by Jamie Magee
I glanced up at Phoenix, who was standing above us.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Sunshine. I know you’re attached to me and all, but I’m not going there. I’ll watch your bodies and make sure no one gets any ideas.”
Landen’s humming hand ran across my arms as I felt his energy move through me. I closed my eyes and focused on Pelhan’s world.
I was so eager to figure out what was going on that it only took me a split second to find myself there.
“What the hell is going on?” I thought.
“Apparently, Aden is here.”
“Our Aden? Like Draven and Aden? She was talking about him?”
“Apparently.”
“What are you not saying?”
Landen turned to face me, but his eyes were closed as his head was aimed at the sky. “Aden’s life is in danger.”
“What?”
“It has something to do with when Charlie rose into the life of a Witness.”
“You knew all along it was them, and you’re just now telling me?”
“I didn’t know all along. I wasn’t even entirely sure until just now. Her description of him is beyond similar to the way those twins look, but it could also be others. I knew they were safe in Chara, so I didn’t see the threats as I should have.”
“Was. Apparently something happened if they brought him here,” I thought, realizing for the first time that someone from our family had to be here. My insight quickly told me I was wrong, though. I was sure Aden was, but no one from our family.
“Only he and Skylynn will ever know if they are one. We cannot tell him about her, it will twist further if we do.”
“Stop with the twisting threat. We know two people who are meant to be together. We’re not just going to ignore that. You’re from Chara, remember?”
“I do remember. Travelers don’t play matchmaker. We lead. I will lead him out of here, and if Skylynn finds a way to get her message across, so be it.” He glanced forward, then to me. “Front door.”
In that thought, we were there. Pelhan was standing in our way, and he glanced over to Landen.
“I see the fire has returned.”
Landen nodded to confirm.
“You need words for him to see you,” Pelhan stated as he reached for our arms.
A surge of energy soared through me, making me feel more whole, like I was in my body.
“How did you do that?” I asked aloud.
“You let me. You could have always been more whole in this form, but you have chosen to stay hidden. Now you have chosen not to.”
Sure. It was that easy, no doubt. Really?
“How bad is it?” Landen asked him before I could argue that he just needed to tell us what we could do. I’m not a huge fan of taking over people’s bodies. Being able to appear in real form was now my new favorite insight.
“Not as bad as it could be. A wall in his mind was knocked down, leading him to his past. He is finding balance with it.”
“Where?” Landen asked.
Pelhan moved to allow us in. In the open room, Aden was seated on one of the pillows, leaning forward and holding his head in his hands. Austin was pacing behind him. When he saw us, hope soared through him.
As if he had no idea what the word ‘caress’ meant, Landen stormed across the room and pulled Aden up, forcing him to look him in the eye.
“Why are you here?” he asked him.
Aden looked all around us, taking in where we had been before this moment, why we cared that he was here. I made no attempt to hide anything from him, hoping he would see Skylynn, that it would help with the open door in his mind, help all of this path crossing business.
“I had a past with Charlie. Draven will kill me when he figures that out,” Aden finally answered.
“You’re insane,” Landen commented dryly, stepping back and giving Aden room.
“I think I am,” Aden replied in an exact tone.
“He will never kill you. You’re his brother,” Landen offered.
“I’m more than that.”
“Maybe, but he is man enough to see that was in the past,” Landen argued.
“You don’t know Draven.”
Austin’s emotion of despair backed up Aden’s words. I guess Draven was a bit of the jealous type. I agreed with Landen, though. Aden was acting crazy. It would be different if I knew Charlie had any doubt in her soul, but I have never felt that from her. I always envied that about her, too. Not that I have doubt; just that she had no interest in honoring past promises that she could not remember. She went with her heart, her gut, and let the rest fall away from her thoughts. I was planning on taking her lead from this moment on.
Landen glanced at me curiously when he felt that intent, then turned his attention back to Aden.
“No, but I know what it feels like to have your past thrown in your face. Hiding here is not helping anything.”
“I’m not hiding,” Aden all but yelled.
“We’ve got issues,” Austin said as he came to our side. “Aden has been in The Realm just as much as he has meditated on his past. They have Winston, and they have lured Grayson in...Monroe has to be next.”
“Clarissa said the same thing,” I added.
Landen looked down at me, then to Austin. “She should be safe in Chara.”
“I agree,” Austin said, “but those boys are the furthest thing from safe now.”
“They can only help themselves,” Landen said regretfully.
“I’m going to wake them up. I woke you up,” Aden argued.
“You did wake me up, and I’m in your debt. But they are not asleep. They are chasing this. If you chase them, you will be lost, too.”
“I have to try.”
“Fine. Try. Leave this dimension to do it,” Landen ordered.
“Why?” Aden asked, as if that were the most ridiculous idea he’d ever heard.
