An Excerpt:
. . . white stick fingers clicked against the heavy wooden bar Kevin had set across the shutters. A staticky voice spoke inside the wind: “If you won’t come to us, then we’ll visit you. We’ll drink ash wine together.”
Kevin rapped the hearth wall with his fist, scattering velvety soot from the bricks. A section of the wall swung away in front of me.
“You wanted to go home,” he said. “Go! If the Bone Men get you, that’s the end. You have to be able to move back and forth between the worlds, because I can’t any more.”
I gaped at him. Back and forth? I was supposed to come back here? In the other room, the door shuddered under a thunderous impact and another piece of planking clattered to the floor.
“It won’t be like this next time,” Kevin shouted. The rushing noise and static filled the air now. He pushed me forward. “Now go, go on!”
“Where?” I said, pulling back from the inky opening in the hearth wall. It looked like the mouth of a bottomless pit.
“Follow the passage,” he said in my ear, “it will take you home. But you’ll come back, Amy -- the prophecy speaks of you. You’ve a part to play here; you’re needed. Swear you’ll come back!”
A racket of hammering broke out on the roof. “God,” I said, “are you crazy?”
He glared. “I gave you your brooch back, didn’t I?”
“Who asked you to steal it in the first place?” I yelled.
The whole building began to rattle like a gigantic snare drum played by a maniac.
“Damn it, GO!” Kevin shoved me into the passage and the brick wall crashed shut behind me.
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