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“Tell me, where is the Great Phoenix’s temple on this map?”
I roll over beneath the cloak blanket and pretend I’m sleeping. I can see their shadows on the wall. Kalistratos stares at the map and scratches his head.
“It’s here somewhere,” he says. “I’ll figure it out as we go.”
“By thegods, Kalistratos,” Alyx replies.
“Hey, have I ever done us wrong?”
“Yes. Plenty of times.”
“And yet we’re still here.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“And now we have this new one to think about,” Alyx says as he walks to the edge of the stone table. “What if the Great Phoenix can’t get him home? What if he can’t tell you anything about your family?”
Family?What is Alyx talking about?
“Hewill,” Kalistratos says. “He has to. Alyx, we’ve gone this far. We can’t give up. Not on our clan, and not on ourselves. Especially not on Tyler.”
“And here I thought you were resistant to helping him.”
“He’s growing on me. He needs my help. I want to make sure he’s safe.”
I roll back over and pull the blanket over my eyes as my face grows warm and a gentle shiver runs through my body. My heart is pounding. At first, it feels like I might betoo excited to sleep, but the exhaustion soon overtakes me and I drift away into the ether.
I don’t dream about Jeff. I don’t dream about anything, just a black void that swallows me whole like a great big tar pit. I’m woken up by a rude beam of morning sunlight that lands right across my face and a strange rhythmic scratching sound. My first thought is that the next-door neighbor is fucking around with my connecting wall again, and what words I’m going to have to say to finally get through to him that I work late and can hear his shit. But then I open my eyes, and as I shield away the light with my palm, I realize that I’m not in my bed, but lying on a pile of grass and leaves inside a musty cave.
I exhale quietly as a heaviness refills my heart. I’m still in Circeana. And after a night spent in this world, it feels more real than ever that I’m not just going to suddenly wake up back on planet Earth. This is truly my reality now.
That scratching sound. I squint and see Kalistratos sitting on the ground on the other side of the cave with a bowl of water and a flat stone between his legs. He cups water in his hand and spreads it across the stone, then swipes the edge of one of his knives back and forth on it. Scratch, scratch.
His eyes are focused on his task, and he’s incredibly quick. He’s done it lots of times.
I know that I’m staring, but he thinks I’m still asleep, and this is a chance for me to get a good look at him. Every part of Kalistratos looks capable and strong. He’s a man who has spent his life doing rough things. I can see it in his hands, which look so powerful yet move with such precision and grace. He’s not massive like some of the guys at my gym, yet I know he could effortlessly outmatch them all. I suddenly realize that there aren’t men like him back home.
Of course there aren’t. He’s not human.He’s a phoenix.
I can’t imagine what this really means. I’ve seen the frogmen, the wolfmen, and all the rest, but what Kalistratos and Alyx’s phoenix forms could possibly look like is beyond my brain to comprehend. There’s that gleam in his eyes though, like there’s a fire lit inside them. In the shadow of the cave, they glow slightly at certain angles like little flashes of molten metal.
What does a phoenix look like?
The first thing that pops into my head is Kalistratos turning into a red chicken. I snort quietly, and Kalistratos looks up from his knives.
“You’re awake,” he says. “What’s funny?”
Now all I can see is him as a talking chicken. I chuckle to myself again. Maybe my imagination isn’t so bad after all.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Did you sleep well? You were mumbling. Something about this ‘Jeff.’”
My face flushes. “Are you serious? I don’t remember having any dreams…”
He smirks. “I’m joking. You were dead to the world.”
Thank god.
“Tell me about this man,” he says. “He’s not your mate, yet he seems to hold some power over you.”
