The car came up the drive like a bullet.
X was still pinned to the ground, his body so broken that some of the lords had grown bored with beating him and drifted away. He managed to turn his head. He saw Zoe’s mother drive toward them. At the sight of her, he felt a wave of shame that eclipsed even the pain. She had told him to stay away from her family. Then he felt a second wave—a wave of fear for her. The lords would not scatter now simply because a mortal had appeared. The tragedy was in motion. It could not be halted.
X knew what would happen next: Zoe’s mother would stop the car. She’d come rushing out of it. She would scream at the lords. When that failed, she would plead. The lords would descend on her. They’d push her back and forth, spin her around. They’d laugh at her uselessness. If they were feeling merciful, they would kill her quickly. If they weren’t, they’d sit her next to X and Ripper, and make the three of them watch Jonah die. Either way, the tragedy would swallow everyone it could.
But Zoe’s mother didn’t stop the car. She didn’t even slow down. She came roaring toward the lords. Some of them had never seen a car before—and all of them were startled by the woman’s audacity—so for a moment she had the advantage.
X watched as she slammed into one of the lords and flattened him against the house. He watched as she backed up—her tires spinning madly, blackening the snow—and knocked a second down. He listened as the car thump-thumped over the body.
The lords left X where he lay, and swarmed the car. He stood, feeling useless and ashamed. He looked toward the house. The façade had been torn away. It looked like a dollhouse now. He could see furniture, toys, dresses, boots, and picture frames—all of it sliding and crashing into crazy heaps.
He could see Ripper, too. She’d been captured by the lords. They forced her to the edge of the house and flung her off. Her golden dress was torn, her arms and legs bloodied. But she landed like a cat.
“I could not find the boy,” she told X.
Tears began to spill down her face. X had never seen her cry, and the sight of it made his own eyes sting.
“Either he was too frightened to answer when I called out,” Ripper said, “or his little lungs have already been crushed.”
They turned toward the car. A lord had immobilized it with just the palm of his hand. A half dozen others circled it now, their robes billowing. They shattered the windows with their fists. They reached for Zoe’s mother, their arms like the tentacles of a beast. Still, she would not surrender. She gunned the engine, hammered on the horn, even set the windshield wipers flapping crazily.
Ripper dried her eyes.
“Oh, I like her,” she said.
X stumbled to Zoe’s mother. He knew the fight was lost. He begged her to come out of the car. He begged the lords not to harm her. Dervish was back on his feet now, a dark bruise spreading on his throat. When he saw X debasing himself, his rage dissipated and the glow returned to his face. He nodded for the other lords to unhand Zoe’s mother.
She opened the car door. Like Regent, she would not even look at X. She pushed past the lords, and darted toward the house, screaming Jonah’s name. But the house was in its death throes. Every wall, every joint, every nail was aching to give way. It screamed back even louder.
X lurched toward the house now, too. No one made a move to stop him, for they knew he was too late. Every time he took a step, another wall crumbled, another ceiling fell. The bedroom where he had slept, the living room where he had answered questions from the silver bowl: everything was crushed, unrecognizable, gone.
In his mind, he saw only Zoe. He remembered how she looked on the lake where her father had been fishing—the way her eyes went wide with fear. I don’t think they’re coming after us. I think they’re going after Jonah. He saw her reach up to embrace him. He felt it so clearly that it was as if she were right there in front of him. He remembered the things they said to each other in those last moments. He remembered the way her heart had hovered over his own for a fraction of a second before touching down gently, as if docking there. He had pressed his lips to hers for so long she’d finally pulled away in alarm.
“You’re kissing me like I’m never going to see you again,” she’d said. “Stop it.”
She’d looked at him sternly.
“If you don’t come back, I’ll commit some horrible crime just so I get sent to the Lowlands,” she said. She was trying to be funny, but she’d begun to cry. “Ripper will come get me—won’t you, Ripper? And when I get there, I will find you, X. I will find you wherever you are, and I will act really obnoxious and dress really inappropriately, and I will tell everyone that I’m your girlfriend.”
She paused. Tried to pull herself together. Couldn’t.
“Promise me again that you’ll come back,” she said. “Promise me the way you promised me before. I want to hear the ‘two worlds’ thing.”
X leaned forward to kiss her once more. His face was so feverish it felt like a lantern.
“I will come back,” said X. “If I do not return, it is only because not one but two worlds conspired to stop me.”
Only then could she let him go.
Zoe’s mother lay doubled over in the snow, wailing. X tried to block out the sound—his heart couldn’t bear it.
“Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Mommy’s here, baby! Mommy’s here!”
Ripper knelt beside her. She put an arm around her and pulled her close, as if trying to share the pain. X looked away. Even the tenderness was too much. He hated himself for what he had done. There had been a wall separating two worlds—a wall that stood there for a reason. He had burned it down.