Jenny, devastatingly aware that her jeans were crunchy from drying wrinkled and her denim shirt looked as if she'd crawled through a chimney, said, "You invited me to come-and here I am."
He answered as easily as if they'd been talking for hours. "Yes, and you're off to a bad start. Couldn't even avoid this simple trap. Don't even know what game you're playing."
"Whatever it is, it's the last Game," Jenny said.
It wasn't the same as it had been before, when she'd felt as if she were fighting him all the time in her mind-whether he was physically present or not. Fighting his sensuality, fighting his beauty, fighting the memory of his touch.
In those days part of her actually longed for the moment when she would stop fighting, for the final surrender. But now ...
Jenny had changed. The fire she'd passed through in the last Game, the one he'd created to trap her, had changed her. It had burned away the part of her that had responded to Julian, that had craved his danger and wildness. Jenny had come through the fire alive-and purified. She might not be as powerful as Julian, but her will was as strong as his.
She would never give in to the shadows again. And that meant that everything was different between them.
She could see that he saw the difference. He said, "More light?" and made a gesture, like tracing a line in the air.
Kenaz, Jenny thought. The rune of the torch, one of the runes she'd carved on her grandfather's oak door. It was shaped like an acute angle, like a lesser-than sign in mathematics. When Julian's long fingers made the gesture, the light seemed to ripple, and with a magician's flourish he plucked a second burning torch from the air.
Jenny, stony-faced, clapped her hands two or three times.
Julian's glance was blue as a gas flame. "You don't want to get me angry. Not this early on," he said with dangerous quietness.
"I thought I was supposed to be impressed."
He studied her. "You really don't want to get me angry."
Oh, he was gorgeous, all right. Inhuman, incomprehensible, and so alive he looked as if he should be dripping fire or electricity from his fingertips. He brought a shine with him like diamonds in coal. But Jenny had a core of steel.
"Where's Tom?" she said.
"You haven't been thinking about him," said Julian.
It was true. Jenny hadn't. Not continuously, not constantly, the way she had in the old days when she'd never really regarded herself as a separate person, but as part of a unit: Tom-and-Jenny. It didn't matter.
"I came here for him," she said. "I don't need to think about him every minute to love him. I want him back."
"Then win the Game." Julian's voice was as cold and ominous as thin ice breaking.
He stuck one torch into a wide horizontal crack in the wall. Jenny hadn't really taken in her surroundings yet-when Julian was around it was very difficult to focus on anything except him-but she saw now that she'd been right in her guess earlier. This was an enclosed place, and a very small one, scarcely as big as her bedroom at home. Three of its walls were stone; the fourth was solidly packed boulders.
Below the crack with the torch was a sort of natural stairway, each step broader than the one above it. Like the fake waterfalls in the mine ride, Jenny thought, only without the water. She noticed her flashlight, apparently dead, lying by the bottom step.
There was no entrance or exit to the room. The ceiling was low. It had a very trapped feeling about it.
Jenny's heart sank a little.
No. Don't you dare let him frighten you. That's what he wants, that's what kicks him.
Besides, what's to be scared of? So you're buried alive under tons of rock, alone with a demon prince who wants you body and soul and will literally do anything to have you. Who might kill you just to make sure no one else can have you. And you're pissing him off deliberately, but so what, why sweat the details?
She tried to make her voice quite steady and a little blase as she said, "So just what is the Game this time?"
"The clue will cost you."
Icy fury swept over Jenny. "You're horrible. Do you know that?"
"I'm as cruel as life," Julian said. "As cruel as love."
The fury, and the steel at Jenny's core, gave her the courage to do something that astonished even her. She wanted to slap Julian. Instead, she kissed him.
It wasn't like the tender, cozy sort of kiss she gave Tom, and not like the terrified, half-wild kisses Julian had extorted from her in the old days, either. She jumped up and snatched his face between her palms before he could do anything with the torch. She kissed him hard, aggressively, and without the slightest vestige of maidenly shyness.
She felt his shock. His free hand came up around her, but he couldn't pull her any closer than she was already pressing herself. She ignored the danger of the torch completely-if it was close to her hair, that was Julian's problem. Let the great master of the elements figure it out.
Julian recovered fast. It was possible to take him off guard, but he didn't stay nonplussed long. Jenny felt him trying to take control of the situation, trying to soften the kiss.
But she knew the danger of softness. Julian could spin a web of shadows around you, with touches like the brush of moth's wings and kisses soft as twilight. He could turn your own senses against you until the kisses left you dizzy and breathless and the moth's-wing touches put you on slow burn. And by the time you realized what was underneath the softness, you were shivering and melting and lost.
