“Whose is this?” I ask, but as I turn another page, I know. Kelia stares back at me. Unlike me, Naito can actually draw. He’s made his fae lover look delicate. Her hair is long and loose, shaded in with the edge of a pencil, and her eyes are soft and mesmerizing. Somehow, he’s managed to capture her otherness on the page.
I close the sketchbook and hand it back to Lorn. “I don’t feel right using this.”
“You can rip out the pages you use,” he says. “After that, I want you to return it to Naito.”
“You can return it to him.”
He still doesn’t take it. “I did mention I’ve been banned from the palace, didn’t I?”
“Lorn…” I fade off, fingering the sketchbook’s worn cover. Naito might appreciate having it back. It’s actually a pretty sweet gesture.
“He won’t mind,” Lorn says, standing. He pulls at his cuffs to straighten the barely there wrinkles in his sleeves, then he reaches into his pocket and hands me an anchor-stone. It’s smooth and the color of snow-white quartz.
“Where will this take us?” I ask. The stone is warm, a sign that it’s been imprinted with a location.
“Worried I’ll abandon you in the Realm, miles away from a gate?”
“Pretty much. Yes.” I’m not up for another six-hour walk through a forest, and tomorrow is Friday. I have to have my driver’s license and Social Security card turned in to Jenkins by then.
“Fortunately for you, the city we’re traveling to does have a gate.” He dips his hand into the stream. The water pours between his fingers before it turns into a strip of white light. He holds out his other hand to me.
“Where, Lorn?” I’m not stepping into the In-Between until I know.
“Nashville,” he relents.
“Tennessee?”
He tilts his head to the side. “Ten of what?”
“Never mind,” I mutter. There’s a gate in Nashville, so I’ll assume that’s where we’re going.
After I take Lorn’s hand, he adds, “My apologies in advance.”
I stiffen, but he pulls me into the fissure before I have a chance to back out. The cold air hits me, freezing my breath in my lungs. That’s not unusual, but the sharp pain in my chest is, and it doesn’t disappear when I stumble out of the light, hitting the ground hard.
Lorn’s on his knees beside me. Chaos lusters flash erratically over his clenched jaw. He’s having just as difficult a time trying to breathe as I am, and I realize that this is the real reason he didn’t take Sosch to the Realm. It’s difficult for him, working any magic. If he fissured back and forth between his world and mine, he might not have had enough energy left to take me through the In-Between.
If I’d known just how weak he was, I might not have agreed to come. Most of the time, fissuring doesn’t affect me like this. As long as my escort isn’t overly tired or hurt, their magic shields them from the drain of passing through the In-Between. Lorn’s magic hasn’t shielded either of us.
I squeeze my eyes shut, cough, then force myself to rise to my feet. I’m light-headed, and I notice the human standing a few paces in front of me only after the fuzzy black spots clear from my vision.
“Did you…were you…” He looks down at my knee. My bleeding knee. My jeans are ripped. “Are you okay?”
The man is holding a set of car keys in one hand, a brown paper bag that looks like it’s holding a bottle of alcohol in the other. He’s probably in his late thirties, a family man, and, if his black slacks and tucked-in white cotton shirt are any indication, he’s some kind of businessman.
And he obviously saw me appear out of nowhere.
“I’m good,” I say as lightheartedly as possible with a queasy stomach. “I just need to watch where I’m going. Tripped over my own feet.”
I start walking before he can say anything else. I’m not about to give him a chance to ask what he wants to. If he’s like the handful of other humans who have seen me appear out of nowhere over the years, he’ll doubt what he saw. He’s probably shaking his head now, thinking he needs some sleep or to check his vision or something.
“You could have warned me,” I hiss at Lorn, when he falls into step beside me. We’re on the back side of what appears to be a strip mall. Looking around, I think that one human might have been the only person who saw me. Most likely, the cars on the road to our left were driving too quickly to notice the girl stumbling into the parking lot.
“I believe I did warn you, my dear,” Lorn says. I think he’s trying to keep his tone light, but he doesn’t succeed.
“You could have been more specific.” I’m still feeling unbalanced, but at least the queasiness is fading, and my chest doesn’t feel quite so tight. “And was this your idea of a safe place to fissure?”
“It’s the only location I have memorized aside from the store,” he says. Then he lengthens his stride. “Now, hurry, please. We might have already missed our opportunity today, thanks to your delays.”
A human woman is walking toward us, so I stifle my response and follow as Lorn leads the way around the row of connected stores. Once we’re on the front side of the strip mall, he points to the corner retail space. The sign above the door is simple: it’s plain white with the words A Taste of Ether written in a sophisticated cursive script. Sunlight reflects off the store’s glass windows, making it difficult to see inside. The only thing I can make out for sure is a few wooden crates in the windows.
“Is this a wine store?” I ask, thinking there might be an arrangement of bottles sitting on top of those crates.
Lorn nods. “A human named Sara works here. Don’t let her know what you are. She’ll be absolutely furious.”
“She knows about the fae?” I ask, surprised.
“She has the Sight.”
“Really?” I stare at the storefront again, trying to see inside. I know the five other humans who are working with the rebels. None of them is named Sara. Could this be one of Atroth’s humans? I only knew a few of them. She could be working for the remnants now or—
“Don’t get any ideas,” Lorn says, eyeing me. “This is another reason I’m not going through Lena. Sara isn’t some stray waiting around to be recruited. She’s mine.”
There’s a warning in his voice. It’s completely unnecessary. If she’s not helping the remnants, I’m not about to pull her into the war. I wish I hadn’t been pulled into it. I want nothing to do with the death and the violence, but I’ve been involved too long to just walk away. I care about too many people now, and I have too many mistakes to account for.
“A Sighted human is working in a wine store?” I ask Lorn. King Atroth wouldn’t have ever allowed this; he’d see it as a waste of her talent.
“Profit, my dear,” he responds, his tone lightening. “Nobles love their luxuries, and your world produces a delicious grape. I’ve tried transporting the vines to my farms, but our soil doesn’t have the depth and personality that yours does.”
I slant him a glance. “You have farms?”
“Vast areas of fertile land suitable for the raising of crops and livestock? Yes. I have several.”
I try picturing Lorn as a farmer and fail.
“What do you grow?” I ask.
“Cows.”
“Cows?”
“All quite illegal, in fact.”
“You have illegal cows?”
“I do,” he says with a pleased smile. “And the Realm hasn’t imploded yet.”
Obviously, Lorn isn’t concerned with damaging the Realm’s magic. It’s mostly the high nobles and extremely conservative fae who want to keep human goods and culture out of their world. King Atroth appeased them, ordering his people to arrest merchants who were caught with human goods or with anchor-stones that were imprinted with Earth-based locations. The only exception, of course, was for his own swordsmen who had to escort Sighted humans through the In-Between. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Lorn didn’t follow the rules.