“It’ll be all right,” I told her, and tried to sound more optimistic than I felt.
I guess it worked, because Rhea nodded, and we prowled down a few more steps. Or, at least, I did. Rhea walked like a normal person, if a worried one.
She was going to mangle her lip if she kept that up, I thought.
I, on the other hand, was concentrating on battening down my senses. All of them, as I should have done the first time I came here. Only no one had told me this place needed a metaphysical hazmat suit!
“Put out the lantern,” I whispered, as we reached the bottom, and Rhea obligingly did so. We stood there in the darkness for a moment, waiting for our eyes to adjust. When I was finally able to see her worried features again, I risked a peek around the corner.
The room was dark and quiet. Well, mostly. There were some ominous flickers here and there, but nothing alarming. The strobe effect was nearly gone, with just a few, weak bubbles of illumination playing over the walls that I had to squint to make out. As if the lava lamp had run low on batteries.
“I don’t think they use batteries,” Rhea whispered.
I glanced back at her. “What?”
“Lava lamps. I had one as a girl, that I picked up in Tottenham Court Road. A pink one.”
I stared at her.
“It plugged into the wall,” she added helpfully.
I stared some more. “Did you . . . did you just read my mind?”
“What?”
“Lava lamps! How did you know I was thinking about them?”
“B-because you said?”
“I did not!”
“I—you—just a moment ago—"
Her eyes were huge, and I realized that I’d grabbed her shoulders. I pried my fingers loose and leaned back against the wall, swallowing. “Sorry.”
“You . . . you did speak out loud, Lady, I promise—”
“Yeah, I do that sometimes without realizing it. Bad habit,” I told her, breathlessly. “I’m just a little nervous.”
“Understandable.”
I was suddenly really grateful that Rhea was here and not Gertie. Who would have smacked me upside the head and told me to get on with it already. And she’d have been right.
I peered around the corner again.
Still dark; still quiet. There were a few signs of movement that I hadn’t noticed before, maybe because my eyes were now completely dilated. Odd squares of light, like single pages out of a book or unusually bendy T.V. screens, glowed weakly here or there. But I couldn’t make anything out on the surfaces, and unlike last time, they seemed to be having trouble sticking to things. They fluttered around, brushing up against columns or peeling off walls, only to waft gently to the floor like fallen leaves.
Harmless.
I took a deep breath.
“Okay. Let’s try this again,” I said, smiling reassuringly at Rhea, and stepped off the last stair.
And a dozen standing candelabras suddenly flared to life.
They’d been littered around the walls behind the pillars, but in the darkness, I hadn’t seen them. I almost didn’t see them now because of the glare, and because the room was suddenly filled with those strange, glowing images, whirling into the air lik
e paper in a windstorm. Only they weren’t flying randomly. They were banking around, they were flowing together, they were coming straight at—