by Amie Gibbons
“He said she’s too unstable to help a lot tonight, but just doing that, I think she could manage. And I think she’d want to help. Her number’s in my phone so Menard can use that to call her. She lives nearby so as long as she answers, she could be here in about ten too. Maybe longer to get dressed.”
“I don’t want to know. Okay, we’ll do that. If she doesn’t answer?”
“Then send one of the witches who can do stuff with energy and see if they can get us back,” I said. “This is worst-case scenario though.”
“I’m an ex-lawyer FBI Agent, Ryder,” she said. “I live in the worst-case scenario. I have to.”
Well that was sad.
I kept that to myself.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Talk to you soon.”
I went back in and this time the office door was open a crack.
“Carvi?” I asked, pushin’ it open.
Carvi sat on the floor up against the desk, naked and obviously sated.
The assistant manager, another woman around thirty, and a man around the same age lay sprawled, half over each other in the small office, and all lookin’ exhausted and happy.
“I didn’t have all my usual toys,” Carvi said, licking his lips. “So I had to improvise. They were not complaining.”
I grinned, biting my lip.
It wasn’t funny, but the way the people were all piled up together with those satisfied looks on their faces, it really seemed like they got as much outta this as Carvi did.
They probably did.
“Y’all okay?” I asked.
The assistant manager gave me a thumbs up. “Please close the door though. I don’t want anyone going to the bathroom to see this.”
I nodded and closed the door and she half flowed, half pushed off the man’s chest. She had black hair in ringlets that fell to her shoulders and a heart shaped face with beautiful green eyes.
And she and the guy were staring at each other.
“I’m Ashley,” she said, holding her hand out to him.
He burst out laughing and took her hand. “Jeremy. I can’t believe I just did that with a woman whose name I didn’t know.”
She smiled and it was shy. “You know it now.”
He grinned back.
Wow, Carvi in all his debauchery may have just played matchmaker here.
The other woman stayed on the ground, smiling bigger but not moving besides that. She had deep bites still leaking from a thigh and a breast.
“I left Ashley mostly alone, since she’s watching us,” Carvi said. “But Monica here, she wanted to be taken even more than you or AB do. She may be down for a while.”
“Will be, honey,” she said in an Alabama accent almost as thick as mine. “Thank you.”
Carvi grinned at me and stuck out his tongue and I held up my hands.
“I surrender,” I said. “You’re right. Sex good. You happy?”
“Ecstatic,” he said, drawing the word out.
“What exactly will I be doing?” Ashley asked, a professional edge to her voice as she pulled on her jeans.
“Watching our bodies while we’re in the astral plane,” Carvi said, standing without using anything visibly to push off of.
Vamps could do that.
It still freaked me out.
“I do have to keep an eye on the club too though,” she said as she put on her black top and started buttoning it. “I’m the only manager on tonight. I get this is important and there’s people dying, but can we bring in someone else to help?”
“I will,” Jeremy said. “I’ve got nothing better to do. And besides, it’ll give me…” He cleared his throat and grinned. “I have nothing better to do. I just came out to party and my friends are already all smashed. I don’t think they’ll notice I’m gone.”
“Thanks,” me and Ashley said at the same time.
He shot me a smile but turned his attention back to her.
Awwwww.
“Alright, thanks guys,” I said. “Carvi, do we want to be lying down or sitting somewhere or what?”
“Lay down, lea,” he said. “Up against the wall. It will give us more connection to the real world. Just in case we need it.”
I nodded and lay against the wall behind the desk.
The extra cover couldn’t hurt.
Carvi walked around and I scooted as close to the wall as I could so he’d have room too.
He didn’t need it.
He knelt in front of me and climbed on top, slowly putting his weight on me.
“What are you doin’?” I asked, voice low and rough.
“The more connection, the better,” he said. “I’d say get undressed too, but you are wearing little enough that there’s enough skin on skin.
He met my eyes, smiling wide and wicked.
“You know, I don’t quite believe you,” I said.
He shrugged, inching down my body until his head rested just above my boobs and he lay snuggled against them.
“One sec.” I pushed and he eased up a bit so I could take my phone out of my top and lay it next to me. “A Special Agent Menard will be here soon,” I said, loud enough so our watchers would know I was talkin’ to them. “Tell him my phone’s here by me and to ignore the vamp lying on top of me.”
A woman, I’m guessing Ashley, giggled. “You got it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
Carvi settled back on my breasts, his body a heavy, comforting weight that made it hard to breathe and made me feel safe at the same time.
I closed my eyes.
Chapter fourteen
I opened my eyes and looked around.
I stood in the office, staring down at Carvi’s body on mine, looking for all the world like we’d fallen asleep like that.
“We do look good together,” Carvi said.
I smiled and turned around.
He sat on the edge of the desk, legs hanging into his body and going right through them.
