Her eyes popped open and she twisted her torso to look around, not daring to move her feet.
A long step away from her was a heart’s hope plant, so tiny it could barely support the single bloom.
Her breath caught. Her heart rapped against her chest. And she remembered what she had done in the meadow, what she had said.
Maybe, she thought. Maybe.
She glanced around. The dark shapes were getting closer. Couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t think about anything but what Ephemera could do.
Shifting until she stood a shoulder-width from the heart’s hope, Caitlin bent at the waist and held out the hoe handle with both hands. She rested the broken end on the sand; then, using herself as the center point, she drew a circle in the sand.
“This is my place,” Caitlin said as she drew the circle. “Within the bounds of this circle is a place of Light and hope. My heart dwells within the bounds of this circle, and creatures of the Dark are not welcome here. You cannot touch this ground. You cannot touch me.”
As she closed the circle and began tracing it again on the sand, she felt the world beneath her feet become soft, fluid.
Come on, Caitlin Marie, think about what you need here while you have the chance to get it.
Water. Food. A place that wasn’t this place.
As she finished the second tracing of the circle and began the third, she saw the creatures running toward her, and her focus almost snapped. But she held to the thought that she was safe inside the circle. She had to believe that. Had to.
The world beneath her feet was no longer soft. Whatever Ephemera could do had been done.
Caitlin bit her lower lip to hold back a cry of despair. No food, no water. Nothing but the tiny heart’s hope within a circle sketched in the sand.
She widened her stance. Shifted her hands on the hoe handle for a better grip.
Then she watched as the ant creatures reached the circle and disappeared, reappearing on the other side of the circle moments later. They didn’t go far before they began milling around, searching for something.
Caitlin slowly lowered her arms, letting one end of the hoe rest on the sand.
The creatures couldn’t see her, couldn’t sense her. Couldn’t find her. She was close enough to that awful place to see it—and them—but she was no longer there.
She sank to her knees and watched the ant creatures.
Slowly, she noticed the difference in the sand—and the difference in the air, which smelled of fish and seawater. Within her circle, the sand was no longer rust-colored. Scooping up a handful, she let it sift through her fingers until all that was left was a small shell like the ones she used to bring home when Michael took her for a walk on the beach.
She had done this much. Maybe after she rested a bit, she could try to shift herself from this little patch of Raven’s Hill beach to her garden.
She waited until they were gone, having accepted that their prey had somehow escaped. Then she stretched out beside the heart’s hope and gently brushed a fingertip over the bloom.
She didn’t have food or water, and she would be in desperate need of both very soon. But she was safe from the creatures, and even though she didn’t know how to take the next step, she had gotten back to the part of the world she knew. For now, that was enough.
It found the remains of the young male—one of the three boys whose hearts had embraced Its whispers to harm the Light that lived in the cottage. But It couldn’t find the Landscaper. She was here but not here. It could feel the resonance of the current of Light that had formed in the bonelovers’ landscape because of her presence, but It couldn’t find her.
A spot in the sand. Nothing there—and yet something there. This had the same there/not there feel as the garden hidden on the hill behind the cottage.
She was strong, but she had seemed unskilled, like the young ones at the Landscapers’ School, who had been so easy to kill. But she had known how to escape from one of Its landscapes. No one had escaped from Its landscapes before.
At least, not until that incubus had managed to elude Its attempt to bring him into the bonelovers’ landscape. The incubus lived in the Den, one of the True Enemy’s landscapes.
Then the male who had fought It at the village where the Landscaper lived. He had broken free by resonating with the True Enemy’s heart.
And this young female was somehow connected with the True Enemy because of the Place of Light they had taken away from It.
These human creatures were all connected to her, to Belladonna…the True Enemy. It couldn’t reach her landscapes. Even when It felt the male crossing over and tried to hold on to him, It had been pulled away to one of Its own landscapes. If the Landscaper found a way into one of Belladonna’s landscapes, It wouldn’t be able to reach her, either.
But there were Dark hearts in every landscape, and It could always reach them.
And one of them would be able to find Belladonna’s companions—and destroy them.
“What, exactly, am I looking for?” Sebastian asked for the third time.
Lee was ready to pound his cousin’s head against a wall. “I told you. I don’t know exactly. Someone who doesn’t belong. Someone…different.”
Sebastian looked down the Den’s main street, where two men and a succubus were staggering toward a brothel that provided slightly more privacy than having sex in the alley. He looked in the other direction, where three bull demons stomped out of a tavern, bellowing.
“Guess someone had a good night playing cards,” Lee said.
“Omelets all around,” Sebastian muttered, watching as three horned, shaggy heads turned in the direction of Philo’s place, where Lynnea waited tables and cooked a few “special” dishes.
“I hear Lynnea’s got the bull demons clearing out some of the brush around your place and cutting another path so folks aren’t walking through your back yard when they want to get from the Den to Aurora.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said, stepping aside to let the bull demons stomp over to their favorite table and then wait politely for Lynnea to notice them. “She made a cake—with a buttercream frosting, mind you—and brought it to Philo’s during one of her work shifts. Gave each of the bull demons a piece of cake and offered to make each one a cake of his very own in exchange for clearing brush and cutting the new path. The negotiations got…noisy.”
Lee grinned. “I heard you almost had to lock up your own wife.”
“You hear too much. Anyway, they each get a cake for clearing the brush, and another cake for cutting the new path through the woods so we can maintain some privacy at home.”
“Did you get a taste of the sample cake when all this bartering was going on?”
Sebastian just sighed.
Lee laughed.
“So,” Sebastian said, watching Lynnea and the bull demons. “Tell me again about noticing someone in the Den who’s different?” When Lee didn’t answer, he turned and looked at his cousin. “Lee? Lee!”
“I have to go. Someone needs…” So strong. The need was so strong. “I have to go.”
He started to step back, to step away. Before he’d completed that first step, Sebastian grabbed his jacket and hauled him back so close that the only things separating them were Sebastian’s fists.
“Where are you going?” Sebastian demanded.
“I don’t know. It’s not a place. I don’t get a sense of place.”
“You’re the only Bridge Nadia and Glorianna can count on. Maybe the only one living in their landscapes. If something happens to you…”
“I know.” Lee tried to free himself, but even if he decked Sebastian, Lynnea was heading toward them—and the bull demons were on their feet, waiting to see what the humans were going to do—and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teaser hustling toward them. He wasn’t going anywhere until Sebastian let him go. Unless he took Sebastian with him. All it would take was a stumble and a step back, but…