by Amie Gibbons
“That’s part of it,” he said. “But that’s not the why. The why is what you can’t see, and he did. You’ll see when you’re ready.”
I clenched my fists and teeth.
This was gettin’ old.
“Fine,” I said, “can you tell me anything about this whole situation here? About how to fix what’s going wrong in Alabama? We have a real problem.”
“Yes, you really do.”
I crossed my arms and stared him down.
If there was one thing I learned from Grant, it was suspects talked if you stared at them long enough.
Fake Milo burst out laughing.
And I tossed up my hands.
Of course, I’d also learned from Grant that it only worked if you could pull it off.
And I guess I couldn’t.
“You really thought you could?” he asked like he’d read my mind. “Your Carvi has nothing on me, Ariana. You can not out stare me or intimidate me. You couldn’t intimidate a My Little Pony, but that’s a different discussion.”
“Excuse you!” I said, something shooting through me.
I’d show him.
Whoa! Show him what? I didn’t know who or what he was. He could be a god for all I knew.
“Now you’re catching on,” he said.
“You can read my mind.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” he said. “You may want to watch your tone with me.”
“May?”
He shrugged. “Some days I’m testier than others.”
“Who are you?”
“I have many names. You can call me Milo.”
“But you’re not Milo.”
He shook his head. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I pressed my lips together. “Because if I know your name, I can look you up later.”
“You can exert power, control, over your world,” he said.
I bobbed my head. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“You think you can, but you can’t.”
“I can’t figure this out so Karma can fix it?”
“You can; it won’t be easy. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“That’s what I care about,” I said, taking a deep breath.
Getting upset wouldn’t help anything. Yelling at him wouldn’t make him help me. Losing my cool or being rude wouldn’t get me anywhere.
Every good southern girl knows you catch more flies with honey.
“Can you please tell me what I’m seeing in here?” I asked.
“You already know.”
I growled inwardly so I wouldn’t on the outside.
He’d try the patience of the steeliest of southern magnolias.
“If I know, then why don’t I know I know?” I asked.
“You do know,” he said, sounding as exasperated with me as I was with him. “You already said it.”
“The flowers are people?”
“Exactly.”
“Why are they flowers?”
“Why are they purple?” he asked, crossing his arms. “Your brain.”
“Wait!” I threw up my hands. “Are we in my head or on the astral plane?”
He grinned big and beautiful.
But it wasn’t Milo’s smile.
It didn’t hold the fun, the personality, the joy of life.
My heart twinged again.
“No,” he said, “don’t even think it.”
“What?” I asked.
I hadn’t thought anything right then, had I?
“You want to ask how to go back in time to save Milo,” he said. “It barely hit your subconscious, and no. That’s how these things get started.”
“I… but… he shouldn’t have died.”
“If he hadn’t died, and exactly like he had, the forces wouldn’t have been balanced. And,” he said sharply as I opened my mouth, “you wouldn’t be who you are right now.”
I closed my mouth.
Being slightly different would be worth it to have Milo back.
“You wouldn’t have learned what you have. You wouldn’t know how to walk in the astral plane. If Milo had lived, you would have either ended up in bed, which would have destroyed your working relationship, or he would’ve tried to teach you and ended up doing most of it for you. You learned from his death, because you had to, because that pain has taught you that you must learn. If you hadn’t gone through that, if Carvi hadn’t, you’d be drastically different people now.”
“Are you sayin’ everything happens for a reason?” I asked. “Because I hate it when people say that.”
“Hate it because you think it isn’t true? Or because you think it is?”
I paused.
That was a good question.
“I think I hated it before because I didn’t believe it. Now, I think I do. And that means his death meant something, but it also makes me think his death was a good thing. And I can’t think that. I can’t… it’s like it’s disrespecting him.”
“It’s the exact opposite,” he said. “It’s honoring him. You becoming the psychic you can be, you fighting the tulpa, you fighting your inner demons, you coming here now to do this to save people and reset the balance, all of this is you honoring those who made you who you are.”
He paused and met my eyes.
They pierced through me, holding me as only Carvi or Grant could.
My breath caught.
He just kept smiling.
“Who started this imbalance?” I asked.
He stared harder at me, finally breaking his gaze and shrugging.
I sagged.
“If I knew, Karma would,” he said after a moment.
“So in here, what am I seeing?”
“The big picture.”
I jerked back.
“That would be what, exactly?” I asked.
“The pattern. You only see what your mind can comprehend, but it’s close enough for you to grab a hold and follow it to a piece.”
“Okay, that kinda makes sense. How? How do I grab on and trace it back to the person who started this?”
“If I knew that, I’d be able to do it. There is no obvious trail.”
