CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The cold out-side was so raw, so ab-so-lute, it al-most burned the skin. It was a mir-a-cle the lake hadn’t frozen over.
Up close the boathouse was in even starker dis-ar-ray, the royal-blue paint slough-ing off like dead skin, the smell of damp rot creep-ing at its ram-shackle feet. The doors hung off their hinges. The whole place smelled of de-cay; I had no idea how I hadn’t no-ticed sooner.
This had to be the seam be-tween the lim-i-nal world and the real one.
It had to be.
Stand-ing bare-foot on the silty shore, I yanked my clothes over my head, then kicked off my bot-toms. For the sec-ond time in the last few days, my class-mates were see-ing me half naked. This time, I didn’t care. Be-cause it was on my terms, and be-cause I was do-ing it for Catalina.
Davina tore off her nightwear next to me. “Do we have a plan? I feel now’s the time to men-tion that I can’t swim.”
I nod-ded. “I’ll try and get to the bot-tom of the lake. You fend off the swans, if they come for me.”
She pulled a knife from the jacket she’d just ditched on the shore. Maisie and Fraser looked at us as though we were quite mad.
Davina clutch-ing the knife blade-out in her palm, we both took the first step into the lake. The cold-ness of the wa-ter was a sav-age bite, a pain that scrubbed me raw.
I steeled my-self, think-ing of Catalina. The way the sun il-lu-mi-nated her corkscrew curls. The way her bronze eyes gazed at you as though you were the most fas-ci-nat-ing crea-ture ever to ex-ist. Her hands on mine, soft and warm. Her fur-rowed brow as she folded origami, or mea-sured ic-ing sugar, or read a dense text-book.
The thought of her was like hav-ing a can-dle glow-ing in my chest, only now I had to watch it flicker and wane, ter-ri-fied that it would soon blow out.
It was my fault she was caught up in this. I could han-dle the cold if it meant mak-ing this right.
The fur-ther we went in, the worse it got—es-pe-cially around the waist—un-til the ice wa-ter was no longer our big-gest prob-lem.
The spec-tral swans glided over to us, some-how lu-mi-nes-cent. Four of them, loom-ing larger by the sec-ond. Dawn light threaded through their sil-ver feath-ers, and their eyes glowed a pe-cu-liar ob-sid-ian, which shouldn’t have been pos-si-ble. Black-ness was not sup-posed to be back-lit.
The hiss-ing from their throats was gut-tu-ral, mon-strous, rak-ing over me like claws or teeth.
I swal-lowed hard. “I don’t think we’re in dan-ger un-til they raise their—”
The front-most swan lifted its wings like an an-gel straight out of hell.
And charged straight at me.
I top-pled back-ward into the wa-ter, gasp-ing at the freez-ing shock of it. Wa-ter stung at my eyes. I could barely see. In the blurred dark-ness there was an enor-mous splash, a hiss-ing shriek, a grunt from Davina. And then limp-ness.
Please don’t be her, I thought, but when I rubbed the wa-ter from my eyes, I saw one of the huge birds float-ing on its side, its neck black with blood. The oily crim-son seeped into the wa-ter around us, stain-ing our pale skin pink.
I fought the urge to retch.
“What the fuck!” Fraser yelled from the shore.
The other three swans charged to-ward Davina in a semi-cir-cle.
“Go!” she yelled at me, both of us past car-ing who woke up and wit-nessed this hideous on-slaught.
“But—”
“Don’t let this be for noth-ing.” Her lips curled around her teeth as she fell into a boxer’s stance.
With one last look at her—bone-white limbs, bur-gundy lips, black pixie hair, nar-row chin raised de-fi-antly—I took a deep breath and dived be-low the sur-face of the wa-ter.
I wasn’t the strong-est of swim-mers, but adren-a-line pow-ered my feral kicks un-til I was far enough from the swans that I could no longer hear the strug-gle. I ran my palms over the lake bed; it was sur-pris-in-gly soft with silt, dot-ted with peb-bles and some-thing slimy.
Not the en-trance to the un-der-world. Just a reg-u-lar lake bed.
Stu-pid-ity pressed in on me like the wa-ter it-self, but I pushed my-self fur-ther into the mid-dle of the lake, where the wa-ter was deeper. The bot-tom of the lake curved away from my hands, and de-spite kick-ing my-self fur-ther down, I couldn’t find it again. I was ab-so-lutely blind, the dark-ness ren-der-ing the wa-ter wholly opaque.
I burst back through the sur-face, chok-ing back the earthy wa-ter I’d ac-ci-den-tally swal-lowed. Tread-ing wa-ter, I looked back to the shore where Davina was still em-broiled with the swans. An-other had fallen, but she was still out-num-bered.
Panic crested in my lungs. This plan was hastily con-ceived, and thus far poorly ex-e-cuted.
