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“I would ask you why you think itshouldhave meaning. Never mind—charming as it is to debate with you, this is not the time. I promise no harm. Just a minor mental change, so you can see how it’s done. In case you decide your own mortality is more important than someone else’s.”
“Fine.”I mentally pointed at one of the dragonfly girls, a particularly silly one with powder-blue ringlets. “Make her smarter.”
He seemed surprised, amused arrogance flickering through his thoughts while he contemplated. Likely he’d only played this game to make people dumber or more obedient—as he’d probably done with those uncanny drudge servants in his castle.
“Not the same thing at all.”He sounded a little absent now. Only half paying attention. “It is you who should be paying attention. Watch.”
We descended into the girl’s…presence. That was the only way I could think of it. Almost a magical representation of her. That echo of herself on this other plane of existence, the one where the dragon’s egg did not exist.
Rogue formed a thought and showed me, the girl being alert and interested, absorbing information. He kept it very low-key, just a smidge of amplified energy, and fed it into her, a gentle shower.
“That’s as light as I’m capable of. Satisfactory?”
“Yes.”
“Now you do it.”
He guided my mental “hands,” showing me how to layer in just a hint more. I wished her good memory and critical thinking skills.May they serve her well.
“That’s part two. Now for three.”
“Is this mental travel gig how you poof yourself about the countryside?”
His dry amusement rippled around me. “Something like it.”
“Do I get to learn that?”
“Maybe someday, once I’m certain you won’t accidentally knock yourself out of existence.”
Yeah. That would suck. Maybe I’d emulate Dr. McCoy and stick to shuttlecraft.
We spiraled up, high into the misty twilight sky, into the looming clouds and then into deep darkness. Abruptly I became aware of sensory deprivation—no light, no sound, nothingness. I flailed in panic and Rogue caught me, wrapping tight.
“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”He chanted it in my mind, folding tendrils of his presence around me, much as I’d layered my magic into that little horseshoe. It steadied me.
Then we burst into light and reality again.
Different entirely. I no longer seemed to float above, observing my fae companions. Instead, I was walking through a pine forest again, but not the one on the hillside around the camp and the cave. This one smelled dry. Normal colors, nothing intensely surreal. My world.
Through the bright, high-altitude light filtering through the needles, Devils Tower loomed above. Rogue and I walked hand in hand on the path, just past where I’d left the trail that fateful day.
“Are we really in Wyoming?”My articulated thought spun away into nothingness. Though Rogue’s presence still intertwined with mine, in much the same way as he walked beside me, long fingers interlaced with mine, we couldn’t communicate that way. It was as if I wore a puppet body, only looking through the eyes, hearing through the ears, but otherwise unable to affect the world.
Most disconcerting.
Then I saw myself—the old me. Strange to see myself as I had been then, with my dirty blond hair and tight expression. It seemed so long ago now that my petty problems had loomed so large. Breaking up with awful Clive, in retrospect, had been such an obvious, easy thing to do. But no—I couldn’t do the easy thing.
I—I mean the old me—was walking briskly, glancing over her shoulder with fear on her face. I remembered that moment, feeling watched. Had I felt my own eyes upon me? The eternal conundrum of time travel, if that was truly what this was. The old me plunged off the path.
And there was the Black Dog, melting out of the deep shadows of the dark face of the tower. It had been there, all along—just as my inner alarms had warned.
Now I saw what had been invisible to me then, the shimmer of black-and-blue magic runneling down the deep grooves of rock, focusing through the Dog, a living lens, traveler between worlds. As the old me worked her ritual—one I could never have consciously known—the rays’ fae magic connected her to the Dog, to the tower and beyond.
She swayed on her feet, and I wanted to reach out but could not. The Dog could. It moved in a flash, through and into her.
And they both were gone.
We shot up into the air, rising above Devils Tower, the early spring country spreading below, still more brown than green. It suddenly hit me that Isabel would be in this time, very close to this place, and I struggled in Rogue’s folds, trying to tell him about my cat. He resisted, holding tighter.
