Alex bucked and thrashed in silence. She had to breathe. Don’t. But her body wouldn’t listen. Her mouth opened on a gasp. Water rushed into her nose, her mouth, filled her lungs. Her mind was screaming in terror, but there was no way out. She thought of her mother, the silver bangles stacked on her forearms like gauntlets. Her grandmother whispered, Somos almicas sin pecado. Her gnarled hands gripped the skin of a pomegranate, spilling the seeds into a bowl. We are little souls without sin.
Then the pressure on the back of her neck was gone. Alex hurled herself backward, chest heaving. A rush of gritty water spewed from her mouth as her body convulsed. She
realized her wrists were free and pushed up to her hands and knees. Deep, rattling coughs
shook her body. Her lungs burned as she gulped at the air. Screw Dawes. Screw everyone.
She was sobbing, unable to stop. Her arms gave way and she fell to the floor, flopped onto
her back, sucking in breath, and wiped a wet sleeve over her face, trailing snot and tears—
and blood. She’d bitten her tongue.
She squinted up at the painted ceiling. There were clouds moving across it, gray against
the indigo sky. Stars glinted above her in strange formations. They were not her constellations.
Alex forced herself to sit up. She touched her hand to her chest, rubbing it gently, still
coughing, trying to get her bearings. Dawes was gone. Everything was gone—the walls,
the altar, the stone floors. She sat on the banks of a great river that flowed black beneath
the stars, the sound of the water a long exhalation. A warm wind moved through the reeds.
Death is cold, thought Alex. Shouldn’t it be cold here?
Far across the water, she could see a man’s shape moving toward her from the opposite
shore. The water parted around the Bridegroom’s body. So he had true physical form here.
Had she stepped behind the Veil, then? Was she truly dead? Despite the balmy air, Alex
felt a chill creep through her as the figure drew closer. He had no reason to harm her; he’d
saved her. But he’s a killer, she reminded herself. Maybe he just misses murdering women.
Alex didn’t want to go back into the water, not when her chest still rattled with the memory of that violent pressure and her throat was raw from coughing. But she had come
here with a purpose. She rose, scrubbed the sand from her palms, and waded into the shallows, her boots squelching in the mud. The river rose, warm against her calves, the current pulling gently at her knees, then her thighs, then her waist. She drifted past the spiky bowls of lotus flowers resting gently on the surface, still as a table setting. The water tugged at her hips, the current strong. She could feel the silt shift beneath her feet.
Something brushed against her in the water and she glimpsed starlight glinting off a shiny, ridged back. She flinched backward as the crocodile passed, a single golden eye rolling toward her as it submerged. To her left, another black tail flicked through the water.
“They cannot harm you.” The Bridegroom stood only a few yards away. “But you must
come to me, Miss Stern.” To the center of the river. Where the dead and the living might
meet.
She didn’t like that he knew her name. His voice was low and pleasant, the accent almost English but broader in the vowels, a little like someone imitating a Kennedy.
Alex waded in farther, until she stood directly in front of the Bridegroom. He looked just as he had in the living world, silver light clinging to the sharp lines of his elegant face, caught in his dark mussed hair—except here she was close enough to see the creases of the knot in his necktie, the sheen of his coat. The bits of bone and gore that had splattered the white fabric of his shirt were gone. He was clean here, free of blood or wound. A boat
slid past, a slim craft topped by a pavilion of billowing silks. Shadows moved behind the
fabric, dim shapes that were men one moment and jackals the next. A great cat lay at the
edge of the boat, its paw playing with the water. It looked at her with huge diamond eyes,
then yawned, revealing a long pink tongue.