Torin beams at me.
I clap my hands. “Okay, let’s head through. Mickey… you’re going to have to leave Tommy and Joy here.”
“I will miss you,” Mickey cries as he cups Tommy’s face. “I won’t forget the way you tuck me in bed at night. Or the way you lay my clothes out for me in the morning. Or how you bring my toothbrush to me when I’m too tired to stand at the sink. You are the best man I’ve ever brought back to life. Willing to do anything and?—”
“Tommy, you ready to hit up the casino?” Joy asks.
“I am. And then my daughter is going to Facetime me at ten,” he says while Mickey whines and watches them go. They’re not as distraught as Mickey is about any of this. But before they get too far, Tommy looks back. “Be safe. I will have your bed fluffed and ice cream waiting for you when you return.”
“Tommy, you’re the best,” Mickey calls as I shake my head and push Mickey toward the Door. “Joy?”
“I can’t hear you,” she says.
“Joy, I want you to also make me feel warm fuzzies.”
Joy just flips Mickey off who flips her off back. Both seem very pleased by this exchange.
“Let’s get this over with,” I mutter.
And with that, we step through the Door together.
The moment we do, the Door shudders and seems to collapse in on itself. I’m immediately thrown forward a second before I hear someone say, “Finally,” and pain spikes through my head when something collides with it.
I stagger and crash to the ground as darkness invades me.
When I open my eyes, I see Torin frantically looking around as he damn near tosses Story into Mickey’s arms. Mickey struggles to hold the teen who is taller than him and hurriedly eases him onto the ground as I discover that I can’t hear anything.
Why can’t I hear him? Instead, I’m stuck with this bizarre experience where I can see him speaking, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I’m worried that my hearing was the next to go, but I didn’t use any magic when I passed through the Door, did I?
Torin lunges forward and grabs Kit as I see his surprisingly distraught face.
“Torin, I can’t hear for some reason,” I say right before I feel something on me.
But Torin is in front of me and…
“What the fuck are you going on about?” a man asks.
“Don’t interact with him. We’ll see what Onyx wants to do with him,” a woman says. I feel them pulling me to my feet, but Kit isn’t looking at me, and Torin isn’t engaging with me.
And that’s when I finally realize that it’s not that I can’t hear Torin… it’s that I’m notwiththem. How the hell did we get separated?
My head throbs while I’m dragged and then something suddenly knocks into my knees and I stumble forward. When I attempt to jerk my arms up to catch myself, I find that my hands are handcuffed behind my back. Unable to catch myself, I fall forward, slamming into something.
“How hard did you hit him?” the woman asks.
“I didn’t hit him that hard. I just wanted to disorient him. I didn’t know who the fuck was invading our realm.”
I decide that maybe now would be a good time to speak up. “I’m not here to do any harm. I heard you had a monster invading your lands, and I came to share with you that we had one that we drove out. I’m here to help you.”
They briefly fall quiet before I feel someone shoving me… evidently my talk didn’t work well. “Onyx will deal with him,” the woman says. “We don’t know who he is. He could be working with them.”
“I guess we’ll just toss him in a holding cell.”
“Aren’t they all full after the last attack?”
The man replies, “Yeah, I’ll just put him in with someone. It should be fine.”
I really wish I had a say in this, but it becomes quite clear that they have determined I’m sketchy.