I could see Landen struggle with his words, half of him wanting to tell him that here he could not be found by anyone, including the one that would more than likely end any onset of a triangle between him and his brother. If Aden found his someone, Draven would never fault him for a past. The only reason it was a threat right now in Aden’s mind was that he was very available and Charlie had always been there. Now, apparently, that ‘always’ has stretched across time. But Landen had to swallow his own advice and keep that information to himself.
“Because hiding from your brother is stupid. Work this out with him,” were the harsh words he chose to use.
“He’ll lose control.”
Landen stepped closer to him, narrowing his eyes. “I saw your mother, your father, your Nana. They said Draven has been coached to remain in control. They also said that you have a concert to play. You can’t do it from here, and you can’t do that if you’re not talking to Draven.”
“You saw my family?” Aden asked, mystified. “The last thing on my mind is playing.”
“Maybe it should be the first,” I mumbled.
Aden’s eyes expanded, taking in what he could see all around me and Landen, what we’d been doing.
“Why there?” he asked, clearly seeing the historic home in New Orleans where we’d been for the last few days.
Landen clenched his jaw. “If I could, I would tell you. Ask them.” He nodded in my direction. “She told your Nana that one way or the other, she was going to bring you to her to say goodbye in a moment that was not rushed. If you plan to hide here or fight in The Realm, then look Willow in the eye and say your goodbyes so she can relay the message.”
Aden clenched his jaw. “I’m not hiding from anyone, and I’m not saying goodbye. Not until I have no choice.”
“Well, you are not going to figure it out standing here,” Landen argued.
Aden glanced at Austin. “Take me back. I’ll go into The Realm from there.”
“Are you ready for this?” Austin asked him.
“No.”
Landen looked at Austin, then to Aden
. “The entire wall was not knocked down. If it was, you would be insane. Take what was meant to hurt you and use it as a weapon, not a curse.”
Aden nodded once.
“Let’s go,” Landen said to me as he held my stare and we sent our souls back to our bodies, which were sitting in the field of New Orleans.
Before I opened my eyes, I heard, “Who do you think you are? Back off, mate!”
“I’m his brother!”
“I’ll be damned! I’ve been his brother longer than you have breathed!” Phoenix scoffed.
My eyes flew open as I felt Landen push me forward. I looked up to see him standing between Phoenix and Brady.
Brady stepped back, almost in disgust. “What happened to you?”
“An awakening,” Landen answered as the compassion Chara had instilled in him absorbed his soul at the sight of Brady.
I stood slowly, evaluating the heavy emotions I could feel coming from Brady.
“What’s wrong?” Landen asked.
“Where do you want me to start? Let’s see...you take off without a word...seconds later, I find out my sister is dead...oh yeah, then my daughter—remember her? Allie? Oddly, at the eleventh hour, no matter how awake she is, she falls asleep, longer naps each eleventh hour...and if that is not odd enough for you, Libby, Preston, and Monroe fall into meditation at that hour, too, longer each time. They’re slipping away. And if you still care, Donalt’s death was announced, the mourning was lifted, and Drake is in a power struggle.”
I knew then why Clarissa had forewarned me about this echo: she must have known the children were being consumed by a deep meditation. They were our clock. My foolish struggle between Landen and Drake had caused us to be blind to this big picture, and because we were blind, the echo could not move past the one planet that could have caused us to expand into a powerful arm that would surely bring victory. We thought we’d won those past trials, but really Donalt had. He was winning now, in his own twisted way.
“I knew about this,” I stated.
They all looked at me at once, in obvious shock.
“Well, not completely. I had a dream with Drake. He told me that in The Realm he saw a clock stop, with Libby and Preston beneath it. Just before I saw Silas in The Realm, he said that everything stops at the eleventh hour, that it’s hitting a shift or something and the echo couldn’t move forward. Clarissa told me not to worry about anything. I was told that it was the past echo, that the only way to know if what I was doing now was wrong was to move through what we’ve planned.”
“Clarissa,” Brady stated, in obvious grief.
“She is not lost to us,” Landen said quietly.
Brady’s eyes rushed over Landen as he pushed his grief down. “What plan do you have?” he asked, glancing between Landen and Phoenix.
Landen started to explain everything we’d been doing, what had happened to him, but I wasn’t listening; I could see Skylynn leaning on a headstone a few feet away and I slowly walked over to her, feeling the stares of Phoenix and Landen on my back. She kept her blank expression as I approached.
“He should be out by now,” I said to her.
“That’s fast. You are good,” was her dry comment.
“He was keeping his distance from his brother.”
“His twin brother,” she said firmly.
I raised my brow. “So you were focusing on the wrong image?”
“Maybe a time or two, but I rarely focus on his image. only his energy.”
I leaned against the headstone next to her, noticing how both Landen and Phoenix were more focused on Skylynn and me than easing Brady’s worries.
“They don’t like you talking to me,” Skylynn said quietly.
“I can’t feel Phoenix, but Landen is just protective.”
“He has every right to be. He fought hard for you.”
“I know,” I said with a sigh.
She glanced to her side at me. “I wouldn’t have taken you away from them. I doubt I could have.”
