CHAPTER THIRTY
Clawed hands shook me awake.
“Penny.”
Davina’s fuzzy black hair was haloed by the blood or-ange of the sun-rise.
“You’re in my room,” I said, bleary from sleep. “Why are you in my room?”
A few hours ago, those hands were very, very else-where.
“Some-thing’s hap-pened.” She crouched to the ground on her haunches. “Maybe. I think.”
“Be more spe-cific,” I grunted, reach-ing over to my bed-side ta-ble to take a sip of peach iced tea. My throat was dry as baked clay.
Abruptly she stood up again, and be-gan pac-ing the nar-row strip of floor be-tween my bed and my pine desk. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went to make my-self a cup of cof-fee. I saw a fig-ure by the lake, through the win-dow. I don’t know why, but I had a bad feel-ing. How late it was, the way the fig-ure just stood and stared … it was like what hap-pened to me the night I lost my eye. I ran out there, but by the time I got to the Great Lawn, the fig-ure was gone.”
My stom-ach clenched and un-clenched, as though my nerves didn’t know how afraid to be. “Okay…”
“I found this on the shore.”
She dug a hand into the pocket of her leather jacket—hastily thrown over silky black pa-ja-mas—and pulled out some-thing that made my heart stop.
An in-sulin pump.
There was a crash-ing sen-sa-tion in my chest, like the rub-ble of a build-ing hit-ting the ground af-ter an earth-quake.
“Catalina.” The word came out as a choked sob.
Davina laid the in-sulin pump on my desk, and I stared at it like it was a hand grenade. “I can’t find her. She’s not in her room.”
“Have you tried call-ing her?” The sug-ges-tion seemed so sim-ple, so com-mon-place, that it was al-most ab-surd.
“I don’t have her num-ber. Can you?”
Hand trem-bling, I fum-bled for my phone and tapped Catalina’s name.
Straight to voice-mail. As if the phone was at the bot-tom of a lake.
No, no, no.
No.
Some-thing bad was hap-pen-ing. Some-thing very, very bad.
“What was she do-ing by the lake?” Davina peered out of my win-dow, clutch-ing the sheer white fab-ric of the cur-tain with taut knuck-les. “Does she swim?”
“Never. She said she was go-ing to the li-brary to re-search the por-traits some more.”
Had she had some kind of break-through?
One that had led her down to the lake?
Had the lake … sum-moned her, some-how? The way it had lured Davina on the night she lost her eye?
Did that mean Catalina was in-ju-red too?
It couldn’t be in the same way Davina and I were wounded. She didn’t have a por-trait.
Still, the thought of Catalina be-ing hurt … it felt like read-ing a news story about a nat-u-ral dis-as-ter. So tragic it was phys-i-cally painful. So hor-ren-dous my brain bucked against it.
But the fear car-ried with it an al-to-gether fiercer force. A de-sire to pro-tect her, to keep her safe, to stand in the line of fire and take the hit for her. To lift up the car she was trapped be-neath; to grab her by the hand as she fell from a cliff. It was a bol-ster-ing sen-sa-tion, hot and tem-pes-tu-ous, roil-ing with des-per-a-tion.
Think, Penny.
I launched my-self out of bed, grab-bing dis-carded clothes at ran-dom and toss-ing them on over my pa-ja-mas.
“We have to go down there.” My mind reeled. “That day in Lawrie’s class, when you were drawn to the swans. How did that feel? Do you have any con-scious mem-ory of why you were do-ing it?”
“I still don’t know,” Davina ad-mit-ted. “It’s a bit of a blur. I was just kind of … drawn to them.”
Sev-eral large puz-zle pieces ar-ranged them-selves in my mind.
“The ghost story,” I said slowly, yank-ing a jumper over my head and stuff-ing my feet into some boots. “The girl in the nine-teenth cen-tury. And the lim-i-nal world?”
Davina glared. “Please try to make more sense when you speak.”
As fast as I could, I sum-ma-rized Catalina’s the-ory about the puls-ing or-gan-ism be-hind the por-traits and mir-rors. A fun-gal net-work that fed on de-cay. A lim-i-nal world de-stroy-ing it-self from the in-side out.
“So then, the ghost story. The girl was swim-ming in the lake when a swan at-tacked her, wasn’t she?” I mut-tered, press-ing my palm against my fore-head as though it would make me think harder. “It beat her with its wings and she sank be-low the sur-face, un-con-scious. Some-one saw from their dorm win-dow and ran to help, but she’d van-ished. Her body was never found. What if it isn’t just a ghost story?” My brain was trip-ping over it-self, like a run-ner in too-big shoes. “What if the lake bed … what if it’s some kind of en-try point to this sup-posed lim-i-nal world? And the swans are … guardians?”
