Never let it be said I could not throw caution to the winds and just take the leap.

“Rory, take off your clothes. Bee, the mirror is water. You can cross if you will come.”

“Of course I will!” cried Bee.

I cut my skin. Blood streamed from the gloomy spring chill of the mortal world into the hot blaze of the spirit world. When my sword’s tip grazed the surface, the mirror peeled back like an eye opening. Was this part of the power I had as a spiritwalker? With my blood to seed it, could cold steel open a gate through which others could cross?

Steel flared at my back, felt on my tongue as the gritty remains of a blacksmith’s forge. Lord Marius had drawn his sword.

“She can’t be allowed to escape!” cried Amadou Barry.

“Follow me!” I cried.

I fell through, pouring like blood through the gash.

17

My knees thumped onto stony ground. Black night enveloped me, unrelieved by moon or stars. As I lifted my sword arm defensively, fire waxed the blade as a shimmering steel gleam.

“Ah! Something stung me!”

“Bee?”

I held the sword aloft, searching for her in the aura of the blade’s light. Just in front of me a wall rose into the darkness, its face too smooth and high to climb. The surrounding land was covered with tall grass as far as the light from my sword reached. I did not see Bee, but I heard a whine like insects swarming.

“Bee!” I called.

Grass crackled. A huge cat with wicked curving canines and eyes as golden as my own sprang up to me. He nudged me with his head, then licked my forearm where a trickle of blood oozed along my skin. The rough trail of his tongue startled me into a laugh.

“Cat?” Bee’s voice rose out of the darkness. I still could not see her, but she sounded panicked. “Everything hates me here. This wasn’t a good idea! Ouch!”

“Where are you?” I cried.

Rory loped into the darkness. The whining spiked into a shrill buzzing. The big cat returned out of the gloom with Bee pressed to his side. She was waving an arm frantically in the air. I made a few cuts of my sword around her. The buzzing vanished as a cloud of tiny creatures scattered.

She dumped the packs at my feet. “I hope you’re happy, Cat. I didn’t think I would really cross through. I only meant to pretend to do so, because I was afraid you would refuse to go if you thought I was in danger.”

“You were in danger!”

“At least there I could have thrown myself into Amadou Barry’s arms if I had no other choice. Here I’m going to get eaten, and you’re going to have to carry all this alone.”