the splintering arm rests. One of his arms had been jaggedly slit open, and a thick, blood-red string stretched from the wound to the loom.

I took a step back, then another, pressing a hand to the scar on my own arm. On the loom, the tapestry version of the man, woven out of his own life force, slowly took shape.

"We definitely need to get out of here," I said shakily.

Gabriel put a steadying hand on my arm. "The window?"

I pulled myself away from the gruesome sight in front of me and went to the window, smoothing my hands cautiously over the frame. The glass was caked with such thick wards, I was amazed any light got through at all.

I shook my head. "No way," I told him. "Not unless you can buy me at least an hour. There has to be something we can?—"

"Evangeline?" Gabriel said, worry coating every letter. He came over to me and followed my eyes, trying to figure out what had stopped me in my tracks. His breath caught when he realized what it was.

On the wall high above us was a mostly unfinished weaving, barely a foot and a half long. It showed the head of a young woman with bright green eyes, a smattering of freckles, and a curly mass of chestnut hair. The thread at the bottom dangled limply, as if the ragged ends hadn't been touched since Marcus found me and severed the connection.

My own face, younger and less cautious, stared down at us.

Gabriel's hand brushed against mine as though he wanted to offer comfort but wasn't sure if he should touch me. I grabbed it and squeezed tight enough for his bones to creak, but he didn't complain.

"We're going to find a way out," he told me, quiet and firm. It was the sort of tone that reminded me that he had been born to authority. When someone told you something in a voice like that, it was almost impossible to doubt they were right.

"You're goddamn right we are," I said. "How hard can you hit?"

"Pretty hard," Gabriel said. "What are you thinking?"

I told him. He stared at me for a moment, then started to grin.

It took me a few moments to get all the spells we'd need in place. I wrapped them around us carefully, making sure to get the order right. This could get very ugly if it went wrong. Smoke was starting to pour under the door, and Nanny Murk was pacing the halls, muttering to herself.

I laid the last spell, one that would keep Gabriel and me linked so that I'd follow him automatically if he went more than a few feet.

"These should hold," I said softly.

"And if they don't?" he asked, keeping his voice just as low.

"Then, we're going to have bigger problems."

Suddenly, the room seemed oddly quiet. My eyes widened, and I turned slowly to look at the loom. It had stopped moving. The tapestry was finished. With a horrible tearing sound, it began to pull itself free, the man in the tapestry reaching out for us with a rasping noise.

"Go!" I cried. "Go, gogogogo!"

The door burst open, letting in a burst of hot wind and the mad laughter of Nanny Murk. Gabriel ran straight at the wall, bracing his shoulder to ram it, and I gathered my magic behind him, sending energy to every one of the shields and charms and strength spells I'd put on him. There was a massive crack as he slammed into the wall with all of his vampiric speed and strength. For a moment, I thought we'd overestimated ourselves, but then the wall began to crumble, first slowly, then furiously quick.

The thing about using magic to manipulate space was that when it went wrong, it went wrong quickly. If, for instance, someone broke through an external wall from inside a room that shouldn't exist, it would get messy very fast. I let out a slightly manic laugh.

The room began to… well, basically depressurize. The hole Gabriel had made was a gaping gray void, and the looms and tapestries and odds and ends were being sucked into it incredibly quickly. Behind us, Nanny Murk howled with rage. Things flew past me in a blur: sewing scissors, the shuttle of the loom, a pair of glasses. Some of the things battered me, but they weren't enough to stop me as I sprinted toward Gabriel.

Together, we leaped into the rapidly growing hole, just as the suction caught the fire outside and brought it roaring into the room. I looked over my shoulder to see the furious old witch screaming spell after spell, surrounded by her burning tapestries.

The void flickered past us in fragments of lost space. It was a sickening blur, and I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on the magic that kept me anchored to Gabriel. I could only hope we were still moving forward. It was out of my hands now. I wouldn't be able to cast anything new without risking catastrophe, and magic like this was the sort of thing that could easily drive a human insane. My lungs were starting to burn, but I didn't dare take a breath.

Suddenly, we were somewhere cold and damp. We hung in midair for a second, then landed with a splash. I opened my eyes and sucked in an eager breath. Gabriel and I had landed in one of the pools around Nanny Murk's hut, pressed against one of the walls of the cavern.

"I can't believe that worked," Gabriel gasped, staring at me with wide purple eyes.

I let out a breathless laugh. "Fuck, neither can I."

In the middle of the cavern, the hut was warping rapidly, growing, shrinking, and spasming. It looked like a glitching video game. Each time it glitched, more and more fire spread across it, painting the pale walls of the cave a burning red.

"Come on," I said, sticking out a hand. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Gabriel grabbed my hand. Now that we were outside of Nanny Murk's wards, my pendant reacted as soon as I activated it, sending us safely back to Gabriel's manor.