Surprisingly, the next few minutes were taken up with small talk. Honi introduced Adi, feeling like he was watching a soap opera. The women were pleasant to each other, but with an underlying bite, a subtext he didn’t get. He was sure they hated each other and was relieved when Adi finally sauntered off. As he watched her leave the room, a small movement behind the open door drew his gaze.
Con’s face peeked out from the gap between the open door and the wall. That was odd. His eyebrows pulled together as he stared at the young man, who was making himself as small as possible. Con’s eyes were wide open and flitted across the room. His skin was pale, and he seemed to shake a little. Honi moved towards him. The kid looked like he was about ready to run.
Not wanting to startle the boy, Honi smiled.
“Hey there, buddy. What’s going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Con’s head shot up. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Honi waited.
Eventually, the boy said quietly, “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m stupid.”
“Try me.”
Con still didn’t say anything. Honi tried again.
“Come on. I didn’t laugh when you told me about your dreams, did I?”
At this reminder of their last encounter, Con visibly calmed down.
“Okay. You can’t laugh, though.”
When Honi nodded, Con continued. “You’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but I look around, and there are wild animals everywhere. Nobody else seems to notice them. It’s totally insane. There are a couple of pets, like dogs and cats, but over there,” he pointed at the far corner of the room, “there’s a tiger.”
He pointed into a different direction. “And over there is a snake, wrapped around Uncle Josh’s shoulders.”
Con was definitely a spirit walker. It explained a lot. Maybe the queen had arranged the meeting in Emain Ablach somehow, maybe it had been an accident, but this kid needed help.
Honi remembered Adi’s terror when she’d first learned of her ability. Her unwillingness to deal with it and insistence on putting her visions down to mental illness had nearly killed them both. For now, he needed to contain the situation before something similar happened to Con.
Still gentling his voice, he said, “It’s okay. I know it seems impossible to believe right now, but there is a logical explanation for what you’re experiencing. We need to talk, but we can’t do that here with all these people around. Please believe me, these animals won’t hurt you,”—God, he honestly hoped that was the truth,— “and if you have another bad dream, tell me about it tomorrow. Don’t talk to anybody else about this. They wouldn’t understand.”
He hesitated before asking, “Have you got a cell phone?”
Con shook his head. Well, it had been a long shot. No way would his mom have spent drinking money on a phone for him.
“But there’s a landline at your house?”
Con shook his head again. “My mom has a cell phone.”
It would have to do. Honi motioned Con to stay where he was, then walked into the kitchen to fetch a pen and a slip of paper. When he returned, Con’s fear had turned into fascination. His eyes were tracking creatures that no one else, other than Honi and Adi, could see. Having someone tell him he wasn’t going crazy had obviously done the kid a world of good.
“Here’s my cell phone number. If anything weird happens… Well, weirder,” Honi corrected himself when Con smirked, “call me or get your mom to call me.”
Con’s eyes fixed themselves to a spot just over his shoulder. Honi spun around, only to find himself eye-to-eye with Melinda. A plume of sour alcohol stink announced her arrival as surely as her harsh voice.
“Come on. We need to get home.”
More than likely, somebody had told her to lay off the booze. Sure enough, Honi’s mom threw hard glances at Melinda’s back, although her gaze softened when they landed on Con. The young man got up without protest, took his mother’s hand, and pulled her towards the open door.
“Sure, Mom. Let’s go.”
In an odd role reversal, the drunken woman allowed herself to be treated like a docile child, following her adolescent son without a word of protest.
Honi’s mind was whirring. The boy’s misery, growing up as the child of a single, alcoholic mother, was compounded by his encounters with the spirit world. He was confused, frightened, out of his depth. Honi had once witnessed Adi saving a man from being destroyed by his experiences that had been eerily similar to Con’s.
What if he helped Con? What if he showed the young teenager what being a spirit walker meant? And at the same time, what if he helped him discover his spirit animal? He’d already considered asking John to organize a spirit quest for Con, albeit for different reasons. Sure, the kid needed more self-confidence, but helping him find his spirit animal was even more important. It could literally mean life or death for Con. The queen had no qualms taking a human life if she considered them a threat to the worlds.
And maybe this could be what Honi needed to convince the elders to stop hounding him about his law degree. Spirit-walking wasn’t what he chose to do—it was who he was. He couldn’t change this any more than he could grow a third arm.
10
“I’m telling you, there’s something strange going on.”
Adi was exasperated. She’d been trying to convince Honi for the last ten minutes that something was wrong with the spirit animals in Heota.
”Please stop."
Honi’s eyes were hard as he glared at her. He obviously didn’t believe her—maybe he thought she was jealous of Nina? Which she was, but she wouldn’t let him know that.
By the time everybody finally gone home, it was late. Adi was exhausted and ready to go to sleep. All she wanted was to snuggle up to Honi’s familiar shape and be held by him until she nodded off. That wasn’t going to happen, though. Honi’s parents had put him into his old bedroom, whereas Adi was supposed to sleep in the guest-bedroom.
