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“No. He showed you the girl’s virtue. Purity. You answered with kindness, not fear.”
“What does purity or her virtue have to do with a lost—” Words die as I think of her and the doll’s shattered face. Anomalies of time. Wisps of memory. A soul lingering.
He speaks carefully. “That’s part of the bigger story?—”
I cut him off. “You saw her too.”
“You and me, love. We’re the ones who see.”
My fingers slide into my hair as the girl, the doll, the staircase float through my mind. The odd sensation of her present yet insubstantial hand. Memories of silence instead of the clicking of a child’s dress shoes on the floor as she ran off.
“Holy sh…” I take in the sky, the landscape, the man in front of me, and the sparks of energy coursing through my body in a wild current. I’m part of this, whatever it is, whether I want to be or not. “So, you’re right about the girl?”
He nods. “And the Veil.” His hands slide down my arms, then lightly touch my waist. I’m tempted to lean into him. “Have you come home, Eala Duir?”
At the bonfire, any notion of being close to an embrace with Sion Loho would strike me at best as unnerving. Here in what he identifies as the Veil, if I let myself believe that is where we are, I ache for the reassurance of his arms. This prickly man has become my anchor in reality turned inside out.
I start to laugh like a crazy person. My body convulses as if it’s shedding a skin of skepticism. “If I believe in the ghost girl, I’m supposed to accept you’re a peanut bar stealing fox?”
His teeth shine, quicksilver in the moonlight. “That I am.”
“Show me.”
He blows out a long, slow breath, his gaze locked on mine, but doesn’t object. Fog puffs in a column around him then settles to reveal a familiar thieving scoundrel. The fox lets go a yip I swear sounds like, “See.” Before I manage a pair of blinks, distortion twists the air, and Sion is back.
I swallow wrong and start to choke. He pats my back as I sputter. “Bizarre. Completely bizarre.”
Sion rakes fingernails up and down his chest under his shirt. I catch a glimpse of flat, toned stomach muscles. “The damn change itches like I’ve been doused in a shower of starving ants.”
I fan a hand along the length of his body. “But, how?—?”
He stoops to scratch his shins. “Something Finnbheara dropped in my toolbox.” With a grunt, he straightens. “I don’t have much call to use it.” Sion watches me. “It served me well enough tonight.” His eyes widen as he continues to stare into mine. “Will you give me an answer now, Eala bán? Does the Veil feel like home to you?”
“Well, Sionnach, I wouldn’t call it home but here—” I sweep an arm across the landscape. “Is definitely nowhere I’ve ever been before.” Not a dream flash imposed over the mundane—a separate reality.
Sion’s mouth quirks into the bare beginning of a smile, his prelude to celebrate a victory he’s reticent to claim completely.
Before I return his smile, the world wobbles as a surge passes through me. It’s not heat, sound, or wind. I sense it in every cell. Matching my internal sensation, ripples cross the sky overhead, but the clouds don’t move. When the unseen pulse reaches my inner ear, my balance shatters, and I tip backward.
Sion catches me. “Felt that, didja?”
I hum an answer deep in my throat. With him, I’m not alone in a membrane between worlds, this Veil.
His eyes are bright. “That was you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
He runs a hand up my spine to grip the back of my neck. Heat builds where his fingertips touch skin. “Your mind called to the Veil, and it answered.” Our faces are inches apart with matching looks of intensity.
His touch, his breath, those green glass eyes mix together in my senses, sparking feelings I’m not prepared for.
When I pull back, Sion’s face flushes as russet as fox fur. Judging by the heat crawling up my neck, I’m doing the same.
I tilt my head to gaze at the treetops. It’s all true. Sion can turn into a fox. The Veil is a conduit to a parallel reality. Stories are not just stories.
He shoots me a look that begins as a question, but then shifts to genuine concern. “Dancing with the Veil feels a bit like losing your mind until you get used to it.”
A fluff of hair falls over my eyes. Sion traps it between his fingers, rolling it back and forth for a moment, studying it. “As pure white as a swan.” He tucks it behind my ear, and I shiver. “Are you losing yours?”
