"A warning to who?" she asks.

"A warning, Niki. And that's all you need to know."

"I think there's a h.e.l.l of a lot I need to know," Niki mumbles, and wipes her hand on her jeans. "A lot of things you're not telling me."

"Sometimes knowledge is a luxury we can't afford,"

Spyder says, and knocks at the door. Niki watches as concentric ripples spread rapidly across the wood, shock waves beginning at the point where Spyder's knuckles rapped against the muntin, then spreading out and out and out until they vanish at sensible horizontal and vertical boundaries. Edges of the door, edges of the world, and Back when most people still thought the world was flat, Spyder told her at the Palisades.

I should probably be really freaked out by that, Niki thinks, still watching as the last of the ripples race themselves towards iron hinges and the ceiling and door frame boards. But perhaps she's seen too much, too fast, and nothing will ever amaze her again. The thought is vaguely comforting, and so she doesn't bother asking Spyder why the door doesn't know the difference between solids and liquids. And then it swings open, and there are rickety-looking steps leading down into darkness beneath the house, and the hallway fills suddenly with the moist stink of mildew and sea water and dead fish. Niki covers her mouth and tries not to gag.

"Follow me," Spyder tells her, as if she has any choice in the matter. "Stay close, and be careful. These stairs have seen better days."

"What's waiting for us down there?"

"Just Esme," Spyder replies, and then she's through the doorway and the old steps squeak like angry rats beneath her feet. Niki lingers a moment, looking back down the long mustard-colored hall, past the strange paintings, and 223.

Eponine Chattox is standing next to the thing that isn't exactly a grandfather clock, staring back at her.

"Come on," Spyder calls, her voice echoing in the stair-well, and the old woman turns around and walks away, trailing candlelight and fear.

"Yeah," Niki says. "I'm coming," and she hurries to catch up with Spyder.

The cardiologist scowled and made grim predictions that she wouldn't be so lucky next time, warnings that there was only so much abuse a body could take, but in the end he let her go, because there was nothing else he could do. Daria signed everything they gave her to sign, release forms absolving Memorial Hospital of any and all responsibility, forms stating that she was acting against the advice of her doctor, and then they put her in a wheelchair and an orderly carted her down the hall to an elevator and back out into the world. Alex was waiting in the cranberry red Saturn he'd rented at the airport, and he helped her into the car and made her buckle her seat belt.

And now the wide night sky and the prairie land rush by outside her window, and Daria watches the rearview mirror as the lights of Colorado Springs shrink down to a fistful of fallen stars trapped in the lee of the Rockies. There's been hardly a word between them since the hospital, Alex keeping his mouth shut and both his eyes on the road, the asphalt belt of Highway 24 snaking north and east towards Falcon and Peyton and other places Daria's never heard of and never wants to see. There's a Tom Petty song on the radio, but the station is already beginning to break up, and soon there'll be nothing but country and gospel to choose from.

"I don't even know how to perform b.l.o.o.d.y CPR," Alex murmurs, and a pa.s.sing semi flashes its high beams, so he slows down to the speed limit. "I had lessons once, in school, but I don't remember any of it."

"That's okay. I do. In a pinch, I can probably talk you through it."

224.

"It's not f.u.c.king funny," he says, and she shrugs and nods her head, because it really isn't funny. But anything's better than thinking about Niki, or the white bird, or Birmingham, or a hundred other awful things that she can't stop thinking about.

"We should stop at the next exit," she says. "I need a pack of cigarettes."

"Over my dead body."

"Oh no, Alex, not you, too. One of us has to drive," and this time she laughs and then goes back to watching the night and the low, scrubby shapes huddled in the darkness at the side of the highway. Alex curses to himself and switches off the staticky radio, so the only sounds left are the hum of the tires on the road and the dry whir of the heater.

"I ought to have me f.u.c.king head bashed in," he says.

"Going along with this crazy s.h.i.te." And then they pa.s.s a Colorado state trooper parked in the median, waiting there with his lights off like some patient ambush predator, and Alex curses again and slows down just a little bit more.

