I clutched at the dock, digging my fingers into the weathered wood. Splinters sliced beneath my fingernails. Into my knuckles. Blood welled.
You are angry, the voice said in my head. And he was right. I was angry. I was angrier than I’d ever thought possible.
When Marcus had taken my brother’s dead body and donned it like some ill-fitting suit, I had wanted to kill him. When he had murdered all those people in Paris and then kidnapped my best friend, Jie, I had wanted to destroy him.
But now he had sacrificed my mother’s blood for his own power. Now . . . the fury blistered inside me.
I would crush Marcus. I would slice him open, and I would laugh as he bled out. I would rip his soul apart bit by bit.
He had stolen my good-bye, and I would obliterate him.
A growl sounded.
Dazed, I looked up. The jackal’s lips were drawn back, and the hair on his spine was high. He lurched at me.
I blundered back onto my knees. He lunged again—biting the air before my face. I scuttled upright.
Then for half a heartbeat, the jackal paused. His ears twisted behind, and the motionless air seemed to pause too. . . .
Go. You must go. In a rush of movement, he thrust at me again.
My feet shambled backward, my eyes locked on the jackal’s bared teeth. Go, go. And that was when I heard them. A new, layered snarling echoed over the water. . . .
The Hell Hounds were coming.
The jackal dived at me once more. You must run. NOW.
In a blind scramble, I turned and charged for the distant curtain. Terror and grief coiled together at the nape of my neck, as heavy and inescapable as the Hounds.
I pounded my feet harder. Each step was like a drum, and my knees kicked up higher, higher. I was out of breath before I was halfway down the dock, yet I barely noticed the scorch of air in my throat.
For as the curtain drew closer, the Hounds grew louder.
Then a wet, frozen wind slammed into me, and the baying of the Hounds shattered through my skull. I staggered, listing dangerously to one side—toward dark waves speckled with starlight. But my arms windmilled, and I maintained my course.
The Hounds were so close now. Inescapable . . . except that the curtain was close too. Its golden light shimmered brighter with each slam of my heels.
I would reach it. I had to reach it. . . .
Then the glow bathed over me. The snarling Hounds faded . . . faded. . . .
I glanced back once, to lock eyes with the jackal’s. He loped behind me and paused just before the curtain, unperturbed and almost . . . smug. Yes, that was what that lolling tongue meant.
“Tell her good-bye,” I said to him. “Please, if you are truly a messenger, then tell her good-bye.”
If he can, the jackal will.
Then I stepped completely through the curtain and into the earthly realm once more.
CHAPTER TWO
My eyelids snapped open. I stood in the middle of my cabin on the airship. My chest quaked. My pulse shrieked in my ears, and with each gasp for air, the echoing howl of the Hounds vanished. . . .
A dull throb pricked at my senses. I glanced down . . . and blinked. My hands bled. Splinters poked out from my knuckles, yet I barely felt them. Elation and surprise hummed through me, dominating every other sensation.
I had just crossed into the spirit realm by my own power—something Oliver had sworn to me was impossible—and I had come out alive.
Though . . . I might not have escaped if not for the jackal.
Jackal.
I frowned. I hadn’t seen him when I’d crossed to the dock before, yanked there by Marcus’s magic. Was the jackal truly a messenger? And if so, to whom could he relay messages? Of course, in order to give a message, I would have to return to the dock again. . . .
As my mind ran through possibilities—of how I could ask Elijah about necromancy, how I could beg for Clarence’s forgiveness, how I could tell Mama I loved her—a scratch began to sound at my cabin door.
I ignored it, focusing instead on all the things I could ask the jackal to share with my family.
Splat. I looked down. A fat droplet of blood had hit the wood and now sank into the grain. My forehead knit. The engines on this airship were so quiet I could actually hear my own blood fall. I glanced to the porthole—the view outside was one of wispy clouds and green, patchwork farmland. We could have been anywhere in France right now. Presumably, though, we were south and east of Paris.
And, good God, we were flying. I shuffled two steps closer to the porthole, but the lush, pale green only served to confuse me. To distance me further from the moment. For seeing the land so far below and streaming by so fast . . . it did not feel real.
The scratching sound came again at my door, and this time there was a loud click. I whirled around just as the door banged open.
Daniel stood in the doorway, face flushed and lock pick in hand. Beside him, with his yellow eyes wide, was Oliver.