understand?” He gave me a little shake. “You won’t leave me. Don’t you dare do it. You hear me? You will fight this!”
The juice took the fire, the misery, the pain, and carried them away on some tide to some other continent, while I lay on the warm beach of this one, feeling so …
Content.
Such a simple word. My legs felt pleasurably heavy, weighted for sleep, ready for slumber. Even my Were felt drowsy and serene. The thought came to me that maybe I wasn’t being healed, but I was being carried to that land that you never, ever, thought existed.
A place where nothing hurt.
And bad things had no teeth.
I was loved.
Heaven.
So, here’s a good rule: if you’re teetering on the brink of death, the one word you do not want to think, breathe, or hazily imagine, is “heaven.” Because if you close your eyes—and truly you can’t help but do so when you’re so profoundly tired—you may find yourself opening them in a realm not your own.
For a few moments, I was muddled. Where was I? Obviously, I wasn’t in Creemore anymore. No scent of Were wrapped around me. No arms holding me painfully tight. I knew myself to be alone … I could practically feel the silence pressing down on me.
This was so wrong on so many levels. Not only was I too young to die, but—come on, for fuck’s sake— Trowbridge and I had finally been reunited. This was when the good times were supposed to roll.
Karma had given me one sweet, brief taste of my heart’s desire then promptly pushed me into heaven. Though, come to think of it—this sure didn’t feel like paradise. Wasn’t I supposed to be met by a family member, or at the very least, some messenger holding a sign that read WELCOME TO CLOUD NINE? Besides, the ground felt solid underneath me … and surely heaven wouldn’t smell like wet earth, and rain and—
Fire.
Shit. As in brimstone and hellfire?
Well, that was a game changer. I lay there, eyes closed, thinking in terms of moral audits; my balance sheet kind of sucked. I stole, though not from the pack. I lied, but then again, who didn’t? And yeah, I did kill Dawn Danvers. But … she really, really deserved it. Didn’t that give me a get-out-of-jail pass?
Cautiously, I slit open my eyes and was treated to a microview of brilliant green moss.
A stream of blue-gray smoke slipped past my sightline, undulated over the verdant, textured surface with a harem girl’s teasing touch, then slid under the scraggly undercarriage of the overgrown hawthorn hedge. There it played for a moment or two, ever the teasing will-o’-the-wisp, flitting between twisted branches, until it grew bored, and melted into the playground of the wild woods beyond the hedge.
I focused on Trowbridge because that’s what worked last time I wanted to zap myself back to the realm of chili burgers and cell phones. But I couldn’t seem to call up his face. Whenever I tried, my brain got hazy, as if something—someone?—had pulled me here and was reluctant to let go.
My presence had been demanded.
I took stock.
It seemed that I’d landed in exactly the same place as on my first visit to the realm between realms—on the right-hand side of the clearing of land, my head turned toward a hawthorn hedge, my body within feet of the roots of the dying black walnut tree. The ground under me was spongy and unpleasantly wet.
Water squelched as I rolled to my knees. For a moment I felt unbalanced, my sense of equilibrium rolling like the bubble inside a tilted level. I don’t know where my Were goes when I travel to Threall, but when we pull into the station, the spot near my spine where she usually curls is absolutely empty. And it was a given that I’d arrive in the land of myst without an amulet. But this time—unlike last time—I was without my Fae, as well.
I was … just me.
Hedi Peacock-Stronghold, stripped of her add-alongs.
At last. Hadn’t I always just wanted to be me? Good old unadorned and simplified me? No longer a complex stew? Seeing the world through my own perceptions?
I felt so much lighter without them.
Lonelier, too.
I swallowed and breathed through my mouth until the sensation of loss passed.
My gaze moved past the ruddy red balls of light buried deep inside the hedge beside me, up beyond the ragged tops of the hawthorns, upward and beyond, to the very top of the ancient trees—
Hundreds of soul balls, high up in the overcast sky, each one lovingly cradled by the boughs of its proud tree. Lit from within—some shining so brightly they made my fingers itch—protected from harm by their thin vellum-soft skins. Oh Goddess, the heart-stirring beauty of them. Even now in Threall’s daylight, they glowed. A hundred variations of yellow, pink-blushed primroses, and heavy golds, sun-pure lemons and tawny topazes, lime- fresh citrons and orange-tinted umbers. And here and there, balls with imperfect colors; their surfaces streaked with shadows of red, suggestions of eggplant, soft whispers of forest green.
Darker souls.
But even so—
I pivoted to look the other way and shrieked as the ground fell out from beneath me. My head snapped back, my knee twisted, and downward I tumbled, arms flailing, mouth wide open.
It was a short plunge, overall, and I landed with an oomph on something soft.
The foxhole had three things at the bottom of it. A great deal of churned-up earth—loose, and quite fine. A foot of water—muddy, and very cold. And one mystwalker—immobile, and quite possibly … dead.
I’d landed draped across Mad-one’s body.
Immediately, I was assailed by a bitch-storm of broken visuals, all jumbled together, with no sense of pattern or time sequence. Two fireballs exploding in a shower of sparks and cinders in the night sky. Rain, gentle and soft. The Old Mage with his lips pulled back, his teeth clenched against some terrible agony. A fast-moving dark shadow skulking along the length of the hawthorns. A black walnut tree, the red light in the center of its purplish soul light flickering before a fresh shower of fireballs arced into the air toward her. A little girl, well turned out in her best pinafore, her hair pulled back, the rakes of a comb still evident in her hair.
Simeon, tall and fair.
