Page 29 of Mortal Things

But the water pouring in is so cold that I struggle to breathe. I look around for a telltale entry point, to determine the source of the water, my clue for the exit. But with the water rising so quickly, it’s hard to locate.

Now it’s already up to my thighs. The logical part of my brain keeps telling me that this is impossible, starts recalling the temperature at which the human body starts reacting to extreme cold. A body temperature of ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit or lower is a medical emergency. Watch for slurred speech, shivering, confusion as signs of potential hypothermia. The facts roll through my thoughts like an endless, desperate train, attempting to deflect my reflex to panic.

I look at the other three guests in the room, waiting for them to make a comment, but they just remain gathered around the paintings, one of them absently holding his coat up out of the water.

Finally, I grit my teeth, then dive down below the surface.

At this low a temperature, the cold is painful. I swim back to the choir screen and grab hold of the bars, trying frantically to sense a current that might signal where I should go. My fingers run along the screen, and my gaze darts around, looking for crevices, perhaps a gap in the grating. But the water is turning darker now, shadows stretching long and wavy along the floor, distant walls fading away into murky nothingness. I hallucinate the silhouettes of monsters in the corners of my vision, glimpses of Wraiths that shouldn’t be here, shadows swimming in my direction. In the water, the statues all around me look like they’re moving, coming to life with their sightless eyes trained on me.

My air is running out. My chest feels like it’s expanding. My thoughts start to fragment, turning unstable even as I try to keep my wits about me.

I can’t breathe. I need air. I need to surface. But no matter how much I try to swim or cling to the screen, I keep sinking, until my feet touch the floor. I look up to see that the water has reached the ceiling, submerging the choir screen entirely. And yet, the people in the room with me still don’t react. They walk around like phantoms, their hair billowing around them.

Somehow, through the darkness, I see Étienne approaching me on the other side of the choir screen, walking easily through the water with his hands in his pockets as if he is weighed down to the underwater floor, his hair drifting in the current.

He stops before me, the iron bars between us, his green eyes burning me. He reaches between the bars to tilt my chin up at him, and in this moment, I am a quivering rabbit caught in his apparition’s snare. Then he leans closer, so that our lips almost touch.

You can breathe, he whispers, his voice echoing in my mind, his thumb running along my jawbone. Because none of this is real.

The thought cuts, crystal clear, through my rising panic.

Everything is a lie. You have to let go.

A cloud of bubbles envelops me. Then, against every instinct screaming inside me, I take a deep breath of water.

And let it flood my lungs.

9

Instantly, the illusion around me shatters.

The water starts to drain out. My body slams against the screen’s bars, the current pinning me in place. I let out a grunt as the water level continues to lower until I’m exposed to the air again, shivering uncontrollably. Étienne is gone, no longer standing on the other side of the screen.

When I wipe water from my eyes, I see the glitch in the illusion at last—a huge gap between the screen’s iron bars.

I pull myself toward it and step through—and the entire choir screen crumbles around me.

The space changes, and I tumble to the floor of a stairwell.

For a moment, I just stay on my hands and knees in the dim space. My heart hammers.

It takes me another second to realize that I’m completely dry now—my clothes, my boots, my hair. The wall behind me, too, is smooth, with no sign that there had ever been a flood of water. There is only a door behind me, and the sculpture hall beyond it.

Shakily, I pull myself to my feet. The stairwell is silent. All I can hear is the distant beeping of some sort of security alarm. Étienne’s illusion is complete.

A faint laugh comes from somewhere above me. I look up to see him leaning against the stairwell’s railing, watching me with a curious gleam in his eyes.

“Not bad,” he says, offering me a second of applause. “The first time I was tested, I nearly drowned in the garden’s river before I was able to trick Terran out of it.”

I glare at him, trying to shake the image of him leaning down to me, of his thumb caressing my jawline. So he had emulated his own experiences in my test. And then, as I take in his words—

“Terran tried to drown you?” I ask him.

He’s directly in my way, blocking my path up to the last floor toward the new exhibit’s wing, and the elevator is on the other side of the building.

Étienne shrugs. “He was the Regent of Death, after all,” he replies. “I expected it.”

Of course he would. But the thought turns me cold. I hadn’t considered how ruthless Raven must have been to Étienne during his tests.