“Stop parroting back everything I say,” she snapped.
“Then say something that makes sense!” I was on my feet in an instant, charging toward her. My fear had been replaced with indignation, anger licking up my spine. She’d tormented my family, sent two of my sisters to cold, icy deaths, and altered some essential part of my very being. The absolute least she could do was give me a straight answer. “What did you do?”
“I beguiled you. The same as your sisters.”
“Not the same. They stopped seeing things long ago. I haven’t.”
“You…you were different,” she mused. “Usually when someone is beguiled, they see what I want them to.” With a flick of her wrist, her fingers erupted into fiery blue flames. I could hear the crackling. I could feel the heat.
“Stop it,” I said, ducking as she swiped her hand close to my face, laughing.
She lowered her hand and the flames burned out. “When the bargain ended, so too did the beguiling, but you still saw things.Things not of my creation. Things not here, but there…” Again, she made the little gesture indicating the air around us.
“Ghosts,” I guessed.
She nodded.
“Echoes of the past.”
Another nod.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t,” she added quickly. “There’s just something in there, Thaumas girl.” She poked at my temple. “Something different.”
Her words sent a shiver down my frame, gooseflesh crawling over my skin. But an idea flickered over me and my heart leapt high. I reached out, grasping her hand. Her skin was oddly textured, like toothed watercolor paper, but I held on fast. “Make itstop.”
She squirmed out of my fervent hold. “There’s nothing I can do. The door was already open. The beguiling just propped it wider.”
“Then shut it!” I cried. “You’re a god. If you don’t have the power, then who? Pontus? Viscardi? Bring Vaipany here right now and make it stop.”
She shook her head, black locks swaying limply down her back. “Perhaps if you…if you were to leave here—right now—something could be done.”
A mirthless burst of laughter bubbled up within me, as loud and off-putting as a bullfrog’s croak. “You want me to make a bargain?”
She shrugged elegantly, the lines of her shoulder blades rising in sharp points. “It never hurts to ask.”
I stalked away from her, acid biting hot at the hollow of my throat. “I’m not leaving. I’m not doing a single thing you ask of me. Not until you fix this.”
Her face hardened, turning brittle and ugly. “I could snap my fingers and send you back to Highmoor this instant.”
“Then do it,” I taunted her. “If you’re so terribly powerful and potent, do it. Send me back. Compel me to leave. Beguile me all the way back to Salann.”
Her fingers balled into tight fists and her nose wrinkled to a sneer. She hissed out words in a language I did not know, finishing off the phrase with a triumphant shout.
All around us, the forest spun, trees and brush bleeding and swirling together in a catastrophic hurricane of color and noise. I felt as if we flipped over several times, strange forces pushing and pulling us, though I was almost certain my feet never left the ground. When it stopped, we were standing in the middle of the Blue Room at Highmoor and I wanted to crumple to the floor to vomit. This was worse than any seasickness I’d ever suffered.
Outside, enormous waves crashed to shore, tossing giant boulders against the rocky cliffs as if they were little more than marbles. Salt hung heavy in the air, coating my tongue with its brackish hold.
My mouth fell open, stunned she’d actually done it. I thought I’d called her bluff, challenged her to something she could not do, but I was back, my sister’s heavy woolen carpets beneath my feet.
I spun around, wondering where Camille was. Everything looked exactly as the night I’d left. Not a thing was out of placeor altered. Nothing except a lit candle gracing an end table beside my favorite brocaded settee.
My eyes narrowed.
The candle was pink.
Just like the one I’d left in the Garden of Giants.
