Take us away. Anywhere but here. We need more time, more time, more time, she thought desperately, her words skipping along with her frantic heartbeat.

A road appeared, knitting itself out of nothing beside them. A fourth road, unguarded.

“Run!” Eleanor cried. Otto didn’t hesitate—he dashed for the road, and Pip plunged after him. Eleanor sprinted to follow.

The startled hounds hesitated half a second—and no more. Shatterblack leaped. Eleanor half-turned, flinging out a hand to protect herself from the hound’s leap.

The thread of moonlight around her wrist unknotted itself at her gesture. It arced gracefully through the air and lashed at Shatterblack’s muzzle. The hound shrieked and leaped back, and her sister barked in alarm.

“Where are we going?” Otto called.

The road didn’t lead anywhere. Not yet. Eleanor could sense it the same way she could feel her own hand at the end of her arm. And she could sense the Wending, too. Waiting. But she didn’t know how to tell it where they needed to go. Her mind was a jumble.

We need more time. We need to get away. She’s after us. Katie Rhodes. The People Who Look Away. We need—I need—I want—

All her fear and desire seemed to well up inside of her, swirling together into a storm—

She stretched out her hand.

The forest seemed to tear in two, a new landscape bleeding into the space where it had been. Different trees, a thicket of pale birches. “Go!” Eleanor yelled as the others gaped.

Two steps, three, and they were on the new road. She could feel the way the roads knit together, the way they might come apart. Rag-a-bone and Shatterblack streaked toward them, and on instinct Eleanor raised her hand, and willed the roads apart.

Where the two roads met, the air shimmered, wobbled. Where the edges of the two roads met, they frayed and shrank back. Only a thin seam of dirt and grass divided them, but the hounds rebounded as if they’d struck a wall.

And then Katie and the hounds and the gnarled forest and the eclipse-darkened sky were gone. They stood in the pale light of morning in a forest of white birch trees, a dirt path beneath their feet.

And they weren’t alone.

“What have you done?” a hard voice asked. Eleanor turned, the world still spinning around her and the world-walker’s power like electricity in her blood. For a moment she stared, not understanding what she was seeing. Who she was seeing.

The woman standing a few feet away crossed her arms, looking angry.

“Mom?” Eleanor managed.

And then her legs went out from under her.

Seven