Aha. Bobby was there already. “I won’t keep you, Bart. Just making sure you’re safe and sound.”
“I am, Sue.” His voice softened. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” I hung up and breathed out slowly.
Bart wasn’t just being kind. He’d always told me the truth. He was a loyal friend; I trusted him completely.
Bart’s loyalty was, in part, because I’d stood up for him a few years ago, when his bitchy ex-boyfriend not only outed him to his very old, very conservative rich lobbyist parents, but also plastered near-naked photos of Bart, wearing a leather harness and assless chaps, all over his popular blog. His mother and father publicly disowned him, which in itself was awful, but Bart was independently wealthy and not very fond of his mean, crusty upper-class parents, anyway. The thing that had hurt him the most was how delighted some of our friends were about his humiliation.
At the time, I’d been shocked at the vitriol spewed against Bart from his friends. We were an arty crowd; wewere supposed to be progressive, open-minded, and understanding. The mocking and teasing from our social circle had been relentless, and it had hurt even more since Bart was a very dignified and private person.
He didn’t deserve that kind of torture, so I decided to do something about it. Back then, all I had to do was throw a dinner party in my enormous dining room, invite our wide circle of friends, and make subtle jabs about their cruel behavior until all of them felt quite ashamed of themselves.
Now, I had nothing. None of them would even make eye contact with me in the street. Not because I was dangerous—even though I obviously was, considering what I'd done to Vincent. They probably could have gotten over the fact I’d gone crazy during early menopause and tried to kill my husband. But I also had the audacity to let myself go and lose my entire fortune at the same time. Apparently, being both poor and a little overweight was unforgivable.
Luckily for me, Bart returned my tiny favor by sticking by me. He was the reason I had a job and an apartment in the first place.
“We cannot stay here while we are in this realm. This abode isnotacceptable.” The girl—Cress, they called her—was suddenly in front of me. “Chosen… Where is Molinere?”
I stared into her face and made a snap decision to play along with my hallucinations until my hormones stabilized enough—or, until I could get hold of Bronwyn. I could talk it out with her and come up with an action plan.
“Okay. I’ll bite.” I rose to my feet, lifted my chin, and put my shoulders back, facing the girl directly. “Who is Molinere?”
“The one sent to prepare you in case you were needed,” she replied, her tone a shade testy. “Themúinteoir. Where is he?”
I shrugged. It was only more evidence that I’d gone nuts. The name Molinere was strange, but I realized I’d heard it before. My scrambled-egg brain was just plucking things out of old memories and repurposing them.
“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” I replied. “I don’t know where he is.”
A man named Molinere had shown up at my house when I was eight years old, as part of a work crew that my mother had hired to landscape the garden one summer when it got too much for her to handle. I only remembered him because he was tiny and odd-looking—four feet tall with messy gray hair and a big, bulbous nose. I also remembered because my father happened to breeze back into my life that day. Dad brought a bottle of whiskey with him to celebrate his return and invited the work crew to join him for a welcome-back drink. Twelve hours later, my father and the work crew were all naked and dancing around a bonfire in the garden.
I smiled back at the beautiful hallucination glaring at me. “The last time I saw Molinere, I was eight years old, and he was butt-naked, trying to jump over our burning pergola without singeing the hair on his balls.”
It was a good thing my father had taken off again that day. My mother would have skinned him alive. Every time she tried to bring a semblance of order to our life, my dad swanned back in with a bottle of bubbly and a charming wink and left with a trail of soot and destruction behind him.
Cress pinched her brow. “Molinere didn’t stay with you? He didn’t prepare you?”
“No.”
The tall man let out a growl, deep in his chest, and turned towards the other two men. “Nate.”
The dark one with the muscles snapped to attention and nodded. “Yes, my Prince.”
“Go back, and see if you can get to the Under without bargaining anything. Ask for an audience with your aunt, and check the death roll for Molinere’s name.”
“Yes, my Prince.”
“I mean it, Nate. Don’t bargain anything, don’t offer any favors. If Morganna’s hounds won’t let you into the Under without a favor, come straight back to me.”
The dark man bowed. “I will, my Prince.” He took a step back, weaving his hands around in a circle in a very dramatic manner. Silver sparkles flowed from his fingertips, creating a glittery frame in the air.
“Ooh.” I nodded, impressed. I might have gone completely insane, but at least this time my hallucinations were pretty. Not like last time, when my brain vomited up the most horrific thing I could possibly imagine. “Well done,” I told myself. “Very nice.”
Suddenly, the hallucination I’d called Nate stuck his hands in the middle of the glitter circle and pushed out, widening the frame, before he jumped inside it and disappeared.
I clapped. Maybe this episode wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Cress stared at me. “What is wrong with you?”
