Quietly staring into nothing, I waited on him. When the day turned to night, instantly I glanced to my side to find him there.
“I wonder if I could heal your eyes with my energy.”
It was so odd to see him in constant darkness. He’d always been my sun.
“If we only join our energy to heal each other or make each other stronger, then it becomes a chore...that is not its purpose.”
“You can call it a chore. I’ll call it an excuse.”
That made him grin, but I was already crawling closer to him, reaching my soul for his. He stopped me, holding my gaze.
“I’m not going to ignore this. It will only make it worse. We are resting now, in our place. Talk to me,” he pleaded.
“I don’t know where to start. I told you I’m fine.”
“And you told me you hated that word. Ask me anything. Let’s get it all out. I can’t handle this wall I feel between us.”
“You feel a wall?”
“I feel you holding back.”
“Because I have to, you know that.”
He tilted his head and offered a tender gaze. “No, Willow, you can’t hold it in either. You have to learn to balance it. Control is not enough. Your emotions are a power—like a hand,” he thought, lacing his fingertips through mine. “You can caress, console, love, pull something closer, push it way, or shape it into a powerful punch...pushing that down will put us right back where we were before Mars.”
My hungry gaze took in his essence, everything about him; his eyes, which could be compassionate one minute, usually when looking at me, and fierce the next, usually when speaking to anyone else. His strong profile that seemed to clench when his anger surfaced. The mark of his dimples that beamed when he when he was happy. Everything about him was the same, yet different.
My mother had told me once that soul mates fall in love with the same person a thousand times. I think for the first time that random rambling made sense to me. I smiled shyly, knowing that advice came when I was no more than ten, on a night I was watching her get ready for an anniversary date with my dad. I couldn’t figure out why she was so nervous, so I questioned that emotion.
I was nervous right now. Butterflies were fluttering in my stomach, a warm tingle in my soul. I felt like time had stopped, that nothing else mattered right now.
“You want questions?”
He nodded once in response.
“K...those images of fire that went into you—were they all of your lives, or the lives of a Phoenix? What is a Phoenix, anyway? Is it a bird? Is it a ghost? What is the deal with the boy Phoenix? Is that his real name? What is it with the ashes? Do you think Donalt could come back that way, too?
Before he could think to answer, I went on. “What is an echo? Why can I see ghosts now? Did you lie to Skylynn when you told her you knew where her lover was? What happens when this spell you are doing is undone? Why did you need her energy, and how did you use her energy before? I know Jupiter is expansion, so why are you not expanding? Why are you keeping us away from everyone else?”
He sat up a little straighter to begin to answer me, but I went on. “Exactly how many paranormal beings are we up against? What is the quote ‘other side’? Are you supposed to go through a veil, then a Realm, then reach the other side? Sounds more like a bad ‘Why did the chicken cross the road’ joke to me.”
That made him laugh.
“I think you need Monroe for this spell, but you can’t ask her because that would be crossing lines or something idiotic like that. Why does your skin hum? I like it. Don’t get me wrong. I thought it was Drake at first, inside your energy, so it scared me, but now I don’t know. Oh, and by the way, I think that Xavier guy is still around in Drake’s court. Oh, and how can you move so fast now? Are you even human anymore, or like some kind of crazy thing I’ll have to name for all of history to refer to?”
He was doing everything in his power to hold in a grin. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Sometimes when I’m nervous I talk a lot.”
“Why are you nervous now, and never before around me?”
Shyly, I glanced away. “Because I don’t want to talk right now. I want to make you better. I want to claim your energy as mine. Put a billboard across you that says ‘Taken.’ Because I feel the wall between us, too, and I want to break it down...you have become a mystery to me...one that I am aching to unravel.”
He pulled me onto his lap. “We are going to break down this wall with words, so that way when you do make me stronger, that wall won’t get in our way.”
The anticipation of that moment to come made me want it all the more. I felt that desire in him, too, and that made every part of my soul tremble with anticipation.
“A phoenix is a soul that is immortal in one form. At the end of its course, it burns its being into ashes and recreates itself—while it builds its strength, it lingers in the veil. Once it’s strong, and as long as it has all of its ashes, it can move through the reality it lived in, into the veil, The Realm, any dimension on this side. If its ashes are taken by anyone, they are at the command of that person; they must appear when called, and while they’re missing their ashes, they cannot be in reality for very long...the veil is where they reside. I was burned as a phoenix sixteen times...those lives came into me the other night. What I know of life before that is only what I learned, assumed, or was told.”
He hesitated, wanting me to either take in what he said or let his words settle. Gently, his fingertips traced my arms, adding to my craving of wanting to fall into his soul.
“Every soul is immortal and carries the essence of lives lived before. I may move faster, hum, or carry the trademark of a phoenix, but that is only because those lives are fresh in my mind. I have confidence that I have that power, so my mind produces it for me...it’s an instinct that I don’t have to focus on.”
I leaned my head back to receive a tender kiss on my lips. “I like it,” I assured him, feeling his emotion of shame.
