“Hey! What gives?” Eira croaked, slightly alarmed.
“Well, technically, out of the five of us, you’re most likely to end up as wolf chow if they attack,” Raphael replied. A second later, water gushed from the side and hit him so hard, he toppled and fell like a big ol’ tree. “I take that back,” he added, grunting as he pulled himself back up and gave Eira a sheepish smile. He looked at me next. “So, then, you’re the weakest link?”
The flame in my hand burned brighter and more menacing as I narrowed my eyes at him. “Let me guess, you’re trying to figure out which one of us you can sacrifice to a pack of wolves?”
Amelia smacked him over the shoulder. He laughed. “Fortunately, we’re all high-end specimens here,” Amelia said. “No one’s getting eaten by wolves or whatever else roams through these woods.”
We walked for a couple of hours, talking and going over everything that had happened. We’d done the same in the previous four hours after our arrival here, but the topics didn’t get old. How would we get out of here? Would we get out of here in time to meet with Varga and join him on the Mortis mission? What was going on with Harper? What more could we tell Phoenix to help him find us faster? What options did we have left to fight the Hermessi before they hit the five million fae mark? Questions without answers, questions that bugged the hell out of me…
Amelia frowned and came to a sudden halt. Instinctively, we all stopped by her side, and she took several deep breaths.
“What is it?” Raphael whispered.
“Shush. Hold on. The air’s getting colder,” she said quietly. “I mean, the temperature is dropping.”
“We are headed north,” I said. She shot me a dark glare.
“That’s not what I mean. Don’t you feel it?” Amelia asked, and we all shook our heads.
Granted, it was chillier in these parts than up on the cliff, but I didn’t find the temperature drop to be all that noticeable. Still, it wasn’t enough to satisfy her. She stilled, her gaze fixed on something not far from where we stood.
I followed her point of focus but couldn’t see anything. “What is it, Amelia?” I asked, my voice low.
“This is… This is weird,” she said. “Don’t you see him?”
“See who?” Raphael replied, persistently staring in the same direction.
Eira and Lumi were equally confused.
“He’s standing right there. Fifty yards, at three o’clock,” Amelia insisted, pointing a finger in that direction. “Come on, he’s looking right at us.”
But there wasn’t anyone there. Not even a silhouette or a shadow. I, for one, was downright puzzled. Amelia, on the other hand, was getting genuinely alarmed. She glanced around, then gasped.
“What?” Raphael blurted, on the edge of his seat, so to speak.
“Oh, come on, you can’t see them?” Amelia croaked. “There are people here! Not just that guy, but all around us.” She started pointing in different directions. “Four over there. Two there. A few more on that side. I can’t be the only one seeing them! You guys should be able to see them, too!”
“Amelia, I swear, we can’t,” Lumi said, trying to reassure her, though she was clearly baffled. “What… What do they look like? Can you describe them to us? What are they doing?”
Amelia chuckled nervously and covered her mouth for a moment. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and popped them open again. The tremor in her lower lip didn’t go away. Judging by her expression alone, she could still see them.
“They’re not… They’re not doing anything. Just standing there and watching us. Only, they’re not full… Gah, how do I explain this?” she stammered. “They’re… translucent… half-visible… like holographs. And they look different. Some are young, some are elderly. Male, female. Kids. Different species, too,” she added, turning around several times, as if to take it all in. “I see humanoids… maybe Imen and people of Earth. Fae… I see a couple of daemons… Hell, there’s a couple of species I certainly don’t recognize. This is weird. And creepy!”
Raphael put his arm around her and held her close. I amplified my fire enough to cast a brighter light around us. Lumi helped, and we lit the forest up on a hundred-yard radius. We noticed animals rushing left and right, but certainly none of the people Amelia had just described.
It hit me, then, what this could be. But it was highly improbable, since there were no actual accounts recorded in GASP of such sightings.
“Could she be seeing… ghosts?” I asked out loud.
