“Not the house, dear. The boundary. It’s… thinning.” Peeble’s antenna twitched. “Usually takes months, sometimes years, for it to get weak enough for a crossing. But something’s changed. Something’s pulling from the other side.”
“The other side of what?”
Lightning flashed outside—real lightning this time—illuminating the kitchen in stark white. In that split second of brightness, I saw it. The kitchen wasn’t just the kitchen. Overlaid on top of it, like a double exposure, was another room. Same layout, but different. Older. Grander. Walls covered in living vines, floor made of something that might have been marble or might have been compressed starlight.
Then darkness again, and just my grandmother’s ordinary kitchen.
“The other side of here,” Peeble said softly. “The place your grandmother fled. The place your mother died trying to protect you from. The place that’s been calling to your bloodline for three generations.”
The locket at my throat wasn’t just cold now—it was burning, sending tendrils of ice and fire across my skin. When I looked down, it was glowing,soft golden light pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
“I need to leave,” I said. “I need to get in my car and drive back to Little Rock and forget any of this happened.”
“Too late for that.” Peeble scuttled to the edge of the table, closer to me. “The moment you put on that locket, you accepted the inheritance. Not the house—anyone could inherit the house. The real inheritance. The one in your blood.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your grandmother was not from Arkansas, Elle. She wasn’t even from Earth, not originally. She was nobility from a place where roses have eyes and trees speak in languages older than human speech. She fell in love with someone she shouldn’t have, stole something precious, and ran here to hide.”
“That’s insane.”
“Is it? You’ve been feeling it since you arrived. The garden growing back overnight. The tree watching you. The house breathing.” Peeble’s compound eyes reflected my face in a thousand tiny mirrors. “Your blood knows the truth even if your mind rejects it.”
Another flash of lightning, and this time the overlay lasted longer. I could see through the walls to a garden that wasn’t Jo’s garden. Plants that glowed with their own light, flowers the size of dinner plates with petals that moved like they were underwater. And in the center, the elm tree shed its ordinary appearance like a mask, revealing what it had always been—something massive and beautiful and terrible, with bark like silver and leaves that burned without being consumed.
“The crossing is soon. Hours, maybe less. When it happens, you’ll have a choice—let them drag you through on their terms, or step through on your own and discover what your grandmother spent sixty years protecting you from. But staying here safe and oblivious? That ship has sailed.”
“What did she steal?” I asked, though I was afraid of the answer.
“A chance,” Peeble said. “A possibility. A way to save both worlds from someone who would see them burn rather than lose control.” They paused, and when they spoke again, their voice was older, sadder. “She stole you,Elle. Or rather, the potential of you. The possibility that one day, someone of both bloodlines could return and finish what she started.”
The house shook again, and this time, cracks appeared in the air itself. Not in the walls—in the actual air, like reality was a windshield and something had just thrown a stone at it. Through the cracks, I could see swirling colors that hurt to perceive, could hear music that was almost voices, could smell flowers that didn’t exist.
“I’m not ready for this,” I said, and hated how small my voice sounded.
“No one ever is,” Peeble replied. “But ready or not, it’s happening. The storm’s not just weather, Elle. It’s the boundary breaking down. And when it does, they’ll come through.”
“They?”
“The ones who’ve been hunting your bloodline for sixty years. The ones who want the locket and what it represents. The ones your grandmother fled from a lifetime ago—and the ones she’s been hiding you from since the day you were born.”
As if in response to Peeble’s words, the boundary shuddered. What sounded like rain lashed against the windows—but when I glanced outside, there was nothing but clear night and impossible lightning. Wind that wasn’t wind howled through the spaces between reality, carrying voices that might have been screaming or might have been singing.
I walked to the window, each step feeling like I was moving through molasses. Outside, the garden was transforming. With each lightning strike, I could see it more clearly—the overlay becoming more real than the reality. The dead grass was now silver moss that moved like water. The overgrown vegetables were glass-like structures that pulsed with inner light. And the elm tree…
The elm tree was opening like a door.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, and immediately felt guilty. This was terrifying. I should be running. Calling the police. Calling a psychiatrist. Something.
But it was beautiful. Heartbreakingly, impossibly beautiful.
“Beautiful things are often the most dangerous,” Peeble said, nowperched on my shoulder. I hadn’t even noticed them move. “Your grandmother learned that the hard way.”
“What happened to her? Really?”
“She loved a king. Bore his child—your mother. But the king already had a queen, and in that place, such things matter. The queen cursed your mother while she was still in the womb. ‘May your bloodline forever be torn between worlds, never fully belonging to either.’ Jo stole the locket—the key between worlds—and fled here, hoping distance would break the curse.”
“Did it?”
