“He didn’t kill Shireen, Del.”
“Yes, he did.” Rachel sounded as if she were explaining things to a child. “If it hadn’t been for him, she’d be fine.” She paused, frowned. “Well, you would say that.”
This isn’t working. I finished the shaping through the dreamstone. The gate was almost ready. All it would need was a push.
“This ends,” Cinder said. “Today. You got two choices. Back up the stairs with me. Or—”
“Or through that other archway and go after Alex,” Rachel said. “You know, there’s a reason I got bored of you.”
“Del—”
“Shh.” Rachel put a finger to her lips. “No more talking.”
Rachel took a step towards Cinder, then another, smiling to herself. I tensed.
“We made a promise,” Cinder said quietly. He didn’t move as Rachel closed in.
Rachel laid her hands on Cinder’s shoulders. She had to reach up to do it. Blue eyes gazed up at Cinder’s face. “I know,” she said. “And I always keep my promises.”
Cinder hesitated.
Rachel’s smile deepened. “It’s just that sometimes the important promises are the ones you make to yourself.”
“Cinder!” I shouted.
Green-black light formed at Rachel’s hands. Cinder’s black flame sprang to meet it, just a heartbeat behind. There was a flash and a roar. I caught a glimpse of Cinder staggering, then Rachel was darting towards me, light steps flying across the stone.
My spell completed and a gateway appeared in the wall to my right. I leapt through.
I held my grip on the spell, making sure the gate would stay open a few seconds longer than usual. I needn’t have bothered. Rachel jumped through with blinding speed. “Ah-ah!” she called. “No running!”
I backed away. We were in a room that looked much like the one we’d left, except that instead of being dark it was clearly lit in grey and blue.
Rachel didn’t seem to notice. She moved forward, graceful and balanced, still smiling. “Here we are again,” she told me. “Do you remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” I told her.
“I knew you’d come back,” Rachel said, as if telling me a secret. “But you shouldn’t have done that with Richard. He’s supposed to be mine.”
“You wanted to keep Richard for yourself, you shouldn’t have given him Anne.”
Rachel nodded. “You’re right. You are right. I should have made sure, shouldn’t I? If she’d died in that attack, it would have been fine. Richard would have been angry, but he’d have come around. But I can fix that. If I just—”
“I really don’t care.”
Rachel frowned. “I’m not finished.”
“Rachel, how many times have we done this?” I said. “It’s been six years now and we keep running into each other. Sometimes you’re more crazy, sometimes you’re less crazy, but it never makes much difference, does it? Nothing ever changes.”
“Well, of course it doesn’t.” Rachel sounded as if she were explaining the obvious. “You’re you.”
I’d been backing away as Rachel approached. She could have closed the distance in a lunge, but instead she paced me, watching me closely. Strangely, I hadn’t got any closer to the edge of the room.
“But I have changed,” I said. “It’s been painful, but I’ve learned. You, though? You’re frozen in time. You’re still the same broken angry teenager standing over Shireen’s dying body.”
Rachel’s smile faded. “Don’t say her name.”
“Why not?” I nodded to one side. “She’s right there.”
“Rachel!” Shireen came striding out from the archway, tension and alarm in her movements. “What are you doing?”
“Not now,” Rachel said absently, not looking at Shireen.
“No!” Shireen said. “You have to get out!”
“Oh, and don’t forget your jinn,” I said, gesturing to the other side of the room. “Looks like the gang’s all here.”
A slender, almost-human shape was standing in the shadows, unnaturally still. It watched us both, unmoving. Rachel shot it an uninterested look. “They’re always here.”
“Has it occurred to you,” I told Rachel, “that you’ve managed to kill or drive away every single person who’s ever cared about you? First there was Shireen. She was your best friend and you murdered her in cold blood. Then there was Richard. He might have put Anne above you, but he still would have kept you on. At least until you managed to ruin years of his work by freeing her. Oh, I was the one who manipulated you into it, but it was still your choice, and Richard knows it. He’ll never trust you again.”
Rachel’s expression had become fixed. All traces of a smile were gone. “Shut up.”
“And finally there’s Cinder. God only knows why, but he’s stayed loyal to you for years. Even today, you still could have taken his offer and walked away. Or you could have done, until you tried to kill him yet again.”
“Rachel!” Shireen burst out. “You have to—”
“Shut up,” Rachel hissed. “All of you.” She stared at me, eyes icy with hate. “Richard should never have taken you in. He could never see what you were. I’m going to—”
“Look at your hands, Rachel,” I said quietly.
Rachel blinked and glanced down, then stared. Faint wisps of light were rising from her fingers.
“You didn’t know that I could open gates to Elsewhere now, did you? I told you I’d changed.” I paused. “Something else I noticed. Ever since our reunion, the times we’ve met via Elsewhere, you’ve never gone into Elsewhere. You’ll walk right up to the edge, you’ll look over the line, but you’ll never cross it.”
“You’re lying,” Rachel said. But all of a sudden, she looked uncertain.
“He’s not!” Shireen said. “Rachel, please, you have to run!”
Without looking, I knew that wisps of light were starting to rise from my own clothes and body. Not enough to be dangerous, not yet. “I spent a while wondering why you’d never set foot into Elsewhere,” I told Rachel. “I mean, Elsewhere’s a reflection of your inner self. So I thought it’d be interesting to see what happened if I brought you here. What do you think, Rachel? What would your Elsewhere be like?”
Rachel looked at me for a long moment, then turned to run. And stopped. Behind Rachel, where the door had been, was a floor-to-ceiling mirror spanning the length of the room.
“Oops,” I said softly. “Guess you’re staying.”
Rachel tried to call up a gateway. I snuffed it out with an effort of will. She tried again with the same result.
“What are you doing?” Shireen cried. “Let her go!”
“Like she said,” I told her. “No running.”
Rachel threw a disintegration ray at the mirror, the beam and its reflection meeting in a green flash. It should have turned the mirror to dust, but the glass absorbed the spell as though it were nothing. I could feel Elsewhere shifting, focusing around us. I couldn’t make out the shape of what was happening, but Rachel was the centre of it.
Rachel turned on me, and green death lashed out. I bent the spell away, letting it fizzle out somewhere off to the side. There was no way Rachel could hurt me, not here. Gate magic might work, but it was my will against hers and—
A chill went through me.
In the mirror behind Rachel, I could see myself reflected, quite small at this distance. I could see Shireen’s reflection as she called out again for Rachel to run. I could see the jinn’s reflection, silent and unmoving in the shadows. And I could see Rachel’s reflection standing just behind her.