Llyr's Court

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Despite the fact that Alistair had lived for so long as his twin’s shadow, hanging out in her head, seeing and learning everything that she did, it was important to remember that he had only driven himself perhaps four or five times. Though he handled it considerably well, the moment they were parked in front of the old ruins, he sagged against the steering wheel, giving a heavy sigh of relief to be off the pitch-black, crumbling road. “You guys really didn’t want visitors, did you…” he murmured, taking a deep breath to collect himself and glancing up at the charred ruins, shrouded in darkness.
He got out with Rynn, leaving the headlights on, and for a moment stood staring at the ruined house. “The last time I saw this place…” he whispered, half to himself, “…you tried to kill Evie. You, sweet little Liesse, and her husband. Now that I think about it…it hasn’t actually been that long, has it?” What a terrible night that had been. He remembered it with such perfect, vivid clarity, he’d tried to grasp at his sister, to attack the Calais siblings, to push their dead away, anything, but found himself utterly useless in the end. But certainly it had been harder on Rynn. He’d actually lost his twin, and two other brothers, and his home. If anything was stuck in Alistair’s mind more clearly than the rest, it was the look in Rynn’s eyes when he’d realized what had happened, Antha pinning him on the ground outside of the maze, both of them with tears in their eyes, covered in soot, her hands smacking his cheeks in rapid succession---’You stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid---’
Rynn had automatically moved towards the house and Alistair stood by the car, bristling at the feel of death hanging heavy all around him. He was…a little light-headed, every hair on his body prickling uneasily. It wasn’t a conscious decision, he’d simply stayed put as Rynn had suggested, not venturing into the dangerous, uncomfortable void of death that was the ruined Llyr’s Court. Neither was his following action moments later, when he felt something shift in the house. One moment he was by the car, the next he’d been in the doorway, his fingers buried in Rynn’s sleeve and eyes narrowing at the darkness, untrusting. Rynn seemed so sure that the Calais ghosts wouldn’t do anything to him, and he was probably right, but Alistair was uneasy and his first instinct was to protect Rynn.
“We should look fast,” he said, handing a flashlight from Antha’s glovebox to Rynn and then pulling his phone out, turning on the flashlight from it, “Things tend to fall and crush people in ruins. And whichever of us doesn’t get crushed, Evie would kill for letting it happen. She’s touchy about things like that.” And touchy about these ruins in particular. Llyr’s Court held terrible memories for her, she wouldn’t react well to finding out they’d come here. In the middle of the night. Unprepared. Just the two teenage boys.
Antha was never to know of this night. She’d never let him out of his room again.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn stepped obediently to the side of the long, dusty runner that divided the hall, causing the floorboards beneath creaked ominously regardless of where he stood. His breath was coming rapidly now, and he could feel his heart-beat high in his chest. The moth fluttered on, leaving luminous trails in the wake of its fluttering wings. “It’s not the house that frightens me,” he said, in a queerly breathless voice. “It’s my brothers. They were never properly buried. The ground isn’t consecrated, here—the catacombs were what kept the wards in place, and our dead contained, and now they’re—“ He stopped, swaying slightly, and pressed his free hand against the faded wall-paper, arabesques climbing like thorns beneath his finger-tips. He could feel the the familiar jangle of the house’s protections, but only faintly, as if from a great distance away. “They’re still active,” he said, slowly. “But at half, perhaps even a quarter, of their usual strength. It explains why I could hear the ancestors, even from as far away as Mayfair Manor. The spells that muffled them have become undone, despite the blood that was spilled that night.” Like the unravelling of a sweater, all it took was one loose thread to begin the process—and the collapse of the catacombs was far more than a loose thread—it was as though a chunk of fabric had been torn out, in one swift wound.
