Page 7

"The one who left me Below."

Oh.

Oh!

Because that wasn't the voice of some random apocalypse monster who'd picked me at random out of a swamp lineup. That was personal. That had always been personal, going back further than four months, further than Barney's journal, further than anything anyone in my life had bothered to tell me about.

Margaret hadn't just walked away from a crown.

Margaret had done something. Something that had trapped the woman speaking through this thing Below. Something Barney's journals — for all his squinting and muttering and moon-phase theories — did not contain one single word about.

It took a step toward me. Not attacking this time.

"Stop hiding."

"Wasn't doing a very good job of it, apparently," I scoffed.

"Come Below."

"No," Kai snapped, hauling himself up out of the mud, plainly not asking permission.

The creature turned its cycling, borrowed face toward him, and something in its expression went cold in a whole new way.

"The Guardian cannot follow."

The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

“The Guardian shall fall.”

I'd heard that line a hundred times over the last four months, muttered by Barney over his journal like a bad omen he couldn't quite translate. We'd all assumed — hoped, prayed, refused to say out loud — that it meant something else. Somebody else. Anybody else.

Judging by the look on Kai's face, he'd made the exact same connection I just had, and he did not like it one bit.

I liked it even less.

"Come willingly, Margaret," the thing said, all those layered voices sliding together, "or I will come Above."

"Still Martha," I said, because somebody had to, because if I stopped making jokes for even one second I was fairly sure I'd start screaming and never stop.

Underneath it, though, underneath every ounce of my smart mouth, I was terrified.

That was the exact moment Zelda arrived.

Bless her red curls, size four body, and the new Michael Kors sandals she had on her feet.

She came in blazing, Baba-Yaga-in-training Magic crackling around her like she'd been shot out of a cannon, skirt snapping, both hands already lit up like a kaleidoscope of green and blood-red sparks and smoke with gold and black misty fog, which meant she was furious. Barney must've triggered the emergency Spell we'd rigged up sometime during the fight, because there was no other explanation for how fast she'd gotten there.

The creature turned toward her.

And Zelda froze.

Not from fear. From recognition.

I watched the color drain clean out of her face, watched her hands falter for just one telling second, and I knew — I knew — before she said a single word, that this was not the first time she'd heard that voice.

"Margaret," the creature said again, softer this time, almost gentle, and Zelda flinched like she'd been struck.

"I've heard her before," Zelda said, low.