The Dickens Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page A

not just some black hole filled with stuff that’ll have her for lunch.
If she doesn’t know it’s open … does that mean she can’t follow?
The door opened for her; the pull-ring sprouted at Emma’s touch.
So what if it closes up right after I go through?
    What is she saying? What is she thinking? She’s not going in there. But Jack wants her to; Jack knows.
And the crazy lady can’t get it open?
    “Emma.” The woman moves into the room. “Come away,
now
.”
    Go on go on, do it, you big fraidy-cat, go!
“O-okay.” She sets her toes, tenses her thighs. “Okay, I … I’m c-coming, I give up; just p-please don’t h-hurt me, d-don’t …”
    Then she shouts to the cat,
“Go, Jack!”
    And launches herself into the square.
    10
    LARA CROFT’S GOT nothing on a cat. Hurtling ahead, Jack’s gone in an instant, lost to the dark. She is a split second behind. The transition’s abrupt; the cold grabs her throat, and there is a rushing around her ears, as if a huge flock of blackbirds has suddenly startled. That static wash of whispers swells.
    Maybe, if she hadn’t hesitated so long, she’d have made it, too.
    A pair of strong hands clamps her ankles. She bucks, trying to kick her way free.
No, NO!
Jack is probably safe
somewhere
, but she’s been too scared, too slow, so stupid. No one will ever know. Sal and Jasper will find an empty house and a wrecked basement reeking of vinegar and smooshed pickles. But they also might see the square or, at the very least, that the boxes have been moved. Jasper might put it together. Will he come after her?
Can
he?
    Help me
, she thinks, furiously, to the dark and whatever lives here
. You were here before; you grabbed me before, so help me now!
Squirming deeper, she realizes that while there is
nothing
under her chest now—no floor, no concrete—she’s not falling either. She also can’t be quite certain, but are those lights? Stars? Open doorways?
    Behind, the woman is hauling her back. Emma’s shirt rucks over her tummy. In seconds, she’ll be right back where she started, at this nightmare turn her life has taken.
    Please
. She grabs for the dark.
If you’re here, please, I want this! Find me!
    And then comes the strangest thought of all:
Put me where I belong
.
    That idea … is hers, and it is not. It feels far ahead and in the future and as distant as one of those bright lights, and yet the thought is immediate, present,
now
. Along with this, there is a sudden
blooming
in her head and a lurch, a tug like the set of a fishhook. Deep in her center, she knows: this is her chance.
    Tearing a foot from the woman’s grasp, she pistons her leg back with all her might. Her foot connects with a solid bang she feels in her knee. The woman lets out a screech of pain. Her grip on Emma slackens—and that’s enough.
    Emma launches herself into this black tide, and now she’s moving, fast, fast, faster, the sensation the same as in the moment she angles her kayak in a swift stream churning through rocks, slipping into exactly the right shoot at exactly the right time. Emma hurtles through the cold and dark, the current sweeping her to …

PART ONE
    AWAKENINGS

1
    SNAPPING BOLT UPRIGHT , he jolts awake with a scream perched on his tongue.
    Jesus
. Swallowing the shout, he grimaces at … 
gasoline
? His mouth tastes like he’s been sucking on an exhaust pipe. Or that could be left over from his nightmare: something about a car or maybe a truck that jumped a guardrail and landed in a splinter of trees and … and snow?
Yeah, that’s right
. What else, what else? A girl. Yeah, there was a girl he … he
liked
? Yes. A girl he
trusted
. To whom he felt a connection. He wanted to protect her. She was sad and … and
haunted
, like him. What was her name? Come
on …
But no face wavers up from memory. Shit,
shit
. It’s all starting to drift away, like soap bubbles on a strong breeze. Yet what remains in his chest is a clot of deep, icy dread—and