Page 32 of Castle of the Cursed
“It’s happening again,” I say, and then I open the door and head down the crimson corridor.
Sebastián is already at my side.
He moves like a shadow, not human or even creature-like, but something else altogether. Once more, the flickering lights lead down the right wing to the cathedral.
“Again?” he asks, not hiding his annoyance.
“I’m just following the lights. I feel like they’re leading me to the purple room.”
“What makes you think that?”
“What makes you think the subway was a spell?”
He frowns at me. “What else could have caused an interdimensional disturbance?”
“Interdimensional what?”
“Whatever caused those deaths also displaced me from my home realm. Only a powerful bruja could have pulled that off.”
“What realm are you from?”
This time he doesn’t answer. I guess my mind hasn’t gotten around to writing his backstory yet.
Still, I need to shatter this hallucination somehow, and undermining its logic seems like the best way. “You said bruja,” I point out. “Why do you say that word in Spanish?”
He considers my question before answering. “I read all the books in this castle to learn the languages of your world. Most were in Spanish, so it must be the language I best absorbed.”
“You know where the library is?” I ask, brimming with curiosity.
He cocks his head, sizing me up. “You ask a lot of questions. It is now your turn to answer mine—tell me more about these lights.”
“There’s nothing to tell. They just flicker off and on at a distractingly quick rate.”
“Are they flickering now?”
“No,” I say, and as I look around the nondescript room that leads to the cathedral, it strikes me that the lights inside that cavernous space never actually flickered.
Does that mean this is the right destination?
There’s no furniture or windows here. This vacant room looks just like any other… except for the red rug. I haven’t seen any other carpeting at the castle.
I drop down to touch the rough fabric. When I pull back on a corner, I see only the stone floor below.
Cottoning on, Sebastián yanks up half the rug with one tug. At the center of the floor is a square outline with a metal ring embedded.
It looks like a trapdoor.
Sebastián lifts the ring and pulls open the hatch. Then he melts into shadow. I follow him down the stone steps at my slower pace.
By the time I reach the bottom, we’re in a cold basement with walls crafted of stacked gray stones. There’s only one light bracketed high up, barely illuminating anything.
I feel like I’m in a trance, following some inner map from my childhood. I remember exactly where the hidden doorway is, the one I thought only I knew about. I run my fingers across the apple-shaped stone that I once believed opened just for me.
A sharpness stabs my finger.
I didn’t spy the tiny thornlike spikes because they blend into the rock.
As I smear my blood across the wall, something flashes in Sebastián’s gaze. He looks unwell at the sight.