Rynn’s hand trailed along the wall as they proceeded, single-file. “I expect they’ll be angry.” he said, softly, scanning the shadows ahead of him. “This was my fault, after all, and it’s my fault that they can’t rest, now.” There wasn’t a trace of resentment in his voice, merely acceptance of the facts. There was no use denying it, now. “Aedan told me it was stupid,” he said, pausing at one of the great, oaken doors with his hand falling to rest upon the latch. “Erin did, too, but I thought he just wanted to see me fail. I should have listened.” There was a kind of low, mournful breeze that sang through the hall at that, the sudden gust of air kicking up Rynn’s hair. “I know, I know,” he muttered, fiddling with the lock. Then, with an exasperated sigh. “It’s stuck. Probably the humidity. I’m going to try to force it—Airi, help me with this.”
When he turned back to look at his accomplice, though, his eyes widened, and he went white—well, whiter than usual for Rynn. Back the way they had come, behind Alistair, twin blue sparks glowed in the reflection of his eyes. They were watching.
He was not quite able to stop the hitch of his breath, but he managed to pass it off for a sigh reasonably well. Rynn would not have been a bad actor, if he had possessed any interest in the drama club. “Here,” he said, keeping one eye on the pale, glowing figures standing at some distance behind Alistair. “One the count of three, we’ll ram it together. One—two—”
They did not get quite that far. On the count of three, the door flew open, without any force needed.
In ordinary circumstances, Rynn might have feigned surprise, but her—far from rendering his jaw slack, it only tightened. Silver cobwebs fluttered in the newfound flow of air through the doorway; when Rynn passed underneath them, they left glittering strands of silver netted through his hair.
The library was in a shambles. Aedan would have wept; he’d spent hours, if not days, if not weeks putting the books into meticulous order. Now, they lay in heaps, strewn about the floor, mildewing upon the shelves. The vast windows at the opposite end of the library were a patchwork of glass and air, shattered panes laying in diamond-toothed shards upon the floor all before it. The floorboard groaned under his weight as he stepped carefully across the dark-spotted, intricately patterned rug. “The important stuff will be locked up,” he sighed, scanning the room until he spotted the familiar, hulking beast of a roll-top desk, lurking in the corner. “Aedan had such a tidy mind, after all. I just don’t know where, but this is as good a place to start as any. He liked working here, just like our father used to. Said he sometimes felt him watching, leaning over him like he was about to correct his notes.” Rynn’s laughter was faint, muffled by the inhospitable air of their environment. “His journals ought to be somewhere in here, and—if not—we can check his bedroom, next.” Crossing briskly to the desk, he rattled vainly at the wooden sheath which covered its contents, like the carapace of a musty beetle. “It’s locked,” he said, with a sigh. “That was my brother for you. He loved his secrets, didn't he?" Looking around, he pointed to an ornate brass candlestick on the mantle. "Think that's heavy enough?" Rynn was determined to break something tonight, it seemed. Anyways, he had always found the roll-top desk hideous.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It seemed that after all, Alistair had not escaped the cat-like traits that marked his siblings’ personalities. It was obvious enough now, as he made his careful, stealthy way to the stairs, alert and suspicious and bristling, fingers locking around Rynn’s as a cat could sink its claws into something when it sensed a threat it could not see. It was not alarm, exactly, more like caution. He could hear…footsteps, whispering, the scuffle and scrape and chittering of the intangible. He could see shadows and flickers and movement that had nothing to do with the faint glow of moonlight or any small creatures that might have taken residence since the house had gone abandoned.
It was fair enough for him to be on edge. It had taken nearly twenty years for Alistair to regain the flesh in which he was born, he refused to be snatched from it now.
But that was unimportant at the moment. It was a vague feeling in the back of his head, a quiet instinct. It was more important to stick close to Rynn. Besides any perceived danger, Alistair refused to leave him alone in this place. Rynn was tense and guilt-ridden enough without wandering the charred ruins of his old home, haunted by his dead siblings and the ancestors he seemed to think he’d failed. No, before anything else, Alistair wouldn’t leave him alone for a moment, even if he demanded it. Ruins or not, this was a house of death.
