Yeesh. “Oh, no. No, that’s okay. Let’s save that for when I’m back in the padded calming room and I need a little company.” I turned and walked into the most gorgeous kitchen I could possibly imagine.
It was straight out of a design magazine—polished concrete floors, a long stone counter, pots and pans hanging from the island, a dazzling collection of sharp knives on a magnetic holder, four ovens and…ohhhh. The coffee machine.
All four of my gorgeous hallucinations were sitting at the long, scrubbed oak table. Nate and Eryk leapt to their feet and bowed. “As you were, gentlemen,” I said silkily, walking over to the coffee machine. I didn’t care if it wasn’t real; my hands greedily caressed the grinder, stroking up and down the frother in a way that was probably obscene. I didn’t care. I’d been living on freeze-dried instant for too long.
“Out of the way, you heathen.” Cecil headbutted me aside. “I’ll make you a cappuccino. Sit down. I believe the Prince has new developments to share with you.”
I sighed and walked over to where Donovan sat, huge and brooding, at the kitchen table. I’d been trying not to look, but my stomach flipped at the sight of him. Let loose from the topknot from yesterday, his jet-black hair was long and tousled, flowing over his broad shoulders. He’d removed his weapons, and instead of black leather, he wore a white shirt and tan trousers. Enough buttons of his shirt were undone that I caught a glimpse of his hard, muscular chest. Even in stillness, I could sense the power in those muscles, the tightly coiled danger that could explode out of him at any moment.
I averted my eyes. They itched to swing back, so I turned around completely. “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think this could wait until after work? I’ve got a big daytoday; I have to stay sharp, and, er, as non-psychotic as possible.”
Donovan’s eyes bored into my back; I could feel him staring at me. “What could possibly be more important than securing the scribe stone?”
“My promotion,” I said simply. “I don’t want to go into details, but I’m trying to rebuild my life. There’s a very long corporate ladder out there. I’ve climbed it once from the depths of the basement mailroom at a bank, so I know I can do it again.” I clenched my fist. “And one greasy Loki wannabe named Richie Curran is standing in my way.”
“Loki?” Cress gasped. “He is here? In the human realm?”
“Not the real one,” I told her. “A fake one. Richie thinks he’s cool like Loki.”
“Loki is notcool. He is a mad god. He changed himself into a mare so he could mate with a giant stallion and gave birth to an eight-legged steed named Slepnir. Does this Richie transform and mate with horses, too?”
“Keep him away from me!” Cecil snorted from the coffee machine. “Until Thursday, when I get my laser hair removal done.”
“Urgh. No,” I sighed. “We have a watered-down version of the Loki story here, where he’s just a cool-looking trickster type of guy. Richie Curran has the same kind of hair, and he thinks he’s crafty, so he leans into the comparison.”
“Oh. And this fake Loki is standing on a ladder?” Cress frowned deeply.
“The ladder was metaphorical,” I told her. “Look, forget all the Loki stuff. What I’m trying to say is that I can’t afford to miss work today. I can’t give Richie any ammunition against me.”
Cecil clopped over, tossed his beautiful mane over his shoulder, and thrust a cup into my hand. I inhaled the milky coffee aroma gratefully and took a sip. Perfection. “Besides, there’s not much we can do about the scribe stone until we go to Professor Owen’s for dinner later tonight, anyway.”
Cress, posing like a superhero by the window, turned around. “There are new developments, Chosen. Our Lower World informants have come to us with new information—we may not be able to trust it, but at this stage, it would be unwise to ignore what they are telling us. We have learned Connor intends to pursue the other Middle World realm’s spark stones while he is here.”
I sighed and held up a finger. “Wait. Wait, I need visual input to process this. Cecil, is my top kitchen drawer the same as it was before?”
“Of course not,” he snorted.
“I need my whiteboard marker?—”
There was a tiny bright-purple flash, and a marker appeared in mid-air, right in front of me. I caught it as it fell, and stared at it, lying in my hand. “Huh.”
Roll with it.
Okay, then.
I strode over to my enormous new double-door refrigerator and uncapped the lid. “Let me just get my head around this World and realm stuff. You guys say you are from the Upper World, right?” I wroteupper worldin big letters. “Which is a horrible display of class snobbery on my part, but I suppose I can hash that out with my therapist at some stage.” That reminded me. I patted my pocket. Where was my phone? I should call Brownyn and make an appointment now.
“Upper does not refer to anything other than vibrational resonance,” Cress explained. “Higher vibration is order—scribes, elementals, warriors, unicorns, brownies, sages, priests and priestesses. Lower vibration is chaos—imps, wraiths, pixies, demons, berserkers and the like.”
“Oh, yeah?” I shot Donovan a smug look. “Which realm is your brother from, then?”
He stared back at me, fury simmering in his eyes. There was an uncomfortable silence.
Finally, Eryk cleared his throat. “There are many different realms in the Upper World.”
“Like…. Like pockets on a jacket?”
“Yes,” Cress said. “Donovan and I are High Fae from a kingdom in faerie, which is the biggest realm located inside the Upper World.”
