Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
We’re sitting on Tia’s bed—me cross-legged with her purple throw pulled over my lap, her against the headboard with a mug of coffee in both hands—and I tell her everything.
Ev-er-y-thing.
The closet. Chase barging in. The fight that wasn’t quite a fight. The spur-of-the-moment meeting in the dorm. The barriers. The keystone. And the freaky-ass bond between the brothers.
It’s one hell of a mind dump, but she listens without interrupting. And since Tia interrupts all the freaking time, that’s one humongous clue as to how serious all this is.
When I finish word-vomiting, she sets her mug on her nightstand and says, “Okay.”
“Okay?” I repeat.
She shrugs. “Well, yeah.”
“But I should be freaking out, right? Why am I not freaking out? For that matter, why aren’t you freaking out?”
She leans over and takes my hands. “We can freak out later. Right now, I think we just have to deal.”
She’s not wrong.
“We deal with the important shit first,” she says.
I nod, fully expecting her to jump onto the barrier problem and what’s happening at the Widow Maker.
Instead, she says, “Adric and Chase really agreed to share you? Because that is the wildest thing I have ever heard.” She looks me up and down.
“Are you really that amazing in bed? Because I’m happy to let you take a test drive to see if you like girls… ”
I throw a pillow at her, but mostly to hide my laugh. “Tempting. Except we both know Riley would hunt me down and kill me. But thanks.”
“For the ridiculous jolt of absurdity in the face of deep peril? No problem.” She leans back. “Seriously, are you okay? I mean, barriers and boyfriends and psychic sexy times. It’s a lot.”
I think about it. Really think about it.
I haven’t slept much. My body still hums in the places Adric put his hands, and the whole Chase-can-feel-me-when-I’m-with-Adric and vice-versa thing is beyond weird.
But all I say is, “Yeah. I think I’m okay.
For now. Later, who knows? We might all three kill each other. But first, we have to save the world.”
“Sucks when the fate of the world takes precedence over your sex life.”
“Right? I mean, what was the universe thinking?” I catch her eye, and we both burst out laughing. Because sometimes, that’s all you can do to keep your head from exploding.
“Okay,” she says when we’ve settled. “Now what?”
“Now we figure out why the Widow Maker’s getting rumbly and make it stop. Because, from what Chase and Adric say, if that puppy comes loose, the entire universe is pretty much screwed.
“So we research,” she says. “We find the answer.”
“I am completely down with that plan. How?”
She grimaces. “I’ve got nothing. Except books.”
“Great,” I grumble. “Do you really think we can find something that Chase or Adric don’t already know?”
“Since you said they don’t know how to stop it, then yeah. I think we can. Because, you know, we pretty much have to.”
She has a point. “Fine,” I say with a sigh. “Books it is. Which books, exactly?”
“Scholarly stuff…and old. The kind of stuff that got lost over time. But there’s got to be something. I’m certain of it.”
“Yeah? Why?”
She tilts her head and stares me down. “Because if there’s not a book, there’s probably not an answer. And then we’re really screwed.”
“Right,” I say. So there’s definitely a book. How do we find it? Goodwill? Half Price Books? NASA’s secret Funky Physics library?”
She just shakes her head in a poor, confused you kind of way.
“We’ve already got a secret weapon,” she says.
“Griffin’s got a zillion books, and he must know all sorts of Hunters who’ve stumbled over others.
Plus, he gave me a list of the really rare ones he wants to read but doesn’t have access to. I figure we start with the list.”
“You just said he doesn’t have access.”
She grins, then waggles her eyebrows. “He doesn’t,” she says, pulling out her phone. “But you do.” She taps out a message, and an instant later, my phone chimes. “I just sent you the list.”
“Hello? Do you remember me freaking out on that research paper I had to write? I am so not research girl.”
“You are now.”
“Me? Why?”
“Nightmare Realm library.”
“Oh,” I grimace, but she’s right. If what we need is in the library, I probably am the only one who can get it. Me or Adric, that is.
With a resigned sigh, I open the file, then stare at the list of titles that are even stranger than Mr. Griffin’s loopy handwriting.
Liminal Architecture in the Post-Sundering Age
The Drakkenfeld Codex.
A Treatise Upon the Veil
I look up. “What is a codex, anyway?” I ask, and Tia just shakes her head.
“Those are the English titles, obviously, but Griffin says the actual books could be in another language. Possibly Latin. But also possibly some language nobody in the Real’s ever heard of.”
“Great,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to go on a scavenger hunt for books in a language I don’t know. Because, you know, the fun.”