So Jenny kept this kiss strictly business. A cheap and nasty sort of business she'd never had to do before because before Julian she'd only ever kissed Tom. She kissed him angrily, with a clinical coldness and all the expertise she could muster. At the end she realized she'd managed to startle him twice in just a matter of minutes. When she pulled away-which she did easily-she could see the shock in his eyes.
Didn't think I could resist, did you? she thought. She stepped back and with utter coldness said, "Now, what about my clue?"
Julian stared. Then he laughed mockingly, but she could see him losing his temper, see the blue eyes glitter with rage like exotic sapphires. She had struck at his pride-and hit dead center.
"Well, now, I'm not sure I got my money's worth," he said. "I've known icicles that were better kissers than that."
"And I've known dead fish that were better kissers than you," Jenny said-untruthfully and with an insane disregard for danger. She knew it was insane, but she didn't care. The freedom of knowing that the shadows had no power over her was intoxicating. It made this encounter with Julian different from any other.
She'd struck home again. She saw the menacing fury well up in his eyes-and then his heavy lashes drooped, veiling them. A half smile curved his lips.
Jenny's stomach lurched.
He was evil, she knew. Cruel, capricious, and dangerous as a cobra. And she'd been stupid to goad him that way, because right now he was planning something bad-or her name wasn't Jenny Lint-for-Brains Thornton.
"I'll give you your clue," he said. He slid a hand into one skintight pocket and brought it out again, flipping something gold on his thumb and catching it again. The gold thing winked in the torchlight, up and down. "Heads I win, tails you lose," Julian said and gave her a smile of terrible sweetness.
Then he flicked the shining gold thing at her so quickly that she flinched. It hit the stone with a wonderful clear ringing clink. Jenny picked it up and found that it was cold and quite heavy. It was a coin, round but irregular, like a very thin home-baked cookie.
"A Spanish doubloon," Julian said, but even then she stared at him a moment before getting it.
Oh, God-of course. The game-the one the real Joyland Park was holding. What had that kid said this afternoon? "You get three tokens and they let you in free. ..." And the billboard: collect three gold
DOUBLOONS AND BE THE FIRST TO SET FOOT ON ... TREASURE ISLAND.
And Julian had invited them to come on a treasure hunt. But Jenny hadn't made the connection, not even when that giant treasure chest had been the only thing moving in the park tonight.
"You modeled this whole place after Joyland because they were having a treasure hunt? Why? Because I used to go to the park when I was a kid?"
He laughed. "Don't flatter yourself. This whole-Shadow Park, if you like-already existed. It was created ten years ago and for a very different reason.
A special reason ... but you'll find out about that later." He gave a strange smile that sent a chill through Jenny. "It was built on an old coal mine, you know-a pit. The Shadow Men have been here a long time."
A pit. Deep into the Pit, Jenny remembered. That was a line from the poem she'd found on her grandfather's desk in Julian's first Game. Was that how her grandfather had found the Shadow Men in the first place? Had he taken a question deep into a pit, into some place where the worlds were connected?
She would probably never know-unless Julian told her, which didn't seem likely. But it cast a vaguely sinister light over the real Joyland Park.
Forget the conjectural crap, she told herself. Get down to business.
"Tom and Zach are on Treasure Island," she said.
She got a wolfish smile back. "Right. And don't even think about trying to swim there or anything. The bridge is the only way, and the toll is three gold doubloons. You'll find the coins hidden throughout the park."
"I've got one already," she reminded him, closing her fist on the coin.
His smile turned dreamy, which was even more frightening than the wolf look. "Yes, you do, don't you?" he said pleasantly. "Now all you have to do is get out with it."
On the word it, everything went dark.
It happened so fast that it took Jenny's breath away. One moment she was conversing by the light of two ruddy torches, the next she was in pitch blackness. Blackness so profound that it made her heart jump and her eyes fly open. She saw ghostly blue pinwheels, then nothing. It was like being struck blind.
Okay. Don't panic. He made a mistake-he got mad and screwed up. He left the flashlight.
I hope, her mind added, as she stuck the doubloon in her pocket and cautiously felt her way in the darkness.
Her hand closed around cold metal. She held her breath and thumbed the switch.
Light. Only a tiny light, a dull orange-ish glow. Either something had happened to the flashlight in the fall or the batteries were going dead. But it was enough to keep her from going crazy.
You shouldn't have made him mad, Jenny. That was really, really dumb.
Because, even with light, she was in trouble. By holding the flashlight very close she could see the rock walls of her prison quite clearly. She could examine every inch of it, from the low ceiling, to the uneven floor, to the solidly packed boulders that blocked the entrance.
There was no way in or out. She couldn't possibly shift those boulders by herself-and if she did move one, she'd probably bring the rest of them down on top of her.
Don't panic. Don't, don't, don't panic.
But the flashlight was already getting dimmer. She could see it, but not anything around it. And she was alone in the midst of solid rock and absolute silence. There was no sound, not even the drip of water.