And so would Evangeline. I glanced at her as she padded along in the sand in bare feet, her hair waving about in wild Medusa springs. She was nuts. She would kill me in an instant if she thought she could get away with it, because it was pretty clear that she was jealous of my standing with Lucifer. I’d like to tell her she was welcome to him if she would just keep him away from me, but I didn’t think she would believe me.
Still, she was a mother, too. And that made me feel a little sorry for her. Her first two children had been taken by duty and Death, made to serve as soul collectors in Lucifer’s stead.
I don’t know whether I could bear it if my child were taken from me. Her instability was easier to understand in that light.
We walked on, two mothers-to-be, without food or water or shade or shelter. The horizon looked farther away with every step.
“How much more?” she asked through parched lips.
“We’ll know,” I said. I had long since abandoned my favorite sweater and rolled my shirtsleeves to my shoulders. I was getting a sunburn.
Something shimmered in front of us. I stopped, squinted at the thing that must be an illusion.
“Do you see that?” I asked.
Evangeline shaded her eyes. “Something silver? Water?”
“Something silver,” I breathed. “Not water. A portal.”
We walked faster. I stumbled over my own feet in the sand. Evangeline went ahead of me, her gown flowing behind her. Her crazy cackle trailed in the wind as she laughed and laughed harder the closer she got to the portal.
I ran, trying to catch up with her, but I was wearing heavy boots and lugging a sword that kept banging around. I would have flown, but ever since I’d landed I’d felt the air pressing on me in a way that told me flying would be impossible here.
I think that she thought she would be able to dive through the portal and close it on the other side, leaving me there. She found out soon enough that wouldn’t happen.
She launched herself at the portal and bounced off it as if it were a brick wall. She staggered backward, her hands thrown wide.
“What is this?” she screeched. “Why have I crossed this desert if not to escape?”
“Chill,” I said, coming up behind her, panting. “Keep the lid on the crazy for a second, will you?”
“I swear by all the gods, granddaughter, if you have made me suffer for no reason…”
“You’ll what?” I said. “Talk me to death? You have no power, Evangeline. Here you are nothing more than a spirit, and you cannot pass through that portal without me. And without paying the price.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I thought I just paid the price.”
“You thought a walk through the desert was the price?” I asked. “No way. You’re asking to be restored to the living. The only way you pay is in blood.”
Evangeline covered her belly protectively. “You will not take my child from me.”
“I am not taking anything,” I said impatiently, although it was a possibility I had already considered. The universe might let Evangeline through that portal—if she gave her baby’s life in return. “It’s not up to me.”
I held out my hand to her. She gazed at it fearfully, as if I were a snake about to strike.
“If you want to return, you have to come with me. And you have to agree to the price that is asked of you,” I said. “Otherwise, you stay.”
After a long pause, she took my hand. Her fingers were cold, and I was seized by the sudden impulse to comfort her.
Then I remembered that she had laughed like a maniac when Ramuell had torn my heart out, and the impulse passed.
We approached the portal, which looked like a long silver mirror hanging without wall or wire above the sand. I stretched my other hand toward it, and I passed through. Evangeline flowed in behind me.
Unlike every other portal I’d experienced, this one did not immediately suck us into a vacuum and send us hurtling through space and time. Instead we were floating in a kind of misty netherworld, surrounded by streams of white smoke.
One of the puffs of smoke curled into a face and gazed at me with empty eyes. I realized that what I thought was smoke were ghosts, the ghosts of all those who had tried to pass through here and been unable or unwilling to pay the price.
The ghosts wound around us. They seemed fairly harmless to me, like kittens. But Evangeline started to struggle, to try to shake them off her.
“Quit it,” I said. “If you keep that up, I’ll lose you.”
“Make them leave,” she said, her voice trembling. “They want my baby.”
I frowned at her. “I don’t think so. They’re just curious.”
“They want me to pay,” she said. “Can’t you hear them whispering?”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t.”
“They are in my head,” she said, her green eyes wide with terror. “They are telling me of all the sins I have done.”
It was like Evangeline was trapped in her own personal Maze while I was drifting along in a stream of cotton candy. There was nothing I could do now. I had fulfilled Lucifer’s charge to me, and fetched Evangeline from the dead. Now it was up to her whether she would pass into the land of the living again.
She began to thrash, and it was harder for me to hold on to her. I knew if I released her now, she would end up in the netherworld forever. That wasn’t really a problem for me, but Lucifer might think I’d left her there on purpose.