The gray mist was receding as the world got more real. As it faded, a huge shape came into view, looming in the distance. The door. Not the small, simple door that led back to Eleanor’s own world, but the door from the gray to the Pallid Kingdom. It was huge, towering in the distance. Chains lashed it shut—thirteen chains, each secured with a heavy lock. Thirteen locks that needed thirteen keys.

Eleanor shut her eyes. She flattened her hand as best she could against the cold ground. It was gaining texture as the gray world spun itself into something like a forest. It had been like this the first time they were here, too. The longer she stayed, the more real it would become. And the weaker she would get. It wasn’t a place where humans could survive very long.

Eleanor set her jaw. She’d save them. Her parents. Her friends. Naomi. I wish I’d gotten to see you dressed up like a pumpkin, she thought, before reaching for the essence of the gray world. She felt it, cool and lifeless, pooling around her. All she had to do was let the gray flow out of this place, and there would be nothing left. No gray. No life.

Nothing.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she whispered, and she let the words sing along every bright cord that was bound to her. To Otto and Pip and her mother and Jack and Naomi and Jenny and Ben.

“What do you think you are doing?” Katie said, looking over. She leaned down, grabbing Eleanor by the throat again and hauling her upright. The gray bands around Eleanor’s wrists and ankles slid free. Her concentration broke. The sense of the gray slid away from her. “You were trying to Empty this place?”

“I have to stop you,” Eleanor choked out, wrapping her hands around Katie’s wrists to try to break her grip.

“You’d die, too,” Katie said, leaning close.

“But everyone else would be safe.”

Katie scoffed. “You think you’re a hero. You think you can save everyone, but you can’t.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” Eleanor said. “I wish you could have stayed with us.”