“He doesn’t,” I said in a low voice. “They each have numbers and he goes in order. One through five. He doesn’t do this.” I was mesmerized by the symbol. “That’s not Wesley’s brand anyway.”
Booker agreed. “Wesley’s brand is an entwined W and M.”
“For May and Wesley,” I murmured.
“Yes, although he told me he’s going to have Lilac design a new one adding an H.”
I snapped my eyes to him.
“For you.” Booker bobbed his head. “You’ll inherit all of this when he’s gone.”
I’d thought about that, briefly, in the past. Galen and I had even talked about it. Wesley’s ranch was beautiful, but I couldn’t imagine leaving the city and I had no idea how to take care of a ranch.
“I don’t want to talk about that now,” I said. Given Wesley’s disappearance, that vague, far-off possibility was now all too real. “I want to know what that is.” I pointed to the symbol. “Anybody recognize it?”
Booker went back to staring. “It looks magical.” He lifted hisphone to take a photo. “We can try to do a reverse image search, see if it’s ever shown up on a paranormal message board or something.”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I admitted.
He shrugged. “Just a trick of the trade, my dear.”
I went back to staring at the symbol. It was curved on two sides with lines through it. I could almost feel it humming. It didn’t feel dangerous as much as alluring.
“It does look as if it was burned into the ground,” Aurora offered. She was hunkered down, a good thirty feet away looking at the symbol from a different angle. “I’m sure it wasn’t a blowtorch or anything.”
“No, it’s definitely magical,” Booker agreed. His eyebrows moved toward one another as he studied it. “This is so weird.”
“Where are we in proximity to Wesley’s house?” I asked as I edged closer. I wanted to test the lines of the symbol to see if I could get a better feel for the magic.
“Why?” Booker challenged.
“I’m trying to figure out if Wesley could walk out here of his own volition,” I replied, sneaking forward another couple of inches. “I lost track of where we are with all the twists and turns.”
“The sun is right there.” Aurora pointed. “It’s still early. It rises in the east and sets in the west, so that’s southeast right there. You really should learn these things in case you’re ever lost on your own.”
“Why would I when I have you?” I teased, slipping forward a bit more. I could feel the magic. It was excited at my presence.
“We’re about two miles from the ranch house in that direction,” Booker replied, pointing. “We took a roundabout way here. It would be about a forty-minute walk through some dense foliage for Wesley.”
“So not impossible but not likely,” I surmised, inching closer still. I couldn’t go much closer without crossing the symbol line, and intrigued as I was, I had no intention of doing that.
“Pretty much,” Booker agreed. His eyes moved to me and I thought his eyebrows would fly off hisforehead. “What are you doing?” He’d just realized how close I was to the symbol and started in my direction to drag me back.
I was jolted by the change in his demeanor and fell forward enough to drag me over the line.
I opened my mouth to apologize to Booker but light flashed all around me and I left my world to enter a new one.
6
SIX
I’d gone through a plane door. Over the course of the past year, I’d become intimately — against my will — familiar with openings to other worlds. I wasn’t a big fan of plane jumping. Yet here I was.
“Oh, man.” I immediately looked over my shoulder for an exit. “Galen is going to be ticked.”
Moonstone Bay’s plane door situation was obviously getting out of control. Why were there so many? This world looked vaguely familiar.
It wasn’t lush and green like the world I’d left behind. The landscape was dark and barren. In the distance, a volcano chugged smoke.