I took another deep breath, and a few seconds to count before I answered. “So what do you know?”
“I know a great deal.”
I clenched my teeth. And one, two, three.
“What would you know about this thing?” I asked.
He stared again.
He really did have that down.
“You’re a stubborn girl,” he said. “Tell my grandson I say hi.”
He vanished.
“Wait! Who’s your grandson!” I yelled.
Nothing answered.
“That got me nowhere,” I said, looking around.
The trees lining the trail evaporated on the air and the field of purple once again spread beneath me.
“Okay,” I said, “I can do this. Take me to the flowers of people in Montgomery, Alabama.”
The world rushed around me and I landed in the middle of a patch of flowers, the gold dust swirling thick and heavy around me.
I coughed.
“I’m not gonna breathe any of you in, am I?” I asked.
The pollen hung around, just kinda chilling, and it didn’t seem like my presence disturbed it.
That’s cuz I was just looking.
I wasn’t really here.
But what if I used this type of place to affect the pollen, like to move it or change it?
Then it’d affect the gold around it.
Either moving to fill the void, or swirling as it got breathed in and coughed out.
Where were these thoughts coming from?
I was onto something though.
The gold was the ties between people, but they weren’t just strings, they were tiny particles, little bits making a cloud, and if something affected one, it could send the others into a flurry to compensate.
; So what if that’s what had happened? What if someone messed with it, not by changing something per se, but by taking out some of this gold dust?
Taking out some of these tiny particles of fate or connection or whatever we wanted to call it?
If that’s what happened, then it’d create a wave as the rest rushed to fill the hole.
Right?
It made sense… until I thought about it too hard.
A pretty, rich red ribbon flowed through the dust and swirled around the flowers like silk, brushing a few of them and rushing away.
Maybe representing whatever had happened to set things off?
I had to run this past Carvi.
“How do I get outta here?” I asked.
I’d gotten in by touching the grid.
Ohhhh. It wasn’t a grid! Each one of those boxes was a person, that’s why they were purple like the flowers. People made up a grid. And gold was the fate or whatever tying them together. That’s why the boxes weren’t perfect squares.
So, did that mean the bigger the square, the more influence?
Probably.
Wow, I was smart on a lot of sake.
Or something about being in here opened up my mind.
If alcohol did this to my powers, did that mean other mind-altering drugs would be helpful?
“Whoa, don’t go there,” I said. “Way too many risks to go there.”
“Where?” Carvi asked.
I blinked and I was back in the room, the square just lines around me on the floor.
And Carvi in front of me.
“I am so confused right now,” I said. “How long was I gone?”
“Gone?” he asked. “Ariana, I just talked to you about Grant, you were going to touch the wall, then you said don’t go there and you were confused.”
“Whoa,” I said, walking to him and taking his hand.
I needed to feel him, even just in the astral plane, to know he was real.
“Lea?” he asked, cupping my face.
“Carvi, I… I don’t know what I just saw.”
I explained it to him, down to the man or god or whatever looking like Milo and staring as hard as Carvi could.
And how he said say hi to his grandson.
“Did he mean you?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Carvi said. “I know my father’s genealogy. And this doesn’t sound like his father. They’re… not so helpful.”
“You make it sound like they’re evil or something.”
He looked at me.
“Carvi, you’re not evil,” I said. “You may joke, you may do some bad things sometimes, but you gotta know you are not evil.”
He smiled but it was sad. “Lea, you don’t know a fraction of what I’ve done. But thank you.”
He pulled the pack of smokes outta his pocket and knocked on the end of the pack before pulling one out.
It lit on its own.
No need for a real lighter on the astral plane.
He took a deep drag and sighed it out.
“Does that do anything in here?” I asked.
He grinned, eyes on mine and dirty painted all over his face. “We’ve had sex in here. What do you think?”
I blushed.
And couldn’t look away.
“Carvi,” I said, breath catching as I held up my hand. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, lea?”
“Don’t do anything if you don’t mean it.”
He took another drag, keeping his eyes on mine.
And let them go with a nod. “You’re right.”
I sighed, the air losing five pounds of pressure.
If he pushed, I’d say yes.
But then again, he knew that.
And he knew it’d break me.
So he wouldn’t.
“We really are friends, aren’t we?” I asked.
He nodded. “I think we are. Now, as for your theory, I think you may be onto something. We need to get out and see if we can find a vacuum in fate.”
“If we do, what does that mean? What could do that?”
“Magic,” he said. “And I don’t mean a little spell. I mean a giant ass spell where the person didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t have the power to pull it off, so they took it from those around them.”
“And that’d affect fate?”
He looked at me as he dropped the cig and stomped it out.
“Yeah. Big time.”
