Page 64 of The Girl Out of Time
“Fine, then …” She whipped her head between the two options. The other man must’ve been Lady Scarlet’s lover, the one bound to die tonight. If they went after him, could they save him?
“You said you needed her,” Theo said.
He was right. Lady Scarlet was her priority. With a gulp, she said, “Left,” and they ran up the stairs to a new hallway. Moonlight streamed through the windows alongside it. At the very end, Emmeline caught a flash of a red skirt, disappearing through a doorway.
“Here.” She pushed in the door, and they entered a dark room. A master bedroom, perhaps, with additional space for a sofa, a table, and some cabinets by the far wall, all in that rich mahogany Emmeline was used to from the mansion.
In terms of Lady Scarlet, though, the room was empty.
Theo stepped onto the balcony, revealed by a fluttering curtain, and leaned over the railing. “Long way down.”
“She couldn’t have jumped. She wouldn’t.” As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Emmeline walked around the room, checking the bed, under it, the cabinets … no Lady Scarlet.
It would’ve been rather undignified, really, to find her hiding like this.
“She must’ve left through a passage to another time,” Emmeline said.Damn it!And they’d been so close.
“Wouldn’t it have opened, then? If it’s still here?”
“Maybe, because she made it, it only opens to her. Like mine did to me.” She plopped down on the bed, grunting in disappointment. Lady Scarlet could be anywhere by now. Anywhen.
“What about the pendant?” Theo’s voice brought her to attention. “You said in the book, she left it in the castle. Couldn’t it have been this room since she ran to it?”
Emmeline jumped to her feet. “Yes!” A consolation prize—but a prize, nonetheless. She nodded at Theo, then began systematically examining the room.
“Emmeline.” Theo, checking a bedside table, gestured her over. He was holding a small jewelry box.
She gasped. “You found it!”
“Not quite.” He unfolded a piece of paper.To my two lovely shadows, it said, in an elaborate cursive font at the top; beneath it were several lines, resembling a poem.
Theo’s eyes met hers. “She left this for us.”
“She knew. She … she tricked us.” Emmeline yanked the paper in frustration. “But the pendant still has to be somewhere. Maybe even she’s still around, laughing at us from behind a corner.” She marched to the door—wait, she didn’t remember them closing it—and pulled on the doorknob.
The door didn’t budge.
“Theo!”
He was at her side in a second, rattling the door, shaking it as hard as he could, but, befitting their surroundings, the door was that of a fortress.
Then, smoke began to roll under it.
Emmeline looked at Theo. “She locked us in,” she whispered.
“She, or someone else.” While he patted his way around the door frame, Emmeline kneeled down, level with the lock. Hands shaking, she pulled a few pins out of hair, bent two, and pushed them inside the lock, but something blocked her way.
“I can’t pick it.” She stood back up.
“And I can’t open it.”
More smoke billowed through. Coughing, Theo held her by the shoulders and guided her away from the door, toward their only source of fresh air—the balcony. A crackling came from behind the door, and heat, and a red glow. Their fresh air would soon do very little if the castle burned from under them.
With her throat closing up—partially from panic, partially from smoke—Emmeline glanced around the room, looking for any last resort, any sort of escape, but her eyes burned, and she couldn’t focus.
“Emmeline.” Theo held her chin, raising her eyes to his. “You must make a passage. It’s the only way out.”
The last time it took her weeks to make one. They didn’t have weeks. Maybe not even minutes. “O-okay.” She squinted through the smoke, focusing on a would-be time portal.Please, open. Please. Seconds slipped by; a minute. She turned around in a circle.At any moment, if you could—
