her head in her hands. Kyros sat beside her—not too close, thankfully, or she might have punched him—and stayed quiet as she took deep breaths through her nose.
“It’s a lot,” she said once she felt calmer.
Kyros nodded. “I’m sure it is.”
“Would you mind if I went up there—” She pointed up the stairs toward the Tiffany dome. She could see only a sliver of it from where she sat, glinting green, but it promised familiarity and—if Kyros would allow it—solitude. “By myself? I just need a few minutes.”
Kyros narrowed an eye at her.
“I promise I won’t go anywhere else,” she said.
“All right,” he said. “But in a few minutes, I’ll come up to check on you.”
Sloane stood, feeling steadier now. She climbed the steps, then paused on one of the landings to look up at the Bacon quote—The real use of all knowledge is this: that we should dedicate that reason which was given us by God for the use and advantage of man—set in tiny tiles into the mosaic that covered each wall, framed on every side by green and yellow and blue patterns, spirals and diamonds and draped ribbons.
When she turned the corner, she saw the Tiffany dome aglow in the sunlight. The walls arching up to meet it were covered in small tiles formed into organic shapes, vines twisting and coiling together, bright green. The dome itself was simpler, divided into rectangular sections that shrank as they drew closer to the middle. Within each rectangle, the glass was arranged in small blue-and-green semicircles, like the scales of a fish, and in the center, the symbols of each astrological sign. A chandelier hung over the space, mirroring the shape and pattern of the dome itself.
Across from her, three canvases were set up in front of the back wall. The two on either side were featureless from a distance, like Rothkos, massive and empty. The one in the center showed hints of light, like something cracking open to reveal something luminous inside it. She drew closer to see the label fixed to the wall near the paintings and found herself standing directly beneath the chandelier.
And then—something caught her by the ankle, its fingers cold and strict, and jerked her foot up toward the ceiling. Sloane gasped as her body flipped upside down, thinking of the teenager who had floated into the clouds in the video HenderCho had showed them, and the walls began to turn around her—or she was turning, guided by the hand around her ankle, the hand that didn’t seem to be there at all. Her clothes floated away from her body but didn’t fall down all the way. Her hair, too, was adrift around her, like she was in a pool of water instead of dangling in midair, staring at the floor as if it were a ceiling.
Quiet, she found herself thinking, her default thought when panic set in. Because quiet had helped her to escape the Dark One with Albie; quiet had helped her escape death dozens of times. She clenched her jaw and went still, letting herself turn, dangling, like a Christmas ornament just placed on a branch. She thought if she could just jerk her leg free . . . but then she might fall headfirst onto a hard floor that had to be more than six feet below. She stared at her captive ankle as if the invisible force holding her might speak up and tell her what to do.
“Hello,” a voice beneath her said.
She flinched and looked up. Or rather down.
She was still turning, but the man’s face was right beneath hers, separated by a few feet—she was higher than six feet above the ground, then, because he appeared to be tall—so he was like the center of a pinwheel.
“Do you need help?” he said. His voice was low but oddly musical for such a serious face. He was pale, with a nose that could politely be described as “pronounced” and dark eyes that had not shifted from hers from the moment she first looked at him. The focus was unnerving.
“What,” she said, “the fuck. Is this.”
He smiled a little. “An Unrealist prank, I think,” he said. “Here, take my hand, and I’ll get you out of the trap.”
The last thing Sloane wanted to do was hold hands with a strange man in a parallel dimension, but she didn’t see that she had any other choice. She reached up—down—and they clasped hands firmly. He raised his other hand, which was encased