“Stick to the wall,” he murmured as Rynn began his careful trek up the stairs, tugging him protectively over to the side, “It’s more secure.” The last thing they needed was for the stairs to give under them.
“It’s alright,” he said, very softly, glancing at Rynn as his fingers gently locked with his, “Shadows and shades, that’s all. Don’t let them get to you.” God knows Rynn was probably open for any of their usual tricks. Shades were good at that, reaching into someone’s mind and seizing on the weaknesses they found there. But Alistair wouldn’t allow it, not now, not here.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn stepped obediently to the side of the long, dusty runner that divided the hall, causing the floorboards beneath creaked ominously regardless of where he stood. His breath was coming rapidly now, and he could feel his heart-beat high in his chest. The moth fluttered on, leaving luminous trails in the wake of its fluttering wings. “It’s not the house that frightens me,” he said, in a queerly breathless voice. “It’s my brothers. They were never properly buried. The ground isn’t consecrated, here—the catacombs were what kept the wards in place, and our dead contained, and now they’re—“ He stopped, swaying slightly, and pressed his free hand against the faded wall-paper, arabesques climbing like thorns beneath his finger-tips. He could feel the the familiar jangle of the house’s protections, but only faintly, as if from a great distance away. “They’re still active,” he said, slowly. “But at half, perhaps even a quarter, of their usual strength. It explains why I could hear the ancestors, even from as far away as Mayfair Manor. The spells that muffled them have become undone, despite the blood that was spilled that night.” Like the unravelling of a sweater, all it took was one loose thread to begin the process—and the collapse of the catacombs was far more than a loose thread—it was as though a chunk of fabric had been torn out, in one swift wound.
Rynn’s hand trailed along the wall as they proceeded, single-file. “I expect they’ll be angry.” he said, softly, scanning the shadows ahead of him. “This was my fault, after all, and it’s my fault that they can’t rest, now.” There wasn’t a trace of resentment in his voice, merely acceptance of the facts. There was no use denying it, now. “Aedan told me it was stupid,” he said, pausing at one of the great, oaken doors with his hand falling to rest upon the latch. “Erin did, too, but I thought he just wanted to see me fail. I should have listened.” There was a kind of low, mournful breeze that sang through the hall at that, the sudden gust of air kicking up Rynn’s hair. “I know, I know,” he muttered, fiddling with the lock. Then, with an exasperated sigh. “It’s stuck. Probably the humidity. I’m going to try to force it—Airi, help me with this.”
When he turned back to look at his accomplice, though, his eyes widened, and he went white—well, whiter than usual for Rynn. Back the way they had come, behind Alistair, twin blue sparks glowed in the reflection of his eyes. They were watching.
He was not quite able to stop the hitch of his breath, but he managed to pass it off for a sigh reasonably well. Rynn would not have been a bad actor, if he had possessed any interest in the drama club. “Here,” he said, keeping one eye on the pale, glowing figures standing at some distance behind Alistair. “One the count of three, we’ll ram it together. One—two—”
They did not get quite that far. On the count of three, the door flew open, without any force needed.
In ordinary circumstances, Rynn might have feigned surprise, but her—far from rendering his jaw slack, it only tightened. Silver cobwebs fluttered in the newfound flow of air through the doorway; when Rynn passed underneath them, they left glittering strands of silver netted through his hair.
When he looked back again, the apparitions were gone.
