“What if the next place is even worse?”
“Keep shifting and I’ll keep holding on.”
A gust of air blasted us. We went stumbling off the edge, into yawning darkness. I opened the pouch as we fell.
A massive vortex exploded around us, black, swirling, tearing at my hair and clothes. I struggled to shove the stones back into the rune-covered bag. I could feel Christian’s grip slipping, then his hands were gone and I was alone.
I slammed down onto grassy tundra, on my hands and knees.
I hit so hard, the pouch went flying from my hands. My forehead smacked into the earth and I bit my tongue viciously. I couldn’t feel Christian’s hands on me anywhere.
Ears ringing from the impact, I lifted my head, dazed.
I stared straight into the eyes of an enormous wild boar with razor-sharp tusks.
When you’re staring death in the face, time has a funny way of slowing down.
Or maybe, in this realm, it really did move slower, who knows?
All I knew, as I stared into the boar’s beady, cunning, hungry eyes—tiny in its cow-size body—was that ever since I’d dropped my cell phone into our swimming pool, I’d begun losing things. One after another.
First my sister. Then my parents and any hope of going home.
I’d tried to roll with the punches, be a good sport. I’d made a new home for myself in a bookstore in Dublin. I’d attempted to make new friends and forge alliances. I’d said good-bye to pretty clothes, my blond hair, and my love of fashion. I’d accepted shades of gray instead of rainbows and finally embraced black.
Then I’d lost Dublin and my bookstore.
Finally I’d lost myself, even my own mind.
I’d learned to use new weapons, found new ways to survive.
And lost those, too.
My spear was gone. I had no Unseelie flesh. No name in my tongue.
I’d found Christian. I’d lost Christian. I was pretty sure he’d ended up being dragged off one way in the vortex, while I’d been sent another.
And now I’d lost the stones, too. The pouch was on the ground, far beyond the boar, drawstring tight. I couldn’t even hope for an accidental shift.
The dirk strapped to my forearm wouldn’t begin to pierce the animal’s scale-plated hide.
And I had to wonder: Was this the whole point? Was it about taking everything from me there was to take? Was that what life did? Made you lose everything you cared about and believed in, then killed you?
Yes, I was feeling sorry for myself.
Fecking A, as Dani would say—who wouldn’t at this point?
Fire worlds? Water worlds? Cliffs? What crappy cosmic power was in charge of deciding where the stones sent me next? Were the blue-black slivers of whatever they were so despised by the Silvers that if a realm couldn’t spit them all the way back to the Unseelie hell, it would settle for trying to destroy them—therefore, oops, me, too? Was I being deliberately flung into the jaws of danger?
Or, as I’d begun to wonder lately, had the destruction of me begun a long time ago? Hidden in obscured dreams and forgotten memories.
What did I have left?
Nothing.
I crouched, staring furiously across a space of grassy field at a beady-eyed boar that I swore wore an evil smile on its tusked face.
It snorted and pawed the ground.
For lack of anything else to do, I snorted back and pawed the ground myself. Bristled and shot it a look of death.
Beady eyes narrowed. It lifted its heavy-jowled head and sniffed the air.
Was it trying to scent fear? Too bad. There wasn’t any rolling off me. I was too angry to be afraid.
Where the hell was everyone when I needed—oh! Once before I’d thought myself without options, while I’d still had one left.
As the boar assessed my victim potential, I scowled at it, baring my teeth while easing a hand beneath my coat and into my back pocket.
I slipped out my cell phone. Water poured off it. Would it even work? I snorted inwardly. I was still expecting things to function according to understandable laws, as I crouched here in the seventh alternate dimension I’d been in recently. How silly of me.
I flipped it open and laid it on the ground.
The boar ducked its head, readying for the charge.
I didn’t dare raise the phone to my ear. I punched buttons as it lay there. First, Barrons, then IYCGM, and finally the forbidden IYD. This definitely qualified as dying.
I waited. I don’t know what for. Some miracle.
I guess I’d been hoping that using IYD would do something like magically transport me to safety at the bookstore. Or Barrons would instantly materialize and rescue me.