Jenny tried to speak, but her words lumped in her throat, each one sticking to the next. She remained at the enormous entrance, the arch so far over her head, it didn’t really feel like a door. More like the entrance to a separate pace, another world.

  The room was dark, but she got the sense it was immense, and she could just about make out several silhouettes as her eyes adjusted. The rgest was the t-shape in the center of the room, towering just as Yeshua’s cross had in the world of the dead. A tremor ran up both of Jenny’s legs; suddenly she felt as weak, as though she’d been trapped inside a pilr of salt for ages and ages and all her muscles had atrophied.

  "What are you doing here?" croaked Susan. Her voice was so strained, so broken, like she'd been screaming or crying for ages. Her breath was loud and raspy.

  "I..." Jenny’s voice broke as well. Hot tears ran down her cheeks, and the more she blinked, the more tears seemed to fall. She didn't know what to say. What was she supposed to say?

  The st time Jenny had seen Susan was when she'd held Susan's corpse on the cafeteria floor. Somehow that felt like so long ago... She'd traveled through worlds, fought ghouls and demons and harpies and... None of that changed the facts of what she’d done. The horrible thing she’d done.

  I bit through her throat.

  I killed her.

  And now here she was... not with the other souls, but separated and nailed to a cross and - why?

  Why was Susan here?

  The room is empty, came Iblis' voice. The girl is alone. I will keep these Souls distracted.

  Jenny swallowed hard, still trying to find words, trying to find the courage to step into the room.

  "Stay away from me!" hissed Susan, and Jenny saw the silhouette of a person wriggling on the cross, followed by a muffled cry, as though Susan was screaming but biting her lips, trying to hide her pain. "Go away. You're not real. Just leave me alone. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FROM ME. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU? I DON'T HAVE IT. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU-”

  "Su-" Jenny tried again, her eyes burning with tears, emotions surging to every part of her face. She couldn’t stand hearing Susan screaming like this. Had Azra’il been torturing her?

  "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT-I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT-I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!" Susan kept screaming, kept thrashing against the cross, screaming until her voice broke, and that was more than Jenny could take.

  She swept across the room and activated Valescent Light. Golden warmth illuminated the enormous chamber. It was a giant room, cube shaped, with Susan on the cross in the center and heavy curtains on the wall and some other statues or something. Jenny didn’t care for anything else. She couldn't take her eyes off Susan.

  Susan stopped screaming. Stuck on the cross, her arms outstretched with nails pushed through her palms. She had one foot over the other with a third nail driven through them. The cross looked exactly the same as Yeshua's; Susan even had a crown of thorns digging into her forehead. And she looked so much like she had on the cafeteria floor, except the blue was gone from her hair. It was brown again, just as it had been all those years ago when they'd met, and Jenny had shyly said hello and Susan had beamed, radiant and wonderful and welcoming.

  Tears spilled down Jenny's cheeks so freely. Her shoulders shook as she held up her glowing arm, rainbows swirling around her fingers and wrist, the light catching on Susan's face, on Susan's tear-stained cheeks, on the blood running down her nose, on the spittle on her chin. She wore a gown too, like the princes and princesses, a purple one that matched the curtains around them, but it was torn in several pces, exposing soft skin. And the tearing pattern looked very particur; she'd been whipped.

  Whipped and much worse.

  She couldn't shop shaking.

  "Is that you?" whispered Susan, tears falling from her eyeshes as she leaned her head forward, as she strained against the nails. Her elbows cracked. A hiccup escaped her throat. She kept blinking hard, with her entire face. "Is that really you?"

  Snot ran down Jenny's lips. She balled her hands into fists, and when she tried to speak, all she managed was a pained cry. She sniffled and tried again. "Yes, it's me. It's me. I found you."

  Susan sobbed. "He told me. He told me everyone's looking for you and that - and that they were going to destroy you and me and that -" She broke down crying, softly this time, eyes shut tight, shoulders shaking. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. He kept asking me about you. About what we did and-”

  "I'm going to get you down," said Jenny in a small voice, reaching up to touch Susan's feet with valescent light.

  But the two of them flinched. Susan felt ice cold to the touch, and Susan looked as though Jenny had burned her.

  "I'm sorry," whispered Jenny, biting her bottom lip and staring at Susan.

