a cross in the void // christopher lightwood {4}

six // is this just fantasy?

Alan woke on his side. In between confused flashes of sand and red eyes, and the pain of a pounding headache, he registered cold marble tile, and a ceiling stretched impossibly high over him. This was not the Adamant Citadel. Neither was it the Isafjordur Institute. Though it was also definitely not the ghastly patch of Hell he'd just been in.

He flipped over onto his back and sat up and oh, hell. He knew this place. Knew it like the back of his hand. This was the Field Museum in Chicago. He'd been there with Pluto countless times.

It looked . . . right and not right. An eerie dream-version, with anachromisms everywhere and no corners that met at their proper right angles, SUE in the same space as forties-style telephone booths. "Hello?" He lurched to his feet. "Hello?!"

"Shh." A hand grabbed him. Alan twisted in the grip and found himself looking down at . . . "Dash?"

"I'd say in the flesh but I am a hundred percent sure my physical body is back in the London Institute in an infirmary bed."

"Then where is this?"

"Hell if I know. Some weird other dimension. Pluto managed to show up here once in their sleep, but they woke up and were gone. Before that I thought I'd died and this was some kind of weird purgatory."

"And now I'm here. And—I have to get back. Before I was here I was . . . somewhere else, some ghoulish nightmare, a sandstorm and glowing red eyes and a demon army amassing . . ."

"Sorry," Dash said. "Either you wake up or you don't. I have yet to find another way out."

< & >

They stole from the eerily empty café.

"The food's safe," Dash promised. "I've been eating it for nearly a week. Then again, like I said, I'm pretty sure I have no corporeal body here."

"I suspect I don't either." Alan made a face. "I sure hope they haven't just abandoned me to freeze in the snow."

"Well," said Dash, "unfortunately, it's out of your hands now."

"It is," Alan conceded, "yes." He looked at Dash. "So what do we do?"

"We stay away from the lady in the black blazer." Dash shrugged. "Other than that . . ."

"Lady in a black blazer."

"Oh, hell," said Dash. "I knew I shouldn't've said anything." They glanced out across the expanse of the first floor. "She just walks around in here. I see her sometimes. Black hair, black dress, black blazer, black heels. Never interacts with me—it's like I'm not here. Don't know what she's doing. Holding us, I guess. Or maybe she's being held too."

< & >

Seanan woke tucked into Gloria's arms. It was an odd feeling, to wake and find her in the bed, still asleep and breathing deeply, brown curls a mess, olive skin dulled by the foggy weakness of the highland sunlight, blurring her into soft-focus.

Seanan flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She felt silly and light, as if she were a little girl again, and yet so oddly sad. She thought irrationally of Pluto, humming the airy chorus of the Polovtsian Dances as they worked with Cordelia in the kitchen: my father used to sing this to me as a lullabye.

No sooner had she begun to thoughtlessly hum the tune herself, the eerie calm unfamiliar in her throat, than Gloria stirred and began to wake in her arms. "Ow," she muttered.

"What did I do?" Seanan asked instantly.

"Oh, nothing." Gloria smiled. "Just my hip again. I must have slept on it wrong."