“All good, Pumpkin?”
“I don’t hear anything.It’s still quiet.I can’t hear the book either.I didn’t even know it did a magic.”
“Think we got the proof we need?”I asked Lu.“That was big magic.The wards are holding.”
“We haven’t opened the book.”
Yeah, that’s what I figured she’d say.
“Let’s do it then.”I set the box down, but when I straightened, I held onto her wrist.
I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I refused to let her go.
Lu steeled herself.I could feel the subtle shift in her muscles as she rocked just slightly to the balls of her feet, poised to respond to whatever the book was going to throw at us next.
“I’m going to open the cover.”
I was nervous as hell, but that woman’s hand didn’t even tremble as she turned the key and opened the book.
The end pages were black and plain, but if I stared at them too long pinpricks of light flashed and faded.I heard distant voices screaming.
I blinked and the book looked like a book again, the voices silenced.
“Hell,” I said.“The whole damn thing is a mind bend.”
“It’s…not easy to hold onto,” Lula said.
“How?”
“It’s moving.Can you see it moving?”
“No.Can you hear it?Did you see the lights?”
“No,” she said.“Abbi?”
“Nothing.Quiet, quiet, quiet.”
Well, I’d take that as a win.
“Can you turn the page?”I asked Lula.“Or is that a terrible idea?”
“Let’s find out.”She turned the page.
“There’s nothing there,” she said.“It’s blank.”She turned the next page.“It’s blank.Brogan, there are no spells.”
I heard her, I did.But I couldn’t formulate the words to respond.
Because she was wrong.The pages were not blank.
They were filled with power, with galaxies, with microscopic wonders and mind-altering vistas twisting across plains of existence I couldn’t comprehend.
I couldn’t bear the horror and beauty of it, but I could not look away.
“Brogan!”Lula’s voice drifted, distant and different.
Worried, I thought,she’s worried about me.
But that thought was whisked into the river of power that twisted around me, a storm pulling apart and reshaping earth, stars, reality—and me.
