Dark Anne’s face went expressionless.
“It’ll be subtle to begin with,” I said. “You’ll be deciding what to do, and one choice will look better for some reason. You won’t be quite sure why, but it’ll just seem like the natural thing to do. Then later on, it’ll start to have more of a voice. Persuading and convincing. You can say no, but it won’t get weaker, it’ll get stronger. It’ll always be there, pushing you. Each time you give in, it’ll take a tiny bit of ground, then a tiny bit more, until there’s nothing left. This thing is thousands of years old; you haven’t even turned twenty-seven. You think you’re going to beat it in an endurance contest?”
“You’ve spent all your life making deals with magical creatures,” Dark Anne said. “You think you can do it and I can’t?”
“All of those deals, I made sure to know what the creature wanted. And what I could afford to give.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t all get it that easy, do we? I saw a way out and I took it. Sorry it doesn’t meet your approval.”
We stared at each other across the boundary. Seconds dragged out.
Dark Anne broke the deadlock, shaking her head. “Whatever. I’ll do your job. Just don’t keep me waiting.” She turned and left, disappearing into the trees. I watched her go, but she didn’t look back.
Once I was sure she wasn’t returning, I walked to a white stone bench and sat down. Even though I’d moved only a little way, my own Elsewhere had closed in around me, and the trees and wilderness of Anne’s landscape were distant and faded. I stared at the grey sky and the swaying trees.
The conversation had gone to plan, more or less. Still, I wasn’t happy. It felt as though every time I saw Anne, she was further away. I was pretty sure she’d do her part this time. But after?
I shook off the feeling. I had someone else I needed to meet, a conversation I’d put off too long. I sat on the bench and waited.
I felt her presence first, ripples spreading through Elsewhere, quick and agitated. I sat there as the footsteps grew louder until a teenage girl with short red hair appeared from behind a line of pillars. “You!” Shireen pointed at me. “Stay there!”
I stayed where I was as Shireen strode across the courtyard. “You know how long I’ve been looking for you?” she demanded. Her face was flushed and angry. “Every time you come to Elsewhere you hide, then you run away before I can catch up!”
“Sorry.”
“What do you mean, sorry? What are you doing? What are you trying to do?”
Shireen looked like a teenager, but she was the same age as me . . . or at least she had been. When Rachel had killed her, a part of Shireen lived on, tethered to our world by her connection to the girl who’d once been her best friend. I didn’t know whether she was a ghost, a memory, or something else, but she’d been trying for years to get me to help Rachel. I’d finally done something, but she didn’t seem happy about it.
“I’ve had a stressful few weeks,” I said.
“Oh, you’ve had a stressful few weeks?” Shireen glared at me. “Rachel’s going insane right now, you know that? Her place with Richard and her relationship with Cinder were the only things holding her together! Now she’s lost both!”
“Okay, I’m pretty sure the second one of those is not my fault,” I said. “Rachel and Cinder had their bust-up before I got involved. In fact, from the sound of it, Cinder barely got out alive.”
Shireen shifted uncomfortably. “She wasn’t trying to hurt him badly.”
“And the last time they met, she tried to disintegrate him, then ran away.”
“That was never going to kill him.”
“Yeah, and neither would sticking him with a knife, but I don’t stab him every time I say hello.”
“It’s . . . complicated.” Shireen shook her head. “Stop distracting me! Maybe that isn’t your fault, but what happened with Richard is!”
“Not arguing that.”
“You tricked her! Now Richard hates her! She’s been cut loose!”
“You wanted me to break her free of Richard,” I pointed out. “Seems to me I did exactly what you asked.”
“She needed to leave Richard because she wanted to! Instead she got thrown out! Richard told her that she could fix her mess or die trying, so now that’s what she’s trying to do! She’s going crazy!”
“Come on,” I said. “You really expected me to talk Rachel into wanting to leave Richard? She would never have done that. Never in a million years. I saw exactly one way to break her away from Richard and keep myself alive into the bargain, and I took it. And honestly, you should be grateful for what you’ve got, because you and Cinder are the only reasons I haven’t killed her already.”
“She used to be your friend!”
“She sat around filing her nails while I was getting tortured in Richard’s basement,” I snapped. “She’s tried to murder me so many times I’ve lost count. She watched what Richard did to Anne, and laughed. She is not my friend, and I don’t owe her shit.”
“You owe me.”
“And that’s why she’s still alive.”
We glared at each other across the cracked flagstones. “How can you be this selfish?” Shireen demanded. “I thought you were trying to be better than this?”
“I try to be better when I’m dealing with people who deserve it,” I said. “Which Rachel most definitely does not. I have known her for a really long time, and I can honestly say that she’s one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met. She’s sadistic, unstable, totally self-centred, and she doesn’t have the slightest trace of kindness or honour to balance it out. Her only redeeming features are her relationships with you and Cinder, and she tried to kill Cinder and she did kill you! I don’t understand why the two of you haven’t given up on her by now. What is it going to take to make you write her off?”
“I can’t,” Shireen said. “She’s why I’m here. As long as there’s a chance, I have to try.”
I stared at Shireen, and all of a sudden it struck me that maybe she meant that literally. She’d described herself once as a shadow. Maybe that was how she’d been preserved, as some kind of embodiment of Rachel’s guilty conscience. She literally couldn’t stop, any more than a heart could stop beating.
“Okay, Shireen,” I said. “I’ll give you your chance. Tomorrow. I’ll be there, and so will Cinder. Get ready to talk to Rachel and make your case. Because one way or the other, I’m ending this. Rachel’s going to have to choose a side, once and for all.”