Chapter 28 · Don't Let Go

The crack in the floor was closing around Micah's wrist.

I dropped to my knees and grabbed him with both hands.

"Nora!" Elias shouted behind me. "Don't pull him straight up. It's got him around the ribs."

"Then tell it to let go."

Micah's fingers were slick in mine. Not sweat. Blood. Thin red lines ran from under his nails where he'd clawed at the stone hard enough to tear them open.

His eyes found mine for half a second.

"Nora," he gasped. "Don't come in."

Then something yanked him down.

His fingers slid through mine.

I caught one hand again. His ring finger. My thumb locked over his knuckle so hard I felt bone.

The Gate screamed.

Not a sound exactly. More like every dead person I'd ever heard talking at once, all of them packed into my skull and yelling from different rooms.

Open.

Come home.

She knows you.

I squeezed my eyes shut. "Shut up."

The dead got louder.

The cracked floor under Micah's body glowed that ugly blue-white color again. The same light that had burned through the old lockbox in the Kline basement.