She nods, almost…smiling at me.
The tickle in my throat gets stronger, and I cough again. Is this normal?
None of this is normal. You’re talking to a gho—non-corporeal being—in an old cathedral, about to go back into a magically sealed vault to read a grimoire no one but you has seen in over a hundred years.
“We’re going to Level Three,” Hannah says.
My whisper swivels toward the vault door. She takes two quick steps forward, then seems to almost…bounce off the metal. Anger carries over the fragile bond between us, and she balls her hands into fists.
“Turn it off. She can’t get in.” I don’t know how I know this. I shouldn’t. Her feelings have never been this…clearto me before. Maybe Hannah was right and the WCU is exactly what I needed to connect with her.
The buzzing in my neck stops.
My whisper stands shoulder to shoulder with me, a gleam in her translucent eyes. I blink, and everything around me blurs. Forces buffet me from all sides. I’m dizzy, but right when I think I can’t take another second of this, my whisper bursts into the vault.
The tongues of blue flame flare brighter. Hotter. Incense burns my nose. Or her nose, since I’m reasonably certain my body is still in the antechamber, pressed against the vault door.
Her fingers brush the cover, and Ifeelthe leather. The deep grooves of the markings. But she can’t open it.
We need more.
I try to focus on the WCU. On my corporeal body out there with Hannah and Isaac. Can I speak? Move of my own free will? Crap. Why didn’t I think to ask Hannah whatshesaw every time I’ve been pulled into my whisper’s reality?
Pain lances through us, a razor’s edge cutting us open and flooding the small space with pure, white light until every shadow is banished to the depths of some far away Underworld we can’t see or touch.
In the next moment, our reality contracts down to a pinprick. Darkness holds sway for so long, I start to panic. We’re trapped in here.I’mtrapped in here. What if I can’t return tomybody? What if my whisper never escapes? What if?—
A blink, and the vault is again what it was. Lit by ever-burning blue flames, filled with perfumed air. But now, a chill bursts over my skin. I can feel everything. Under my feet, the stones are uneven. I run my hands over the book’s cover. The marks stop moving, and I gasp.
Power lies within.
The words weren’t there a second ago. They weren’t words at all.
My whisper ignores the fear twisting my stomach into knots and curls her fingers around the edge of the cover.
The first yellowed page is blank. My heart sinks. There has to be more. Right?
As if the magic infused within the spell book can hear me, ink wells up, soaking into the parchment until the image of an ornate blade with a carved handle is so clear, it looks like it was drawn only yesterday.
The Blade of Liminal Transference
I snort—silently.“We are so renaming this thing.”
My whisper shakes her head. I want to ask her why she cares. Or how she knows anything about the book and the Blade. She’s three weeks old for Pete’s sake.
Turning another page, she waits. I think she might even hold her breath. Or…whatever passes for breath when you’re a whisper ghost.
Only the purest of heart can see these words.
Love and hate. Light and darkness. Life and death.
The circle begins where the circle ends.
Proceed, and you will be forever transformed.
May the power not stain your soul.
My whisper clutches her throat. I can’t breathe. The air is sucked out of the room in a greatwhoosh. Instead of incense and spice, the harsh tang of blood hits the back of my throat.
