Lara lurched to her feet, forgetting the words to the hymn herself, but Dickon continued to sing, strong and certain. A second voice joined in over the rupture of gunshots: Washington, singing harmony to Dickon’s melody, their voices entwining like they’d practiced in choir a hundred times.

Buoyed by the song, by the tones that rang through it—not just what they sang, but the passion and conviction beneath it—Lara walked forward, eyes on the rip in the air. The bleached-out nightwings shrieked and wheeled to escape her, as if her presence was anathema to them. Some drove back through the black tear, but more simply scattered, tearing away from the hole that dragged them back. Those who escaped it snapped into the sleeker shape she’d seen in the Barrow-lands and winged forward, skreeing triumph. Where they broke free, the breach bled thick black ichor that spat and sizzled when it hit the concrete floor.

Power leaped in Lara as she stared at the rip, chimes ringing with such violence there could be no music to it. It grew worse as she lifted a hand, bringing it nearer still to the rip.

The raging bells told her the doorway wasn’t true in the way an arrow might not be true: it was warped, a thing not meant to be. That was what the worldwalking spell did, created a mistake between two disparate lands that allowed them, briefly, to touch. It could be set right, the magic undone, closed off again, by one who understood the inherent untruth of its making.

Lara put her hand over the tear in the world, drew breath, and sang it closed.

Power rushed out of her, clashing bells turning by slow degrees to chords, then to single notes, and finally to a thin sweet sound of purity as the gash shriveled and shrank to nothing beneath her palm. Lara sagged against a concrete pillar, dizzy with exhaustion as she tried to focus on the fight.

Dickon’s song stopped, his jaw fallen open as he knelt where Lara had left him. Kelly was crouched a few feet away, knees drawn up so she could just barely see over them. She’d never begun screaming again, though her eyes looked like she still might decide to.

Dafydd and Washington stood between Lara and her friends, each fighting in their own way. The attacking nightwings paled as Lara watched, turning gray with the sudden break in the link to the Barrow-lands. Dafydd roared triumph, lightning cracking from his hands to destroy dozens of the creatures at once. The survivors screeched, making a flurry around Dafydd and falling back again as fresh electricity snapped around him.

Under the sound of wings, of screams, of lightning leashed, a familiar click rang loud in Lara’s ears. Familiar, but only from film; a quiet sound, something she shouldn’t have been able to hear in the noise. The sound of a gun chamber coming up empty, no bullet to fire.

Lara screamed, much too late. The nightwings wheeled away from Dafydd and descended on Washington as if they sensed his vulnerability. Dafydd bellowed and spread his hands, but this time no lightning came, nothing to tear black beasts away from the detective’s fighting form. Claws dug into his flesh, the nightwings struggling to steal him as they fled.

His weight proved too much: almost as one, they dropped him, one straggler with tangled claws crashing to the concrete with him as he fell. Kelly screamed this time; Lara’s hands were fisted against her mouth, cutting off any sound.

She could not, from the small distance, see if the detective still breathed. Gashes and punctures tore his body, made a red bleeding mess of his clothes, and his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, mouth pulled in a rictus of pain.

The nightwings grew increasingly pale as they spun together, their amorphous mass darting from one exhausted form to another. Kelly shrieked and slashed at their cloud as they came toward her, but Dafydd threw lightning and they retreated with a howl. A funnel formed, rushing the sole open path in the garage.

Rich Cooper stood in the gates, duty weapon still lifted but emptied of rounds, and had no chance at all as the nightwings slammed into his chest, and disappeared.

The silence left in the wake of their screams was astonishing. Cooper broke it with a faint sick sound, fingers plastered against his chest as though he could find, or draw out, what had entered him. Then he snarled; a feral expression that showed too-long teeth and nightwing-dark eyes before he flung his gun away and ran.

Lara managed one step after him, then caught herself on the pillar again, utterly drained of energy. The door she’d torn to return home hadn’t exhausted her as much as closing this one had. But then, the Barrow-lands were meant for working magic in. Earth was not, and she paid the price for that.

They all paid the price for that. Dafydd took a step forward, staring down at Washington and drawing all their gazes. Lara, abruptly, saw what Dickon and Kelly must see: a slim form, alien with arrogance. The angular lines of his face, the inhuman slant to his eyes and the upsweep of exposed ears, were all pronounced as he looked down an aquiline nose at the detective as if he was an inexplicable thing, lying there bleeding as he did.

“I have no talent for healing others,” he said. It sounded absurd in the aftermath of the fight, Lara thought; absurd in the face of his elfin form. Anything that looked like that should command magic as easily as breathing; he should be able to heal a wounded man. And he knelt, as though he’d try.

“You can’t.” Lara barely knew her own strained voice. “I’m so sorry, but you can’t. I did it, Dafydd. I broke the world.”

“Broke?” Dafydd looked up, expression drained by incomprehension.

Lara put her hand against the pillar for support. “The worldwalking spell, it’s bad for the Barrow-lands. I could feel it, and when I closed it … ‘changes that will break the world,’” she reminded him. “I think I closed it for good. You saw what happened to the nightwings, how they went gray when the door closed. They were cut off from the magic, and so are you. And you said they’re creations,” she whispered. “They don’t have magic, energy, of their own. I think that’s why they went into Cooper, so they had sustenance. I’m sorry, Dafydd. I think you’re stuck here, and all the power you’ve got left is what’s inside you.”

Kelly crawled to Washington and put her hand against his chest, then whispered, “He’s still breathing.” She glanced at Dafydd, flinched, and looked away. Injury flashed across his face and sympathy surged through Lara. He had saved them all with his magic, and it was neither fair nor surprising that Kelly should look away.

Especially given that Lara’s blurred vision had disappeared. “The glamour, Dafydd. It’s gone.”

His hands were always long-fingered, elegant, but his gaze snapped to them, and then he lifted his hands to his ears, tracing their elfin shape with clear shock. Lara shook her head. “It fell away as soon as the fight started. And I don’t think you’re going to be able to put it back now.”

“I had to get rid of the earrings to call the lightning. But the glamour should have stayed—”

“Dafydd, you’re not strong, you know that. Being in jail did something to you, you haven’t looked right—”

“This is all very touching,” Kelly said through her teeth, “but we have to go. We have to go right now, Lara. We have to leave Reg.” She got to her feet, face tight with determination as she pulled keys from her pocket.

Lara, gaping, turned her attention to Kelly, and Dafydd staggered as though only her gaze had kept him in place. Kelly, despite her earlier flinch, caught Dafydd with an arm around his waist. “There were gunshots. There’ll be cops here inside another thirty seconds. We have to go right now.”

“Kelly, are you nuts?” Dickon sounded thunderstruck.

Kelly propelled Dafydd away from Washington, driving him toward the gated doors even as she answered Dickon. “Do you see any choice? How are you going to explain what happened to Reg? How are you going to explain what David looks like? We have to go. Cops’ll take care of Reg, but we cannot be here.”