Chapter 25
Everything around me is chaotic yet silent at the same time. I’m standing, but can’t feel the earth beneath my feet. I inhale, struggling to get enough oxygen. Jacques’s words echo in my head. A human won’t survive long in the spirit world.
I’m standing in a dark fog, not sure if there’s anything around me at all. I blink, and the bare-branched silhouettes of trees come into view. Whirling around, I look for the rift. It’s here somewhere. It has to be.
Slowly, I take a step forward, holding my hand out in front of me, trying to feel for the energy the rift lets off. Low-hanging branches sway, but there is no breeze. They make an odd sound, almost like muted wind chimes.
And then I realize the trees aren’t trees at all.
My mouth falls open with a gasp and I jerk away. Human bones make up the shapes of the trees. Finger bones and teeth dangle in front of me, moving as if a breeze is blowing through.
“Jac?” I call, hoping he can somehow hear me. I feel incredibly alone, though at the same time it’s like a thousand eyes are on me. Lynn is nowhere to be seen, and each second that passes by lessens my chances of escaping.
“Acelina.”
I whip around, looking in the direction of the voice. A familiar voice.
My mother’s voice.
“Mom?”
“Ace,” she repeats. “You need to get out of here.”
“I know. But I don’t know how.”
“Follow me.”
The bones hanging in front of me rattle and I step forward, fully aware that I could be following a demon into the deepest pit of hell. The smell of lavender floats through the air, and my heart flutters in my chest.
Mom is here, and she’s going to help me escape.
The fog thickens, making it hard to move. Everything gets darker and darker, until I can’t see a single thing. Cold fingers wrap around my wrist and I flinch.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Mom soothes. She leads me through the fog, and soon it begins to thin. Blue light sparks in the distance, and I hear Hasan’s voice calling my name.
“Go to him,” Mom says, fingers leaving my wrist. “I love you, Acelina.”
“I love you too, Mom.” My words get cut off by a harrowing cry, reverberating off everything in this forsaken place.
“Ace, hurry!” Mom gives me a push forward and I take off, running as fast as I can toward the rift.
“Hasan!” I cry. “Hasan!”
The rift is right in front of me. I don’t have time to hesitate. Don’t have time to think this through. I just close my eyes and leap.
I land on Hasan, knocking him to the ground. His arms fasten around me, pulling me away from the rift.
“Ace,” he pants. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I say back, fighting the urge to throw myself around him and tell him to never let me go. But I have to close the rift. Whatever was coming for me isn’t going to stop, and the barrier is open. “I’m okay. We have to close the rift.”
“Are you sure? When you went in…I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I heard you,” I tell him, running my hand over his cheek. “From all the way in there, I heard you.”
“I love you,” he whispers, and then helps me to my feet.
“Holy shit, Ace,” Gemma says, shaking her head. She has her hands outstretched, still trying to hold the circle. If whatever darkness is in there comes out, it won’t be enough.
“Jared?” I ask, diving down to my bag. Hasan and I came up with this plan to close the rift on the way here, and we have no idea if it’ll work. Gemma shakes her head.
If he’s in the spirit world, he’s dead. There’s no way he could have survived any longer. Hell, I barely survived the five minutes I was in there. A deep, throaty growl comes from inside the rift, sending a chill down my spine.
“Hurry, Ace,” Gemma tells me, hands trembling.
I grab the last mixture of herbs, invoke their powers, and step over the salt circle.
Standing in front of the rift, I summon the fire and burn the herbs.
“I bind the tear and seal the rift. I bind the tear and seal the rift.” I chant the same thing over and over, using everything I have inside of me to heal the hole in our world.
The rift sparks and sizzles then starts to get smaller. And smaller. I feel like I’m running uphill and need to stop to catch my breath. I let my hands fall and my eyes start to flutter shut.
And the rift gets bigger again. I need to keep doing the spell, but I have nothing left.
Then Hasan steps next to me, putting his hand under mine. He lifts it up and starts chanting along with me. I turn to him, eyes meeting, and take a breath.
“I bind the tear and seal the rift,” I say along with him. My heart is racing. I’m exhausted. But I can do this.
Gemma hops over the salt line and stands at my other side. She puts her hand on my shoulder and stretches out her other hand toward the rift.
“I bind the tear and seal the rift,” we say at the same time. The rift gives off one final spark and then shimmers into nothing. I fall back, collapsing against Hasan. He gently lowers me to the ground, brushing my hair out of my face.
“We did it,” Gemma breathes, looking around in disbelief.
“We got rid of the ghost,” I say. “But I didn’t find Jared.”
“Ace,” Gemma says sympathetically. She crouches down and puts her hand on mine. “I’m sorry.”
“You win some, you lose some,” I say distantly, trying not to feel. I failed the kid. Here I am, wanting to teach him and guide him in the right direction so he didn’t end up under the shadow of someone using magic for the wrong reasons…and he gets kidnapped and killed by a ghost.
“Ace!” Jac’s voice booms up from the bottom of the waterfall. I turn my head and watch him fly to us, holding something in his arms.