The library was in a shambles. Aedan would have wept; he’d spent hours, if not days, if not weeks putting the books into meticulous order. Now, they lay in heaps, strewn about the floor, mildewing upon the shelves. The vast windows at the opposite end of the library were a patchwork of glass and air, shattered panes laying in diamond-toothed shards upon the floor all before it. The floorboard groaned under his weight as he stepped carefully across the dark-spotted, intricately patterned rug. “The important stuff will be locked up,” he sighed, scanning the room until he spotted the familiar, hulking beast of a roll-top desk, lurking in the corner. “Aedan had such a tidy mind, after all. I just don’t know where, but this is as good a place to start as any. He liked working here, just like our father used to. Said he sometimes felt him watching, leaning over him like he was about to correct his notes.” Rynn’s laughter was faint, muffled by the inhospitable air of their environment. “His journals ought to be somewhere in here, and—if not—we can check his bedroom, next.” Crossing briskly to the desk, he rattled vainly at the wooden sheath which covered its contents, like the carapace of a musty beetle. “It’s locked,” he said, making a grimace at the sudden carpeting of dust upon his hands. “But I think I can break it.” Anyways, Rynn had always hated the desk. It was hideous.
And ornate brass candlestick, wax dribbling down its arms from the old, damp tapers, was on the long cherrywood table, where Aedan’s books—the last books, Rynn thought, that he must have ever read—rose in precarious towers, stacked with the precision of a house of cards. The little blue witch lights drifted from around Rynn’s head and settled on the end of the candles’s wet wicks, as Rynn lifted it up, and his eyes gleamed like distant, wicked stars with their reflections.
“This’ll do.”
The first blow resounded splendidly throughout the house, at the grand smashing of the many thin wooden planks which had protected the contents of the desk for so long. Rynn lifted the candlestick again—thought better of it—and set it aside, on a shelf, before beginning to sort through the splinters. It wasn’t long before he’d drawn blood on one of them, and with a faint ‘ow’, Rynn shook his hand out of the wood, with something grasped inside.
A necklace--no, a rosary. But where the cross ought to have hung, instead, there was a rusted key on a ribbon. The pattern was unfamiliar. Rynn rubbed his chin thoughtfully, lost in his speculations for a moment, before a sudden twinge made him remember the splinter in his finger. Popping his wound into his mouth, he turned around to face Alistair and muttered around the digit, "We should have brought gloves."
It took him a second to understand why Airi was wearing the expression that he was, but when he did, Rynn went red and dropped his hand. "Did...did you find anything on the shelves over there?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair had been braced against the door when it flew open, briefly (nearly) stumbling back and seizing Rynn by the back of his shirt, yanking him out of the way of possible falling debris. This kind of thing was probably why Antha would have disapproved…
While Rynn charged headfirst into the poor, wrecked room, Alistair hesitated in the doorway, bowing his head and murmuring to Aedan beneath his breath, “Pardon the intrusion.” Dead or alive, he knew the importance of respecting someone’s sanctuary. It wasn’t something you intruded upon lightly, no matter how important the cause.
While Rynn pondered the locked desk, Alistair perused the shelves, inwardly cringing at the state of the books. The ever-strengthening summer climate had not been kind to them. He could only hope that Rynn was correct and the tomes they needed were locked away, at least somewhat shielded from the heat and humidity. “Ah, it’s alright, I---” He flinched, going silent at the abrupt splintering of wood as Rynn bashed the desk open, continuing in an inconsequential murmur as he rooted around, “…I can pick locks.” His head fell to the side, a little sigh dropping from his lips as an amused smile flitted across them. “Nevermind…” Rynn was really too brash. But then, Airi liked that part of him.
Airi liked most things about Rynn, but he couldn’t say that. Rynn was likely to run away hissing like a cat.
