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She grabs my hand, pulling me back into the now with her. She stares, her eyes glistening, and the depth of understanding and knowledge in them is surprising. The sun reflects through the window, outlining her with a golden halo and in the moment, Savannah seems to be part of my dreams of other times and realms of fae.
“You follow your heart. That's all you can do. It’s all any of us can do.”
“My heart?”
Her smile is dazzling, pulling the rays of light and reflecting them back like a prism, rainbows dancing off her lips and accenting her words.
“Your heart,” she says, touching my cheek. Warmth spreads out from her touch.
“Savannah, are you…?”
I trail off as the sun shifts and the beatific glow is gone. Savannah is herself, my friend exactly as I’ve always known her.
“You okay?” she asks.
I nod. “I will be.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The light of the laptop screen glares off the pure white page and black words, stabbing them into my brain like so many daggers. I close my eyes and rub them then massage my temples, trying to ease the throbbing pain.
“Damn it.” I lean back in my office chair, tilting until I’m staring up at the ceiling. “Damn it!”
My dorm neighbor pounds on the wall and gives a muffled yell.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
I run my fingers through my hair, scratching at my scalp, then in a fit of pent-up energy burst out of the chair and pace the room. It’s four paces long and two wide, not counting my desk, bed, and mini-fridge, so pacing is a loose term for what I’m doing.
I’ve been home a month, back in my dorm and nothing is the same. What happened to me feels less real with every passing day. What was vivid memory is taking on a dreamlike quality that makes me question if it’s real or not. The only thing that is real is what I see every time I close my eyes. The memory of Duncan dying. Every time it plays, my heart is blasted apart. Every time, it tears its way through, opening the wounds anew.
We didn’t stop it, damn it. The Fae were right. Nothing in the history books has changed. Or it wasn’t real.
I stop mid-pace and give a hateful glare to the stack of books next to my laptop. The offending histories, all the websites, everything I’ve checked, agrees. History is what it was. The MacGregors name was outlawed. They were massacred in droves. Unspeakable atrocities were committed against them.
What none of them are telling me, not one book, not one website, not even genealogy.com, is the one thing I want to know: did he survive?
Was he real? Was any of them real?
I grab Mr. Buttons, my stuffed bear that my mom gave me when I was six, off my bed. I hold him up and examine his roughness. He has been patched so many times, I don’t think there’s an original stitch still in him. One button eye has been replaced and doesn’t match the other in hue even if the overall color is correct. He’s rough, like Duncan.
“It’s not like it's not already bad enough,” I mutter to Mr. Buttons. “Either I’m insane, or I’m in love with a man who was born four hundred years ago. Either one or the other is enough of a barrier to overcome, wouldn’t you say?”
I drop onto the edge of my bed and clutch Mr. Buttons to my chest, just like I did when I was a kid. I hang my head and tears fall. The empty ache in my chest grows in intensity until I have to let it out somehow. Tears are better than any alternative because it really feels like if I let the pressure go, it will explode out of my chest like an alien spawn.
“What do I do?” I ask Mr. Buttons.
Grabbing my phone off my side table I stare at my contacts and debate calling home. A tingling sensation in my head makes that feel like a bad idea. I don’t know why, but for whatever reason, I don’t. I put the phone down and lie on my back.
The ceiling of my dorm room is a drop, with those rectangular foam looking squares covered in squiggly lines. I don’t know if they’re supposed to be a design or if its part of the manufacturing process that makes them. They’re boring. Someone knocks at the door, and I push myself up onto my elbows. The knock repeats so I get up, run my fingers through my hair and rub my face, then open the door.
“Hey,” Savannah says.
“Hi,” I say.
“Coffee?”
“Isn’t it late for that?” I ask.
