“But you do,” Eneas shot back. “What else do you wish to do here? She’s real, you know that now. So what next?”
I thought about it for a moment, choosing my words carefully. Tristan’s warning persisted in the back of my head. The last thing I needed was to burn this bridge before I could cross it. “Can I see the book where she’s kept? I’d like that very much.”
The Ghoul Reapers exchanged fleeting glances, and Filicore took the lead as he got up. “Unless you can set us free, you will not get past us.” He pointed his half-moon scythe at me for good measure. The dusky light bounced off it in fractured shards of amber and pink that persisted at the corner of my eye for a second or two.
“You want to leave Biriane?” Tristan asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Would Death allow that?”
“Of course not!” Eneas barked, obviously insulted. “She cannot even undo this state we’re in. World’s rage did such a number on us that it’s practically irreversible. Our souls were destroyed without us eating other souls. We got the ghoulishness but without the bad deed that usually leads to it. It’s still ghoulishness. Irreversible, regardless. So, no, Death wouldn’t want us to leave. But Unending here is her precious baby. She knows death magic that we don’t. The kind of death magic she could use to let us leave this wretched place. Don’t you see? Biriane is dead. There is nothing here left to protect. We failed, and Death failed, and the World Crusher will keep rotting away inside that damn book, regardless. We don’t have to share her fate!”
Knowing Death as well as I did, I didn’t dare express certainty in my ability to give them what they wanted. There were several factors to discuss first—there could be repercussions to releasing them. I had no idea how Ghoul Reapers might react once they were free. Where they would go and how I might be able to track them. On top of that, I wasn’t sure if their status depended on the World Crusher’s. Would they leave her rage behind, or would they carry it with them? Would it then infect others beyond this realm?
I couldn’t talk to Death about this. Not without risking her intervention and potential demand to abandon this trial before I uncovered the whole truth. No, I had to keep this between Tristan and me for now.
“I think we should discuss this further,” I suggested.
Filicore sneered, baring his white fangs at me—another sign of the ghoulish nature taking over the former Reaper. “I think we’re done talking.”
That sounded like a threat, which worried me. Were they ready to pounce? Were they so irrational that they would jump us before we could even consider helping them? It sounded counter-productive, but their condition was unique and without precedent. I had no idea how they would react or how to prevent a potentially violent outburst.
Tristan and I had waded into dark and unknown waters. My primary concern was to keep us safe. Nothing else mattered. Nothing, unless Tristan and I were in it together. Looking at the Ghoul Reapers, I understood that they had been betrayed and deceived by Death. Where would I even begin to repair the damage she’d done to them without causing more damage to the universe itself?
Sofia
A few days had tumbled by since Thayen and the others vanished, likely into the same unknown realm that had flooded ours with murderous clones. Two days of feverish waiting and studying every portal remnant the creatures had left behind, thanks to the Daughters of Eritopia. There were hundreds of shimmering portal traces, some newer and others dating back six months. It still boggled the mind to consider this horrifying fact. For half a year, the clones had been coming in and out of this world, and we were no closer to figuring out their agenda.
They had taken Isabelle, Serena and Draven’s daughter, two months ago. Voss, Chantal, and Richard were also missing. Viola had been taken, as well… I could only hope that our son’s crew would bring some justice. That they would recover our people safe and sound.
But in the end, we didn’t know anything. We only had this muted hope while we struggled to find a way into that strange realm. Phoenix was working with Safira and the other Daughters on a way to reverse engineer the shimmering portals, though they were nowhere near a solution. Mona and Kiev had returned, but the witch didn’t have much to add to our investigative efforts—much like Corrine and Shayla and the others, Mona was stumped by this entire affair. This wasn’t about throwing our most powerful witches at the problem—the problem itself pertained to magic and knowledge that none of us had ever dealt with before.
We had put teams in place, each with a witch or a djinn ready to teleport them to wherever a new passageway might open. Derek and I had made a crew of our own for the same purpose, joined by Rose, Ben, and Kailani. Caleb and River were manning the executive side of all things GASP-related, while the rest of our friends and family—Victoria and Bastien included, along with Lucas and Marion, Claudia and Yuri, Eli and Shayla, Tejus and Hazel, Vivienne and Xavier, and Liana and Cameron—focused on making sure each of the deployment teams were fed and equipped with everything they might possibly need for a new and mysterious dimension. Alas, there was only so much preparing we could do…
Waiting was all we had left, and I refused to spend another moment in this damn limbo. A mere hour earlier, I’d decided to take Derek, Ben, Rose, and Kailani to Serena and Draven’s treehouse. Our great-granddaughter and her Druid husband only used it for their holidays since they lived on Calliope, but Isabelle had been
