A palace …
Suddenly, I’m shaking. My blood is pounding too hard in my veins. Jamie is no longer beside me, and I’m alone on the street, looking through the window at the smoke that fills the shop. I’m screaming out my mother’s name, watching a man I’ve never seen lay her body on the wooden floor.
Cases line the walls, full of old clocks and crystal vases, dolls and watches and books—so many books. And when the man sees me, I yell. I scream. A bag lies at my feet. Shiny metal peeks out from the depths, and I reach for the gun. I reach for the gun, and—
“Gracie. Gracie!”
Jamie is squeezing me, holding me tight.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” His fingers are in my hair, pushing my face toward his broad shoulder, muffling my screams.
The flames are gone and the night is clear, but I swear that I can still smell the smoke. It hasn’t been three years. It isn’t over. A part of me wants to lunge through the place where the door used to hang, run back through time to that night, to stop the stupid girl I was. But it’s too late.
Inside, the wide wooden floorboards are sturdy but covered in dust. The roof is still standing, and the old tin tiles on the ceiling are now charred and stained with soot. Mom loved those tiles. She spent hours sanding and scraping and painting them to shiny white perfection. But nothing about our family will ever be perfect again.
“Every now and then Dad talks about selling it, but …”
I get it, even if Jamie can’t put it into words. There are some books you can never get rid of, even if you don’t like the ending.
It’s not a shop anymore; it’s a grave. There is nothing alive within it, and it can’t hurt me. I know this, but when I close my eyes, I hear the crackling of the fire, the shattering of the glass.
I shake and I want to scream, but most of all I want to wake up in my old bed and find that the past three years were nothing but a very bad dream.
I don’t realize I’m shaking again until I feel Jamie’s hands on my arms.
“We don’t have to do this, Gracie. Whatever test you think you’ve got to pass, you don’t.”
I do. But I can’t say so. I just pull away from Jamie’s grasp and steady my pounding pulse, take a deep breath. And soon I’m standing where the stairs used to be. The second-story balcony is breaking free, crashing down and taking Dominic’s perfect face with it.
That’s one way the Scarred Man and I are different. It takes more than a glance to see the way that this place changed me.
“Grace?” Jamie is beside me, here to stop me from doing something stupid.
He’s three years too late.
“Gracie, come—”
But I don’t care what Jamie has to say. There’s a brick at my feet, and I pick it up and hurl it as hard as I can through one of the remaining pieces of glass. It shatters and falls to the floor, and I just pick up something else and lash out again. And again.
And again.
Jamie doesn’t try to stop me. Maybe he knows he’s too weak now. Or maybe he was never strong enough to hold back the wave of emotion that is crashing through me.
One of the interior walls is half-collapsed, but I kick at the part that still stands. Over and over I pound and I pummel until the bricks move. The wall shifts, and soon it’s crumbling, just like me.
“Gracie, stop!”
His arms are around my waist, pulling me away from the bricks that are crashing to the floor like an avalanche that’s been held back for too long. Dust swarms around us. The old wooden floor creaks. And, suddenly, I wonder how long and how hard I’d have to kick to make the wall around Valancia come tumbling down. I’m half-tempted to try it.
“Are you okay?” Jamie holds me at arm’s length and looks me up and down. Poor Jamie. When will he learn that I only get hurt on the inside?
When he sees that I’m as whole as I was when I started, he tips up my chin and makes me look him in the eye. “Feel better?” he tries to tease.
But Jamie wouldn’t smile at my answer, so I don’t give it.
I just try to ease away, but in a flash Jamie’s arms are around me, jerking me back, and he’s screaming “Look out!” as I realize that the heavy bricks have crashed through the weather-beaten boards, disappearing into some unknown below.
For a moment, my brother and I just stare at the massive black hole that has opened up before us.
“I didn’t know it had a basement,” I say.
Jamie shakes his head, a hint of fear in his eyes. “It didn’t.”
I shouldn’t be surprised. My life has become a never-ending spiral of dusty, secret rooms and even darker secrets. We’re thousands of miles from Adria, but this shadowy space is connected, I can feel it, like maybe I might drop into that dark hole and start walking and, in a year or so, emerge somewhere behind the wall.