“I will be accompanying you,” said Lalura as she stood from her rocking chair and slowly made her way to Danny’s side.
Everyone froze. All eyes fell upon the old witch.
Danny knew that Lily had said nothing about partners or companions entering the Duat with her. In fact, now that she had spoken the words that turned the key, she knew good and well that no one was supposed to enter but her.
And yet….
Dannai met her adoptive mother’s gaze and a silent understanding passed between them. And she would have just paid good money in that moment to see a god – any god at all – try to tell Lalura Chantelle that she couldn’t come.
Chapter Fifteen
They told the tales sometimes at gatherings. The Tuath Stories remembered the fates of the Wishers well.
Thousands of years ago, the sovereigns of the fae lands issued a decree: The Wishers would die.
The Wish fae had managed to hide their powers for eons. But all secrets were eventually told, and it was so for this one as well. When the sovereigns were made aware of the abilities of the Wishers, they grew frightened.
Powerful magics were called forth, and in an act never before or since accomplished, both light and dark, both Seelie and Unseelie gathered together in their courts and combined their powers.
The Wishers were annihilated.
However... speculation caused rumors, which spread in whispers and eventually became legends that told how the strongest and most fortunate few managed to escape and hide themselves amongst humans in the mortal realm.
But thousands of years passed with no sign of these legendary Wishers.
In time, the sovereigns who had issued their massacre were overthrown. Under new rule, the truth of this terrible tragedy was well taught and lamented. The fae kingdoms had destroyed something precious.
The Wishers were declared extinct. And in its rareness, in its extinctness, the lost, most powerful class of the fae, in fact became sacred.
Selene knew this now. She knew all of this and more. With the muttering of a few trigger words, she had opened up the past and let the truth come pouring out into the canals of her mind. It was as if she had always known the story of the Wishers. The knowledge was there, embedded in her memory circuits like DNA.
Because she was a Wisher.
And so was her sister.
None of this was a dream. She wasn’t going crazy. She was perfectly sane after all, and this was all very real.
Everything made sense now. The way she had never felt that she was fully a part of the world around her, the way she felt disgusted with humanity even though she wore the same skin they did, and the helplessness she so often felt, not a kind of empathy alone and not a kind of longing to change it exactly, but almost a kind of guilt because she witnessed this pain and knew, deep down, that there was something she should be able to do about it, but she couldn’t recall what.
Even everything that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours made sense.
She stood up, feeling numb and yet capable of anything. “Did I do that?” she asked, gesturing uncertainly to the men who had been frozen mid-stride on their way across the dirt field that led to the gas chambers. “I mean, can I… stop time?”
“No, not exactly,” said Avery, who was looking at her as if she were a perfect four hundred karat diamond he’d just found in his refrigerator. He looked both amazed and uncertain. He even sort of looked like he thought she might break or something.
He shook his head, ran a hand through his thick dark blonde hair, and Selene noticed that he’d visibly paled. He muttered something very, very softly, something she couldn’t quite understand, as he closed his eyes. He appeared to gather himself, and then opened them again to settle his heavy gaze upon her. “No, you can’t stop time,” he finally said. “I’m afraid this is what happens during a Wisher’s awakening. Your transformation.” Again, he shook his head, and added in a bewildered breath, “If I recall the stories correctly, anyway. To be honest, you….” He gave a small, astonished laugh. “You are the first of your kind to be discovered in quite some time.”
He looked vaguely thunderstruck.
“I know,” said Selene softly. “Thousands upon thousands of years.”
“Yes, but you must understand. You’ve been thought extinct since before I was even born,” he said. “And I’m not young.”
She narrowed her gaze at him, at once wondering just how old he was going to profess to be.
But then he just let out a big breath of air and gestured off-handedly to the frozen world around them. “This will be temporary. It’s what the realms do in order to allow you to come to terms with what you are, and it works this way for all Changelings during their transformations back into fae. I’m afraid you won’t be able to do it again. Time happens to be one of the few phenomena a Wisher can’t affect. The only one who can control it is the Time King.” He paused, frowned, and added, “Or he could have at one point, anyway.”
“The Time King?”
Avery blinked and shook his head. “It’s a long story, Selene. You have a load to learn, I’m afraid. But this isn’t the place for those lessons.” He glanced side-long at the approaching men. “Deal with this situation and let’s get out of here.”
It was all the prompting she needed. It was like she’d just been waiting for permission to do what she now knew she was capable of doing.
“I wish the animals in this horrible place were out of here and in homes where owners will care for them and love them.”
The metal doors behind them flew open, and the chambers inside yawned vacant. In the massive structure beyond, where the dogs and cats had been housed in cage upon cage, the air rippled and warped, and Selene knew that the thin metal bars that once pressed into the delicate undersides of scores of paws were now free from their weight. The cages were as empty as the chambers.