“It was an impressive library,” he continued quietly, his fingers brushing the dusty spines of books, “But we should probably---”He stopped, dead still, his eyes narrowing at Rynn. If they hadn’t been in his crumbling ancestral home, surrounded by ghosts and fairly prominent danger, he might have thrown him up against the bookshelves and violated him ten different ways. But they were and that was just impolite, so Alistair turned hastily back towards the books, muttering, “I don’t see anything particularly useful. But from what little I know about Aedan---and if he’s anything like my brother---he probably has a hiding place. Malakai keeps all of his journals in a tree hollow in the garden.” He paused, tensing briefly. “Forget you heard that. Anyways, it’s pretty common, right? Witches with anything worth hiding find somewhere to hide it. Antha has hiding places all over both of her houses---it’s not even stuff worth hiding, it’s just a witch’s nature.” In particular, she had a hiding spot behind a wall in the parlor full of sentimental junk that only he and Malakai knew how to access, by way of a particular set of notes on the piano. She was really like a magpie sometimes, seizing on shiny things and squirreling them away in her little box of seemingly inconsequential nonsense. “And Julien, and Nikki, and Court, and Tori, and the Talamasca…even I hide things.” He was half tempted to start tugging on books to see if one of them opened anything. That was one of the first rules of hiding places, right? Trick books that opened secret compartments?
He resisted the urge, shuffling through the last shelf and coming up empty. “Nothing out in the open,” he sighed, stepping carefully over to Rynn, taking up his hand and casually inspecting his injured finger. Taking a scrap of cloth from his pocket---handkerchiefs were always useful, one way or another---he tore a strip off with his teeth, wrapping it around the pierced flesh. “What now? The less we go traipsing around, the better. I’m half afraid the floor is going to give out under us as it is.” And then glancing around himself, questioned musingly, “Do you think we could ask Aedan? Even if he is mad at you, he’d want a place to rest, right? A place to keep all of his books safe? Maybe he’d be willing to help, since it’s to his benefit.”
Alistair was no fool, of course. He could feel them being watched, followed, and he could take a good guess at who it was. And really, Rynn wasn’t as good of an actor as he thought he was. It was in the flash and narrowing of his eyes, the subtle tensing of his muscles. He couldn’t hide things from Airi.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn stared at the key, swinging from its noose of pearls. “I wonder,” he said, faintly. “I always thought he’d be annoyed by me asking.” As if struck by a sudden idea, his head turned sharply, scanning the room for—yes—that faint, familiar cerulean glow.
The moth that they had followed upstairs had somehow made its way into the room ahead of them, its light camouflaged by the illumination of Rynn’s chrysanthemums.
The house creaked beneath them, and for a moment, Rynn could hear a sighing through the timbers, yesssss.
The moth had perched upon two ornately carved handles of a glass-enclosed shelf, made to resemble two irises in bloom. Rynn found that somehow striking. Irises—a symbol of wisdom, courage, hope—and royalty. When Rynn’s hands closed around their stems, his fingers settling automatically into the bronze petals, he heard something lclick under his grasp.
The bookshelf shuddered, and parted, mechanisms sliding awkwardly apart with a snarl of reluctant, rust-worn gears. The shelves did not manage to recede all of the way into their hidden alcoves, though, and when the secret passage stuttered to a halt, there was barely enough room for even Rynn’s slim physique to sidle through. “Of course it’s broken,” Rynn said, unable to disguise the disgruntled tone in his voice. Everything in this place was falling apart. Peering through the narrow passage, Rynn failed to notice that the lunar moth had fluttered up from the handle to perch upon his shoulder now, like a phosphorescent parrot. At the end of the long, narrow corridor, a pale patch of air was dimly visible.
“I think I can just squeeze through,” he announced, jamming his shoulder through the crack in the door.
A wiser man might have hesitated, but Rynn was only a boy. And it felt like an adventure story— a thrilling tale that he might have read once, long ago, now only vague remembered.
The walls of the passage were rough stone, slabs layered shingle-like atop one another, and more than one jutting edge of a rock shelf caught Rynn’s shirt on his way across. Well, he could always blame Airi for the torn garments, Rynn thought—and then blushed hard, thankful that his embarrassment was invisible in the darkness.
The chrysanthemums bobbed ahead of him in the passage, and flooded the chamber with their eerie light before Rynn could step out of it.
