Crunch.

I froze only a step into the hallway and crouched low reflexively, expecting something big and insanely dangerous to come flying at my face. Nothing was there. At least, nothing I could see. I extended my senses, feeling my way cautiously along the walls, but couldn't sense anything overt. The sense of creeping rot pervaded the entire ward, but I couldn't get a lock on the source. Maybe there was none. The demons could have had their fun and skedaddled, off to find someone new to torment.

Or maybe they were lurking around a corner, or spider-walking across the paneled ceiling, ready to pounce on us the moment our backs were turned. Dealer's choice really. The veil I'd woven could hide us from sight, but it didn't mean they couldn't smell us. Cold sweat beaded on my brow, and I could taste my pulse at the back of my throat. Mercy's terror was an added weight to my own, making me jump at every whisper of sound.

"What was that?" Mercy whispered.

"I don't know."

It didn't sound like glass, which would have been my first theory. One of the fluorescent lights in the hall had burned incandescent when we stepped into the hall before going out with a pop. For all I knew, shards could have fallen to earth in a sharp, glittering rain. But the sound was too soft for that. More cardboard than glass.

I pulled my pendant of Saint Jude from under my shirt. Harry said not all demons were repelled by faith, but enough of them were that it had seemed stupid to go without one. I had my rosary tucked away in my back pocket, too. Mercy had gone all out, layering crucifixes around her neck, and digging a cross-laden charm bracelet from the bottom of her jewelry drawer. I willed light into the pendant. It felt a little blasphemous, but I figured God would forgive me if it saved my life.

The light caught the pale scraps of notebook paper on the floor. The pages were slashed to ribbons, strewn across the floor like underwhelming confetti. The handwriting was small and dotted with little buttons over the 'I's. I crouched, picking up the nearest and read it aloud.

"You know I love you," said the other mother flatly.

"You have a very funny way of showing it," said Coraline.

My fingers spasmed around the page and it fluttered to the floor, landing with a hushed sound on the torn notebook cover. The cartoon rabbit's head had been torn loose from the rest of the image, nowhere to be found. Nope. That didn't seem ominous at all.

"What is that from?" Mercy asked.

"Coraline," I said, straining to remember the context. "She's playing a game with the Other Mother. She realizes that even if she wins, the Other Mother isn't going to let her go. Other Mother likes to play games and has never lost. Not until Coraline. She claims to love her, but she really just wants to consume. She can't love. Not really."

The passage was significant. I felt that with bone-deep certainty. I couldn't have said exactly why, but I knew. In my experience, there was no such thing as coincidence. The white rabbit had shown up twice now. It meant something. But what?

"The girl in the library," Mercy said. Her tone was terse. Almost angry. I didn't understand why. None of this made any sense. "The one talking to Mr. Richards. You think she's the second demon?"

"Either that, or she's dead. How likely is it that she'd have made it to this floor unseen? She's one of them. And the only thing they have in common is the library. Do you think Mr. Richards...?"

Mercy let out a shaky breath. "Only one way to find out."

I clutched the pendant tight, muffling the low blue-white light. The hall was dark, and the veil gave everything a muffled, grayscale tone. It felt dangerous to hide the light completely, but it was equally as stupid to broadcast our location to whatever might be lurking in the dark. The spell might work to hide us from human eyes, but there was no telling what the demons could perceive.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a door banged open further down the hall. Mercy let out a little yip of surprise before she could stifle the sound. It was lost in Dad's call of, "Harry! I need you to see this!"

A tall, lean shape hurtled down the adjacent hall, briefly illuminated by the strobing lights. Harry ran, head down, duster flapping in his wake as he ran toward the sound of Dad's voice. The sigils on his staff glowed, the force of his will pounding in my head as he passed. He was keyed up, ready, adrenaline spiking through his veins.

"I think they might have found it," I whispered. "We should just-"

But that was as far as I got. My stomach heaved, and I tasted vomit before my mind could fully interpret the feeling of creeping wrongness in the hall. I dropped the veil and swept out a hand, knocking Mercy into the wall just as a shape came scuttling out of the dark. The pendant spilled out of my hand, shining like a miniature star in the gloom.

The shape on the floor cast long shadows onto the wall behind her. Mercy let out a breathless shriek. I would have done the same if I'd been willing to suck in a breath. The stench wasn't just psychic now. A reeking mélange filled my nose. The fetid smell of rotting meat mingled with the stringent scent of piss and old blood. Pustules had broken out on one side of the girl's face, while the other had caved in giving her a lopsided look. Her hair had been grass-green and tugged into pigtails the last time I'd seen her. Now it hung around her face, limp and wilting like cooked spinach. There were bloody holes where her piercings should have been. Worst of all, the thing had put one of her pretty hazel eyes out, and the remaining one was so bloodshot the whites of the sclera were all but gone. She was moving across the tiled floor toward us, using her jutting elbow bones to propel herself forward.

