Free Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel Page B

you return?” Konrad asks, sounding bereft.
    “I promise you,” I tell him. “But now we must go.”
    “Where do you go, and how?” Konrad asks in frustration.
    “To the place where we left our bodies in the real world. Come,” I say to Elizabeth, and she seems finally to understand my urgency, for her eyes move to the door. “Our bodies need us back.”
    “Good-bye,” she says miserably, stretching out her handtoward Konrad. “I shouldn’t have come. It’s a torture to leave you again.”
    I head for the door, into the hallway, and look back to make sure Elizabeth is following. Down the hall we hurry with our unnatural speed, no doubt blazing trails of light for Konrad and Analiese, who stand watching us from the doorway.
    Entering my bedchamber, I falter, for it looks entirely different. The furniture is all in different places, and the pieces themselves are much grander and older. The walls pulse with different colors and paintings and tapestries.
    “Victor,” I hear Elizabeth say, and when I glance at her, she touches the wall as if to steady herself. “What’s going on?”
    “It’s the house, remembering itself,” I say in wonder. “Our living presence seems to agitate it.”
    I look at the ornate carving of the grand canopied bed and see on the pillowcases the monogram WF .
    “This used to be his room,” I whisper. “Wilhelm Frankenstein’s!”
    “Make it go back to normal,” she says, sounding scared for the first time.
    “If you concentrate, it’ll return to its present age. You have the power to do it too.”
    I take a breath, focusing my gaze on the place where my bed should be. From the corner of my eye I see the entire room shimmer and begin to reshape itself. And for just a moment I see, set within the wall, a strange cupboard containing a book—and then it’s gone and is nothing but brick and plaster. Suddenly my bed is where it ought to be, and when I look about the room, it is altogether mine again.
    Elizabeth seems confused, and moves toward my bed.
    “You’re on the chair, remember,” I tell her, and take her hand to guide her.
    The effect is instant. It’s the first time I’ve touched her in this world, and the simple contact of her skin against mine sends an urgent heat coursing through my entire body. I stare down at my hand, her hand, breathing hard. My spirit world heart thrashes within my chest like a firefly trapped in a jar. I feel weak, slightly sick—and completely, hypnotically helpless to the desire that grips me. I swallow and look up at Elizabeth and know from her gaze that she is possessed by the same sensation.
    “This is a dream,” she says.
    I shake my head. “No dream.”
    “I am dreaming.”
    In one step I am against her, my hand in her hair. Her arms lift and encircle me, her fingers pulling hard against my neck, urging me to her. Our mouths meet hungrily, and it’s as though some spectral current has been completed, and there is nothing more than this moment, all sensation, every nerve in my body attentive to her.
    But our frenzy is interrupted by the ever more insistent pattering of the spirit clock in my pocket, and a real weakness seeps through me. Not a pleasurable, giddy one this time but true exhaustion and breathlessness.
    “We must get back,” I pant, forcing myself away from her, and I see the look of disappointment and anger in her face. Once more she draws closer to me.
    “Our bodies need us,” I say, pushing her into the chair. “Take hold of your bracelet. Hurry!”
    Breathless, I tug my ring free, clench it tight in one hand, the spirit clock in the other, and throw myself onto the bed, my limbs weirdly moving of their own volition to shape this spectral body to my real one and—

C HAPTER 5
THE SECOND DEATH
    W E WOKE GASPING AT THE SAME MOMENT . H ENRY PACED between us anxiously, looking at his stopwatch.
    “Slightly over a minute this time!” he said. “What kept you?”
    “I stretched time a little.” I swung my legs