What if she lost her life over this?
But no. She couldn’t—be-cause the por-trait made her im-mor-tal.
Un-less … the su-per-nat-u-ral swans had more power than we’d reck-oned with?
A threat we had failed to cal-cu-late, like a sud-den back rank check-mate on a chess-board.
I watched help-lessly as an-other swan beat its fe-ro-cious wings in her di-rec-tion.
This time, they struck true.
Davina sank be-low the sur-face of the wa-ter in a surge of air bub-bles.
“Davina!” screamed Maisie, tear-ing off her coat be-fore wad-ing in.
Fraser threw him-self into the wa-ter, cut-ting his way through it in a con-fi-dent front crawl.
I had a choice. I could go back and help them save Davina—would two of them be strong enough to fend off the swans bare-handed?—or I could keep search-ing for Catalina.
Catalina, who might al-ready be dead.
Drowned.
The men-tal im-age of her bloated corpse was enough to drive me down-ward.
I had to act. Now.
Suck-ing in air slowly, I let my lungs stretch and ex-pand deep into my belly, un-til I could no longer hold an-other breath. Then I sank back be-low the sur-face, this time an-gling my-self to-ward the bot-tom cen-ter of the lake.
The deep-est point.
I kept swim-ming in dogged breast-stroke un-til my palms hit the floor, but it was more of the same: satin-silt, slick peb-bles, some-thing rough and sharp like a crab’s grip. Ten-drils of sea-weed floated am-biva-lently in the cur-rent my body was cre-at-ing.
Kick-ing back up to the sur-face, de-feat was al-ready weigh-ing heavy on my lungs. I swam into a more cen-tral po-si-tion—imag-in-ing the lake’s bulls-eye from a crow’s view—and re-peated the process.
Hit bot-tom. Noth-ing promis-ing. Back to the sur-face.
Swim to a bet-ter po-si-tion. Try again. Re-peat.
I could no longer see Davina or the swans, my vi-sion blurry with the ef-fort of tread-ing wa-ter, of hold-ing my breath for al-most a minute at a time. There was a dis-tant male shout. Fraser?
I had to trust they would be okay. Safety in num-bers.
Af-ter three more tries, my blood howled through my limbs, and I knew I only had one more at-tempt be-fore I passed out. If I kept go-ing, there was no way I’d be able to get my-self back to the lakeshore.
Deep breath. Dive.
Swim, swim, down-ward, down-ward, try-ing to fight the ter-ri-fy-ing dis-ori-en-ta-tion of the black wa-ter.
This time, my hands took far longer to meet the floor.
My heart surged, think-ing per-haps I’d found it, the seam be-tween our world and the lim-i-nal space be-hind the por-traits.
But then my fin-ger jud-dered against rock, and all the hope died.
Catalina. Catalina. CATALINA.
Please.
I man-i-cally clawed at the lake bed as though I could dig my way to her, un-til my vi-sion vi-gnetted dan-ger-ously.
I’d been un-der-wa-ter too long. I had to get back to the sur-face.
But I’d been un-der-wa-ter too long.
And for the first time, there felt like a very real chance that I would not make it.
As I pushed fran-ti-cally up-ward like a frog, my lungs were burn-ing, burn-ing, burn-ing, so brightly I felt like I might im-plode from the pain.
But the pain be-gan to ebb away, dim and soften to a gen-tle throb, and that fright-ened me more. My limbs floated away from me like ten-drils of sea-weed drift-ing on a cur-rent. My sight bleached fu-ri-ous white, and the fight slid away from me like a wan-ing tide.
It felt like dy-ing.
Oh.
Maybe that was the point, I re-al-ized.
Maybe to pass through, I had to let my-self en-ter a tran-sient state.
Af-ter all, isn’t that what the por-traits were? Tran-sient be-ings, trapped be-tween life and death, ex-is-tence and nonex-is-tence?
Per-haps that was how Els-beth had passed through this im-per-me-able mem-brane. She was knocked un-con-scious by the swans, un-able to fight for her life. She let her-self drift away, and the ether wel-comed her in. And the same might have hap-pened to sweet Catalina.
Could it be…?
Was this my way in? Or was I just deliri-ous?
It was a risk.
The great-est risk there was.
The sur-face was a few more kicks away. If I gath-ered all my strength and gave it one fi-nal surge, I might make it. I could gasp in sweet lung-fuls of crisp morn-ing air.
But there was no other way to save Catalina—or my-self.
I knew that deep in my bones, in my flesh and sinews.
So I suc-cumbed.
I opened my mouth, let my lungs fill with wa-ter, let it weigh me down from within.
Let the beat-ing of my blood fade to a fee-ble whis-per.
Af-ter a few long, peace-ful mo-ments, the dark-ness opened its maw and swal-lowed me whole.