His first impression was the scent—a magnificent haze of roses and wisteria, heady and intoxicating. Rynn found himself stumbing upon the steps down from the secret hallway, and turning back to check that Alistair had followed. He might not have feared for his own chances in the house, but he didn’t like the thought of leaving his brother-in-law alone on the other side.
And it was funny, wasn’t it, because Rynn had thought that he had known all of the rooms of Llyr’s Court so well, had been certain that there was no room for secret passages that he had not already explored. Where this room existed, they should have been stepping out into about twenty-five feet of air inside the entrance hall.
But this, this was a chamber that should not, could not, have existed within the design of the house. Long, pebbled shafts of blackened iron ran up walls that stood at least three times higher than the house itself, disappearing into soft, murky shadows at its tapered, arched ceiling.
The actual room itself was circular in shape, like a turret upon a castle in which the spiral staircase had never been constructed. The walls and floor were made of the same material; a black, shining sort of stuff, which Rynn thought might have been jet until he drew closer to the wall, and something whirled past in a jet of blue-tinged shadows. The walls were glass. The ceiling and floor were, as well.
“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Airi,” Rynn said, in that oddly toneless voice that he took on when he could not quite conjure the appropriate reaction. There was something in the air that seemed to sap him of all ability to feel shock.
The moth left his shoulder, then, and fluttered in its haphazard, looping way to one of the dark shapes within the chamber, which, upon being cast in the light, revealed itself to be a tall, narrow chair made of some kind of blackened wood, its silhouette made unrecognizable by the piles of parchment, colorful ink-pots, and old, leather-bound books which surrounded it. Rynn drew nearer, fascinated, his witch lights hovering around his head like a saint’s halo. The chair had been carved by a master craftsman. Long, root-like tendrils made up its arms and legs, weaving in and out in a magnificent braid. The seat was upholstered in silk damask, a pattern of thorns and roses winking at the young Calais heir in the dim light, and Rynn thought he could see the gleam of gems set into the carved, twining mantle of leaves which made up the back of the throne. “No wonder Aedan never told me about this,” he murmured.
He did not quite dare to settle upon the chair, but he knelt beside it, shifting through the pale-bound volumes stacked at its side. There were dates upon the spines of most, in roman numerals—and upon each, a brass lock with which to protect its contents.
One, splayed open upon the arm of the chair, made it clear where the room’s floral scent originated from. Upon each page, intricately drawn and painted watercolors took up the whole of the allotted space; upon the open page, roses and wisteria. When Rynn turned to the next, the scent in the room abruptly changed. “Airi, check it out,” he murmured. Lavender and lilac upon the next page, and then a sprig of vanilla and a branch of artfully rendered cherries. “My brother was keeping all the good books to himself, it looks like.”
Then, he noticed a small, tightly-knotted signature, in cursive, at the bottom of the page. His finger traced the name--Aedan Calais. "Or he was making them..."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair watched with no more astonishment than quietly curious eyes and the cocking of his head to the side. This was the sort of house to have secret passages and hidden rooms, he thought, there was no use in being surprised. But then, it hadn’t escaped his notice for the entirety of his life, so he supposed Rynn had the right to be awe-struck. “It’s not as bad as the tunnels in Sleet’s crypt---well, Nikki’s now,” he dismissed it, shedding his jacket (it was leather, that stuff didn’t come cheap) and slipping in after Rynn. Mercifully, Alistair was remarkably slender, even for his naturally slim Mayfair frame, and so had no difficulty following into the dim chamber, brushing old dust from his shoulders as his gaze took it all in. “Armand would have a field day with something like this,” he murmured, eyeing the ornate chair. It was all undeniably romantic and mystical, Armand’s bread and butter.