  Susan blinked away tears. “It’s okay. You didn’t hurt me.”

  Jenny almost ughed. “You don’t have to lie to me. I’m sorry.... for everything.” She emphasized the st word, trying to find the courage to say, I’m sorry for killing you.

  Susan shook her head and sniffed. More blood ran down her lips and dripped off her chin. "You were... I wanted to save you. It was my fault."

  "I shouldn't have"

  "It doesn't matter," she said with a sound that was half a sob and half a ugh. "I'm just-"

  "Yeah." Jenny wiped her eyes and sniffled deeply. Then she took a shaky breath and tried again. Grasping Susan's feet firmly and trying to get a good hold on the nail. Susan whimpered several times, but Jenny knew the only way to stop the pain was to set her free. No matter how much that hurt. And she had valescent light ready to heal.

  And just as she was about to suggest it, Susan said it out loud. "Just rip it off.”

  Jenny could tell she was trying to sound brave.

  "Just rip it off. You have my light thing now so just... okay?"

  Jenny's throat felt like it was colpsing. "I don't know if that works on Souls." She blinked several times, trying to go through her memory. "But it looks like Souls just heal on their own. You can't die.... again." Guilt unfurled in her chest.

  But Susan was shaking her head. "No. No. He said.... he told me that the cross was different. It'll keep me here. I'll...."

  Jenny remembered how Yeshua was forced back through the worlds, back into the blood storm with all the ghouls. And when she'd returned to find him, she found him nailed once again to the cross. There was something about it that completely trapped someone.... Yeshua had to drag his around. She took another breath.

  "It's okay," she said, trying to sound steady. "I met someone else who was crucified. I know what to do."

  "Someone else?" whispered Susan. Her eyes fluttered like she was struggling to stay awake. Her shoulders sagged, her arms bent slightly, and she jerked back awake, eyes wide and blood shot. She looked like she wanted to scream again, gncing around several times before spotting the glowing light of Jenny's arm. When her eyes met Jenny's, she seemed to shrink back. Once again, she asked in a broken voice, "Are you really here?"

  Jenny swallowed hard and nodded. "Let me get you off the thing. You'll heal. Or we'll use something, okay? And then we just have to get you out of here before- Wait." She licked her lips and put out the valescent light, plunging the room in darkness again. she couldn't see Susan anymore, only the faint outline of the cross and Susan's body. What if I just open another doorway here?

  Jenny looked around for Iblis. "Where are you?" she called. "Iblis?"

  But something had changed. There was a disturbance in the air, like the humidity had gone up, like the room was closing in on them. She was about to reactivate her light or use ignite to see again, but then an involuntary shudder ran up her spine.

  Susan cried out. "He's here. He's here. He's back. He's here again. He’s going to hurt me again. I knew it. I knew it. You’re not real. You’re not really here.”

  "Who?" whispered Jenny, but she already knew the answer. Her heart was breaking listening to Susan whimper and cry and say the same thing over and over.

  “Cmon, cmon,” she muttered under her breath as renewed panic pounded through her thoughts. Guilt and anguish and heart break and rage, with fear swallowing everything up so that she couldn't think, couldn't breathe. She had to use severed spirit. Had to open another doorway. Had to grab Susan and the cross and get out. But where was Iblis?

  "I can get us-"

  "The sinner went in there!" shrieked a loud voice from the entrance hall. "She went to the forbidden room!"

  "Punish her!"

  "Save us from her sin!"

  Susan was shaking so hard, the cross seemed to be rattling. Jenny chewed on her bottom lip, trying to snap herself out of it, but something heavy and awful reverberated through the floor, and she felt that immense, dizzying wave of dread again, like she was standing on the shore and watching a towering ship bearing down on her.

  Why won’t this stupid thing just...

  She had plenty of heartbreak, plenty of hurt to pull on, so where was it? Where was Severed Spirit? Why couldn’t she cut through the air again?

  Why couldn’t she stop shaking?

  Susan’s voice had dropped to a rapid, incoherent stammering. Jenny held her breath as the lumbering footsteps drew near, as the suffocating sense of despair sank in. She looked up at Susan in the dark and touched her feet. “Everything’s going to be okay,” she whispered to her trembling best friend, knowing fully well that she was lying through her teeth.