"Oh God!" Mercy whispered. "It's Rowan!"

Rowan let out a manic laugh. "Rowan doesn't exist, fool."

I held the pendant out toward her. The light was shaking. Or maybe that was just my hands. The demon ducked its head but didn't retreat as I'd hoped.

"Get out of her," I said, trying to sound commanding. I only succeeded in sounding like I wasn't going to piss myself that very second. Go me.

Rowan cackled. "The devil isn't in her, she's in you. Open your eyes, fool. Turn, turn, turn!"

"Get out now or we'll find someone to cast you out!"

Rowan's lips pulled away from her teeth, blood trickling from a cut on her lip down her chin and then into the scooped neck of her hospital gown. It fluttered around her, though there was no wind to lift it. Her hair started to gently sway as well, bunching into clumps independent from the rest. Her tongue flicked out, too long to belong to a human being, and licked the crimson trail away.

"Follow the white rabbit into a hellhole," she singsonged. "Dance with the devil and off with your head!"

Mercy's foot swung out of nowhere, the tip of her Mary Jane shoe crashing into Not-Rowan's cheek with a sickening crunch. Several of the pustules burst on impact, spattering the hall with blood and reeking yellow pus. She followed it up with another and another until Rowan's jaw hung loose, and still, she laughed mumbling "white rabbit" thickly through gobbets of blood.

"Bitch," Mercy snarled, eyes alight with a hatred that bordered on madness. "Stay down and shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up or so help me I will make you shut up!"

Mercy kicked Rowan until her face caved in and the jaw could move no longer. Sound still bubbled out of the mass of blood, but the words weren't intelligible. She rounded on me when I tugged her back, eyes wild. For a second I thought she'd slam her bloodstained shoes into my shins on sheer reflex. Reason trickled back into her eyes after a moment, though the line of tension didn't drain away. She was shaking, breath coming in ragged gasps.

Our heads snapped up in unison as another giggle bounced around the hall. The middle-schooler from the library was standing at the end of the hall, performing a shaky pirouette that made her gown fly up around her skinny thighs. The move was only made more disjointed by the flickering quality of the light. She tried to go up en pointe but clearly wasn't used to it. One of her toes crunched. If she felt it, it didn't show in her voice or in the shiny black buttons she had in place of her eyes. She let out another girlish laugh and blew us a kiss.

"Want to play a game?" she asked in a sibilant whisper that nonetheless carried.

"What kind of game?" I asked.

"A finding-things game," she said in a conspiratorial whisper. She pointed over my shoulder. "She doesn't get to play. It's just you and me."

"Let me guess. You want to sew buttons over my eyes if I lose?"

The answering laugh hit my ears like a sour note on a violin. I wanted to claw them off so I didn't have to hear it a second longer.

"Of course not. She already has your eyes. I want them back."

"What am I supposed to find exactly?"

"The truth," she said. Blood trickled from beneath one button when she tried to wink. She spun again, more toes crunching as she went. Then she was gone, just a sourceless voice in the near-dark. "Now you see me, now you don't..."

Fuck! She'd disappeared under a veil of some kind and I couldn't feel her past the reek of the other demon. It thrashed weakly, unable to push itself into an upright position after Mercy's thrashing. How the hell was I going to find it? Would the demon think calling the cops in for help was cheating? Would she kill one of them to punish me for it? But how the hell was I supposed to beat it if I couldn't pin it down with my senses or magic?

The sight. A wizard's sight would show things for exactly what they really were, cutting through any veil or illusion as if they weren't there. The only problem? Whatever you saw stuck with you, never changing, never fading for the rest of your natural life. I'd see it in horrific detail a hundred years from now. But what choice did I have?

The hallway simply...dissolved. Gone was the flickering light, stairwell behind us, the distant shouts and gunfire coming from the east ward. There was just cracked earth and a starry sky above. A bloodied woman knelt where the demon girl had stood only moments before. Her face was mottled with bruises, her mouth sewn shut, and her arms had been stretched painfully over her head with a length of barbed wire. Her blonde hair was spattered with dark ichor. She strained toward me, trying to speak. Then her gaze flicked fearfully over my shoulder.

I turned, too slow, to face the figure looming over me. It wasn't the demonic aspect I'd feared and expected it was...beautiful. Hauntingly so. Galaxies whirled in her eyes, drawing me closer with all the inviting warmth of a black hole. Deep grooves had been dug into almost every inch of bare skin as if she'd been etched into being by pain and pure will. Searing strands of hair fanned around her face like a saint's aureole. I couldn't even summon a scream when she reached for me, one dainty hand palming my face. The heat was so intense I was sure my eyes would bubble out of their sockets and run in scalding rivulets down my face.

My sight snapped shut and black spots danced before my eyes. I listed sideways, tumbling toward the ground in slow motion.

In the distance, Mercy screamed.