Isaac made for the door of the armory. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Willow said, their voice a sly wheedle, “Can we recommend a more direct route?”

Isaac paused.

“If you’ll allow us, we’ll magic you out,” said Willow. “It’s much quicker. We wouldn’t do this for just anybody, but because it’s Amelie . . .”

“All right,” Isaac said. After all, he thought, I’ve time traveled. What could be worse?

Being magicked by a wight, as it turned out.

Isaac thought he was being squashed into a speck of dust, then exploded back to full size. “Ow!” He landed with a thud on the floor of a room he’d never seen. Every bone in his body hurt, as if he’d been through a tumbler with rocks. He lay flat on his back, trying to determine whether anything was broken.

“Honestly, you humans with your skin and bones and other whatchamacallit thingies. You are impossible.”

“Those thingies are called internal organs. Which are fragile.”

“Exactly.”

Isaac groaned, sitting up slowly. “Where is Amelie?”

“This way,” Willow said, pointing.

Isaac stood, clinging to the furnishings, one hand on the back of his pounding head. He staggered after Willow, who bounced along in the air ahead, humming.

The wight was humming. Off-key, too.

As was Isaac’s brain, all of a sudden. That magical hum filled him and it was hard to control, it was so strong. He grabbed at the doorknob, thinking he couldn’t feel much worse, until he saw what was in the room on the other side of the door.

Amelie was there, all right.

She was suspended, hanging in the air, high above his head, her eyes closed and her arms open and her hair and clothes drifting like seaweed around her.

CHAPTER 47

Isaac

1942

“Amelie?” Isaac said. Was she dead? If she was dead, he couldn’t begin to . . .

“Ah,” came a voice from the other end of the room. “Good. You’re here at last. I thought this would do the trick.”

A great tall creature (no, a monster), with leathery wings and a face bearing a white scar that ran from one earlobe up through one vacant eye socket and a remaining eye that glowed a burning red, rose from a chair.

A sluagh fae, Isaac thought, as he braced himself. Just like in the book. Just like he’d seen before.

A dire wolf next to the fae also rose to its feet, shook itself, and faced Isaac with teeth bared. Willow danced in the air next to Amelie.

“Thank you, Willow,” said the fae.

“Willow?” Isaac asked, thinking the wight had led him into a trap.

“We didn’t know they were here,” the wight hissed. “We just wanted to help her.”

“Now,” said the fae, in a stilted but lilting voice, “I imagine you’re trying to sort this out.”