So, after a lot of practice, I figured out that nine out of ten times experiencing an intense emotion equaled vision access. Of course, this put a lot of pressure on my newfound ability to experience emotion. And experiencing one on demand didn’t always work out the way that I wanted.
It was with Laylen’s help that I finally started to get the hang of things.
It was my fifth practice day, and Laylen and I were in the room he was staying in. I was sitting on the bed with my legs crossed, facing him as he sat in a chair he’d dragged over beside the bed.
“So what do you want to feel today?” he asked me.
“Happy, sad, scared, worried.”
“Not worried,” I said quickly. “That one is not fun at all, and when we used that feeling last time, I ended up getting stuck in the vision for awhile, like the feeling wasn’t strong enough to last or something.”
“True,” Laylen agreed. “Besides, the scared one, I think, was my favorite.”
I shook my head. “No it wasn’t—you almost gave me a heart attack."
He smiled, this beautiful, pleased smile. “Yeah, but it was fun.”
I shook my head, thinking how in no way, shape, or form was Laylen jumping out from behind a closed door to scare me fun. “Well, let’s not do that one, okay. Let’s do something else—something easier on my heart.”
He gave me an intrigued look. “How about we try happy? We haven’t done that one yet.”
My mouth instantly fell to a frown. “We haven’t done that one yet, because I’m not sure I know how to feel happy yet. Well, I mean sometimes when I look at the stars I think I might feel happy…but I don’t know. I think it might be a different kind of happiness then what you’re talking about. Maybe not, though…I don’t know…”
He didn’t look at me with sympathy like I’d expected him to do, but more with determination. “Well, then I think it’s about time you knew for sure if you have.” Oh, Laylen. Sometimes he made my heart ache—
in a good way. “I wish it was that easy, but…I mean, how—how do we do it—make me happy.”
“You can’t force happiness, it just comes.” He leaned back in his chair, his face twisted in deep thought. “I think you and I both could use a little bit of fun…a little bit of relaxation.”
I stared at him like he was insane. “How are we supposed to relax, when we’ve got so many non-relaxing things to deal with?”
“We take a break,” he said as if it were that uncomplicated.
“You say it as if it’s that simple, but it’s not. I mean, we can’t go anywhere, since we have Stephan, the Death Walkers, Demetrius, and a lot of vampires after us,” I told him, counting out the list on my fingers.
“Besides, do you know how to have fun, because I don’t?”
He got a look on his face that could only be described as a look someone got when they were about to do something they weren’t supposed to. “I think I have an idea.”
“ Thisis what you think will make me have fun and be happy,” I asked Laylen, staring up at the enormous roll ercoaster, the tracks twisting and turning and flipping in loops, like a giant death trap. And the busy sidewalk we were standing on made me even more uneasy. All it would take was for one wrong person to walk by us and we’d be screwed. But Laylen had sworn that we would be fine, because almost everything that was after at us, more than likely wouldn’t come out during the daytime; and that the bundles and bundles of people roaming around would keep us inconspicuous.
However, I wasn’t as optimistic. Being around people had never really been my thing. And when I had a crazy man with a scar, and his yellow-eyed, Chil of Death assailants after me, being around a huge group of people was definitely not my thing.
“This is what you think will make me feel happy?” I asked again just to make sure I understood him right.
“A roll ercoaster?”
Laylen nodded, looking absolutely sure.
So we headed up.
I couldn’t believe I was doing this. Riding a roll ercoaster—never in a million years would I have ever thought I would be doing such a thing; and doing such a thing when we were being hunted.
But Laylen was persistent, guiding me along as we weaved up the aisle, until we reached the ticket area, where he purchased two tickets, and then the cashier sent us on our way to the loading area.
It was there that I realized that my jittery nerves weren’t just because I was worried we might run into someone. I was also jittery about the idea of getting on a roll ercoaster. So by the time I slid onto the leather seat in the far back cart, I was trembling.
“You’ll be fine,” Laylen assured me, pulling down the bars that would—hopefully—hold him in the cart when it whipped upside down.
I pulled down my bars and secured them tightly against my shoulders. I heard someone from the front let out a scream as the cart started to creak forward. I held as still as a statue, my hands gripping the bars tightly. The wheels clanked as the cart rose up the tracks; the brightness of the sun glared in my eyes.
There was a pause, where the cart just hovered at the top, and for a split second I thought we were stuck, but then it lurched forward and dropped. Then we were flying, wind blowing through my hair as the car went up and down, flipping loops and taking sharp turns. In the beginning I was terrified, but by the end I was laughing. And I mean really laughing. I wanted to hold onto this moment with every ounce of strength I had in me and never let it go.
By the time we stepped off of the cart and back onto the ground, I had tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Was I right or what?” Laylen asked, grinning from ear to ear.
I nodded, wiping my tears from my cheeks. It was the first time I’d ever had to wipe tears of happiness away. Who would have thought riding a roll ercoaster would have brought them out.
“So you’re happy?” Laylen asked, looking at me with hopeful eyes.
“Yeah…I think I am.” I felt the back of my neck where the prickle was poking and then I felt myself starting to fall. “I think I…I …” I was slipping away and before I crashed onto the floor, I grabbed a hold of Laylen’s arm. But instead of catching me, I ended up yanking him down with me.
Yanking us down, down, down as the City of Crystal flashed through my mind.
Chapter 19
My face smacked hard against the floor. And I mean hard.
I pushed myself up to my feet, rubbing my sure-to-have-a-goose-bump forehead. My jaw just about hit the floor when I noticed that my feet were planted firmly on top of a translucent crystal floor, a midnight river flowing beneath it, bits and pieces of gold twinkling in the water like stars. Dark red crystals hung from the glittery charcoal ceiling above, and to the side of me, rubies waved across the snow-white crystal walls.
The City of Crystal.
I can’t believe I’d pulled it off. I felt like such a bad ass.
I glanced to the side of me, praying that Laylen would be standing there, but he wasn’t.
“Laylen,” I called out quietly, my eyes searching the cave. The sound of a light breeze was the only thing that answered me back. “Laylen?” I started to walk toward a bridge that was paved with broken pieces of porcelain. “Are you here?
A soft bang came from behind me, and I spun around, afraid of what I would find, but my racing heart instantly settled when I saw Laylen.
I let out a breath of relief. “For a second, I thought I didn’t bring you with me.”
“For a second, I thought I died.” He glanced around at the cave made of glass and crystal. “This place is…interesting.”
“Yeah, it is” I agreed. “Wait…You haven’t been here before?”
He shook his head, his fingers tracing the rubies curving along the crystal wall. “Not too many people have.”
People? Neither of us were really considered people, were we? In fact, everyone I knew had a mark of some sort. “So, which way do you think will take us to Alex?” I asked him.