“Yes. I wouldn’t miss it.”
Joell smiled. “How about you, Magda? You have the furthest to travel. Do you need any assistance to get here?”
“Nah. I’ll catch the next flight out. It should be easy to get one since it’s the middle of the freakin’ night here.”
“Hey, you don’t have to leave the mansion at all, if you don’t want to.”
“You just don’t want to be responsible for watering my plants.”
The others chuckled. “You’d hex us if we let them die,” Rayna said.
Eli seemed to relax a bit after seeing how these powerful women teased each other. “Can I have one of those cookies?” he asked.
“Sure,” Joell said, sliding the plate of triple chocolate goodness over to him.
He grasped three of them and started chowing down like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
Joell let him eat for a bit before continuing. “Eli, you said the faceless man told you that you were ‘ripe.’ Do you know what for?”
He swallowed a massive bite, leaving a smear of chocolate on his cheek. “I think he meant I was ready to leave. Or break through the Between. Or something.” He glanced around the room like the walls might be listening. “He said it was time towake up.But I was already awake. Or dreaming. It was like both.”
“Classic Between,” Magda muttered. “Half sleep, half reality, all cosmic weirdness.”
Sahara added, “Some shamans describe the Between as a kind of pressure cooker. Time and identity break down until something or someone cracks through.”
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “And it’s almost always someone marked. Someone chosen.”
Eli dropped the last cookie. “I didn’taskto be chosen.”
“No one does,” Rayna said quietly. “You think Katie applied for this job? There wasn’t exactly a LinkedIn listing for ‘marked victim of unknown origin.’”
Katie leaned forward. “Hey. You’re not alone anymore, Eli. Whatever this is, we’re all going to help you figure it out. Okay?”
He nodded, eyes shimmering, like he was about to cry. “Okay.”
Joell stood. “All right. That’s enough for today. Rayna, Katie, show him to the guest suite.”
“The one with the stained-glass windows and the anti-dream wards?” Rayna guessed.
“Exactly.”
Eli stood too, clearly trying to look tough, but not fooling anybody. “Are there, like, monsters here?”
Katie grinned. “Only if you count Rayna before coffee.”
“Hey!”
But the tension had broken, and Eli smiled a little.
As they started to lead him out, Victoria’s voice stopped them. “One last thing…”
They turned back to the monitor.
Victoria’s expression was grave. “If the graffiti knew Katie’s and Eli’s names before they met, and the faceless man who picked Eli and stashed him in the Between, we might start looking for a pattern. It almost sounds as if they need certain individuals for something.”
“A ritual?” Sahara offered.
Joell frowned. “You think someone, or something, is marking them for some kind of ritual?”
