Chapter 2
Quinn
“Don’t do that.” My least favorite words came out of my dad’s mouth once again. “Honey, you need to fit in. I know you have issues, but you need to try. Remember the last time you came home crying?”
The growing anger heating my face cooled.
I didn’t want to, but I remembered every time I came home crying.
This time, my hair was too frizzy, and when Scott pulled it, I batted him away.
Except, when I’d batted him away, I touched the massive, priceless watch on his wrist. In front of both our eyes, it unraveled into pieces.
I’d destroyed it... but I didn’t know how.
He’d started yelling, and I’d started crying about “magic.” But magic wasn’t real, and now I was in trouble for lying and destroying something valuable. Worse, everyone laughed at me. Again.
I clasped my hands together to keep them from shaking.
“I love you, sweetie, but we’ve talked about this. You’re too sensitive. If you don’t react, Scott will lose interest in you. Kids can be mean, especially if someone is different. You’re sick, Quinn. It’s not your fault, but they don’t understand that.”
I didn’t want to be sick. I wanted to be normal and make my dad proud.
“They were mean to me, too, when I was young.” My dad ruffled my hair. “But they stopped because I didn’t react. You still react. Don’t do that.”
He made it sound so easy, but it wasn’t. Nothing was easy.
I woke from another round of dark dreamless unconsciousness but didn’t open my eyes. My logical brain knew I still lay on my surgeon’s table, but my sick brain wanted me to believe something completely different and filled its delusions with details.
The air was stuffy and—ick—almost moldy. This definitely wasn’t a bright, clean hospital room. But it also wasn’t the rolling hills and dense forest that centered around my last delusion. I couldn’t hear any birds or bugs. Actually, I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of my breathing.
I jerked. It didn’t hurt to breathe. Whatever infection had settled in my lungs over the last few months was gone.
No.
I halted my thoughts.
It only feels like a few months.
An hour at most must have passed in real-time. Dreams were like that. And this had to be a dream. It wasn’t possible to hurt as badly as I did, only to wake up pain-free… yet I had.
I ran my hands down my naked, clean body. The sores and bug bites were gone, as was the infected cut running down my hip. The pain from my broken legs was a bad memory.
Bodies didn’t magically heal.
I snapped my eyes open. Dark stone walls surrounded me, lit by a plum-purple mist floating out of translucent cauldrons in every corner of the ceiling. A crazy giggle slipped out of my mouth.
Magic. Magic again. God damn, my psychosis was persistent.
Automatically, I reached for my cell phone before pulling back.
There were no cell phones in this delusion.
For some reason, my made-up reality was one of limited technology, made up of a bizarre cross between Merlin and Mad Max.
I’d spent an unbelievable amount of time during my hours of endless wandering, trying to remember when I’d last seen either movie.
“No. Not endless. Don’t do that,” I said out loud, as if hearing myself would make it feel less real.
‘Don’t do that.’ My last three words echoed in the cavernous space, and I cringed.
A wave of homesickness and frustration washed over me. I was twenty-four and still lived with my dad because I was sick. He wanted me to get better. I wanted to get better. That’s what this brain surgery was for. I had to stay strong.
I squeezed my eyes shut before opening them to the new world my mental illness made up this time.
I was in a small room of dark, polished stone walls that swirled with texture.
To my right, a shelf covered in glowing bottles and bunches of herbs I didn’t recognize, mixed with bandages and basic medical supplies.
My mattress was a bit hard but much more comfortable than the cold ground I’d slept fitfully on for the last… no, recently.
A smooth metal mug filled with water sat on the bedside table next to me, and I helped myself. The water was good. Clean and crisp, with a hint of mineral. It was far too real.
Once again, I had to remind myself no matter what I experienced, outside this new reality, I still lay on my surgeon’s table. My struggle with mental illness was at its end. The personality inside of me that lied, stole, and did whatever it needed to fake magic was literally being cut out of me.
Magic didn’t exist.
Miss Q, the name I’d given the part of me who thought she could use magic, would fight me. My surgeon, Doctor Oz, and multiple therapists warned me. It never occurred to me Miss Q could create an entire world in such vivid detail.