Chapter six
“What kind of spell could start something like this?” I asked, sitting in the car with Quil driving and Carvi on the phone on Facetime.
We got outta the hospital fast as we could after we got back into the real world cuz Quil said a nurse came in to move the now dead patient and Quil had to hypnotize her to get her to leave and give us a minute.
If anyone checked security tapes later, they’d probably have some questions for us about us going into a dead patient’s room just to sit there and hang out, and then running out.
Quil sighed as he started the car. “I can think of a few, but they’re big ones. Time travel, bringing somebody back from the dead… Carvi?”
“Those are the two I’m thinking,” Carvi said over the speaker.
“What about killing someone?” I asked. “That’d mess with fate if they weren’t supposed to die, right?”
Quil pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main street. “Where to now?”
It was my turn to sigh. “I’m trying to think. What do we know? What do we not know? Where can we find where this thing started?”
“Back here, to the house,” Carvi said. “We need to regroup and think, and AB may have some ideas. We can go from there. But yes, time travel or bringing someone back. I don’t know about killing someone, unless they held great influence.”
“Lots of famous people died this year,” I said. “But they were all old and probably didn’t have a lot more to influence… so, what if it was someone young, who was fated to do big, great things, and now won’t?”
Carvi put his hand up and rocked it back and forth in a kinda motion. “Possible, but… fate doesn’t work like that. Not really. We have possible paths, not one main one.
“If someone could have done great things and died before their time, it could set off a ripple through time, but only to the extent that person would have affected the lives of those around them, and it wouldn’t be a giant hole, because it was only one possibility.”
“I don’t think that made sense,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure I’m sobering up, so I don’t think I’m just being sake stupid right now.”
“You’re not stupid.” Quil grinned over at me.
“Says the other blond,” Carvi said, giving him a big grin Quil couldn’t see.
Quil didn’t say anything and I giggled. “Anyway,” I said, “why wouldn’t somebody dying be a big deal? Like power vacuum big?”
“Because people have many possible paths,” Carvi said, “so taking one before their time may have a small ripple, and obviously affects those around them, but it’s not so massive that they let loose a power vacuum that would do this. People are supposed to die, so even going before they are meant to still wouldn’t be that big of a screw you to nature. Keeping someone alive when they’re supposed to die wouldn’t be either, but bringing someone back? That’d do it.”
“Okay, what did you mean when you said if they didn’t know how to balance it? What if they do know how?”
“Ariana, no,” Carvi said, voice flat, face unreadable.
“What?” I asked.
“We can’t bring Milo back. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
My mouth fell open.
He nodded.
“You…” I said, then shook my head. “When?”
“Right after he died, before I went up to Nashville to find his killer. I… I know how to balance the forces, and what it looks like when they will not balance. I could not bring back my brother without setting off something like what’s going on now,
so I didn’t.”
“But you could have? If you decided to say screw it and just do it? You could’ve had him back.”
“Yes.” Carvi pulled out his pack of smokes and knocked the pack against his hands before pulling one out.
Did he actually need to do that, or was it some kind of nervous tick?
He lit up and I stared at him as he sucked in a deep breath.
“You can stop staring, lea,” he said as he breathed out. “I’m not going to start talking.”
“What if you need to?”
“I’ll be the judge of that. And you aren’t the person I’d be talking to.”
I jerked straight in my seat.
That stung more than I wanted it to.
“Lea,” Carvi said in my head, staring me in the eyes through the screen, “I wouldn’t talk to you because right now, you don’t want to be bonded to me. That thread scares you. If we talk, if I get into this with you, then I will be creating a stronger bond, and I think you’ll run.”
“Oh,” I said out loud, staring at my hands.
Quil glanced at me, but didn’t ask.
“Okay,” I said. “You know how to look at this type of thing to see the balances, enough to see yours wouldn’t balance, so can you look there to see if something else didn’t? Where do you go to look?”
“It’s off the astral plane,” Carvi said after a beat.
“What does that mean?”
“There’s the astral plane, there’s limbo, different layers in both, and there are other planes. Oh!” His voice went up. “Oh!”
“What!” I yelped, looking around.
“Reality rips,” he said. “That could cause a fate suck if the forces weren’t balanced.”
“I… like a rip between limbo and the real world?”
“Nooooo,” Carvi said. “Those are layers within this reality. An alternate reality is something completely different. That’s where it’s earth and all that, but different versions.”
“I think I saw this on a TV show,” I said. “Like a book here is real in some alternate reality?”
“Exactly.”
“Okaaaaaaay?”
“To answer your next question, yes, they are real, and yes, I do know that for a fact.”
“I’m so not going to ask.”
“Why not?”
