“I can’t let her go without angering Kincaid,” Dante says. “The security feed will catch it, which means I’ll have to take her in.”

“Do you have holding areas here?” Jost asks.

“Not here. Kincaid has holding facilities on his estate, but I can’t protect you from him if I take you there. A refugee is one thing, but a renegade Spinster is another,” Dante tells me.

“I’m guessing after this”—I gesture to the warp—“you couldn’t protect me from him regardless.”

Dante’s attention turns to Erik. “You got a good bit of credit for that Guild paraphernalia, right?”

Erik nods.

“Then let me put this in terms you’ll understand. Adelice is the most valuable Guild paraphernalia on Earth,” Dante says. “Kincaid will want her.”

And like that I’m an object. Something to be collected and used and sold, like a machine.

“What if we don’t want to come along?” Jost asks.

Dante faces him, his shoulders drawing up so that his slight difference in height feels more formidable. “He’ll come after you. We may not have looms here on Earth, but you can’t get far if Kincaid wants you. Your best option for staying alive—and keeping her safe—is to come as an invited guest. Otherwise, he’ll see you as a threat.”

“We’ve been threats before,” I say, taking my place beside Jost.

“You don’t need more enemies than you already have,” Dante warns us. “The Guild overstepped their bounds here tonight. Kincaid won’t overlook this. He’ll want retribution from whomever he can get to after this. At this point, you need him as an ally.”

“I won’t be of any use to him,” I warn Dante. “The strands here are different. I can hardly control my abilities.” The warp I’d made to protect my mother was nothing like the large domes I’d built around Jost and myself in the Coventry. It would have stopped a direct bullet but he only had to change position. I’d barely been able to grab the correct strands.

“You aren’t dealing with the precise patterns of Arras here. This is raw space-time—you can’t control it like you’re at a loom,” Dante says. “Not that I imagine most Spinsters could do what you did.”

Jost steps closer to him and nods at my mother. “What will we do with her?”

I’m grateful he’s changed the subject. I don’t want to explain more about my skills, especially since I’m only now grasping that here I can touch the raw matter of the universe.

Dante’s face is grim, but he’s gentle as he lifts the remains of the steel door from my mother. Jost keeps a gun leveled at her, but Dante reaches to take her into his arms. She claws at him, howling, but her injuries prevent her from causing too much harm. Keying in the passcode, he holds her cautiously and eventually she goes limp in his arms as we wait for the door to swing open.

“We have facilities where I can restrain her,” Dante says. “She will be fine there until we can move her in the morning. You should rest.”

He tilts his head toward a hallway lined with doors.

“Sleeping quarters,” he tells us, and then he disappears down the gray corridor without another word.

For a moment, I question if I’ve done the right thing by keeping her alive, and if I’m making a mistake by sending her with Dante now, but soon worry gives way to a panic building inside me. It rushes through my limbs and stops me in my tracks. The boys freeze alongside me and I feel their concern. But I can’t put words to my dreadful realization yet.

This is what the Guild does to traitors, and I committed treason of an extraordinary caliber when I ripped us from Arras to Earth. We might be safe here temporarily, but there’s no way to protect those we left behind, and now I know what the Guild does to those they perceive as threats—the monsters they create from them.

And if I don’t find the resources to get back to Arras soon, there’s no way to prevent them from doing this to Amie.

SEVEN

IN MY SLEEP, I FACE THE GHOSTS that come for me. A wave of Remnants with Amie in the middle, reaching for me. I can only watch as Amie is swept into the crowd of soulless monsters. A new figure emerges where she vanished: a woman with wrists dripping red. The Remnants are gone now. I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes. Blood pools at her feet as she dissolves slowly into a puddle and then another woman rises from it. She’s naked, a long scar marring her belly, and her hair on fire. My mother. She points to me accusingly. Her eyes hollow. Dead. Because of me. I will the dream to change, coaxing my mind to wake up, reminding myself this isn’t real. But when I open my eyes, I’m at a bar, a whiskey perched in front of me. Next to it rests a tiny card. I lift it to read the inscription.

Drink me.

I look around, wondering where this dream has taken me. The place is familiar, although it lacks the color of the real location I encountered in my travels in Arras. Here the bar isn’t rich mahogany but a slab of ebony in a gray world. My eyes fall on the swinging doors. He’ll arrive any minute.

Cormac. The worst nightmare of all. But it’s not him. He’s stockier than Cormac with the same easy swagger, but his face is shielded by a fedora cocked too low.

Even as I fight the dream, I drift in and out of consciousness until light breaks into the room. Suddenly Jost’s arms are around me, waking me.

“I was dreaming,” I murmur.