A sudden noise grows from outside the room. Isaac begins to move toward the watch. Why did he leave it so far away on the table? The noise outside increases, then voices, urgent and angry, swell, and they, whoever they are, are in the corridor just outside this room. Someone yells and pounds on the actual door of this room, and then, just then . . .

The watch begins to chime the hour. One, two . . .

Be absolutely certain you hold the watch when it chimes at the end of each travel.

. . . five, six. Isaac throws himself across the table to grab the watch but can’t quite reach it. Needles of panic sweep over his skin.

The woman exchanges an anxious look with the girl, then reaches to her throat. She yanks a chain from around her neck and hangs it around the girl’s and speaks to the girl in hushed tones. The girl protests, but as the noises grow, she hugs the woman and then dives for the wall and vanishes once again through that magical door, leaving the woman behind.

The woman picks up the watch as the sweet, soft chime strikes, nine, ten, eleven, and then she moves swiftly toward Isaac as he makes for it, too, and they just meet so that she can drop the watch onto Isaac’s open palm, her expression broken and sad. Isaac closes his fist around the orb.

“Thank you,” Isaac says, as the door behind the woman opens with a crash and men bearing flaming torches and drawn swords and angry faces step into the room and the watch chimes, twelve, and . . .

*   *   *

. . . the room around Isaac faded into a swirl of fire and bright swords and shouts and despair. Then another kaleidoscope of color and movement, and he folded his arms over his chest, gripping the watch tight, as he whirled back through space and time until he landed with a thud and a gasp on the floor of his room in Rookskill Castle on the coast of the North Sea in Scotland.

He pitched forward onto his knees, his head spinning and stomach lurching, and he clutched at his shirt to feel the scroll still safely tucked inside. The skull spilled from his hand and rolled across the floor, coming to rest barely out of sight underneath his bed.

CHAPTER 23

Moloch and His Fae Hunter

Moloch bends over the Seelie king’s spy. He’s never killed one of his own kin before. Once he might have retched at the thought. Now his anger makes it easy to set his qualms aside. He’ll dispose of this body and then set out to find the Guardian.

He has a little time before the stupid king starts thinking that something has gone wrong.

Moloch clutches the mirror in his hand and rotates it until it becomes a window again and he can make out the image on the other side more clearly.

“What’s this?” he mutters. “Ah!”