“Is that him?” Gemma jumps to her feet. Jac lands with grace, gently cradling Jared’s limp body in his arms. “Is he—”
“He’s alive,” Jac says. “But barely.”
Gemma goes into nurse-mode and rushes in, checking his vitals the best she can. “He’s freezing.” She takes off her jacket and puts it over Jared. “Was he in the water?”
“On the edge of it.”
I pull my phone from my bag to call 911. “Take him down to the parking lot,” I tell Jac. “Put on the charm once you land. An ambulance will meet you there and we’ll be right behind you.”
Jac nods and takes flight. Hasan jumps into the air to find Tom and Gil, and Gemma madly scrambles to gather up our supplies as I call for help. The ambulance will be here soon, and Hasan picks me up, saying it’s faster to fly down than hike.
“Hope you’re not scared of heights,” Gilbert tells Gemma, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“I’m terrified.” Her eyes widen and she holds onto him for dear life.
Gil grins. “Then close your eyes.”
“How is he?” Hasan asks as soon as I walk through the door.
“He’s fine. Physically, I mean. Mentally…
that’s another story.” I take off my shoes and drop my purse on the ground.
I rode in the ambulance to the hospital with Jared, and had Gemma take the guys home in the car.
Keri and Roger got there in record time, and thanked me over and over for finding their son.
Jared came to once he was warmed up, and we didn’t have a chance to talk about anything.
I pressed the same story over and over to the EMTs, the ER nurses and doctor, and again to Jared’s parents, hoping he’d remember it and stick with the lie that he went out on a hike, leaving his phone at home on purpose for a social media break, and got lost in the woods.
Lots of people get lost in the woods, and he’s just lucky I remembered him mentioning wanting to go exploring.
“And you?”
“I’m fine too,” I assure Hasan, though no one in this house looks convinced.
“You went into the rift.”
“Yeah. But I came out too.” Just thinking about the bone trees creeps me out. And knowing my mother is still in there…nope. I can’t think about it. Not right now.
Gemma pulls a bottle of wine from the fridge. “After the last few days you’ve had, you deserve the whole thing.”
I chuckle. “I won’t disagree with that. I’m starving. Who wants to make dinner, because I’m beat?”
Taking the bottle of wine from Gemma, I sit heavily in a kitchen chair. Tom looks at Gil and then at Jacques.
“What?” I ask, bringing the bottle of wine to my lips.
“You went into the spirit world, Ace,” Thomas says gently. “Don’t you want to talk about it?”
“No.” I take another drink of wine. I don’t want to talk about it because that will make me think about it. Thinking leads to feeling, and emotions are bad. “Not now.”
Hasan opens the fridge and gets out lunch meat and cheese. I let my head fall back against the chair and close my eyes. I don’t know what time it is, but we have to be nearing sunrise.
After I eat, Jac takes me upstairs, wanting to lie in bed with me while he can before the sun comes up. I strip out of my clothes and fall onto the mattress next to him, curling up between his wings and his body.
My eyelids are heavy, and I fall asleep almost instantly.
I sleep for a solid ten hours and still feel groggy when I wake up. Though it’s probably because I slept for so long. Rubbing my eyes, I sit up and look around my room, remembering everything that happened this last week.
After this, I need a real vacation.
I stretch out, taking my time getting out of bed. I shower, put on clean PJs, and go downstairs to find Gemma. She’s sitting in the living room, opening the boxes to the portable air conditioning units that I never got around to.
“Hey,” she says, ripping the cardboard enough to get the air conditioner out. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better. You?”
“I’m still good.”
My eyes go to a flat white box on the coffee table. “What’s that?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s for you, and I had to sign for it.”
I cross the room and pick up the box. Whatever it is was shipped first class, and there’s no return address. I take it into the kitchen with me, needing my morning coffee even though it’s the afternoon now. I start the coffee and open the box.
It’s full of files, and I recognize them right away as police reports. Each file has a different name on it, and they’re stacked in order from oldest to newest. I sit at the table, getting more and more confused as I flip through them all.
The coffee is ready, but I don’t get up. I sit there transfixed, eyes brimming with tears and the weirdest feeling of panic and fear mixing with the thrill of discovering something I’ve been searching for my whole life.
“Ace?” Gemma calls, coming into the kitchen. I’ve been sitting here for at least twenty minutes, reading through the files. “Do you want any—what’s wrong?”
I look up, blinking back tears. “The files…” I start, but words leave me. I close my eyes and an image of my parents’ dead and bloody bodies flash before me.
“That’s what was in the box? Files? Files of what?”
“They’re all cold cases. Some date back to the early 1900s.”
“Someone sent you work?” She tips her head to the side, not following.
“No…not in that sense. But someone sent them to me for a reason.”
“What is it?”
“The cause of death…it’s the same for every case. Their hearts were frozen from the inside out.” A tear escapes and rolls down my cheek, splashing onto the last file. The one I haven’t brought myself to open yet.
The one labeled Frank and Jessica Bisset.
The one about my parents.
To be continued…
Ace’s journey concludes in brOKEN BY NIGHT, Book 4 of the Her Dark Protectors series! Turn the page to keep reading…