I smirk. I didn’t lose her before. She disappeared on purpose, so she’d have time to find her damn vein of metal. Fine. I should have known.
“Don’t take chances,” I tell her. “If you have to go back, then go back.”
“Don’t get dramatic,” she scoffs. “I’m your friend but I’m not dying for you. I’m not Thomas. I’m not her.” Her footsteps fall flat on the rocks as she walks away, whistling a tune that sounds like Elmer Fudd’s when he’s after rabbits. When Anna and I look at each other, I know that behind us, Jestine has disappeared.
* * *
Walking through Hell with Anna, it feels like I should blurt out every damn thing I’ve wanted to say to her for the last six months. It feels like we’re on borrowed time, even though I’m here to bring her home. I never really counted on seeing her again. It was just a dream. A quest, like a knight after the Holy Grail. But I’m here now, with a hole in my stomach that’s starting to throb, trying to lure my father’s killer out into the open. The surreality of this moment is probably making my brain bleed in nine places.
“I won’t tell you that you shouldn’t be doing this,” Anna says. “Trying to free your father. I know I would, if he were mine.”
“Is that what I’m trying to do? Free him?”
“Isn’t it?”
I guess it is. I’m trying to free all of them. Will and Chase—they’d have been stuck here forever if I hadn’t come looking for Anna, and the thought makes my insides twist. And my dad. I thought Anna had done it six months ago, when she dragged the Obeahman down here.
Something moves in the corner of our vision, and we both jump. But it’s not him. It’s something in the distance, hanging from the branches of a lonely tree. We keep on walking, walking without walking, because we can’t really tell by looking whether we’ve made any progress. The landscape just shifts and changes; rock formations crop up and disappear. It’s like being on an enormous treadmill. Now we look down over a canyon of sorts, cut down deep into the stone. There’s what appears to be a black, oil-slicked river cutting through the bottom.
“Do you—have you ever talked to him? My dad, I mean?”
Anna shakes her head gently. “He’s just a shadow here, Cassio. They all are.”
“But do you think he knows where he is? Has he known the whole time?”
“I don’t know what they know,” she says. But she looks away. She doesn’t know. But she thinks he does.
Ahead, the canyon looms closer, too quickly for the pace at which we’re moving. I hate this place. It’d drive a physics professor batshit crazy in the span of three seconds. Where is he? Where is Jestine? The pain in my side is heavy, and it’s starting to get harder to walk. If Jestine’s breathing had slowed already, she might not even be here anymore. I guess I hope she isn’t. By my side, Anna tenses as she scans the landscape. But there’s still nothing there.
“Listen,” I say. “After this is over, assuming I’m still alive to go back, I want to take you with me. I came here for you, and so did Thomas and Carmel. We want you to come back.” I swallow. “I want you to come back. But it’s your choice.”
“I’ll still be dead, Cassio.”
“So will I be, someday. It doesn’t matter.” I touch her shoulder and we stop so I can look into her eyes. “It doesn’t.”
She blinks, long and slow, her lashes black against her cheeks.
“All right,” she says, and I exhale all over. “I’ll come back.”
The Obeahman’s scream cuts through the still and vibrations resonate up through our feet.
“There he is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The walking, distant stick figure at the bottom of the canyon could be anyone. But it isn’t. It’s my father’s murderer, my father’s jailer. He got the better of me once, with a curse that almost killed me. It’ll be different this time. This time I’ll make it stick.
His footsteps sound in our ears, too loud for being so far away. As he moves closer, our position changes; the cliffs shift in the space of a blink. We’d been looking down. Now he’s straight ahead.
“What’s wrong with his arms and legs?” I ask.
“Borrowed joints. Borrowed strength.” Anna’s eyes are steel; she doesn’t blink at his approach.
The extra joints make him ungainly. Before his gait was stiff, almost dragging. Now his legs jerk like they’re attached at wrong angles. He walks closer to the wall and grins as he grasps on to it with his hands, heaving himself up onto the side of the rock face, defying gravity. When he pivots and skitters forward faster, on all fours, I take a step back in spite of myself.