Chapter Twenty-Eight
My gut twists as I stare out the windshield of the SUV. There’s something shimmering much like the rip in reality that took us to the fae realm.
“What is that?” I ask, leaning forward.
“We’re about to find out,” Jayden mumbles. “Should I avoid it?”
We’ve been driving through swampland for the better part of an hour with no direction in mind, but that looks suspiciously as if it’s going to delay us again.
“No, it could just be the entrance to Arcadia. I don’t feel a pull toward it this time.” I grip the armrest a little harder.
“No, it feels like the opposite,” Draven says from the back. “Like it doesn’t want us to go through.”
“It could still be a portal or rip to another realm. Everyone, keep your eyes open,” Jayden says.
My stomach drops the closer we get to the shimmering barrier. Something whispers in my ear, “Danger. Keep out!” I shake my head and take a deep breath, holding it until we pass through the barrier, feeling as if ants are crawling across my skin. An involuntary shudder rolls down my spine.
“Wow, what is this place?” I lean forward in my seat.
“It’s like a paradise. I thought Arcadia was supposed to be mostly swampland to scare people away.” Jayden glances at me. “How did we come into the area that’s not?”
“Did we come into the right place? We’ve been lucky that we haven’t been thrown off course again. Maybe we’re in a different world?” I ask.
Vibrant flowers I have never seen before dot the ground around the SUV and lush foliage rises up, creating a canopy over the trees. It’s a paradise. A wild unknown land that doesn’t appear to be touched by human civilization.
“The book did say that there was a paradise, but it was surrounded by deadly swamp and demon pigeons. I’m glad it brought us somewhere safe rather than the heart of trouble.” I rub my eyes with two fingers and pinch my nose.
“That’s if,” Raven says, poking her head between the seats, “it even brought us where we need to be and didn’t derail us when we’re running out of time.”
“Wait.” Adrian leans forward and squints into the distance. “What’s that?”
“What do you see?” I glance out the windshield and a grin grows on my face. “I know exactly what that is. We weren’t sent to another realm; we are right where we need to be.”
“What?” Raven cocks her head to the side.
“Don’t you see the building? Look familiar to anyone else?” I ask.
Jayden glances at me and then back out the window. “Well, look at that. Guess the old goat has something to tell us if he moved the shop here.”
“Pan is here? That’s either a very good sign or a bad sign.” Raven clenches a fist in her lap.
“Well,” Draven says. “We probably shouldn’t keep him waiting. We are running out of time here already.”
I shoot him a glare for putting more pressure on us as we roll up to the front of the shop. “What in Hades?”
“Something’s not right here. Why does it look like that?” Raven asks.
Compared to the gorgeous landscape of Arcadia, Pan’s shop is run down. The paint on the siding is peeling and the sign above the entrance is hanging at an angle it never did before. What could have happened to the god of the wilds for his home to be like this?
“We need to go inside.” I wring my hands together. “Something is very wrong here.”
I unbuckle my seat belt and reach for the handle, but Jayden stops me with a hand on my knee. “We go in together, as a team. We could be walking into a trap set by the queen.”
“Yeah, B,” Raven says. “She knows you care and will investigate things like this. We need to be smart and prepare for what we might find.”
“You’re right, but Pan has helped us on more than one occasion. If something happens to him, I won’t forgive myself,” I say with a sigh.
We move as a unit inside the shop, but I’m unprepared for what we find. The shop is never really organized in any way that we can understand, but this time, it appears that a cyclone hit it. Papers are scattered across the ground and equipment hangs haphazardly from tree branches.
