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I looked back up at the stars, trying to figure out if I was scared of that gate or not. And, strangely enough, I discovered I wasn't. It was like Lend and I had talked about-no one could say when they were going to die. You did the best with the time you had, filled it with people and things you loved, and hoped that whatever came after was as good or better. I was finally okay with this whole finite mortality thing.
"Alright, you big pansy. I'll figure out the other one. "
Frowning, I tried to sense the area around me, knowing that beyond the surface of the world were other worlds, the distance between almost paper-thin. But I didn't know what I was looking for, didn't know how to find it. I turned to Vivian, but she shrugged.
I closed my eyes. The only things I knew about why Empty Ones worked the way we did was that we had room for extra souls because we started out with less, and that we could make gates because of our innately human sense of home. But my home was here. How on earth was I supposed to find another one?
"The gate needs to be opened and closed before dawn," Cresseda said, a hint of strain flowing through her voice.
"YES. THANKS FOR THAT. VERY HELPFUL RIGHT NOW. " I glared at her, but a splash drew my attention to another part of the pond, where I saw the head of the fossegrim I'd partially drained watching me, his murky eyes narrowed, whether in hatred or anticipation I couldn't tell. Then I looked up and saw the sylph nervously swooping around, and an idea clicked. I was still holding on as tightly as I could to my own soul, and my own soul belonged right here. But the others. . .
Taking a deep breath, I released control, letting the other souls well up and overwhelm me, changing and shifting my senses, making this world feel cold and old, the dirt and decay clogging my sinuses, the very air hastening my death even as it prolonged my life. I shuddered, knowing that I didn't belong here, this wasn't my world. My world was-
There. Just beyond my fingertips. I could even feel the rough edges of the tear that had brought them here, nearly healed, almost past the point where it could receive them back.
I blindly held out a hand and felt Vivian take it, squeezing reassuringly. "Here," I whispered, guiding her hand forward. "Their home. Can you feel it?"
"I. . . yeah, I think I can. I definitely can. It feels-Oh, Evie, I want to go there. " Her voice was low with longing.
"Let's open the gate, then. " We pushed against the air together, and I willed everything in me, all the souls there that belonged elsewhere, to push through.
Then the world exploded.
Chapter Forty-Three
MISS YOU FAERIE MUCH
Light and sound and wind filled everything, momentarily blinding me in a massive sensory overload. Gradually my eyes adjusted as they stared through a hole in the night, into the shifting world of light and motion that was the paranormals' home. My hair whipped past my face, stinging my eyes, pulled forward with the rushing wind into this strange, eternal land.
Vivian staggered back, and I looked at her, pale and winded and without any soul other than her own again. She was already shivering violently, only the threadbare hospital gown around her. I still had some souls left from the others I had drained, and it took every ounce of them to push the edges of the gate back until it felt stable, though it still pulled with an insistent intensity I feared would only get stronger.
"Okay," I shouted, finally feeling like myself again, except more tired and heavier, like gravity wanted me back with a vengeance and was trying to pull me down to the ground. "We did it. Oh my gosh, we actually did it!" I laughed, nearly hysterical with exhaustion and wonder, collapsing against Vivian. We wrapped our arms around each other to stay steady, my scarf ripped from around my neck and sent flying into the other world.
Lend came and put his arm around my free side, staring wide-eyed through the gate. "It's beautiful," he said, and fear twisted inside my stomach. What if it called him through? What if he realized that's what he wanted?
"And," he said, his voice changing, "kind of freaky, too, right?"
I let out a breath, relieved. "Totally freaky. It doesn't feel right, you know?"
"Yeah. "
I couldn't explain it, because it wasn't that the feeling I got when I looked through was bad, it was just. . . foreign. So impossibly foreign it was like I didn't have an emotion that could express it. It made me feel less and more than I was, like who I was or thought I was didn't matter at all.
I happened to like mattering.
I turned to the crowds of paranormals. "Well, get going! Dawn waits for no paranormal!"
They didn't need a second prompting, rushing forward and with bursts of light leaving our world for theirs. As they went through I could see their forms shifting, become less physical and more pure spirit, everything bigger than it had been here, everything brighter, everything more beautiful. Dryads became swirls of green light, dancing along the ground; Grnlllll ran past me with a wink of her beady black eyes and flashed, changing in the light to something grand and wonderful, everything good and pure about earth and stone as she disappeared into the ground.
Three unicorns trotted past me with glowing salamanders on their backs, and I held my breath against the stench. But as soon as they crossed the threshold everything small and repulsive about them burst free, and they became the unicorns of my dreams, more a vision of light and motion and power than a simple horse, pounding away free, while the salamanders turned into living flame, curling and twirling on the wind.
They were going through so fast now I couldn't keep track, couldn't notice everyone, although the dragon paused long enough to incline its head at me in a way that still looked disapproving, before going through and exploding into a thousand writhing, dancing dragons even larger than it had been here. I saw Donna run through with several other selkies, her face a mixture of joy and sadness. Kari would never go through with her.
The tree spirits wound their way through, and again, Nona wasn't with them, her spirit forever lost to that realm. On the other side they sank into the ground, spreading out and away, covering Grnlllll's rich earth with trees and flowers and growing things too perfect and strange and wild for this Earth.
And then a rush of water flowed past us, carrying the countless water elementals with it, straight through into their home. I was wet up to my calves but it didn't matter, not now. I watched light after light as souls passed through in a torrent to the other side, but my attention was brought back to our own cold Virginia predawn when the last of the water rose up in front of us.
Cresseda, beautiful and lit from the inside by her own soul, smiled at Lend and held out her hand. "Come, my son. Join with the water and discover your true nature. Be with us always. "
