"I'm not sure. Days. Maybe a week." I was so tired, and I closed my eyes, trying to recall the specifics without getting pulled back into the threads still waving around us. I'd seen something new while I was in there this time. I didn't give it much recognition at the time, but now I tried to remember, to figure out what it was. "In all of the different scenarios I followed, I saw four binding points connecting that dimension to this one. I think if we can find them, we can break through."
"Binding points?"
I opened my eyes, trying to make my brain work. "I think so?"
"The witches can work on that." Elias shifted me in his arms, and I realized we were still sitting in the protective circle at Ancient Magicks. The voices I heard when I first came out had stopped, and all around us, worried faces stared down at me. "First, you need to rest."
My eyes found Kenya's before going back to Elias. "I'm fine."
"You're shaking."
I was. My whole body shivered like I'd just walked through a blizzard. When did it get so cold? I pressed closer to Elias, seeking his warmth.
Honey-blond hair tickled the side of my face as Alice bent close to us. "You found him, though?" Alice whispered in my ear. "You really saw him?"
"I did." I'd seen multiple versions of him, but I didn't tell her that. I reached for her hand, squeezing it. "He's still alive, Alice. And he's fighting."
She broke down completely, sobbing into her hands. Angel moved to comfort her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
Kenya was strangely quiet.
"Can you tell us what you saw?" my aunt asked.
I told them everything I could remember while Elias sat restlessly beneath me. I could feel his eagerness to leave even though he never moved while I tried to explain what it was like to travel beyond yourself.
When I was finished, Elias helped to my feet, still holding me. The room full of vampires and witches watched me, waiting.
But I had nothing more to give them.
"I'm taking her home," he announced.
No one moved. No one spoke. No one tried to stop him.
Good.
He carried me out of Ancient Magicks and into the New Orleans night, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and laid my head on his shoulder, not even caring who saw us.
We almost lost each other in there. Almost lost everything.
But we didn't.
And I'd be damned—more damned than I already was—if I let Marcus or anyone else threaten what we had.
Elias saved me today.
Tomorrow, I'd figure out how to save Alex.
Chapter 17
Alice
The ceiling fan spun in lazy circles above my bed, casting shifting shadows across the walls of my apartment. I counted the rotations. Twelve. Twenty. Forty-three.
Sleep wouldn't come.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Talin when she came back from the thread realm. Pale as death, trembling, barely holding herself together. I saw the terror in Elias's expression as he carried her out of the back room of Lizzy's shop. I tried to imagine the binding points she described, the four anchors tethering Marcus's pocket dimension to our world. I saw the book still hidden beneath the floorboards in my closet.
And I felt the darkness inside me, coiled tight and waiting.