Selene smiled to herself. Her power surged. “And I wish that they,” she said, nodding at the two men who were just now becoming unfrozen, “could know exactly what it felt like to not be able to breathe. To be sick with oxygen deprivation, to be desperately clawing for life, to be terrified and alone and betrayed.” She turned and gestured to the metal chambers behind her. “In there.”
The men disappeared from where they’d been standing, and two of the metal doors behind Selene and Avery slammed shut once more. A hissing sound began to fill the shed. Selene experienced a moment of doubt. She added, “I wish for them to think they’re dying. And then, just when they give up hope, for the doors to open and let them out.”
She gazed at the doors for a full two seconds before Avery said, “Fair enough,” and was snapping his fingers.
The pound and its various cruelties disappeared from sight.
The air warped, the colors melted in their mesmerizing manner, and when they re-solidified, it was into the form of an office. The room was clean and rather sterile, painted in muted beiges, with crown molding of bright white along the ceiling. A nondescript painting decorated one long wall, beneath which rested several equally nondescript chairs in a clean line.
A Ficus rested beside the window, soaking up the afternoon light allowed in by the drawn Venetian blinds. An air conditioner almost silently cooled the room, which was empty but for three people.
There was a woman who sat in one of the chairs beneath the painting and a little boy who must have been her son sitting in the chair beside her. At the other end of the room was a polished wood desk that looked as if it had cost a small fortune, and behind this desk sat a second woman who was so absorbed in what she was doing on the computer before her, she had yet to look up at Selene and Avery, despite their abnormal arrival.
“A psychiatrist’s office?” Avery asked, no doubt having figured it out by the generic décor, but wondering what they were doing there. After all, it wasn’t he who had decided where they would go when he snapped his fingers. It had been Selene. She seemed to be in charge of their destinations on th
is journey.
“Yes,” she said softly. “A shrink. I have unresolved issues. This is the office of Dr. Elaine Sandoval. This is the woman the hospital sent me to after my first panic attack.”
“Mom?” the boy spoke softly. Shakily.
Selene directed her attention to him. He looked to be around ten to twelve years of age, small for his years, and very, very pale. He sat utterly still, his hands folded tightly in his lap. He was so skinny that his skin stretched taut over his bones.
He was staring back at her as if she had just come through a portal or something.
And now so was his mother.
“I wish that you would not know we are here.”
At that, the mother and her son did absolutely nothing – except continue to stare at them with wide, terrified eyes.
Avery moved closer and bent to whisper in her ear. “I’m afraid that’s another phenomenon you can’t control,” he told her. “At least not right now. Human awareness of you is off limits. Once they’ve seen you, they’ve seen you. Messing with their memories would mean messing with –”
“I know, I know,” Selene interrupted. “It would mean messing with time, and only the Time King can do that. Whatever that means.”
Avery chuckled then said, “Not quite. I do have witch friends who can erase memories, and know of a few vampires who can do the same. But you’re inexperienced and you might end up erasing memories they desperately need. Consider the damage done. If you want people to ignore you, you’ll have to turn invisible and inaudible. That, you can do.”
“And what about them? They’ve already seen us.”
“You can always render them unconscious and maybe they’ll think it was a dream.”
The mother and her son continued to stare, silently soaking up Avery and Selene’s admittedly bizarre exchange.
“I wish you would fall deeply asleep and not wake up until we are gone,” Selene finally said.
At once, both mortals rested their heads against the chair backs and closed their eyes. Their breathing slowed, becoming deeper and more peaceful.
“Better put her out too.” Avery nodded toward the receptionist. Who still hadn’t noticed them.
Selene had the feeling that if he wanted to, Avery could have handled all of this himself. She had been able to feel something pouring off him from the very beginning, and she had no other word to describe it but power. Immense, gravitational power. Avery was a goddamned planet. But for some reason, he was letting her flex her developing muscle.
“You too,” she said simply, nodding at the receptionist. No “I wish” was needed this time. Her magic knew what her heart desired, spoken or not. In response, the receptionist’s head did a small Grover-like circle, and the woman fell face-first onto her keyboard. The computer beeped irately and then went silent.
“Now to get down to business.” Selene turned away from the sleepers and faced the door that she had gazed at with fear and loathing several years ago. A cold kind of familiar fear opened up in her stomach, and an equally familiar queasiness rode up her spine to the base of her skull.
“What did she do to you?”
Avery had again come up beside her, so close that she could feel the heat of his body.
She found herself turning to face him, and it might have been a mistake. She was caught in that gravitational pull, wanting to look away, but unable to. He held her there without touching her, his height sheltering her, his warmth chasing away the cold.
I wish I could look away.
She turned from him at last, and in doing so, she learned a little more about the scope of her incredible powers. And about his.
“Very good,” he commended, his deep voice laced with both admiration and thwarted dominance. “Defiant and challenging. But good.”
It was a few minutes before she could respond to his initial question. She hadn’t realized, not really, how much this time in her life had really rattled her.
For that very moment, the nearness of this breathtakingly handsome man was indescribably welcome. In all of the strangeness and impossibilities, he’d remained an unexplained constant. Always beside her. Like Dante’s guide through Hell.