Neither of them was happy with that. They’d been together for two years. When Honi had complained, his mother had responded, “You’re not married, therefore you get separate bedrooms.”
Adi wasn’t sure how she felt about that. They hadn’t talked about marriage yet, although it was pretty clear that they were serious about each other. What really pissed her off was that Honi had given in so quickly. He could have put up more of a fight. Ever since they’d arrived, he’d behaved like a child in the presence of his parents.
But something else had changed throughout the afternoon. When they’d first met, Adi had liked Honi’s mom. Now, she glared at her—as if she held her responsible for perverting her precious son. She couldn’t believe Honi hadn’t noticed. She tried again.
"Please, I don’t understand why you won’t believe me. Did you not see that there was something going on with those spirit animals?"
"No. They look like they always do."
Honi’s stare hadn’t lost its coldness, and it was beginning to piss Adi off. They’d been through too much together for Honi not to take her seriously, dammit!
"So what? Are you telling me that Nina’s panther is always mangy? Did you not see your mom’s puma with her runny nose and disgusting, yellow stuff around her eyes?"
Honi slowly shook his head, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. He said quietly, "I didn’t see anything like that. Every one of those spirit animals looked perfectly healthy to me. I don’t know why you are seeing something else. Are you sure it’s not just the queen playing us again?"
Adi considered that. It hadn’t occurred to her. The queen of Faerie had been deadly serious about needing Adi’s help. She wouldn’t try to play a trick on her, as tempting as the explanation was. But even if the queen wasn’t behind this, maybe she had information?
"You’re right. Maybe I’m just tired. I’ll rest in my room for a while,” she said. There was no point continuing fighting. She needed to find something else to convince Honi. He nodded, obviously happy to
end the conversation.
After he’d gone to join his parents in the kitchen, Adi sat on the bed and assumed her meditative position. Her legs crossed in front of her, her arms resting on her upper thighs, she closed her eyes and slipped into a trance state.
It took her a moment to orientate herself, because while she could clearly sense all the inhabitants of the house, the area around the building felt thick as treacle. Adi had never come across anything like this. She pushed through, and pretty soon, her area of reach had expanded to the village limits.
Adi imagined herself traveling along the main street and approached the nearest group of spirit creatures. She saw herself flying and weaving through the color patches, briefly touching each one. This was her favorite way of checking the health of spirit animals on a molecular level.
By the time she had grazed the third animal, exhaustion spread through her. Each creature was a concentration of shining life energy, but every single one of them was diffused around the edges, fuzzy with a sickly, pea-green color invading from the outside in. Some animals only had the slightest aura, whereas others were infected all the way to the core.
When Adi touched the ones with the worst contamination, her mind shied back. She felt the flinch all the way to her core, and it kicked her out of her trance. In that split-second of touch, the greedy creature had attempted to pull her life force out of her. The hollow suction had been so strong, so all encompassing, that Adi was fortunate not to succumb to it.
She came to a screeching mental halt, then flew back into her body as quickly as she could. When she finally felt the bedding against her skin, she gasped. The sound that escaped her was loud and painful.
Adi’s head swam, and as she stood up, black encroached on her vision. Her legs were so weak that they barely supported her, and when she tried to take one step towards the door in order to call for help, her knees gave out entirely. She crashed to the ground with her full body weight, her head bouncing off the wooden floorboards with a crack.
11
When Honi had been little, he’d hated the tunnel-like hallway in the bungalow. The bare lightbulb illuminating the space had been broken more often than not, and his active imagination had conjured up all sorts of horrors hiding behind the kickboards.
One day, when he’d just started preschool, his father had removed one of the boards because he’d heard some rustling.
He’d leveraged the piece of wood off with a screwdriver. The moment the baseboard had hit the ground, Honi’s dad had turned pale and scooted back on his butt. Honi’d laughed at first. But then a snake, light-brown with a distinct, darker diamond pattern on its back and a head shaped like an arrow, had slithered out of the darkness.
His dad had whispered, “Honi, don’t move.”
The fear in his voice had frozen Honi to his spot. Only his eyes had moved as the reptile had gracefully meandered down the hallway and disappeared through the hole in the screen door.
Quick as a flash, Honi’s dad had jumped up and lifted Honi into the biggest bear hug of his life. His strong father had shaken as his arms had squeezed him so hard, it had hurt. That evening, they’d had a family meeting around the kitchen table. His dad had explained that a Western Diamondback’s bite was deadly poisonous. Honi had sat straight as a stick, listening intently. His dad had been afraid, and anything that might frighten his dad was dangerous.
“Respect, Honi. You respect them, and they won’t hurt you. Stomping loud enough to warn them you’re there. Not sticking your hands into holes or anywhere they hide. Not chasing them or poking them with a stick or any other foolish things people might think of.”
He’d never forgotten that talk, or any other lessons John or other elders had taught him. Living up here on the plateau, miles away from the nearest town, wildlife wandered near human settlements on a daily basis.
All kids in Heota knew of foolish children who were eaten by wolves because they hadn’t listened to their parents. When he’d gotten older, he’d realized that nobody had actually met anybody whose child had been eaten, but the delicious shiver after one of those stories had been real.