It was, I had to con-fess, an out-lan-dish idea, but ev-ery-thing in me was alight with cer-tainty. If one of these ab-surd things could be true—if you could an-chor your soul to a paint-ing and ren-der your-self im-mor-tal—then why couldn’t the lim-i-nal world? Why couldn’t the lake be an atrium?
“The girl was get-ting too close,” mur-mured Davina. “Els-beth Owens. She went swim-ming, and got too close to the en-trance. That’s why one at-tacked her.”
NO SWIM-MING—SWANS DAN-GER-OUS.
“Could that pos-si-bly be true?” I asked. “Or is it too mad?”
“No mad-der than the rest of it.” She was star-ing at me with a strange ex-pres-sion. Her makeshift eye patch had been re-placed by a neater felt one she’d bought on-line—black, with a taran-tula em-broi-dered in tiny sil-ver beads. It seemed al-most com-i-cal that she’d cho-sen the beast she knew I was afraid of. Like a kid pick-ing out the scari-est Hal-loween mask they could find, be-liev-ing it would gen-uinely frighten their par-ents. “So you think if we swim deep down into the lake, it’ll just … keep go-ing? It can’t, can it? It’s right over the gallery. It def-i-nitely has a bot-tom.”
I started to-ward the door. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Davina knew, with-out words, what I planned to do.
Go in af-ter Catalina.
Please don’t let any-thing bad have hap-pened to her.
Please don’t let her have drowned.
Please, please, please. I’ll do any-thing.
I didn’t even know who I was beg-ging and bar-gain-ing with. I knew only that if I started cry-ing, I might never stop. And so I had to take ac-tion in-stead.
I wrenched my bed-room door open—only to find Maisie stand-ing on the other side.
“What’s go-ing on?” A pair of binoc-u-lars hung around her neck. Had she been out bird-watch-ing so early in the day?
Al-most pant-ing with fear, I looked back at Davina, who shrugged back at me. As if to say: Tell her. You might as well.
But I didn’t get the chance.
“Catalina’s miss-ing, isn’t she?” Maisie voice was small and scared. She was scrubbed free of makeup, wear-ing a pair of wellies and a waxed coat sev-eral sizes too big for her. She looked as young and out of her depth as I felt.
Davina frowned. “How did you know—?”
“The walls aren’t as thick as you think. Does this have some-thing to do with the alumni deaths?” Maisie pointed to me, then Davina. “With your face, and your eye?”
I nod-ded fiercely. “Yes, but we don’t have time to ex-plain. We have to go and help Catalina. We think she’s in the lake.”
Maisie dropped her small back-pack to the ground, then her binoc-u-lars. “I’m com-ing with you.”
“It’s too dan-ger—”
“I’m. Com-ing. With. You.”
Her face was pale but stoic. De-ter-mined.
The three of us headed to-ward the front door, only to hear a key scratch-ing in the other side.
My heart leaped in my chest.
Catalina? Was all of this just a mis-un-der-stand-ing, and she’d gone for an in-no-cent walk with her phone switched off? If she walked in that door right now, I would throw my arms around her, I would hug her so tight, I would nuz-zle my face into her neck and tell her I was so glad—
But it wasn’t Catalina.
It was Fraser.
Fraser, wear-ing a full face of drag makeup. False lashes as thick as taran-tula legs, elab-o-rate eye-shadow in pink and pur-ple and red glit-ter, over-drawn lips the color of a bloom-ing fuch-sia.
All at once, ev-ery-thing made sense. The scat-tered se-quins and traces of makeup on his face when there had been no cos-tume par-ties. The feather boa slung over the sofa in the kitchen. The gen-eral sense that he was hid-ing some-thing.
At the sight of us stand-ing there, he stopped dead.
“Er-rrrrr. Hi.” A sheep-ish grin, fol-lowed by a shrug of the shoul-ders. “Coco Coxx. Nice to meet you.”
Davina sighed. “Damn it. A poker card I never got to play.”
“Fraser, you look fuck-ing fab-u-lous.” Maisie gave a camp lit-tle fin-ger snap. “But Catalina’s in trou-ble. We’re go-ing to help her. That’s all the de-tail I have at the mo-ment.”
“Roger that.” Fraser dropped his sports bag by the door in a puff of glit-ter. “I’m com-ing too.”
De-spite the ter-ror of the sit-u-a-tion, some-thing warm spread through my chest. I’d never had cav-alry be-fore.
For the first time in my en-tire life, I did not feel alone.
And so, as the sun rose golden over the stark black Cross-woods, to-gether we strode to-ward the lake where Catalina was last seen, hop-ing be-yond all hope that we were not too late to save her.