I smirked. “I know. A woman scorned can say and do insane things.”
“Scorned? You act as if you have been down that road.”
“Maybe I have.”
“In what life? He has always chased you. You were the one that was blind.”
“He was taken into The Realm a few days ago. I was more than crazy at that point.”
“What do you mean, ‘taken’?” she asked as her body tensed and she locked gazes with me.
“A girl named Bianca. Landen thinks she’s a mirror. Aden and his brother, the girls with them, helped me get him out. That’s how I know them.”
“You know Aden?”
“I know Draven the best out of all of them. Aden seems like a good guy, though.”
“You see him like that because he is light and you are darkness.”
“Whatever. He has a balanced mind, loves his brother, and wants to free the damned souls.”
“Have you seen him play?” she asked me.
“I’ve heard him.”
“Music...he led me to music.”
“What’s your story? How do you have this connection with him but you have never met him?”
“I haven’t met him in this reality,” she sighed. “I saw visions of when we did meet. I yearned for him before the visions ever came. I didn’t understand that. I used magic to figure out who we were, what this all meant.” Her eyes gazed forward. “I’m impatient, and I wanted to learn the craft faster than my mother would let me. I was so worried that I would never find him. In the end I put a divide between us. I became what I am. He was blinded to me.”
“I can’t feel you, but I see doubt in your eyes.”
She sighed again. “It’s not doubt, its worry. We all connect, Willow. I want to know why. I want to be past this hell, but it keeps pulling me deeper.”
“You were in the other reality?”
“Briefly.” She smiled shyly. “Aden saved me, he saved Guardian, too. They were friends then. Which makes what Guardian and I did all the more wretched.”
“Landen knew that?”
“I don’t think so. I wasn’t exactly clear on the matter either. But the more time I spent around Guardian, the clearer my visions became. I knew he would lead me to Aden. He was a life line I lost when he died to find you.”
I let out a shuddering breath. Realizing this was more than a web of spells we were fighting. It was a web of hearts and souls.
“Aden is fighting the same war, though. He’s fighting for his brother and his friends. You would have found him without Landen.”
“I didn’t know that until today, and I’m still not clear on how he is.”
“I don’t know either. I know he sees the damned, speaks words to them to make them remember love, but I think he’s been focused on saving his twin lately. They didn’t know he was dark.”
“How did he know how to get into The Realm?”
“Not sure. Something to do with a song. It opened for his brother. They followed.”
“A song,” she repeated.
“Right. Music runs through all of them, even Charlie, his brother’s girl. Her father was a musician, died before she was born.”
Skylynn stood and stared at me with wide eyes. “Charlie Myers?”
“You know her?”
“I know him. Her father.” She reached her hands for her head, gripped her lavender hair, and let out a growl of frustration. She then let her hands fall as determination crossed her face, and she vanished.
Phoenix appeared at my side at that moment. I moved my head from side to side.
“Do you ever walk?”
“Are you calling me lazy? It takes more energy to appear than to walk.”
“Interesting,” I mumbled.
“What did you say to her?”
“Nothing, really. I think she knows the father of a friend of mine. He’s connected to that boy she’s looking for.”
“Name?”
“Charlie.”
Phoe
nix raised one brow, as if in shock.
“Friend of yours?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“Depends on the side you’re on. He backed away from what he was, fell in love with a light, then refused to take the power. Some think he made that act look far too easy to have truly been an Escort.”
“Really?” I said as my eyes raced across his image. There was more to what he said, but he wasn’t in the mood to explain it to me.
“What else did you say?”
“If you wanted to know, why didn’t you just come over here before?”
“Because girls talk. She wouldn’t have said anything if we were here.”
“Well, she didn’t say much.” My eyes rapidly moved across his image, trying to figure him out. “Skylynn was in the other reality.” I said in more of a question form.
He looked at me as if I were insane, which led me to question if that story Skylynn just laid on me had any truth.
“Bloody Hell,” he muttered as a look of shock came over him.
“You all right?”
“Sunshine. I’ve been on this side for a while. Its hard to call back details of the other side sometimes.”
“Was she from there?”
“No.” he glanced at Landen. “She was a victim. There was a bloke on that side that made sure Guardian got here the first time, when he was pulled back by someone who was clearly trying to hurt him, that bloke saved him. He’s saved Skylynn days before.” Phoenix became tense. “We were, are, Falcons on that side. We took in damaged souls, souls the rest of the world saw as a plague. We healed them. My family planned to take in Skylynn, we even brought her to the manor, but she vanished after one night. I’m pretty sure all hell broke lose not long after that.”
“You’re just now remembering that?”
“I told you details fade after time. I’ve been trying to figure out why Skylynn did what she did, why she cared so much. You just enlightened me.”
“What did she do? I thought you were mad at her?”
“Oh, I’m mad. Trust me.” He said with a shake of his head. “But the thing is, sometimes the best intentions lead you down the wrong path, sometimes they hurt people. That is what Skylynn and I have to contend with on top of all of this.”
