“Grey!” I shouted. My voice broke. “Let me out!”
He didn’t answer. I tried again, a few times. Too many times. Until my throat felt raw, and the sounds I made were barely recognizable. He wasn’t answering. I’d have to rescue myself. Free myself. There would be blood spilled before I settled down to be his Rapunzel.
Stripping the bed, I laid the linens out. All of them—the sheets and the coverlets, the duvet, and even the dust ruffle. Dropping to my knees, I tied the corner of one to the next. My bowknots were good and strong. I wasn’t that far off the ground. It worked in movies, although that didn’t mean much.
I secured one end of my rope to the bed. Just as I hefted the rest to the window, the room shifted behind me. Two footsteps sounded on a spiral staircase. China rattled on a tray, and Grey looked seriously confused.
“I brought breakfast,” he said, and turned away from me.
“Where are my clothes?”
The question seemed to embarrass him. He didn’t blush. There wasn’t that much color in him. Sliding the tray onto the bed, he gestured at a stand-up chest. “I’m sure they’re dry now.”
Edging around him, I opened the door. I yanked my jeans off a hanger. They rasped when I put them on, but they were warm and soft. Cedar sweetened my sweatshirt, surrounding me as I pulled it over my head. I didn’t bother to take off the foreign shirt. I could get rid of it at home.
Eyes on the ceiling, Grey started, “You seem perturbed—”
“Don’t.”
I pulled my shoes over bare feet and snatched my coat. The hangers swung on the bar, whispering as they rubbed together. Little echoes filled the armoire, ripples in the air. Freeing my hair from my collar, I backed toward stairs that finally existed. Grey left the tray on the bed and turned to follow me.
“I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. You almost drowned; I pulled you from the water.”
His weight made the spiral staircase tremble, and I didn’t know where it was going anyway. So far as I saw, rooms came and went in the lighthouse. They only existed when he wanted them to. I was relieved when the next landing was the library.
Desperation in his voice, Grey reached for me. “What have I done to offend you?”
“Nothing,” I told him. “No, wait, you said let’s be honest.”
“Please.”
The rough iron rails bit into my palms as I hurried down stairs that never seemed to end. I was almost out of breath. The music-box room should have been ten steps down, but I kept spiraling with no end. “You pulled me out, great, thanks. But you stripped me. You locked me in that room. What’s wrong with you?”
“That’s the worst possible interpretation. You can’t afford me the benefit of the doubt?”
I threw a look over my shoulder. He was serious. He was actually ticked that I didn’t appreciate all his creeping when I was unconscious. A shudder raced through me. “What’s the good spin on locking me in your tower?”
“The truth,” Grey said stiffly, “is that I put you in my bed but the lighthouse decided to provide you with your own chamber.”
“It’s a building! It doesn’t decide anything!”
“Doesn’t it?”
He reached past me and pushed open the door. A door—it wasn’t there a second ago. And it didn’t open onto the music- box room. Instead, the wind rushed in, bitter with death. The beacon hummed, spinning without light. I was back at the top of the lighthouse.
The dull ache in my head turned sharp. I stepped onto the lantern gallery because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Outside seemed better. I could breathe there. I could back away from him. Iron rattled with my steps. I pressed the heel of my hand to my temple. “Let me out.”
Grey drifted past me. He was smart enough to keep his hands to himself. Though his shadowy eyes pinned me, he moved away. Wrapping his hands on the guardrail, he stared at the sea. Didn’t even look over once. The wind tried to snatch his voice, but I heard him all the same.
“It stuns me that you think I have any control over this whatsoever.”
“You’re telling me you don’t?”
He looked like a storm coming in. He threw his hands up, flashes of lightning, his voice thunder. “It’s cursed. I’m cursed, this place is cursed. Don’t you know an illusion when you see one? You woke up in the room you desired, dressed the way you imagined.”
My mouth gaped. “That wasn’t my imagination.”
“I swear to you, it was.” He turned to me finally. His hands flew, dangerously constrained against his chest. But they trembled; he was furious. “You’re not flesh to me, Willa. I see the life in you that I could collect, but nothing more. You’re a ghost. You’re a lie.”
I probably was all those things. And I was afraid. I glanced at the rocky shore below. I didn’t have my sheet rope now. No matter how many physics classes I missed, I still understood terminal deceleration. It was too far down. I’d never survive. Nobody could survive.
Grey set his jaw and looked away. “Just want to leave and you can. Only one of us is bound here.”
“Yeah?” I spread out my arms. “I’m still here. And I can think of about a million places I’d rather be.”
“You must not want to be there very badly.”
If I’d known him, if we’d grown up together, I might have decked him. Instead, I threw out my arms and said, “Wishful thinking on your part.”
Instead of answering, Grey’s expression darkened, and he looked back to the sea. He was made of marble. Chill pale, with grey veins that pretended he had a pulse. I bet if I touched him, his hands would be stone. His mouth would be ice.
This frozen creature stepped onto the rail. The wind plucked at his hair. It was mist and nothing more. Wild, foggy tendrils that flowed around his head, then pulled straight.
Grey jumped.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look back. Over the side, he plummeted without a scream. There was screaming, though: mine. It tore from my throat. I threw myself against the rail, raw with terror.
Clinging to iron so cold, it bit, I leaned over. I was fast. I saw him hit the ground. Exploding into ribbons of haze, he disappeared. No body. No blood. Nothing left of him.
“As you see,” he said behind me. “Only one of us is bound here.”
My skin crawled. I whipped around, and there was Grey. Whole. Still cold and pale and frightening. But fine as could be, like he’d never jumped at all.
Frigid wind blasted off the water. It pushed me back, and I saw the stairs. I shoved past Grey. My heart was jelly, quivering instead of beating. I almost fell, but I didn’t slow down. Taking the stairs two at a time, I ran. Like if I hurried, the lighthouse would have to let me go.
I needed to be outside. I wanted to go home.
My footsteps echoed in my head. In my ears. If I did fall, I wondered if I would ever stop. The spiral could have gone on infinitely. My body would tear apart. Smaller and smaller pieces, until nothing but blood and atoms stained the steps.
Tinny, discordant notes jangled around me. Music boxes trembled. A soaring wall of them, delicate brass and silver fixtures shivering, strangely alive. Light glinted on them; it was too bright. I caught glimpses of my face, bent by spiked wheels and shimmering gears. A thousand fun-house mirrors, all playing their own eerie songs. So many sharp edges.
I ran past them and crashed through the door.
Pushing through, I clapped a hand over my mouth. By force alone, I strangled a laugh or a sob. Maybe both. Because when I passed through, I didn’t find myself standing on the stone cliff of Jackson’s Rock.