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Another element, bold, effervescent, lit up the board.

“The final glyph, fire, which reigns over everything. A flame with four stars lining its right side, below.”

Ryder rotated my wrist as he moved behind me, draping his arm over my shoulder, the floorboards creaking against the thick soles of his boots. I was rooted, hardly breathing, as earth, water, air, and fire continued to burn in their places, an elemental compass directing me to my true north.

On the peripheral something plopped into the straw grass. I glanced back at Ryder and his gaze met mine, pupils condensing into pinpricks before my eyes. Tension stiffened his shoulders and every facial muscle stilled as his instincts seized control.

He prowled to the spindled railing and twisted over it to scan the roofline.

Then the whole house started moving.

One by one, the eaves slid off the roof, into a pile at the base of the home. Ryder dodged a mini cherub as the molding fell off the porch ceiling’s plaster, the trim’s cornices breaking apart at our feet.

A loud crack made me look upwards. The beams had begun to split. A tremor shook the foundation, dividing the deck, tossing Ryder to the stoop and me to the welcome mat.

I smashed into the door hinges, the receding nail heads tearing into my scars. The metal ripped one of my straps to mere threads and red sprinkled the floorboards, the blood and rust staining the side of my gingham top. Hoisting myself up the latched wooden entrance, I desperately knocked at the door.

“We need to get out of here!” Ryder called.

That was probably the better idea, but something in me told me to keep trying. That this might be my only chance. So, knocking became pushing, pushing became banging, but the door stayed sealed shut.

Closing my eyes, I prayed for something to click amongst the collapsing gothic revival, but my thoughts were weighed down by the frenetic whir of the sliding shingles. By the windows creaking and groaning and exploding into a thousand jagged pieces, my senses lying somewhere in the shattered glass. Around me, the entire building was caving in on itself like I had created a black hole at its center, and I was about to be swallowed.

“Quarto vigil.” The fortune teller’s phrase was hushed on my curling lips. “I am the Fourth Watcher.” I exhaled sharply.

When I opened my eyes to face my crumbling reality, at first it seemed like nothing had changed. But as I reached to cling to the door, my hands grasped empty air. Because where the door had stood there was now a tunnel that swallowed the ultraviolet light we had brought forth on the wood. No floor. No ceiling. No old wicker furniture. A passage of darkness.

My gut nudged me forward. A voice called me back, the lilt of the accent so sharp and irresistible and growing so frantic that I almost listened. But intuition screamed louder, it could no longer be silenced, and I stepped into the epicenter.

Chapter 27

The passage sighed in rhythm, a slight wind nipping at my hair and clothes, as if the house was taking a breath. My head swiveled to all sides, where the floor and ceiling should have been but swept over…nothing. Nothing but a black, infinite depth.

I reached for a wall, anxious to grab anything that might help anchor me. Air met my fingers. With the onset of complete darkness, a sudden chill crept around me, the goosebumps forming on my arms as pointed as the tip of a blade. I spun around and shot back towards the entrance, but it had disappeared, along with everything else.

My chest rose and fell in short, frantic heaves. Ryder was out there, and I was stuck here in this void, where there were no signs of life, let alone Madame Myrian.

Panic set in and my senses prickled on the cusp of turning silence into shrieks. Clenching my fists, I gnashed my teeth and willed myself to calm. I stood there, focused on each breath, until my eyes started to adjust. Tiny balls of light, the same purple-white as the markings on the door, dotted the black—as if the elemental symbols had fractured apart and now flecked this nebulous corridor like mini galaxies.

A scuttle came from somewhere in the dark, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin.

I turned on my heels, extra slow. Hardly steady.

“Myrian?” I could have shouted it at the top of my lungs, and it wouldn’t have mattered. My voice was a squeak in this expanse. “Is that you?” My ears narrowed in on a steady hum, like a distant vacuum was on.

A brilliant orb appeared in the vastness, flooding the dark with a pearly iridescence that lit the space like a moon. Rippling with the fluidity of a wave, it sat atop a tourmaline pedestal that seemed to have been carved out of the shadows.

I gravitated towards it with short, eager steps.

Resisting the urge to touch it, I paced around it, transfixed by the milky matter beneath the glass surface. A draft swept the loose strands of hair from my face, and an outline emerged on the other side of the crystal ball. Stirring the air, pulling from the specks of ultraviolet light, until a proper shape materialized.

Buried in her violet robes, her thick auburn hair piled high, Madame Myrian observed me, her indigo stare enlarged and unblinking through her fishbowl glasses.

She bared a near-toothless grin. I was too shocked to return it.

Our relationship picked up right where it left off: in an epic stare down.

But I wouldn’t mistake frailty for harmlessness, petite for punchless, this time. Beneath the sunken cheeks and grandmotherly features, Myrian hid the strength of a lion. I reflexively rubbed my arm where she had grabbed me the last time I saw her.