"Did you call Marvin?" Daria asks. "Did you tell him I was leaving the hospital?"

"Yeah. I told him you were a G.o.dd.a.m.n lunatic."

"How'd he sound?"

"How the h.e.l.l do you think he sounded?"

"I don't want to fight with you," she says, and rolls down her window an inch or so, letting in a blast of fresh, cold air.

"I'm not going to talk anymore, not if you're going to keep trying to pick a fight."

"Just when the h.e.l.l are you going to get around to telling me where we're going?" he asks, like he didn't hear a word she said.

"I'll tell you later."

"I think you need to tell me now."

"It's really a very long story," she says and chews at a thumbnail, wishing that she had a cigarette and anything alcoholic, a beer or a shot of Jack or anything at all to smooth out the jagged places behind her eyes.

225.

"Yeah? Well, I think I can spare the time."

"Listen, Alex, if you're right, then it's nothing. All you gotta do is shut up and drive me to f.u.c.king Kansas and watch me make an a.s.s of myself. If you're right-and you're always f.u.c.king right-where's the harm?"

"Why don't you try asking me that when you're having another heart attack," he says and checks the rearview mirror before speeding up again.

"Never mind," Daria says, and she rolls the window shut.

She's about to close her eyes, because the thirst is getting worse by the minute, already so bad she's starting to sweat, and even bad dreams would be better than arguing, when something scrambles out of the blackness at her side of the road and into the headlights. Something on bandy, long legs that moves so fast it's hardly more than a blur of yellow fur and iridescent eyes.

"Motherf.u.c.ker," Alex growls and swerves to miss the animal, stomps the break pedal, and the tires shriek as the car fishtails and b.u.mps off the blacktop onto the uneven gravel shoulder of the highway. Daria feels herself moving towards the windshield, a long moment of weightlessness before the seat belt catches her, and she only whacks her knees against the dash. Half a second later and they're sitting in a cloud of dust, and the bitter smell of hot rubber is seeping in through the vents. Alex shifts into park and lets the engine idle, leans forward until his forehead is resting against the steering wheel.

"b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.king f.u.c.k," he mutters and punches the seat between them.

"Did we hit it?" Daria asks, breathless, both her knees aching, and she's too afraid to turn her head and look behind them, afraid what she might see in the crimson glow of the taillights.

"f.u.c.king G.o.dd.a.m.n deer," Alex says.

"But did we hit it?"

"No," he replies and punches the seat again. "I don't think so. Jesus Christ, it was big as a cow."

"It wasn't a deer. I think it was a dog."

226.

"It was a f.u.c.king deer. I saw its horns."

"Deer don't have horns, they have antlers."

"You think I give a rat's f.a.n.n.y? It was a f.u.c.king deer."

"We might have hit it," Daria says, and unfastens her seat belt, opens her door, and an alarm buried somewhere in the guts of the car starts beeping loudly.

Alex raises his head and glares at her. "Where do you think you're going?"

"It might be hurt. We can't just leave it lying there in the road."

"Why the h.e.l.l not?"

"Someone else will come along and run over it," Daria says, and she gets out of the car before he can tell her not to. The gravel shifts and crunches beneath the soles of her boots, and the night air's a lot colder than she expected; her breath turns to white steam and mingles with the settling dust. Look quick, and get it over with, and she does, turns around expecting blood and matted fur, twisted bone and muscle, but there's nothing at all in the road behind the car, no broken dog or deer or anything else that she can see. She takes a step towards the rear of the Saturn, and her left knee pops loudly.

"Where do you think you're going now?" Alex asks, and she doesn't answer him. She realizes that she's started shivering and hugs herself tightly. The car is still beeping, and Daria wishes that he would turn off the engine so it would stop. She walks around to the back of the car, and a night bird calls out somewhere in the distance. It might be an owl, she thinks, but she hasn't heard an owl in years and years, not since she was a little girl, so she can't be sure.

"We didn't hit it," she whispers, saying the words out loud to convince herself, saying them so she'll turn around and get back into the car. The bird calls out again, closer than before, and this time she's pretty sure that it isn't an owl.