“Skylynn had taken my ashes after my seventh burning. She wanted me to help her bend time, to undo a spell she had done in the past...it didn’t take me long to get them back from her.”
I cringed, thinking of what he might have done to persuade her to give them back. In response, his arms tightened around me.
“I was far more powerful than her, and she was very new to the veil...once I got them back, I decided that she could help us. When Phoenix and I would come across a point where we needed to get into The Realm, we would find her. Skylynn doesn’t trust many, so most of the time she would barter with us. Our relationship—”
“I don’t want to know,” I thought, cutting in as I sat up.
He pulled me against him again. “Meant nothing. She knows that. The promises she made you think I made last night were not about us. They were about me helping her bend time. I told her I could do nothing without you.”
His arms tightened around me. “Phoenix always said that was a mistake. That I told her my weakness. He even thought she was purposely botching the spells to keep us around. She had...has abandonment issues.”
“Is that why she took his ashes?”
“I’m sure. That last spell brought me to human form, which meant it would be lifetimes before I could see her again and even if I did, there was no promise I would remember who she was.”
“What happened to your ashes, then? Does someone have a hold on you now?” A sudden panic caused thunder to explode around us.
“There were no ashes with my last death. My entire being vanished into thin air. Skylynn and Phoenix ensured that.”
“You have no doubt?” I questioned.
“I wouldn’t have been reborn if not. I would have been a slave with the mirrored souls,” he assured me.
“Which brings up one of my other questions: how many paranormal beings are we against right now?”
“No more than before. We are just aware of them.”
“You are aware of them,” my thoughts muttered
.
“Right. Let’s see. Phoenixes are not against us and are usually solitary. I doubt we will come across many. Witnesses, we talked about them before. They are not against us. They are basically archangels who defend souls of light. They will offer insight when the moment comes that was stated...Escorts…some of those are on the dark side. They feed off the essence of emotions.”
His thoughts hesitated as his eyes cascaded over me. I knew he wanted explain more about Escorts, but he held back, and that was fine. I wasn’t entirely sure they were all bad, and I didn’t want him to convince me differently.
“Mirrored souls,” he began again. “I’m almost positive that girl that took Drake and me is one of those. She is a prisoner to her master and will do his bidding faithfully. Then there is a shadowed soul...what Skylynn is. They died before their time, usually because of misuse of magic. They cannot come back until time and circumstance are aligned again. They can appear in dreams or images. Most people see them as omens. The argument on whether they are good or bad omens rages on. Honestly, it depends on the intent of the soul, why they want to come back.”
I moved my head from side to side. “How complicated can this be?”
A faint grin was all he bothered to answer me with.
“Why are you not wanting to cross paths?”
“So far, every planet we have faced has managed to twist what we thought it should represent. Jupiter is luck and expansion, but I’m trying to outsmart this curse. I know now that many of us were fighting to get what we wanted, that spells, intent, were cast with a blind eye. The times we used for the spells we cast were chosen because of the alignment of the Earth, the squares and conjunctions of the planets. We were not the only ones that would have used that power. If I asked Draven and the others to help us, for all I know, I’m taking them away from something they either have to undo or do for the first time. If I try to help Dane or my sister, I could hurt them by ignoring what I have to undo. The only safe way is to follow our path. When they meet, I’ll know to help them.”
“Okay, I get that fates run side by side and that this is a thin line and you are treading carefully, but how close? Like, use this analogy: all of us, everyone involved in this, on our own decided to go out to dinner. Is it enough that by chance we all end up at the same restaurant? Like, we see our friends and say, ‘Hey, come sit with us,’ or do we have to wait for the hostess to accidentally sit us side by side?”
His odd grin made my heart flutter, and his fingertips began to trace my eyes.
“I think the same restaurant would do, but let me add to your analogy. There is a strip of restaurants all side by side, and in reality we are only feet away, but in different buildings.”
I looked away from him and adjusted my lean against him. “Very thin line.”
“I understand what Nana was saying to me about how trying too hard to ignore others is not going to help anything. But, no matter what planet we were facing, I would have tried to do this spell once more before bringing anyone else into it. I’m just going with my gut feeling.”
I sat forward and looked over my shoulder at him. “I watched that battlefield last night. I saw all of you, Drake and me, Clarissa and Dane. I didn’t see a heavy metal band…maybe you’re right.”
I felt the laughter in his soul, noticing that his eyes were becoming more and more normal by the moment. It was as if the laughter was helping him. At that moment, I made myself promise that I would make him laugh at least once every day.
“I promise to make you laugh, too,” he thought.
“Your insights are stronger than you think. That was a lingering thought.”
“I’m locked inside my mind with you. That makes them strong. Everything about you makes me stronger.”
The heat in my soul began to rise as I tried to understand if that was an open invitation.
“The veil is becoming clearer to you,” he stated.
“You see it, too?” I questioned.
His eyes told me yes. “The echo...that is the dead. They live on a different time frequency from us. Basically, our intent, thoughts lead our human lives. They see the echo of what is to come.”
“And they saw Draven play,” I pointed out.
