She didn’t turn as the back door slid quietly open and strong arms wrapped around hers.
She gripped Elorie’s hands, an old woman clinging to young life. “I can’t lose them both, darling girl. I just can’t.”
“We won’t.” Her granddaughter’s eyes were fierce. “We know how to hold him now. And he knows how to come back.”
It shamed her that she doubted. But the blood in her veins couldn’t forget. The mists had won far too often.
Chapter 21
Marcus stood on the rock promontory of Evan’s beach, the first rays of dawn teasing the sky in front of him. The mists were strong still-but the light was coming. A time carefully chosen.
For him, it would be the time of seeking.
Either there was a place, somewhere in the in-between, where his brother cast spells and reached his magic back out into the world.
Or the mists were only pure, enveloping evil, as he’d believed all his life.
He needed to know. If he had an ally in the mists, he had to find out.
He could feel his circle behind him, standing strong in the pre-dawn light. Moira sat a half-mile away in her garden, Aaron and the twins with her. They’d all refused to leave Fisher’s Cove.
They’d refused to leave Elorie.
Adam was with Kenna and Morgan, barricaded in Realm and protected by an irrationally large contingent of guardian angels.
Marcus was grateful for every last one of them.
He cast one last look over Evan’s beach-and then turned to the circle at his back. Time to seek his brother’s soul.
The traditional words of Devin calling water steadied the heart bashing around in his chest. He waited as the other elements joined the circle, a tight and competent flow of power woven by the strongest witches of his generation.
The four points complete, Elorie held her arms to the sky, pendant clasped in her right hand.
He had a moment of surprise-it was a new call, and the imagery reached deep into his ribcage.
And then she poured power his direction, and all he could do was grab the lightning strike. It blasted through him, water through a sieve, punching holes in his magical skin as it went. He was a flea riding a fire hose, all sense of direction lost in the tumult. Bloody hell-flying through space like a damn rocket, and no idea if he was even headed the right direction.
He struggled to figure out what part of the torrent was actually his power-and then decided it didn’t matter. He gave over to the magic, reaching for the soul that was twin to his.
And ran headlong into the freezing mists of hell.
Marcus opened his eyes to a halo of light and a woman’s dulcet voice singing a strange kind of lullaby.
Gods. If this was heaven, he’d taken a rather large wrong turn. He strained his brain to remember. A rocket ride, and then… nothing.
“Awake now, are you?” A face bent down closer to his. “I think he’s conscious. You better come on over before he tries to pop me one.”
Marcus was pretty sure Aunt Moira’s rules about not hitting girls extended to heaven. Or wherever he was.
A young face swam into view. And this time, even in the shadow and light, he knew who it was. With all the longing of forty-three years, Marcus reached out to touch his brother.
And discovered he couldn’t move at all.
“Nimwit. Hang on a minute.” The boy with Evan’s face waved his hand a couple of times. “Sorry, I had to hit you with a stasis spell when you panicked in the mists.”
He hadn’t panicked. He’d worked very, very hard not to panic.
Gingerly, expecting to shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment, Marcus sat up. And then did the thing he’d waited an eternity to do.
He grabbed his brother in a stranglehold of a hug and let the maelstrom he’d contained every day of those forty-three years go. Guilt and longing, love and rage, and the murderous need of a small boy who’d felt half his soul ripped away, all collided in the raging storm that had once been Marcus Buchanan.
He had no idea how long he sat there holding Evan. He knew only that when he let go, the cells of his body all had new neighbors-and a lake of tears dried on the ground around them.
If Evan’s face spoke true, the tears weren’t all his.
For a while longer, Marcus just looked, drained of the feelings that had always been his skeleton. “Funny.” His voice sounded like it hadn’t been used in a decade. And his nose was in desperate need of a hanky. “I spent so much of my life wishing for this moment. And not once did I think about what would happen next.”
Evan rested his head on his knees, a simple movement that nearly drowned Marcus in memory again. “We have some time. And you have some questions.”
The first leaked out of its own accord. “Why are you still here? In this place, whatever it is?” This place of gray and shadows and odd light.
Evan stared off into the distance. “I take care of the souls who come here.”
Marcus looked at the sunny small boy beside him in horror. “But you’re only a child.”
Evan smiled, at once sad and amused. “That’s how you see me-how you remember me. Physical appearances are mutable here. They reflect the hearts of those who look, or sometimes, how we see ourselves.”
Marcus blinked. “How do you see yourself?”
Evan grinned, his eyes twinkling in that way they always had just before he got the both of them into a heap of trouble. “A blond-haired, blue-eyed version of you. We’re getting old, bro.”
A small hand joined with his.
Marcus looked around, willing the shakes away, and sensed movement in the shadows. There had been someone with Evan when he’d awakened. Voices. “Who are the others?”
“We’re kind of like a way station for departed souls. Some stay here only moments. Others, for months or years.”
Marcus watched as a beautiful woman floated out of the shadows, her feet moving in an intricate and beautiful dance. Light shone from her face.
