Chapter 37

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"You've got to help me!"

I'm a wild-eyed thing standing outside Kartik's tent. He doesn't argue with me, doesn't say

a word, not even when I tell him what's happened. He hoists Pippa over his shoulder and

carries her through the woods all the way to Spence. The only time he stops is when we

pass the ravine and the corpse of the deer we've left there. He helps us get Pippa to her

room, and then I'm racing for Mrs. Nightwing's door. I bang furiously, calling her name

with a desperation I can't hold back.

Our headmistress throws open the door. Her nightcap is sliding down her long, graying

braids. "What on earth? Miss Doyle, what are you doing in your clothes? Why aren't you

in bed?"

"It's Pippa," I gasp. "She…" I can't finish, but it doesn't matter. Mrs. Nightwing has

caught the alarm in my voice. She springs into action with that immovable firmness of

hers, a quality I've never truly appreciated until this moment.

"Tell Brigid to call for Dr. Thomas at once."

The lights burn through the night. I sit at the window in the library, hugging my knees in

my arms, making myself as small as possible. At the edges of sleep, I see her. Wet.

Hollow-eyed. Slipping under the smooth surface with a scream for help. I dig my

fingernails into my palm to stay awake. Felicity paces past me. She avoids looking at me,

but her silence speaks for her.

You left her there, Gemma. Alone in that watery grave.

A lantern moves across the lawn. Kartik. The light bobs and shakes in its metal cage. I

have to strain to see him. He's carrying a shovel, and I know that he's going back to what

he couldn't ignore in the ravine. He's going to bury the deer.

But whether he's doing it to protect me or himself, I cannot know.

I sit for a long time and watch the night bruise toward morning, the purple turning yellow,

the yellow fading till it's as if the dark has never marked the skin of the sky at all. By the

time the sun peeks over the trees, I'm ready to take one last journey.

"Keep this," I say, crumpling the crescent eye amulet into Felicity's hands.

"But why?"

"If I don't come back…" I stop. "If something should go wrong, you'll need to find the

others. They'll need to know you're one of them."

She stares at the silver amulet.

"It will be up to you to come after me." I pause. "Or close the realms for good. Do you

understand?"

"Yes," she whispers. "Promise you'll come back." The scrap of silk from my mother's

dress is soft in my tight fist. "I'm going to try."