He was gingerly sifting through the stacks of books, looking for some indication as to their contents, when Rynn called him over. “Hm?” Coming up behind him, he leaned forward and dropped his chin on Rynn’s shoulder, peering at the book in his hands. “What did I tell you---witches and secrets.” He reached out, around Rynn, his fingers gently tracing the figures on the page without physically touching it. “We should take this home with us,” he said after a moment of consideration, nodding to himself, “Watercolors are delicate, it should be kept somewhere safe. At least until you have a safe place to bring it back to.” And then, glancing upwards to nothing in particular, added, “If Aedan doesn’t mind.” Ghosts were so particular about things like that, they always wanted their precious things in precisely the right place, come hell or high water or the collapse of what was probably a legit ton of glass.
Quietly drawing away, Alistair returned to the locked volumes, lifting one very gingerly in his hands and turning it around to inspect the binding for any indication that it was what they were searching for. “At any rate, we should look for what you need and go. It’s dangerous here, and it’s getting late. I can’t risk Julien catching us and getting grounded. My phone is too new, I won’t part with it. All of my music is on my phone, Rynn.” It was a new problem, as far as the Mayfair children were concerned. When the others were teenagers, precious few years ago that it had been, there was really nothing the adults could do to punish them. There was nothing they could take away, too many windows to keep them from sneaking out, and no way to cut them off from their own independent financial resources. But Alistair’s phone was a different issue, it was his weakness and Julien knew it. Once it got taken away, the content was difficult to replace, and it was small enough that Alistair could spend days looking for where Julien had hidden it.
Unconsciously, Alistair clutched his phone protectively to his chest as he inspected the lock on the book in his other hand. Julien would get it over his dead body. “Maybe we should just take them all. If they were important enough to put under lock and key, we should keep them somewhere safe. All it takes is a little humidity to completely ruin a book forever.”  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn had already begun to stack his arms high with books.
Then, he glanced around.
“Wait—“
The tunnel was too narrow. They didn’t have the chance to take a stack of Aedan’s journals, like Rynn had hoped. They’d have to transport the volumes one-by-one, clutched tight to their bodies.
The oceans—as Rynn had begun to think of them—around the chamber rumbled. There was something moving within the impenetrable fog outside of the glass phylactery.
Something hit the glass, from the other side, and the room shuddered.
The moth on his shoulder lit upon an unknown air current, spiraling up into the pointed crest of the ceiling. Then, all of a sudden, the insect flared—its faint blue glow became an inferno, a whorl of iridescent flame which spanned the whole of the hall like a cathedral— and revealed, at last, what was on the other side of the mirrored walls of the hidden chamber.
Faces.
A howling, endless gallery of faces, forms, bodies writhing around one another in boneless, ecstatic rhythms.
Rynn found himself, despite his better instincts, fascinated. He pressed a hand toward the glass—tendrils of frost spread around his fingers—
The room shuddered again, and a long, hair-thin fracture shot up beneath his palm.
Panic set in, then. Rynn withdrew, hurriedly, even as he recognized—dimly, through whorls of dark smoke—one of the faces on the other side. “Aedan,” he whispered.
A maddening suspicion appeared unbidden in his thoughts.
If Antha had done it for Liesse, she could do it for his brothers. She could bring them back. All he had to do was bring her here—or someone as good as—
And his gaze, fluttering around the room, splinters of blue light fragmenting around them, landed suddenly upon Alistair.
So that was what they had wanted, all along.
Rynn felt himself seized with fear. The walls around them trembled. He tucked Aedan’s book into the crook of his arm, a second and third journal forcefully wedged against his ribs—“Grab what you think you can hold,” he warned his companion—and, with his free hand in the small of his back, pushed Airi towards the passage back to the library—back to the real world, the waking world, an escape from this horrible submarine into purgatory.
There was a terrible rumbling behind them, but Rynn did not dare to glance back—like the wife in the story of Sodom, already knowing what he would see. And he could not bear to face Aedan, not like this, like a thief in the night. The glass rattled, walls of the tall, narrow room spider-webbing into cracks beneath sudden, crushing weight—“Go!” he hissed, shoving Aedan towards the narrow crevice between worlds.
