Page 96 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

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For the first time in more than a century, Maxwell prayed.

He didn’t manage the formal sort, didn’t even call on a particular god, but as he watched Hazel swallow all but a trace of the hideous red liquid, he clenched his fists at his sides and thoughtplease, please let her survive.

The wound on her hip flared to life almost as soon as she’dlowered the bottle from her lips. Pale light surged outward and up through Hazel’s body, overwhelming the colors of her skin and hair, pressing against the rainbow ribbons. Agony twisted her face and held her otherwise frozen for a moment, hands white-knuckled on Chapman’s container.

Maxwell dug his fingernails into his palms, fighting the urge to go to her. He couldn’t help her any longer, he knew that, but he could at least hold her, give some kind of comfort even if it was poor, and—

—it would mean her suffering was in vain.

No.

All he could do was wait, watch, and keep pleading with whatever powers might be inclined to help.Please let her survive. Please let her pain stop. Please don’t let those requests be incompatible. Please.

Rays of light stabbed out from Hazel, slicing through the barrier between worlds. The temperature around them dropped like a lead weight off a balcony. Maxwell heard a sharp crack and realized that one of the windows had broken. Trees became hazy brown and green shapes, the outlines of the house blurred, and the mailbox grew, and still Hazel stood frozen, a soft whimper emerging from her throat.

It wasn’t working. It was working. She was dying, there in front of him, victim of his own idiocy, and Maxwell almost sank to his knees and howled.

Then the light stopped moving. It still shone through Hazel, but its rays died away, and the twisting strain on her bindings seemed to ease. As Maxwell watched, she fell silent, gulped air, and gradually relaxed her hands.

“Are you—” he barely managed.

“For now,” she said, with the wry smile he’d learned to love. “Better not waste it.”

She turned her attention to Chapman’s jar, which she’d covered with runes that shone red now that they’d slipped into the ethereal. Raising one hand above it, she spoke a word of command, then another, then a stream that began echoing in a voice much deeperthan her own. As she frowned down at the container, a strand of darkness rose out and began to stretch off into the woods. Casper sniffed at it, then immediately put his ears back and snarled.

“That’s about right,” said Hazel. “That’s where we’re going. Still want to come?”

The dog leaned against her leg once more, then, tail low between its legs and ears still back, began to follow the trail. Hazel went with it, looking back just once to meet Maxwell’s eyes.

They’d managed to say a fair bit over the last few days. He found everything else he needed in her glance.

Chapter 51

Following the demon’s trail with sympathetic magic to help her went much faster than tracking Maxwell had. Casper hurried after the darkness with no hesitation, and Hazel’s certainty meant she barely had to stretch herself to keep up. The strand from Chapman’s jar almost pulled her after it like the world’s creepiest towline.

The ethereal flashed by around her, a patchwork of blue-lit places that obeyed no reasonable geographic order. One moment Hazel followed Casper down a narrow city alley with broken neon signs blinking above them, the next they emerged into a cornfield straight out of Nebraska, and then they flashed through the cobalt-colored mist of an unformed patch. She saw a vast body of water off to one side and couldn’t look for long enough to know whether it was a lake or an ocean before they sped onward and into a village square in the middle of a festival.

Casper never even turned his head; the changing scenery might have been completely blank as far as he was concerned. He had a trail to follow, and that was all he seemed interested in, as awful as he clearly found the smell or the feel of it. Hazel admired his priorities.

She herself could only spare a few thoughts for the landscapes they traveled through, though normally she would have wanted to spend hours investigating each one. Most of her attention went to maintaining the dark line guiding her—and to the name that theghosts had told her, the name that Chapman had invoked while he was murdering them.

Perthrux.

It hammered through her mind with the beat of her heart. Each step and each breath fell into its rhythm, louder and closer as Hazel went on.

Perthrux. Perthrux.

Perthrux Perthrux Perthrux Perthrux.

She didn’t know whether that was proximity or preoccupation, but she sensed its domain even before the ethereal ahead of her turned ash-dark and the temperature dropped again, turning her fingers numb.

Casper lifted his head and howled. The forlorn sound echoed around them even though there were no real acoustics to make it do so.

“I know,” said Hazel, ruffling the dog’s spectral ears. “I’m here too, if that helps any.” He didn’t unclench his tail or relax his ears, but he turned his head and licked her hand. Hazel swallowed past a lump in her throat and stared ahead at what she knew to be her destination.

Maxwell had given her as much physical description as he could, but Hazel thought she could have recognized the place even without it. Suggestions of mountains like teeth rose up against a sky barely a shade lighter. The ground was dark gray, mostly formless but uneven with boulders like giant deformed skulls, and movement to either side didn’t seem to belong to any one entity. It might have been the wind, or whatever passed for wind there.