“Faelan, I’m not supposed to travel the passageways.”
“Now.” I slide out, head to the other side of the car, and open the door. I give Aelia a look as I gather the demi into my arms. “Seriously. I’m not playing around. Your father can not be made aware of this, and you know it.”
She looks back at me with steel in her eyes, but her blue misty energy seeps out of her chest, revealing her fear again. “Fine.” She gets out and follows me across the lawn, toward the crypt. “But why do we need to go to Scotland to get help? There’s gotta be a healer in Reseda or Granada Hills or something. They can help us put her in hibernation.”
“A healer isn’t what we need, and hibernation will be a wash for someone this far gone. We need a person who deals in spirits and souls.” I nod for her to walk in front of me. “So can we just get there? We’re running out of time.”
Her heel gets stuck in the grass, and she stumbles, then growls, pulling her shoes off and carrying them.
I pause in front of the crypt gate; the iron looks rusted clean through, the vines growing up the face the only thing holding it together. It’s obviously been unused for a while. I shift the demi in my arms and step over one of several blossoming wormwood and mugwort plants growing around the small building for protection.
I turn to Aelia. “Open the door.”
“Excuse you?” She’s on her bare tiptoes, like she’s trying not to touch the grass any more than necessary.
“It’s simple. You just use an unveiling spell.”
She gapes at me, her shoes held high in one hand.
I add, “You’re the witch.”
“Druid,” she snaps. “Ugh. I can’t believe I ever let you kiss me. You’re such a jerk.”
More like she jumped my lips with hers. But when Aelia wants something, she usually gets it. Until she wanted me.
She keeps mumbling in protest as she walks over and places her hand on the gate. She takes in a deep breath and begins to whisper the unveiling to unlock the door. A slight glow rims her shoulders as she completes the spell, and the iron latches crackle, then pop loose.
She pulls on the gate and it creaks open, a puff of rust billowing out. She coughs and waves a hand in front of her face. “Happy?”
I step past her into the dark space. Every surface is coated in several inches of dust. The grave plates on the wall are covered in a gray blanket that masks the names.
In the doorway, Aelia slips her heels back on before stepping all the way inside. They click on the cement as she looks around. She pauses, and her eyes fall on me again, on the body in my arms. A new wisp of blue mist emerges from her chest.
“Don’t worry,” I say, “traveling the passages is painless. Once you get used to it.”
She smirks. “I’ve traveled before. We had to travel through a passage twice last year during studies.”
“Grand,” I mutter. Traveling from LA to San Francisco with a supervisor for physics studies isn’t the same as passing over a full continent and an ocean. But she’ll figure that out as soon as we go through.
“We need blood,” I say. “Demi blood.” It takes a demi to crack the passageway, and I have no hands to reach for my dagger. I motion again to Aelia, turning so my hilt is showing.
She takes hold of it and starts to pull the blade free from the waist of my jeans. But then she changes her mind and takes Sage’s wrist instead, lifting it to show me. The hand flops in front of my face. The palm is coated in red, sticky now from the blood beginning to dry. “We have loads of demi blood already. Where do we put it?” She waves the hand at me.
“Enough.” This isn’t a joke. If we don’t hurry, it’ll be too late—nothing will bring her back. “Place it on the lintel there.” I nod to the frame of the crypt’s entrance. “But once it touches, we only have a few seconds to slip through before it closes back up.”
She nods. “And you’re doing the steering so we don’t end up in Oxnard or somewhere else horrible?”
“Yes, just be sure you hold on to me.”
She slides her arm through mine, hooking it around my bicep. Then she nudges us closer to the lintel. “Here we go.” She directs Sage’s palm to the rim and squeezes her eyes shut in anticipation as she presses it down.
A crack of green light appears at the center of the doorway, and the whistle of rushing wind pulls at the air. The fissure fractures until it opens fully, like a shattered mirror. And we step through.
EIGHTEEN
FAELAN
Bending space is never as simple as walking from one location to another. It wreaks havoc on a cellular level for a human, and Aelia’s blood is more human than Other. While I manage to land on my feet as the passageway releases me, Sage still in my arms, Aelia collapses on the mossy ground in front of me with a whoosh of breath, gasping and gagging. Then she crawls into a cluster of high ferns and begins to vomit.
I only have to crouch for a moment, holding Sage tight to my chest to keep from dropping her. I breathe through the flip of my gut, the buzzing in my muscles, the fading crackle in my ears, used to the odd sensations after hundreds of years of traveling through passageways.
Aelia, however, continues to throw up.
I steady myself and look around. We’re in a small thicket. There won’t be any humans this deep in the forest, only animals and the occasional wysp—a small creature made of water that lives in the river just north of here and sometimes hides in the fog.
I try to be patient as Aelia whimpers and releases the contents of her stomach for several minutes, but after a while it becomes a little melodramatic, with her mostly just pressing her head into the moss and complaining to herself.
Eventually, I tell her I’ll leave her there alone and move on to my destination if she doesn’t suck it up.
“I hate you right now,” she mutters. She wipes her mouth and shivers, swallowing, but she stands and follows me through the tree line into the deeper wood.
The energy of the trees wraps around me, the rich life soaking through my skin, settling my nerves better than any drug. The white birch and ash creak; robins and siskins titter in the branches above. I spot a merlin eyeing us from a Scots pine, and a red deer pauses in her feeding, turning her head to watch us pass.
The early-morning air is misty on my skin, smelling of moss and approaching rain clouds. I try to focus on the beauty around me. That way maybe I won’t notice the chill of Sage’s forehead against my neck. I won’t think about how fast she’s grown cold. Her death will be final very soon—I can only pray it hasn’t happened already.
I have to stop a couple of times to confirm the scent of my path, making sure I’m still heading the right way. The man I’m seeking isn’t one who likes to be found. I’ve met him only once before, in a time I like to forget, but it’s been a while, and much of the forest has changed since then. The farther in we go, the more I see how aggressively it’s been cut back. I have to wonder if the man’s even still here.