Lumi was the first to react. “I’ve never heard of people actually seeing them. Regardless of their species. Maybe feeling them, sometimes, in certain conditions,” she said. “Of course, every culture has its folktales about the dead and the afterlife.”
“Okay, now they’re gone,” Amelia snapped, putting her hands on her hips. She gave me a worried look. “Am I losing my mind?”
Did I have an answer for that? No, I didn’t. Multiple possibilities thundered in my mind. Visions. Actual ghosts. Hallucinations. Mirages. Projections from some kind of spell. But nothing else happened—a magic offensive seemed rather far-fetched.
Maybe they were just local creatures. Or, perhaps, Amelia was right. Maybe she was suffering from some kind of breakdown. I found that even harder to believe than the idea that a witch was messing with us, though. Amelia’s psyche was ironclad. Everything that had happened to us so far would’ve been enough to send a human off the deep end, but certainly not a creature like Amelia.
No, something else was going on here, and it warranted further investigation. Since we were still waiting for a sign from Phoenix, we basically had nothing better to do. I advised our group to keep moving and pay attention. Something told me this wasn’t the last sighting Amelia would come across, and my instinct was rarely wrong.
Eva
In a way, my experience in the Volcrun caves had transformed me. I was no longer the Eva who had first gone down there. I found myself in awe of Kabbah, Nevertide’s Earth Hermessi. He was old and powerful—enough to deter the other Hermessi from attacking him. It didn’t stop them from coming after us, sure, but Kabbah sent a clear message across when he obliterated their Shills. Fortunately, his brethren’s desperation to kill us had made him tell us about Death.
I was inclined to believe that Kabbah wanted to do more, but, since they held his daughter hostage, he didn’t dare. He hid behind that grumpy and uncaring façade, but deep down, I knew he was worried. He’d been against the first ritual. He couldn’t be okay with this one, either.
But what had really changed me was my own interaction with him. I’d been fearless—or, better said, numb. Kabbah could’ve easily crushed me for my insolence, but I stood by every word I’d said to him, and it seemed to have earned me his respect. I wondered if he would’ve been as forthcoming as he was, had I not poked and prodded him.
The Lamia princess, daughter of Tamara and future Lady of the Lamias, was pretty much a distant memory for me. I wasn’t that person anymore. I was infinitely stronger. My self-confidence was booming. I was out of my silk cocoon and blossoming into a creature I looked forward to getting to know better. If only my mother could set her pride aside and see me now…
I hadn’t spoken to her since I’d joined the mission for Cerix. I missed her, even that version of her that made me want to scream and run away—yet she hadn’t even sent word to me. Nothing. It was as if I’d stopped existing all of a sudden. I wondered about her, but I didn’t want to be the one to reach out. That would’ve meant playing into her hands, and my mother was an expert in manipulation. I had firsthand experience with her machinations. She meant well, but her mind belonged to another era, another culture.
“You seem different,” Varga said, pulling me out of my musings. His eyes were fixed on me, gold flakes dancing around his pupils.
We were in Phoenix’s telescope room, patiently waiting while he scoured the astral maps, using details he’d gotten from Amelia’s sky readings. Riza and Herakles were settled at the other end of the table, and Fallon was half asleep in a chair next to Phoenix. We were on our own here, while the rest of GASP was assigned to multiple field missions and administrative tasks. Roles had been shifted, priorities had been changed. After Mount Agrith came down, that had struck me as the reasonable thing to do.
We were stretched thin, anyway. My crew was in limbo, waiting, much like Taeral and the others. I looked forward to being reunited with them, because I felt a bit safer with a swamp witch like Lumi around. I also liked Eira a lot. She was my kind of girl—kind and decent, but ruthless when push came to shove.
But I did enjoy these few moments I had with Varga. I could feel his eyes on me, even when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t need his abilities to sense his interest in me. My heart skipped a beat whenever I had his attention. “What do you mean?” I asked, giving him a weak smile.
