Jacob is still shouting, but I can barely hear him. The world has gone cotton quiet. The only sounds that get through are my pulse and the too-heavy steps of the Emissary walking toward me.

“Once, you stole from us,” it says, and the words wrap around me like water.

I feel like I’m in the river again, the cold leaching all the strength from my limbs.

“Once, you fled.”

It reaches up for its mask, and I feel myself tipping forward, into the dark. The Emissary hooks one gloved finger under the bone mask, begins to lift its face away, when Jacob appears, all flailing limbs.

“Get away from my friend!” Jacob shouts, flinging himself at the Emissary. But Jacob goes straight through, and hits the ground on the other side. He collapses, shivering as if doused in cold water. His hair hangs wet around his face, and he spits a mouthful of river water onto the grass.

Jacob, I mouth his name.

The Emissary doesn’t even seem to notice.

Its bottomless black eyes stay on me.

I manage a single backward stumble, clawing at my necklace. I hold up the mirror pendant like a too-small shield between me and the skeletal thing striding toward me. I force air into my lungs, and speak.

“Look and listen,” I say, voice shaking. “See and know. This is what you are!”

But we’re not in the Veil.

And the Emissary, whatever it is, is not a ghost.

It looks straight past the mirror at me, then closes its gloved hand around the pendant and tugs it free. The cord snaps, and the Emissary flings the mirror away. It hits a gravestone, and I hear the splinter of glass before the world is blotted out again by the Emissary’s voice.

“We have found you,” it says, “and we will return you to the dark.”

It reaches forward, and I know that if it gets its hands on me, I will never get away. I know, but my legs are still like blocks of ice.

I shuffle backward again, make it a few clumsy steps before the ground changes beneath my feet, from gravel to stone, and a wall comes up against my back. A crypt, old and crumbling.

There’s nowhere to run.

Jacob struggles to his feet, still looking damp, and dazed, and gray, and even if he were solid enough to fight, he wouldn’t reach me in time.

The Emissary steps closer, and I resist the urge to close my eyes.

There’s nowhere to run, but I won’t hide.

I look up, into that skull face, those empty eyes, as it reaches out, gloved fingers skimming the air in front of my chest, carrying the touch of ice, and cold air, and deep shadow, as its other hand goes to its mask.

“Cassidy Blake,” says the Emissary, in its whispering way, “come with—”

Something shatters against the Emissary’s hat.

A roof tile.