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BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

Margaret's memory, the image of her that was a memory, flickered, like a candle caught in a draft.

"Martha..." Zelda's voice had gone tight.

A scream rolled across the Between, low and building, and it wasn't fear.

It was fury.

"MARGARET!"

I looked down at the crown in my hands. Then at Zelda.

"Still Martha."

But when I looked back at the table, Margaret's expression had gone deadly serious. Her whole memory flickered at the edges like it was already running out of time.

Then she did the last thing I ever expected.

She opened her mouth as wide as it would go, and she screamed, "Run!"

8

Istood with my palm flat against the Wayfinder and tried very hard not to think about the fact that Margaret's Guardian had died standing in exactly this spot.

I failed. Repeatedly. It was what it was.

Everything had gone quiet on the other side of the portal, quiet in that particular way that made the back of my neck prickle. I could still see the shape of the passage, mist curling at its edges, but Martha and Zelda had vanished somewhere beyond it, following a trail of light I couldn't follow myself.

Chewy paced a tight, anxious line at my feet. Arthur and Otis sat rigid, eyes locked on the opening as if they could will it to give up its secrets. Mona growled, low and steady, at absolutely nothing I could see. Barney stood off to my left, journal open, not reading it so much as gripping it. Carol hadn't taken her eyes off the Wayfinder since Martha and Zelda crossed.

“You're thinking very loudly again,” Roy said.

“I'm allowed.”

“Apparently.”

Then…

BANG.

Distant. Muffled, like it had traveled a long way to reach us. Then another.

Then another.

I straightened.

"Something changed," Carol said.

"No shit." No, I probably shouldn’t have snapped at the Baba Yaga, but I did, and there was no taking it back.

"Language," Chewy sniffed.

Every single one of us turned and looked at him.