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A short pause. “Yeah, no. I was stationed abroad. She made that shit up.”
“That’s what I said, but when I called her out on it publicly, suddenlyIwas the asshole.”
I sighed as they broke out in laughter, leaning my head back and closing my eyes.
Come to me.
Jesus, it was bad today. Worse than it had ever been. A small part of me hoped that meant my waiting was almost over. The rest of me was side eyeing the fuck out of myself. What “wait”? I didn’t even know.
“Next,” the attendant barked.
I moved forward and flashed him my food order so he could mark it down for inventory. I took the long way down to the portal, avoiding the cold for as long as possible. When I touched ground level, I braced myself as I stepped outside.
Taunting whispers rode the wind.Come to me.
I blinked slowly, eyes opening.
This was new. The voice was distinctly masculine, both smooth and tempting. I knew it had been just a few weeks since I’d been laid, and that dream was something else, so surely I wasn’t having withdrawal to the point of hallucinating. A girl knew how to take care of herself, if you know what I mean. But still . . . I shook my head and glanced at the portal once more, staring into the swirling blue and green depths.
Thirty feet in diameter, the Arcadian portal loomed over most everything. Around it, scaffolding had been built to form the bridge—four levels of security that the Portal Watch occupied.
I typically served on the first floor. The main one.
It was the closest to the portal and made direct contact with anything and everything that came through, which meant I got to fight on the front lines.
Not that there was ever much action.
A few dozen animals. Occasionally a shifter in partial shift. I hated those. They came through so disoriented, they couldn’t finish shifting one way or another and they’d end up dying in a few days.
That dinosaur a month ago was the most fun I’d had in a while. Not every day you got to fight a giant bird-lizard.
Very little provided a reprieve from my endless waiting for something. What that something was, I didn’t know. It was hard to explain.
I just felt it. That pull. And I didn’t dare tell anyone.
Maybe it would be good for me to leave for a couple weeks. Clear my head. People joke about going crazy, but I was really starting to question it.
As if it heard the direction my thoughts had gone, that mysterious voice whispered once more.
Come to me.
Those honeyed words were all too appealing. I was tempted to cross. I almost had, once. It was when I had volunteered to stay behind again, not going home to visit my family. The desire to see my sister was ever-present, even if I was the one keeping myself from taking leave.
In some ways, I just convinced myself that my duty was to the Portal Watch, and Danni’s was to our House, Blood and Beryl.
That didn’t make it any easier.
I’d left my family and all I’d ever known behind to travel the world.
Because of a fucking feeling.
A sense of longing I didn’t understand. When I found nothing, I’d come back here searching for the unknown. Waiting. Watching.
And nothing. I pinched the bridge of my nose, squeezing my eyes shut.
Come to me, the portal whispered louder, as though it were near me.
My eyes shot open. Okay, that wasn’t a voice in my head. It had comefromthe portal. I drew closer, slowly. I’d never stepped over the line. I wanted to.
