He hadn’t ever had to
By the time Vireo yelped
The woods were so dark, he was only vaguely aware of tree trunks around him, the black night pressing in … and
When he tried to walk on the forest floor, brambles ripped at his legs.
If this was like a dreamscape, he might be able to control it. Could he go up?
Jay let himself be a bird.
When he did this in the real, waking world, the experience was only mental. He formed a connection to the animal and studied its thought patterns until he could slip into them at will. In this world … he spread white and blue wings and aimed for the tops of the trees.
Something yanked at him, knocking him back down, until his feathers tangled in the brambles. Thorns like daggers pinned him in place, a warning not to move.
The wind whispered to him as he struggled:
He couldn’t help himself; he struggled, and the brambles savaged his feathers.
The wind went silent.
Jay needed to be something sturdier.
He had to slow down. He had to be so patient. He had to wait and gather his shell.
The turtle fell through the brambles, tossed this way and that, but he hid inside his armor until he hit the ground beneath the lowest spines.
It was cold down here, making him even slower, but that was fine.
The turtle was cautious.
The turtle could wait.
He lumbered, seeking something different in the darkness … but found only deeper darkness, choking night … silence.…
CHAPTER 8
“JAY?”
He leaned toward the voice.
Jay followed the voice—which was as much magic as sound—back toward his brother. When he opened his eyes, he found Vireo looking pale and shaken, and Caryn flushed with relief.
“How long was I out?” he asked.
No one answered him. They probably assumed they didn’t need to. But he got nothing. He couldn’t hear a thing anyone wasn’t saying.
Unsettling.
They were both staring at him, waiting for him to say something.
He wasn’t with the shapeshifter anymore but in another SingleEarth medical room, where he had been given a bed of his own. He tried to push himself up, and realized that he was hurt.
“Be careful,” Caryn said. “I couldn’t heal it all. Your magic fought back when I tried.”
The clothes he had been wearing earlier were gone, replaced by light cloth pajama pants like those they gave out in hospitals. He didn’t have a shirt on, and there were bandages on his chest. And not just bandages but
He remembered the thorns cutting into him. Though the brambles themselves may have been an illusion or fantasy, they apparently represented a real, physical attack.
“What happened?” Vireo asked.
“I don’t know. How long was I unconscious?”
“A couple hours,” Vireo answered. “I called for Caryn’s help when I couldn’t reach you mentally and you started to bleed. It took us about an hour to get you stabilized. I take it you’re pretty mind-deaf right now?”
Jay nodded. He was too exhausted to hear anything specific in the noise around him, like listening for a whisper after spending hours in a noisy nightclub. Whatever he had touched minds with, it was far bigger than any shapeshifter.
“So …,” Vireo said. “I hate to ask while you’re still in your sickbed, but did you learn anything useful about our other patient?”
Jay paused to reflect on his experience.
“There is someone, a ‘he,’ that she is afraid of. I think her being unconscious may be a way of hiding from him. She has an elaborate trap in her mind set up to keep her hidden. I got caught in it when I tried to find her.”
“We should probably let Jay rest,” Caryn interjected. “Jay, do you need anything?”
He shook his head. He knew someone who might know more about their mysterious patient, but there was no point in explaining his intent to Caryn and Vireo. They would want him to be careful, by which they would mean, “Stay in bed and don’t go seeking flirtatious vampires.” Considering how many semi-legal and life- endangering escapades Caryn had engaged in, Jay resented her belief that
Thankfully, Vireo not only
Jay didn’t have a choice. He had found the shapeshifter behind Xeke’s apartment. Xeke might know who she was.
Besides, it would be fun to see him again.
“I’m good.”
Vireo squeezed his shoulder on the way out. “I was worried about you,” he admitted.
Jay shrugged, not sure how to respond. “I’m okay,” he said.
“Yeah. But I’m the one who asked you to do it, and, well, just be careful with yourself.”
With that said, Vireo left quickly. For a man who had dedicated his life to meddling with others’ minds, Vireo wasn’t comfortable with his own emotional insides.
Once alone, Jay used the phone by his bed to call a SingleEarth secretary, who told him that they had no direct contact information for Xeke but suggested that he try the vampire’s club, a place in Boston called The Market.
Information offered two phone numbers matching that description. The first seemed to belong to a clothing store. The other was the club’s answering service, which informed Jay that the phones were not manned in the mornings and that he could either leave a message or call back after six.
A few words into telling whoever heard it to ask Xeke to call him, it occurred to him that the message he