“Just wait until Doctor Oz finishes cutting out your broken bits.” I chuckled and tapped my temple. “Then we’ll see who wins in the end.”
A shiver ran up my legs, and I rubbed them again as my last delusion came back to me.
I stood in the middle of what looked like a small coliseum from those movies about gladiators.
People wandered around the seating area wearing a mix of uniforms, fancy sweaters, and some medieval wizard robes.
It reminded me of a Renaissance fair. My layers of dirty, stolen clothing blended in perfectly as the town beggar.
I played the role well, no one paid any attention to me, which was perfect.
I had no idea what I was doing.
My feet tingled as if I stood on something charged, and a zing of energy shot through me. Suddenly, the milling people went silent, and every eye turned toward me. Someone gasped.
Hot breath hit my back, and I turned. A massive, black, spike-covered medieval dragon looked down at me through prismatic crystal eyes. I screamed and ran. What had seemed like a large oval coliseum now shrank in size. Too fast, I collided with a curved wall and spun back to face the beast.
Behind the monster’s hulking, scale-crusted ass, the entrance I’d come through warped smaller with every sway of its tail, each lumbering step sealing me deeper into its shadow.
Two men dressed in black leathers and covered in medieval weaponry stood on either side of the door.
One of them met my gaze and shook his head in disappointment.
I clenched my fists. Fuck Miss Q.
For months, I’d done everything I could to ‘blend in’ and ‘be normal’ in a world of her creation. And for my troubles, I’d almost been raped, kidnapped, and tied to an altar as a sacrifice. Now a fucking mythical beast was going to eat me.
A half-insane laugh and half-scream tore out of me.
I wasn’t playing this game anymore. My subconscious could suck it. None of this was real, so fuck trying to do the right thing.
I charged the dragon and slid between its legs like a ninja.
Driven by pure rage, I managed to hook one of the big spikes at the base of its tail and climbed up the massive, ridged spine along its back.
It turned circles looking for me, stupid thing, but once I got to the top of it, I could…
what? I didn’t have weapons. My hiking boots were rubber and leather.
Which one of us was the stupid thing?
What was I doing?
The dragon went still as it felt me crest its final spike. The eyes, the only part of the creature that should logically be soft, drew my attention.
Flattened against its head, I crept forward, every muscle tight, bracing for the violent shake that never came. Heat bled up through its scales as I crawled toward the ridge of its eye. I hooked one leg into the void beside it and kicked hard.
The dragon roared, the sound rattling my bones, and whipped its head from side to side.
I clung to a jagged spike above its eye, my body snapping back and forth with each violent jerk.
My fingers slipped. Whether I let go or it threw me, I was coming off.
The ground loomed three stories below. I released.
The air tore past me, and the impact exploded into pain before I got the chance to scream.
The wood door squealed open, jerking me out of my memory.
I let out a strangled laugh. “Nice try, Miss Q.” I slapped my legs. “Not broken. Didn’t happen.”
An older woman stepped confidently into the room. Her bright pink hair and glowing gem-pink eyes were perfectly synchronized.
I wrinkled my nose, touching my not-broken legs again.
I’d blacked out and woken four times, including this one.
Every time, whatever delusion I’d been in before vanished, replaced with a new scenario.
Although this setting lacked the usual outdoorsy theme, the characteristics of the people seemed to be the same: hair of every color, which always matched their glowing eyes.
Oh yeah, and magic. Magic existed. No one destroyed things like I did. But if I’d seen it in a movie, Miss Q made it a part of this world. My bonkers mind wanted to stay bonkers. On some level, I guess, I respected her attempts to normalize magic, as if that would save her destructive ass.
Something still felt off about the new arrival.
I focused on the woman’s pink hair… woman.
I blinked a few times. I’d seen very few women in any of my delusions.
She wore black, generic wizard robes from like a hundred different TV shows, belted around her waist with light-pink cords.
A collection of pouches and glowing jars hung off her left hip, including a square stone with glowing writing on the sides.
“You’re awake. How charming.” The woman’s rough, low voice bounced off the bare walls.
Great, Miss Q was leveling up her sarcasm game.