It was his fault, of course, as always. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He knew that the ghosts wouldn’t hurt him in his own house, but he had never considered the possibility that his house might hold passages to other worlds, where the spirits were not constrained by their graves. Behind them, the pounding of their fists synchronized with Rynn’s panicked heartbeat.
The walls shuddered around them, their cavernous grasp rending Rynn’s sleeves to shreds and ripping at his vest. But he kept his arms locked tight around the book of Aedan’s sketches, even as the passage inched skin-tight around the two of them
When the boys finally stumbled through, to the other side, Rynn was gasping for air, but the book was untouched. The leather-bound volume had nary a scratch on it.
Behind them, a blue wisp of ectoplasm whiffed from between the shelves, as they closed up with a rasp of hidden machinery. Rynn’s breath came in ragged gasps as the glass case swung slowly shut, without even a finger upon the carved handles with which to induce the motion.
“I…I think we’d better go.” he said, carefully, while staring at the darkened cabinet. His witch-lights had been lost in the tunnel somewhere; raising his hand, he summoned them once more, twice as many as previously. They spread out around the two boys in a ring, like a perimeter of guards against the darkness. "We can check Aedan's rooms another ti--another day."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It was difficult to rob Alistair of his composure. This was proven yet again when the fog began to shift outside, something tapping on the glass, and in response he only glanced towards the sound before turning back towards the books. While Rynn was preoccupied being mesmerized and terrified of the faces on the other side of the glass, Alistair quickly pulled the (purely decorative) scarf from around his neck, pulling briefly on the fabric to determine how much weight it might be able to support and then winding it around seven books, tying it up securely just in time for Rynn to shove him back towards the tunnel. The books skittered behind him, straining against their leash as he slid back into the library, hastily grabbing the stack back up and inspecting them for damage. A few minor scuffs to the bottom book, that was all, and Alistair gave a little sigh of relief as he clutched them to himself.
Glancing up at Rynn as the door shut behind them, he tipped the books so that he could count them, flashing that disarmingly cheery smile. “I did good, right?” he purred, and then snickering added, “I want a reward later.”
It was almost possible, as he stood quietly brushing himself off, to pretend that every hair on his body was not standing on end, his muscles turned tense as stone. “You’re probably right,” he consented quietly, reclaiming his jacket and threading the scarf back under his collar, “Come on…let’s go home.” He said it almost possessively, jealously---asserting the word as if to remind Rynn that there was another place waiting for him.
He moved a little more quickly out of the house than they had gone in, climbing eagerly back into Antha’s car and hastily starting it up, relieved by the familiar fluorescent glow of the figures on the dashboard. While Rynn climbed in he situated the books in the backseat, spreading them out where they wouldn’t fall over. Something was bothering him. “You know---” His hand paused on the gear stick, gaze focused distantly on the speedometer. “I don’t think you realize how bad Evie felt about what she did…about what happened to your brothers. The entire time you’ve been blaming yourself for their deaths, she’s been blaming herself for it, trying to fix it. But necromancy…it’s the single most complicated magic in the entire history of witchcraft. It’s one thing to bring a departed soul into the land of the living, but attaching it securely to a body, actually making it alive again, there’s no real way to do that. There’s only loopholes. Evie could bring me and Liesse back because we’re connected to her and you as twins, we never completely left the world of the living. Your brothers don’t have that kind of link. She kept their blood, but all she could make is zombies. It’s not the same. So…” He hesitated, glancing sidelong at Rynn. “Don’t mention it to Antha, because if you bring it up, it’ll just keep gnawing at her, and there’s nothing she or anyone else can do without a proper link.”
And then, as if it was nothing, he gave a cheery little dismissive smile, shifting the car into drive. “You have a tendency to blurt these wild thoughts of yours out,” he excused himself lightly, turning the car around and pulling out of the driveway. He couldn’t even begin to express how glad he was to be leaving.