Things hadn’t changed from when he’d been a kid. Honi toggled the light switch with no results. The pitch-dark hallway seemed to extend into the distance. He stared towards the end, willing the outline of the guest bedroom door to appear.
Something moved at the end of the hallway. He squinted, turning his head away to catch a glimpse from his peripheral vision. There was definitely something there—a large outline, a massive fleshy tail, and a hint of reflecting eyes. Honi blinked against the darkness, but when he opened his eyes again, there was nothing there. He chided himself for his overactive imagination. Still, when a hand touched his shoulder, he yelped.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Nina’s voice had dropped low, made more intimate by the darkness surrounding them. He could barely make out the outline of her face. He was just about to make a silly comment to break the strange tension that had sprung up between them, when a loud thud disturbed the silence. It had come from the guest bedroom.
All thoughts of strange shapes forgotten, he moved quickly towards the bedroom door with Nina on his heels. The sound had been organic—not the hard crash of something being dropped to the floor, but the muted noise of a heavy, soft body colliding with hard floorboards.
When he pushed the door open, it only swung halfway before being blocked. Honi looked through the gap. On the floor, Adi was not moving, wedged against the door. Honi pushed carefully, not wanting to hurt her more, until he could slip into the room.
He kneeled down next to his girlfriend, feeling for her pulse. His hands were shaking, and he swallowed dryly. She’d obviously hit her head on the way down and still hadn’t moved. There was a heartbeat, thank God, and although she was unconscious, she was breathing easily.
“We need to call a doctor," he murmured.
He jumped when Nina said, "She’s only been out for a second. I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’ll come out of it soon.”
She stared at Adi with a mix of fascination and pity. Honi shook his head. He didn’t like this. Adi looked so fragile, her small body crumpled on the ground. She needed him. He wouldn’t let her down. He switched into take-charge mode.
“I’ll go and get my cell phone. If she’s not awake by the time I’m back, I’ll call Dr. Russell. Could you keep an eye on her, Nina?”
The door opened again, and Honi blocked it with his own body to avoid Adi getting jostled. His mom stuck her head through the door, her eyes growing wide as she surveyed the scene. Honi quickly explained what had happened. Then he ran to the kitchen to get his phone.
By the time he came back, the two women were talking softly. They had moved Adi to the bed. Honi sat next to her, about to dial the doctor’s number when Adi’s eyelids fluttered. She finally seemed to come out of it.
The door opened again, and Honi’s dad stopped in the doorway, staring at Adi with an unfathomable expression. Honi’s heart sank. He’d thought the animosity between his father and his girlfriend had been laid to rest. Apparently not.
His suspicion was confirmed when his dad coughed before saying, "I don’t like this. She’s been acting strange since you arrived here. We never really found out what role she played in your—”, he interrupted himself, supremely uncomfortable but pressing on regardless, “—suicide attempt.”
Honi’s mother interrupted him. ”We don’t even know if it was a suicide attempt. John said Honi didn’t try to kill himself, and I believe him.” Her voice choked up towards the end.
Jim didn’t say anything for a moment before he exploded. "I don’t know what to believe!"
Honi’s mother shushed him, and Jim continued in a lower voice, “When I met her at the hospital, I thought she was in love with you. But then she got you to run off after her, all the way to Germany. I’ve heard some really troubling things since.”
Adi chose that moment to open her eyes. Honi was
so stunned by what his father had just said that he barely noticed. When she turned her head towards the people crowding the bedroom, his attention ricocheted back to her. He squeezed her hand gently, waiting for her to speak. Adi opened her mouth, but her voice cracked. She tried again.
"What happened?"
Adi tried to smile as she spoke, but her eyes were swimming with tears. Something must have happened, something bad enough for her to lose her composure in front of virtual strangers. Adi wasn’t an emotional girl and didn’t cry at every opportunity.
She lifted her hand and gingerly prodded a lump on her temple. Honi brushed his fingers over the injury, wincing at the feel of the swelling. It wasn’t a huge bump, and there was no reason to suspect she had a concussion. He’d seen her with worse scrapes she’d brushed off with a laugh.
This was different. Something had rattled her deeply. Honi bent over and kissed Adi’s forehead, worried about her uncharacteristic behavior.
He whispered, “What happened? Did you spirit-walk?”
Adi groaned. "I’m not sure. Just before I fainted, I’d reached out to the spirit…” She quickly glanced at Honi’s parents and Nina. At least she remembered to mind her words in front of people who weren’t in the know.
"I… I don’t know."
She squeezed Honi’s hand, and stared at him. Honi frowned before he nodded.
"Okay. So how are you feeling now? I would be a lot happier if Dr. Russell could check you over.”
Honi knew what she was thinking. If they called a doctor, he’d play it safe and refer her to the hospital. She had no insurance in the USA, and a hospital overnight stay could very well clear out her budget for the next couple of months, even if her German insurance would cover basic treatment.
Adi pushed at Honi’s side until he gave her some space. She sat up and swung her legs out of the bed. After a moment she stood up slowly, only swaying a little.
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