Selene had to admit that the prospect of being his queen for all eternity wasn’t entirely unpalatable.
“Dr. Sandoval prescribed me anti-depressants for anxiety,” she told him softly. “It was an enormous mistake. SSRI’s block the absorption of serotonin, which is already too elevated in most people with panic disorder. As a result, I had further panic attacks, grew very ill, and nearly took my own life.”
Avery was silent beside her.
“Worst of all was that I discovered she had done this to countless others before me, many of them having to suffer through the same results. Two of them actually killed themselves….” Anger spiked through her, but she swallowed it and went on. “She was aware of the warnings regarding panic and SSRI’s. But in order to remain in good standing with the ADA, she refrained from prescribing anti-anxiety medicines that calm rather than cause mania, and kept coming back to the drugs that kill.”
More silence. Then, finally – like a warm and sure – Avery’s hand was at her back. It was a gentle touch. Supportive.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
Selene’s jaw twitched. She could see Dr. Sandoval on the other side of that door, sitting there behind her massive desk with her pen behind her ear and her short-cropped hair so perfectly coiffed. She could smell the perfume and see the polished acrylic nails, and she could feel the disdain in Sandoval’s expression. Disdain for everything that wasn’t easy or by the book or controllable.
“What I’m going to do,” she said softly but with some amount of seething vehemence, “is give her a taste of her own medicine.”
Chapter Sixteen
Thanatos looked over from under the car he’d been working on. The air was wavering a few feet away, preparing to open in order to emit another lost and damaged soul.
Thane, as his friends called him for short, had filled the role of Phantom King since existence and its death had begun. His “purgatory” realm of desert land stretched to the far reaches of tomorrow and yesterday, and encompassed the souls and spirits of those who had suffered death unnaturally.
Mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers filled the spaces of his far reaches, wafting this way or that, sometimes there, usually not. Vehicles fresh from accidents, animals found on the sides of roads, forests laid bare and smoking at the hand of disease and fire; these beings and things dotted the landscape, forming the map that was the space between now and then, where spirits could neither find rest nor desire it.
The number of his damned and wayward was expanding exponentially with each passing year… each passing day. There would have been no way for him to keep up if time didn’t move differently in different realms. Fortunately, it did, because due to the nature of life and its ultimate antithesis, death moved on a constant path, reaping with never-ending sweeps as it went.
So, when Thane noticed the wavering portal preparing to open, he pulled himself out from beneath the Shelby he’d been restoring and got to his booted feet in his usual unhurried fashion.
And then the portal solidified, and a form appeared.
Alarm at once shot through Thane. The form was static, uncertain, and un-whole. Portions of light and darkness had inserted themselves between the sections of what should have been limbs and a torso, and the whole of the image was blurred as if through a soup-thick fog. Even so, Thane knew who he was. And that was the source of his alarm.
“Caige….”
The wavering, uncertain figure pulsed and waited, but said nothing. The only part of his being not utterly destroyed by what must have been a catastrophe in death was his eyes – dark, eternal, filled with fear and anger unlike any a living man could experience.
He’d been murdered. And from what Thane could surmise, it had been extraordinarily messy.
Thane was dismayed. There was a ringing
in his ears, hinting at that knowledge a person sometimes had but didn’t want to recognize. It was the knowledge that something terrible, something even bigger than the horror before their eyes, was going down. It was like seeing smoke, because it meant there was fire nearby. Maybe even somewhere near the ones you loved.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, really to no one but himself, as it was clear this particular disrupted spirit could not speak. He’d visited Lucas and Dannai only a few days ago, when they’d gotten together with Siobhan, Diana Chroi and Lily Kane in order to make improvements to the shelter they ran for injured and homeless animals.
Caige had been fine then, if feeling a little impatient; waiting for the enemy to strike was not the werewolf way. And the wolves were dealing with issues of their own these days. They were fighting humans who’d taken it upon themselves to eradicate the planet of wolves by using camouflage, impossible distances, and bullets against animals only interested in the survival of themselves and their tiny offspring.
Lucas Caige had been antsy, yes. But he had sure as hell been alive.
Thane ran a hard hand through his dark hair. He had no idea what to do in that moment. Normal protocol was to welcome the spirit, calm the spirit, and send it to its own piece of purgatory in order to allow it the time and space it needed to come to grips with what had happened to it.
But this…. Well, this was different.
He needed to know what had happened and whether it was fixable. He needed to know who else might have been hurt, what was going down, and – there were a thousand questions all needing answers. And something in Thane’s chest hurt.
He liked Caige. The man had good taste in bikes.
He’d been a friend.
Thane felt a little twisted inside. Parts of him were warring with others. Fear fought with anger, and both were smothered in loss. It wasn’t something the Phantom King was supposed to feel.
He looked up at the indistinct figure where it misted in and out of sight and felt that twist inside him tighten. He needed help, and fast. Fate only knew what would happen if he held up this particular spirit for too long.