I bent knees, planted my boots, and sat, holding still as my head swam and the world rocked. Whatever kind of magic had hit me, it had done damage. I felt like I’d been tied to a barbed wire fence and electrocuted.
The shed was a good twenty feet away, Stella was nowhere to be seen, and the glow of magic from the buried journal still shone out of the junk pile like a headlight stuck on high beam.
“All right,” I grunted as I stood. “Plan B.” I ached from my heels to my molars. I didn’t dare touch the buried journal again. Not until I knew what kind of magic bound it.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and waited out another dizzy spell. A small vibration, light as a moth’s wing, fluttered in the center of my chest.
Lu was waiting for me.
Our soul connection was strong. There wasn’t a place on this earth where I couldn’t find her. But the farther away from the Route either of us traveled, the harder it was to feel each other and the longer it would take me to track her down.
East. She was east.
I traveled toward the pull of our connection, passing through the world, across the flat land faster than any living thing. Houses, trees, fields, and more fields slid by so quickly, they were a ghostly blur.
Then I was there. In the graveyard, the moon slanting down through the branches of an old white oak tree, neat rows of sparse gravestones stippling off to either side of me. Lu was right there, right in front of me, sitting on a curved white headstone.
“Hey,” she said, her gaze searching for me and missing by just a few inches. “You’re late.”
I huffed a laugh and stepped to one side so I could pretend she could see me. “I’ll tell you all about it,” I said. “One minute, love. Let’s do one.”
Lu angled her chin up, exposing more of her pale neck to moonlight. The dull glimmer of the chain around her throat caught my eye, and I followed the links down to the pocket watch hidden beneath her shirt.
She inhaled, exhaled. I watched as her shoulders settled and her heartbeat picked up. She was excited, afraid, hungry.
I was all those things too.
She ran her finger along the chain and pulled the watch free. “One minute,” she said.
She cupped the watch in her palm, exhaled through her mouth, then pressed the stem with her thumb.
It was strange, this magic. We’d never found any other like it in the world. It snapped hot, a violent, phosphorus flame suddenly alive, surrounding the watch, eerie in the shifting colors of amber, blood.
The flame was not hot. It was an arctic wind, so cold, Lu quickly shifted her hold to the chain, suspending the watch away from her skin, even as prickles of goosebumps pebbled her chest.
“Brogan?” she asked, looking for me, waiting for me, for this, our shared sixty seconds.
I wrapped my hand around that watch, shocked as ice pumped through my veins, the endless cold of this magic.
Then…and then I was there, alive—nearly so, as close as I’d ever been able to be.
I saw the moment I became substantial in her eyes, saw the moment she could really see me.
And oh, how she smiled.
“I love you, Lula.” It was always the first thing I said. And I knew it would be the last whenever that day finally came.
“I love you, Brogan,” she replied.
Before she could say more I immediately bent and met her mouth with my own, hungry for her touch, aching to feel her in my arms, alive.
I straddled her legs as she stood up into me, pressing full body, as if we could become one person, as if we would never have a chance to feel each other again.
I locked one arm across her back, holding her slighter frame against the massive bulk of me, every curve and edge of her absolutely necessary for me to savor. Her free hand dug up the back of my neck, catching the curl of my hair and tugging hard enough it stung.
Yes.
The kiss grew deeper. I dragged my tongue across her lips gaining easy entrance as her lips parted hungrily for me. She pulled me in, her tongue stroking mine, setting off a fire that spread hot and wild across my chest, pouring like heated oil down my stomach to my groin.