“Are we in that second layer right now?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We have to travel a bit to get into the next one at the point where we want to go.”
“That means?” I asked.
“We need to go to where one of the men was killed and use that point to follow that line of magic deeper into the astral plane, to hopefully see where the magic came from.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “The closest one would probably be Thomas. He lives only a few blocks away.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Carvi said, hopping off the desk and landing in our bodies.
“That is so weird,” I said.
“You’ll get used to it eventually.”
###
Thomas’ apartment looked exactly as it had when we were there earlier.
Dear God, was that really only a few hours ago?
We’d been on this case only a few hours. Before that, I was having girl time with Kat and gettin’ my nails done and picking stuff up for Len’s party.
“I wonder how Len’s doin’ right now,” I said.
“Don’t,” Carvi said. “If you think about it too hard, you’ll get yanked over there to see.”
“Right.”
I actually had known that from stuff he’d taught me before.
Just didn’t quite remember it til he reminded me.
He was right. I did need to study more.
I sat at the little kitchen table where Thomas had first cut his finger.
“It seems so long ago, doesn’t it, lea?” Carvi asked, standing behind me and resting his hands on my shoulders.
“Yeah.” I nuzzled his hand.
“I love his decorating. It’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, looking up at the giant American flag and the maps on the other wall. “I liked this guy. We could be friends. Except, he went and did this horrible thing, and I’m not sure I’d want to be friends with a guy like that. At the same time, the girl he did it to still seems to want to, so why should I hold it against
him?”
“You are still thinking of it in terms of him doing something bad,” Carvi said. “What was so bad? If you weren’t supposed to deflower virgins, no one would ever get any.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” I said. “I think, even if it goes horribly, that the bad comes from leaving her after that. I think that’s what AB is having such a hard time with. The act wasn’t good, sure, but doing it and then breaking up is what does the damage. I think being a virgin just makes it worse because it’s the first cut. There’s no walls. You build walls as you learn.”
“I think you just figured out another piece of your puzzle, lea,” Carvi said. “That the bad is not in the act of sex, it’s in the person leaving, severing a connection with another person, that is the bad act in this situation.”
“You were slow walkin’ me towards that, weren’t ya?”
“Yeah.” He kissed my forehead and walked around to sit next to me.
“Okay, how do we do this?”
“First up, picture the ghost, the power we saw earlier. Don’t do anything with it, just pull it up.”
I took a deep breath and the lights of energy turned on soon as I thought about it.
Red ran from the chair through the kitchen and towards the hall like a blood trail, faint but glowing.
“Wow,” I said.
“You are getting better at this,” Carvi said. “Good. That’ll make it easier.”
He got up and I followed him, walking down the hall into the bathroom. The red gathered there at the mirror denser than anywhere else, but a slight trail doubled back and went down the hall into the bedroom.
Where Thomas had jumped out.
“If the tulpa entered here,” I said, pointing at the mirror, “then why was she showin’ up in his phone and cut him? It didn’t seem like that happened to any of the other guys.”
“I don’t know,” Carvi said. “I got some strange sensations around that. I’m wondering if it has more to do with AB than with him. She obviously has real feelings of friendship for him beyond wanting a relationship, maybe that was the tulpa trying to take him and AB’s positive emotions holding it back so it had to get a greater hold. Maybe it was the tulpa taking a swipe and realizing the phone wasn’t a big enough conduit. I really don’t know.”
I nodded. “I like the idea of AB’s positive emotions holding it back. It makes a certain amount of sense.”
“You just like that because you want to believe love can conquer all,” he said, ruffling my hair. “To do this, we’ll need to go through the mirror.”
“Okay,” I said, stepping forward.
“Wait!” he grabbed my arm. “Lea, you ever watch a show where thieves are the heroes, or anything like that?”
“Sure,” I said.
“So what’s the first rule of thieves breaking in anywhere, lea?” Carvi asked.
“You never go in without an exit strategy.”
He nodded.
“Yeah,” I snorted. “I learned that lesson with my ex and that one did stick. I don’t go in anywhere unless I’m skippy sure I can get out. There is nothin’ I can’t run from.”
He looked at me.
“What!” I finally said.
“You can’t run from yourself, lea.”
I rolled my eyes.
Well look who was gettin’ all philosophical?
“And,” Carvi said, meeting my eyes, his gaze razor sharp, “just so we’re clear, know, you can’t run from me.”
The moisture fled my mouth and my stomach flipped.
“I don’t know if that’s a promise or a threat,” I said.
He smiled, sweet and somehow a little bit evil at the same time. “Both, lea. Considering you have abandonment issues, I’d think you’d find more comfort in that than most. It doesn’t matter how much you push me away, I will not chase you, but I will always be waiting for you when you come back.”
I looked down.
“Okay, that sounded like a promise. Thank you?”
“Always, my lea,” he said. “So, we go in there, we have to have an exit strategy.”