And then there's movement from the darkness at the farthest limit of the taillights, a sudden, pale flutter and a twin flash like animal eyes. s.h.i.t. We did hit it. We did hit it, 227.

but it's not dead, and she takes a few cautious steps away from the car. Behind her, Alex blows the horn, and the eyes flash again, a brief red-gold glimmer, and now she's sure that they're eyes, watching her from the gra.s.s and scrub at the edge of the highway.

Go back. Go back, and get Alex. If it's hurt, it might be scared. It might even be dangerous, but Daria doesn't go back to the car. Instead, she takes another step towards the dim shape crouched at the side of the road.

When it speaks, it's a voice colder than the November wind blowing across the prairie, the voice of something that is neither hurt nor scared, a voice like frostbite and ice and starvation at the still heart of winter.

"Where are you going, Daria Parker?" it asks, the words pouring from it thick as syrup, and now the thing that she thought was a dog is standing up on its spindly hind legs, twice again as tall as she is, and its red eyes burn bright in the night. "We thought you were smarter than this. We thought you wouldn't be a problem. We told the Dragon he had worse things to worry about than the Hierophant's b.i.t.c.h."

Daria opens her mouth to scream, but only a soft puff of fog slips past her trembling lips. She can't look away from those hateful, noctilucent eyes gazing down at her, eyes that could pick her apart in an instant or burn her to a cinder, eyes to show the soul of something that has never even imagined mercy. Alex blows the horn again and the thing flares its nostrils and smiles, baring teeth that seem b.l.o.o.d.y in the gleam of the taillights.

"We have been wrong before," it says. "Though it would be much easier on you if we were not. It would be simpler for all concerned."

"Niki," Daria whispers, and she needs all the air in her lungs, all the strength in her body, to manage those two syllables.

"The Hierophant chose her path. Yours didn't have to be the same. What did you hope to find at the end of this road, anyway?"

228.

And that's the question, the only question that really matters. Daria knows that, must have known that all along, and wants to ask the thing if it has the answer, but it won't let her talk, won't even let her move.

"There's only death, this way," it says, as the night curdles and shrinks down around her until there's almost nothing left but those eyes. The beast grins and opens its jaws wide to bay at the moonless sky, yawning like some hungry fairy-tale wolf before it gobbles up Red Riding Hood or blows down a house of straw. Oh, what big eyes you have, what big teeth, and when it howls the ground shudders, and Daria's bones hum painfully beneath her skin. It's coming for her, erasing the distance between them, and in another heartbeat it will grind her to jelly beneath its perfect, obsidian claws.

Death and sorrow.

Loss and waste and- Alex's strong hands close roughly around her shoulders, and the beast dissolves in the deafening blast of an air horn, its eyes and teeth melting away to the blinding glare of headlights and a chrome radiator grill. He shoves her hard, and she stumbles, almost falls on the pavement, but he's still right there to catch her, and the truck pa.s.ses so close that the wind off its trailer is a hurricane gale. And when it's gone, and there's only the beeping alarm from the rented cranberry Saturn, only its idling motor and the night bird Daria doesn't recognize, he holds her while she cries and shakes and tries to drive the memory of that voice from her head.

All the way down through the dark spread out below the house, round and round the tight, descending spiral, looking for the bottom of the rickety stairs, and the air grows closer and more fetid with every step. If this were a story, Niki thinks, and she's beginning to believe that's exactly what it is, and what it's been all along-a story-a story that she's been written into, or that she's written herself into, and now she's merely a character trapped in the 229.

obligatory, inevitable riptide of plot and subtext and metaphor.

If this is a story, and I'm walking through it, then these must be significant stairs, and surely some revelation is at hand.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre . . .

Round and round the foregone, snail's-sh.e.l.l path, and she knows there probably never was a center here to hold anything at all, only her exhaustion and the dim light from Spyder's hair and the gem between her eyes. I could sleep for a month, she thinks. I could sleep for an age.

I could sleep for a thousand years, easy.