“Oh,” she adds. “I forgot to add another one you need to look for. Riley and I need it. The Book of something-or-other that translates to The Book of the Threshold. Latin from around the sixteenth century, I think. Apparently, the original was burned, but at least a few copies are floating around.”
“Hopefully I can find one.”
“Fingers crossed,” Tia says. Because if you can’t find it, you may have to cozy up to Sebastian Vance. We ran across a few references that suggest the Oneiroi have one of the copies.
I grimace, then cross my fingers that my uncle’s favorite library is as awesome as he thinks.
“When are you going?” she asks.
“Tonight,” I say. I’m going to go over to Chase’s place, then I’ll leave from there. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve found what’s on your list. And after I see Uncle Finn and Adric,” I add, because those are pretty much a given.
“If you see anything else that sounds like it’s about barriers or keystones, bring it back.” She frowns. “Actually, can you bring them back? Won’t they change character coming to the Real?”
I frown. She may be right. “In that case, I’ll bring them back into the closet.”
“Great. Riley and Griff can camp out there and set up a workspace on the sand.”
I roll my eyes. “I’ll get Adric to move the liminal space to the Griffin’s Nest. But only if we need him to.”
Her mouth twitches.
I cross my arms
She stares at me.
“What? I like having it in the closet. It’s a convenient way to see him. And I like how my clothes are starting to smell beachy.”
She just smirks again.
I sigh. “It still feels weird, you know. Wanting them both. And I have to say, Adric’s been good about staying out of the Real.”
“I think it’s a hoot,” Tia says. “Adric in the Nightmare Realm, Chase here in the Real. You’re like a kickass heroine in a really hot romance novel.”
“And that crazy perspective on my life is just one of the many reasons I keep you around.”
“Many, many reasons,” she says, then hugs me hard.
I hug her back, but my mind is wandering, lost in the thought that I’m somehow cheating. Not on Chase or Adric, but on the world.
Like the Adric-and-Chase-agreeing-to-share-me part of the program is a prize the world doesn’t hand out during pending apocalypses, and any second now some hard-faced judge is going to take it all away.
Maybe so, I tell myself.
But he hasn’t taken them yet.
There’s a particular kind of crazy in knocking on your boyfriend’s door to kiss him goodbye before you go spend the night with the other man you’re falling for.
And engaged to. And who happens to live in another realm.
And through whom your boyfriend will totally feel any and all sex that might—okay, will—undoubtedly be going on.
I knock anyway.
Chase opens the door in a soft gray tee and bare feet, and my stomach drops the way it always does—a stupid, happy swoop that has nothing to do with realms and everything to do with the fact that I’m completely gone over him.
“Hi,” I say.
He steps back to let me in, the door clicks shut, and I’m in the space I’ve started to think of as the one place in any realm that truly feels like home.
I don’t make it past the doormat. He pulls me against him before I’ve taken two steps, and I’m grateful, because I’ve been wanting his hands on me since I left the dorm.
His arms come around me, and his chin settles on the top of my head.
For a moment, I just stand there with my cheek against the soft cotton of his tee as I listen to the steady thump of his heart.
“Missed you,” he says into my hair.
“Same.”
He kisses the top of my head, and when I tilt my face up, I’m rewarded with his lips on mine.
Soft at first, then surging into something wild and demanding as his hand slides to the back of my neck, and for a long moment, there’s nothing in the world but the warm press of his mouth and the smell of his laundry detergent and the wonderful reality of being in this man’s arms.
When I pull back, I’m a little breathless.
“Hi,” I say again, because apparently I’ve lost the power to create sentences.
“Hi,” he says back, amusement sparkling in those lovely golden eyes.
He guides me to the bed, now folded up into just a sofa, and we both sit, with me snuggled up tight against him. I know he wants to ask about Adric, but I jump in first. “Dare I ask what’s new with the Widow Maker?”
He’s silent for a beat, and I can practically see the wheels turning as he debates leading with the work or the invisible man between us.
“The dead zone’s still growing,” he says, and I relax a bit, having dodged the Adric-shaped elephant in the room for a little bit longer.
“The diameter?” I ask. “How big is it now?”
“For starters, it’s not a circle as of the last report from Griff. Now it’s elongating toward the walkway, and it’s growing at a steady clip.”
“Like it’s got someplace to be,” I joke, then freeze a bit when Chase actually nods.
“We can’t rule that out.”
“That’s not creepy at all.”
“It gets better. More dead birds. Nine this time, at the base of the trunk.”