Their eyes are crazed. And black, like oil. They’re taller than they should be. Necks bent. Heads tipped against the ceiling. Their arms look like spiders’ legs.

“Bea?” I say.

“Moon?”

“Run!”

58

We make it into the wheat, driving our shoulders through, just as they explode out of the door—loping—on all fours, like animals. I feel a spike of fear. But, in the field, I think the odds are even. We press on, getting whipped and cut. Behind us, they come, two burrowing creatures. A sharp wind knifes through the wheat and the light shifts. I hear my name called, over and again. “Ana! Come back to us, Ana.”

I stop running and, panting hard, I turn to look behind.

“Ana, no!” Bea shouts. She grabs my arm and pulls.

Just in time.

A figure crashes through the plants and flies past us, right where I had been standing. That wakes me up. I haul out my sword.

“Ana?” Bea says.

“Shh,” I say. We’re back-to-back, waiting. The wind howls.

One of the figures explodes out the wheat and, without seeing it properly, I pivot and slash the sword left to right. There’s an awful screech and the wheat rustles and something tunnels away from us. Then silence. We stand there, panting.

A moon eclipses the sun. The wheat field darkens. It folds around us, like water. In the blink of an eye, we’re suddenly in a black sea. I hold onto Ra for dear life as giant swells heave and dip around us. We swim drunkenly through blood-hot water. In another blink, the sea becomes black as oil and drops away and we find our feet in sand. We’re alone, on land again. Darkness all around.

We walk through a silent darkness, wordlessly, hand in hand.

Now we see a pinprick of light.

It grows into a large, bright hole. Bea looks at me wide-eyed, following my lead. We keep walking and the hole keeps widening, until we see the room beyond.

Then we step through.

—

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the brightness. The pyramid. The commanding view of Paris Nouveau. The extraordinary works of art. The Reaper-guards. Malik. Still bloodied, gagged and bound, but wide-awake now. Eyes fierce. And everyone still in the same position they were in when I stepped into the gate. Including the elder master, Kei Shinigami.

She comes hungering towards us, rapt, and light on her feet. “It worked!” she cries. “I knew you were the key. And now the seventh is mine.”

I glance at Bea. She doesn’t look shocked, or scared.

But that’s Bea.

“I remember you,” Bea says to Shinigami. “And this place.” She looks around the room, staring. “Bloody hell,” she says. “So much money. You’d think you could have hired a better interior designer. It’s a little tacky but—”

She must see Malik then, because she stops speaking abruptly.