She bites hard at her lower lip, the pain and a few drops of blood to keep her awake and walking, and Niki digs for other thoughts to push back the towering, satin-black wall of sleep. We should be underwater, she thinks, because there's no way that the house could possibly have a bas.e.m.e.nt this deep, not even half this deep, not if the whole village is floating on a raft of bones and wire. They must have pa.s.sed the waterline a long time ago-unless this is another sort of magic, like jumping off a bridge and never hitting San Francis...o...b..y. Maybe the second door with the red mark was more than an ordinary door, and this is another place entirely, and that thought sends icicle fingers down her spine and makes her want to turn and run all the way back up the stairs to the mustard-colored hallway and frightened, glowering Eponine Chattox. Spyder stops and glances warily back up at her, as if she's been eavesdrop-ping on Niki's thoughts again.

"We're almost there," Spyder says in a tone that Niki knows is supposed to be encouraging, rea.s.suring, but isn't.

Her hand hurts like h.e.l.l, and her feet hurt almost as badly, and she thinks maybe she's been dozing off while she walked, fading in and out of consciousness like a bad radio signal, and that's why it seems the stairs will never end.

Dead on my feet, she thinks and laughs out loud.

"What's funny, Niki?"

"Nothing. Nothing's funny. But I gotta sit down now."

230.

"Not much farther, I promise."

And Niki realizes that it's getting easier to see, the stair-well brightening by slow degrees, and now there's a little light coming from somewhere below them, somewhere besides Spyder. A faint green luminescence like moonlight shining through the surface of an algae-covered pond, a muted absinthe light that seems the slightest bit brighter with every step she takes.

"I feel like I've walked a hundred miles," Niki says.

"No, not a hundred. Not quite that far."

"Well, far enough. These d.a.m.ned stairs better end soon, or I'm not going to make it."

"Look, Niki, we're here. We're at the bottom."

She blinks, squinting into the soft green light, and is surprised and startled to see that Spyder's telling her the truth, and they're standing together on a wide landing built of planks gone almost as gray and weathered as the decaying catwalk leading from the Palisades to the village. The landing at one corner of a vast chamber, and the stink of fish and mold is so strong here that her eyes water, and she has to breathe through her mouth. That way she only tastes it, rot-sweet aftertaste like the seas have all drained away, seven Chinese brothers swallowing the ocean; a million squirming things, dead and dying, lying trapped in the solidifying muck and seaweed beneath a blazing sun.

Past the landing is a sprawling, pick-up-sticks jumble of sagging piers and platforms, teetering shelves crowded with aquarium tanks-some clean and bubbling, others stagnant and choked with algae-books and scrolls and great gla.s.s jars filled with dark liquid and darker things floating inside. Here and there are places where wide openings in the wooden floor reveal inky pools of seawater, draped in mesh tents of fishing nets and lobster pots.

There are long tables cluttered with medical instruments and microscopes and cruel-looking contraptions that Niki can't identify. And at the very center of it all, a stone dais rising from the seafloor, and then Niki notices the walls.

231.

"My G.o.d. It's water. It's all water," and Spyder nods her head.

"Esme is a very skilled hydromancer," she says. "That's how she was able to open the portal to bring you across."

"A hydromancer," Niki whispers, and she stares up at the high and shimmering walls, a dome carved somehow from the sea itself, a gigantic bubble far below the floating village. And she guesses that explains the stairs as well, as much as it explains anything at all. The stone dais sits at the very center of the dome, beneath its highest point, and now Niki can see that the green light comes from a sort of chandelier or candelabrum hanging directly above the dais. Except there are no candles or electric lightbulbs, no gas jets, but, instead, light spilling from gla.s.s pots and bowls of living things hung from the rusted iron frame of the fixture.

The walls of the dome glisten, revealing black and impenetrable depths, revealing nothing much at all.

"Well, I never thought we'd see you again," someone says, someone standing directly behind Niki, and she turns to find a young man. He's long-limbed and rail thin, a gaunt wraith of a man, his straight, mouse-colored hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.

"Is he talking to me?" she asks Spyder, and the man sits down on one of the bottom steps and winks at Niki. He's wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and blue jeans so worn and faded that they're hardly even blue anymore.