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“Oh, that’s just Chicken.” Calla shuffles around in her cabinets until she finds a bag of dog treats and tosses him one. He catches it out of the air, slobber flying from his mouth, then struts away into the shadows with his bushy tail held high. “Don’t take it personally. He hates everyone,” she adds.
Yet she seems at ease with him despite always being the one afraid of animals growing up. She heads back to the cabinets and pulls down two glasses, then heads to the fridge for a bottle of wine, clearly knowing where everything is, as if this is her own home.
Because she’s been here long enough for it to feel like that to her.
This, more than anything else, threatens to sweep my legs out from under me. I fall onto a barstool, pushing off the stack of magazines sitting on it in the process. The weight on my chest grows heavier by the second until I feel like I can’t breathe.
Am I stuck here? Really, truly stuck here? What if I’m already too late? Would I be able to feel it from this side, if something happened to Reid? Would I know?
“Breathe.” The clank of Calla setting a wineglass on the counter in front of me pulls me back to my surroundings. I blink at her as she leans onto her elbows and swallows a healthy mouthful from her own glass.
I push away the wine and stumble back to my feet, unsure of where I’m going, but I can’t just sit here.
“I know you’re worried,” Calla says behind me, her voice sounding distant, thin.
“You don’t know,” I snap, already heading for the front door. “You have no idea—”
“And you have no idea how to get back so just stop!” She grabs my arm before I reach the hall and turns me around. “I will help you. I told you I would. But that means you’re going to have to accept that right now, you’re here. And there’s nothing you can do to get yourself back to our side. Not alone, at least.”
Hot, angry tears fall to my cheeks. At least, I tell myself they’re coming from anger. It’s much better than this feeling churning in my stomach that’s far too close to helplessness for comfort.
“How are you so calm about this?” I demand.
“Because I’ve been here for weeks,” she bites out. “And I figured out early on that panicking wasn’t getting me home any faster. I can’t get you back right now,” Calla says, her voice gentler this time. “But we will figure this out, and Icanhelp you see what’s going on over there.”
I stop fighting her, my arm going lax in her grip. When it’s clear I’m no longer going to make a break for it, Calla heads for the living room beside the kitchen and retrieves a small woven basket from inside the fireplace. She pulls the supplies out and sets them in a line on the mantel. I recognize some herbs and crystals, though most of the items are entirely foreign to me.
“Fill this up with water,” Calla says, extending a small bowl over her shoulder without looking at me.
I do as she says, then pause and watch her from the sink. She grinds a few herbs together and scatters them along the fireplace, but upon further inspection, I realize the fireplace is empty. It looks like it’s never housed a fire in its lifetime. There’s no wood, no ash, no gas mechanism.
Calla makes it look like a well-practiced routine, every item having a place, her movements fluid and easily finding a rhythm. Once she’s finished situating everything, she raises an expectant brow at me over her shoulder, and I hesitatingly hand her the small bowl of water.
Without preamble, she tosses the water. But instead of the mess I’m expecting, the water moves in slow motion, coating the air in front of the fireplace as if there’s an invisible wall there. My breath catches as the drops slowly trail down the surface. The air ripples like a tarp flowing in the wind, and my mouth runs dry as the sight scratches a familiar itch in the back of my mind.
I’ve never been a fan of scrying. It never came easily to me, and I never saw much of a use for it. Although this clearly isn’t the same as what we learned sophomore year, but it must be something similar. The layer of water hovering in the air begins to shift, blurring and twisting until an image forms.
My legs feel weak beneath me, and I stumble back a few steps until I hit the couch. Calla remains standing a foot from the water, hands on her hips, as an image takes form.
It’s difficult to see, the image murky and constantly moving—one of the things I always hated about scrying. It always felt like you were trying to see through moving water. But after a moment, it clears enough for me to recognize what I’m looking at.
Auclair stands at the head of the throne room, the floor below him filled with rows upon rows of Marionettes in uniform. They nod along to whatever he’s saying as he paces back and forth on the dais. I squint, trying to get a good look at their faces, but I don’t recognize any of them.
But of course I don’t. If everything is going according to plan, then he should be briefing the alchemists and getting ready to send the reinforcements.
Watching from the shadow realm is nothing like I imagined it would be. Now much farther back from the threshold, there’s no chance of interacting with the other side. To get people over there to feel us, hear us. Instead of a thin shadow of a cloth dangling between us, it’s a mountain. A barricade.
We watch as if through a screen, watching a story play out instead of my own life.
I find myself back on my feet and drifting forward until I’m standing right beside Calla. “Can you see anyone else?” I breathe.
She nods and waves her hand. The image shifts along with her, blurring and spinning until I feel dizzy, but then another scene materializes.
It’s much darker than the last, and I drift closer, squinting as I try to make out the figure hunched low in the corner.
“It’s Mom,” Calla says softly.
It looks like the same jail cell from the picture. The floor is bare concrete, and there’s nothing else in there with her, the only light coming from a crack beneath a door in the distance.