“I’m not sure what that’d be since I haven’t done this,” I said. “I think that’s gonna have to be on you.”
“So do I, but I’m teaching. When you go further into the astral plane, you want to leave markers at each point you go through, so you have something to follow back. From this level, you still don’t know how to get out.
“That’s something I’ll have to teach you. I can pull us out easily whereas you can not, because I leave a marker when I go in. We will do the same thing here, at the edge of any other layers we have to go through, and along the way in the layer once we’re deep enough to see the magic.”
“Like breadcrumbs!” I said.
“Precisely. We can not risk becoming lost. So we leave ourselves something to follow, but, just as with the breadcrumbs, it can not be something others could pick up on and either follow to us or just remove.”
“Like the birds eatin’ the breadcrumbs. I’m with ya. So what do we leave?”
“A piece of magic, one that is concealed enough that no one could stumble upon it. They could find it if they were searching, there’s not much we can do about that, but they would have to be looking very hard.”
He held up a hand and pinched the inside of his palm, pulling back.
A small thread the same color as his skin and so thin I wasn’t sure how I was able to see it so clearly came out of his hand, pinched between his fingers and coming out like pulling a loose thread from a dress.
“You could unravel your entire being this way if taken to extremes,” Carvi said. “We don’t want to do that, so we cut it off after we get enough out to tie around something.”
The thread clipped off like he’d taken scissors to it, and he looped it around the faucet, tying it off so it hung around it like a glowing ribbon there for decoration.
“Okay,” I said. “And that’s all we need?”
“That’s what we need to guide us back,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we can’t get trapped like last time.”
“But we were only trapped because of the Fae, right?”
“Yes, but there could be Fae in there, other things that decide to mess with us, or we could just walk into a place made to capture humans wandering around because they don’t like humans, or want to keep them as pets.”
“This is soundin’ worse and worse,” I said.
“There’s a reason we don’t go in there lightly,” he said. “I have gone into the third layer before with other psychics. I have never gone beyond that without Milo.”
He stared at me.
“Um, I feel like you’re tryin’ to tell me something,” I said.
“I am,” he said. “I’m saying I trust you and your power enough to get us out if I can’t. And the only reason you wouldn’t be able to, would be if you didn’t believe it. That being said, are you ready for this?”
“So, no pressure,” I said, licking my lips. “Yeah. If some brokenhearted woman can make an entire being, I can sure as shootin’ get us outta the astral plane if I need to.”
“Good girl,” he said, touching the mirror.
The world whirled around us and grew around us.
No, we were shrinking.
The world rushed around us and we were sucked through the mirror.
###
I hit the marble floor hard on my knees.
“Ow!” I yelped, rolling off my smarting knees and rubbing them.
Carvi grunted and I turned.
We were on a giant black and white chessboard, the pieces large enough to ride.
“Wait, we’ve been here before,” I said. “This was, what did you call it, the war room?”
“No,” Carvi said. “You interpreted it as a chessboard, and this does look like what you were seeing there, but trust me, this is not the war room. We are… not on that plane.”
“That wasn’t the astral plane?” I asked.
“Nope. T
hat’s why I was so worried about you in there,” he said. “It’s its own place, kind of like limbo, and human minds can’t take it. This is definitely the astral plane.”
“Why does it look like that then?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “That was your interpretation of the war room, so I’m guessing this is telling us there is a bigger game at play, and we’re only seeing part of it. That maybe the power behind this is tied to the greater war.”
“Meaning?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Meaning Fae.” He shook his head. “Okay, the Fae aren’t the only adversary in this game, but they’re a big one.”
“Carvi, could ya stop being cryptic?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Sorry, lea, even I have to follow some rules. And not telling people who don’t figure the greater plan out for themselves is one of them.”
I blinked.
That sounded like a hint.
He smiled and winked.
The chess pieces here were set up like at the beginning of a game, instead of being all over the place like the one I saw in the war room.
Except the white had a knight out.
A black pawn slid forward two spots.
So the game was just beginning and they were beginning to move their pieces.
“I feel like I’m missing something,” I said. “Is this supposed to be a metaphor for what’s goin’ on? Cuz if so, the game is already in play.”
“Maybe this is a representation of how it started,” Carvi said. “Pay attention.”
“Shouldn’t we be following the trail?” I asked.
“We did, it led us here,” he said. “Shush.”
I sighed.
Chess had never been my game.
Too slow.
White pawns moved, setting up a basic beginning perimeter, and the black pawns responded in kind.
Then out of nowhere, the bishop flew forward, jumping pawns, and slammed into the knight.
He went down.
“Interesting,” Carvi said as the pieces broke their patterns and started fighting all over the board.
The bishop flew around the board, knocking chips off other pieces, not following the rules of the game, gravity, or physics at all.
It just flew through the other pieces.
I gasped.