“I have no idea what they saw, and that echo could be anything, even someone trying to hurt us.”
“I doubt his mother would have heard it wrong.”
“True. We have a plan for this now...echo or not.”
I felt useless against this trial—almost broken.
“Why do you think my images vanished? Do you really think I’m dark? I’m some kind of a puzzle piece that can get us out of this reality if we are backed against the wall?”
He reached to gently caress my cheek. “I don’t think they vanished. I just think you have been too distracted to see them. They’ll come back...and I’ve never really cared for labels like ‘darkness’ and ‘light.’ Souls find their mate, no matter what shade their energy is.”
“If we’ve disrupted a balance, I want to put it back.”
“So do I,” he assured me, wrapping his arms around me.
“What about home, Landen? Donalt...those damned people...are you sure that by being here we are still helping, not moving on to a new problem?”
“I need to drain the power going there. The night that you saw last night gave that dimension an immense amount of power, and the souls here are still grieving for the souls that are still feeding that dimension. It’s one of many portholes that I want to close; it will help. I think Donalt has been purposely distracting us from figuring that out with our little love triangle. He sent me to that Realm to twist my energy into Drake’s, which he succeeded in doing. But the time there exposed my past lives to me, making the opening of my eyes so much easier to comprehend. He couldn’t have stopped Phoenix or Skylynn from finding us because every bad thing we endure because of him causes a door to undo that hardship to appear...we have crossed through that door.”
“What is he now? A ghost, an Escort, or a phoenix?”
“According to Phoenix, a bit of all of them, which is not insane to believe. He is a powerful master Escort. He wants Drake’s body, your power, my power. If he can’t get that, he will find another way.”
“Are you worried about this Xavier guy?”
“I would be a fool not to be. Donalt has many enemies, ones I tried to find favor with at times – which was foolish.”
“You made a deal with him on that night,” I thought, letting him know I knew more about that night than he’d told me.
“Not really. He told me he found you, made me believe he was going to help us stop all of this then...when we got there.” His eyes fell deep into mine, causing my soul to tremble with anticipation. “I felt you. You were so intoxicating. Passion singed the air with your presence. I could barely focus because I was so consumed with you. As Madison’s image approached, your essence didn’t become stronger. It became weaker. I turned in time to see you fall to the ground.”
I knew he was trying to explain why he was fooled, but it only made me feel guilty.
He turned my head so I would have to look into his eyes. “You mistook what I said. That passion was for life. It was undoing all that was wrong, for sacrificing yourself to save innocents. It was the passion that pulled me to you the first time our souls met. I was feet away from you. I could have saved you. I was the fool, not you.”
“Saved me,” I repeated. “Thrown me into a fire to become like you. I saw myself last night. I would have killed anyone that would have stopped me from chasing after Drake. He consumed me then, and we destroyed each other, just like Phoenix said darkness and darkness do.”
A painful disdain filled his eyes. “You’re right. That is why I finally chose to die. Why I decided to trust fate. Why I’m holding you now. Let’s trust fate right now and slowly undo the damage I’ve done.”
“I don’t trust fate. I make it. I’ll go along with this ‘don’t path cross’ thing for as long as I c
an, but if my gut argues with yours, I will step in and save Dane or whoever else.”
“That is my plan, too. Promise.”
“You mean that? I have a say in all of this, too?”
He laid me down next to him across the tender blades of lush green grass. “You are me. I am you. You have more than a say. What you feel, I feel and together we are unstoppable.”
His hand, which was resting on my stomach, slowly eased into my soul, and a gasp of ecstasy escaped my lips, causing the atmosphere to become alive with static electricity. As he eased his soul into mine, the air around us vibrated, the sun beamed with my excitement, and the rain fell with the ache of wanting to be even closer. When we became one, the thunder vibrated the ground, and lightning cascaded around us as the sensation of power, unconditional love, and passion absorbed us.
Chapter Eleven
By the time we’d pulled ourselves out of that empowering dream, nightfall had come. Not wanting to come out of the safe haven of this room, we made our way to the bathroom attached to it and lingered in the oversized claw-foot tub until the hot water ran cold and our skin began to shrivel. After getting dressed and straightening the room up back to the way we found it, we answered a knock on the door. No one was there, but a tray of food was on the bottom step. I was sure Nana had placed it there.
After dinner I gathered everything on the tray to take it down to the kitchen and thank her for taking care of us, but Landen took it from my arms just as a plate began to tumble to the ground. At first I thought he caught it in mid-air somehow, but then I realized I was suspending it. Not with my energy, but with a gentle wind.
“Wow,” I muttered, picking it up from the current, noticing that the wind vanished the second I didn’t need it anymore.
“Looks like you are using that power like a hand now,” he said in a teasing manner.
In the bath, he’d made me make mini-waves and whirlpools with a thought. It was meant to be a lesson, but we spent more time laughing at the odd shapes I could create with the water. I’d managed to use the water as a canvas, but for the first time in a long time I didn’t paint anything that was dark or full of emotion. Instead, I sculpted anything I could think of to make him smile.