Page 115 of Harnessed in Gold

“Yes.”

“Okay, hang on to me.” She loops my arm through hers.

The next room we enter isn’t the one we’re looking for, but it’s evidence that the rooms are getting progressively older the further we get from the elevator. Leo shines his phone light around thespace, spotlighting its dank stone walls and lumpy floor. “I wonder if there used to be a furnace in here,” he says, pointing to a square hole in the outer wall. “I’ll bet this was the coal chute.”

Something drips on my head, and I back out fast, gritting my teeth to keep from yelping. But the hallway isn’t any safer. The short distance to the next door feels like a twenty-mile hike. I’m stumbling up and down sand dunes in a desert, battling the hot, dry wind.

I imagine wrapping my velvet cloak tightly around me, pulling the hood down to protect my eyes from the heat and sand.Keep them out, keep them out, keep the emotions out.

“Hold on.” Aaron holds up his hands. “I hear something.”

Yet again, all six of us freeze, right outside the doorway. We hold back our questions, letting him listen uninterrupted. Meanwhile, Topaz and Rime scan the hallway for danger.

“Holy shit!” Aaron’s eyes are huge. “It’s hammering on metal. I think I’m hearing the forge!” He squeezes past us and launches into the room, triggering another motion-sensor light, this one even more anemic than the last. “It’s louder in here,” he calls out. “And look, the windows!”

We pour in after him, and in my eagerness, I rush, forgetting about the energy field I’ve come from and the one I’ve just thrown myself into. As my knees buckle, Leo grabs me. I grip his shoulders and imagine my cloak covering my whole body, sheltering me in darkness.The emotions are outside it, I’m safe inside. The emotions are outside it, I’m safe inside…

“Are you still hearing the metal?” Rime asks Aaron.

“Yeah. Nice and loud.”

Feeling more stable, I loosen my grip on Leo and study the room. It’s stone like the furnace room and equally damp. The tracery windows, all three of them, are smaller than I expected and positioned up along the plaster ceiling, cobwebs linking one iron fleur-de-lis to another like swag curtains.

“Hey, ya’ll, look!” Avery holds up a gothic candelabra. “More iron stuff.”

Stuff. That’s the best word for what’s in this room. Stuff you suspect is valuable but you don’t have time to do the research, so you toss it all into a dank storage space and vow to one day “sell this shit on eBay.” That kind of stuff. I wander among the antique tables, dragging my fingers along the cold knickknacks, leaving dark trails in the white dust.

Suddenly, a yearning grips my chest, stealing my breath.

I want what I want, and I’ll do anything to get it.

A few steps deeper into the room, and the desire gives way to terror.What have I done?I whirl, desperate to escape, to run from what I’ve created.

“Betts.” Someone grabs my arm, halting my flight. “Look at me.”

Leo.

I drag a hand down my face. I’m Betts Peterson, Brownhill student, Newberry Hall resident, English major.

“I’m okay,” I tell him, exhaling long and slow.

As I reorient myself, I notice exactly where I’m standing relative to the windows.

I signal for Leo to wait and take several steps toward the door. As I expected, the intensity of the emotions drops from, let’s say, a six to a four on the Peterson Clairsentience Scale. I one-eighty and walk back the way I came. Five… six… eight. When panic has me seeing spots, I stop. “It’s strongest here.”

“Where?” Leo asks.

“Here.” Duh. Where I’m standing. Less than two feet away from slamming face-first into the stone wall. The one with the three windows.

“What’s here?” he gently urges.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I’m terrified. But… but I want to give in. I want to do all sorts of horrible things. Fun things. Crazy things. Evil things.” Suddenly a word comes to me, skipping my brain and traveling straight from my intuition to my lips. “Hubris.”

“Hubris,” Leo repeats, half to himself. “And it’s strongest right here?”

“Yes, right here. When I went back there, it got weaker.”

He guides me a few steps to my left, then to my right.