I study this strangely familiar, yet sadly unknowable version of the man I once loved.
“Gage, I question everything you think you know, and if you’re still in there at all, you will, too.” I shake my head. “I’m not keeping anything from you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
His mouth opens as if he’s about to say something, but his eyes quickly run up and down my body instead.
“You should see Ezrina,” he whispers.
“Funny you should say that. We were just headed to Whitehorse. Any other orders you’d like to bark out at me?” I free myself from his grasp. “Should I tell Logan I bumped into a wall on my way out?” I lift a brow as I throw those spirited words he uttered to Chloe last night right back at him.
A dull laugh pumps from him as he closes his eyes a moment. “Did you hear what I said before that? When I was speaking to you?”
I gasp. “You did that?” I slap his chest until he takes a step back. “I knew it. Don’t you ever enter my dreams again and drag me into your nightmare with Chloe. I will not be secondhand screwed, and I will not tolerate seeing the two of you together firsthand. How dare you desecrate my mind that way.” I push my way past him and he reels me back in by the wrist.
“That’s not what happened,” he growls it out like a rabid beast and I can’t get away fast enough. I bolt out the door and into Logan’s waiting truck and we speed off to Whitehorse, to our true home, as far away from this hellscape as possible.
Good Lord, it’s a horrific feeling to look around at what was once familiar and not recognize the landscape of your life. How frightful to think life can change on a dime.
How horrific to think that it did.
I shared that misadventure with Logan as soon as the truck pulled out of the driveway, and I can tell that whatever Gage claims to know, it’s troubling Logan. The boys run wild as soon as we let them into the house, but Logan and I herd them down through the hidden stairwell in the kitchen, down to the Wonderground where Ezrina’s lair sits brightly lit, and somewhere down here reside—
“Nat,” I say, surprised to see her in an oversized room just before you get to the lab. She’s seated behind a table covered with what looks like bottles of red and green glitter, at least a dozen skeins of yarn and a plethora of other art supplies. “What’s going on?” I ask as Nathan kicks himself free from my arms and he and Barron take off laughing and screaming.
“Just getting ready for Christmas. I figure if I want to have a ton of crap to sell at the next craft fair, I’ll have to start early.”
“Geez, I’ll say. It’s nine months away.”
“Michelle and Lex are doing it, too. They took a break from The Enchanted Closet to pick up supplies and they bitched at each other the entire time we were at the store.”
“Where are they now?”
“Lex said she felt like kicking Miller’s ass, and Michelle said let’s take it outside.”
“And you didn’t want to watch?” I’m almost amused, but regardless, I need to find those two stat because Nat may not be interested, but I sure as hell am.
“Nah, I’ve seen it all before. Michelle might be knocked up, so Lex will probably go easy on her.”
“Geez. I would hope so.”
Logan nods over to me from the entrance to the lab and I excuse myself from Nat.
“Dudley’s here.” Logan’s expression sours. “Along with a couple of unexpected guests.”
I take a step inside the gargantuan space and freeze when I see an all too familiar couple seated at an elongated examination table.
“Oh my God”—I speed over, choosing to momentarily ignore Marshall, Ezrina, and Nev as I circle the front to get a better look at the usually feathered pair—“Holden Kragger and Serena! Are you nuts? No wonder I haven’t seen you in ages. What are you doing here in your earthen forms? My mother has a hand in this, doesn’t she?”
Ezrina chuckles without smiling, and it’s an unnerving sight.
“Ms. Messenger”—Marshall takes a step forward, his tall frame unusually pin straight, his chest wide and expansive as if he were about to have a confrontation—“I may have pulled a supernatural string or two.”
“You?” I gasp. “You had my mother do this? Why in God’s name?” And then it hits me like a ton of DNA-covered bricks. “Oh my God!” I turn to Ezrina and Nev because, let’s face it, he’s just as culpable at this point. “None of you have my permission to do any of this. Holden—Serena, please tell me you haven’t been poked, pricked, or prodded.”
Serena is a blonde goddess, pale skin and eyes with almost no color. When she’s in feathered form, she’s white as snow. She and Holden have an entire brood of feathered children. She’s one of us, who just happened to be trapped in the body of a stark white raven long ago just the way Nev once was.
“Skyla, we want to.” Serena averts her eyes as if this were an obvious decision. “Others will be tested, of course, but we’re the first line of defense. If anything goes wrong, Ezrina was instructed to immediately return us to our precious state and we’ll be right as rain. Your mother said so.”
“I knew I smelled a supernatural minx at the helm,” I grunt as I continue to survey the scene. Marshall has a fiendish look on his far too handsome face as if it pleased him to be in on this potentially deadly secret.
