I turn back to Vivian and respond, “You understand that you’re different, right?” She rolls her eyes and makes a face, but nods, so I add, “We can try to fill you in as much as possible as we go, but any in-depth discussion will have to wait until the end.”
“The end?”
Cornelius’s phone pings on the counter, and he snatches it up, his expression turning resigned as he types out a response and then places the phone back down. “That was Jacob. We’ve got to go.”
“Jacob?” Vivian asks. “Who’s Jacob?”
Cornelius gives me a dirty look as he responds. “The guy at the head of the table yesterday?—”
Vivian moves to say more, but I interrupt, “We don’t have time for this shit right now.”
“Well, maybe we'd better make time,” Cornelius retorts. “Because one wrong move from any of us could easily lead to disaster.”
My teeth clench, but I say nothing, knowing there is no sound argument for me at this point. Choosing to ignore Cornelius, Iturn to Vivian, snagging her wrist as I say, “I’ll give you the CliffsNotes while we get dressed, but we have to hurry.”
She searches my eyes for a moment and then nods, so I turn and lead her from the room. We’re no more than two steps into my bedroom before she’s yanking her wrist from my grip, stopping dead in her tracks in the middle of the room. “I’m not doing one more damn thing until you tell me more about what’s going on.”
I ignore her and instead walk directly to my closet, disappearing inside and quickly finding appropriate clothing. I snag her clean clothes from the top of the dresser, returning to the bedroom, walking over to the bed, and tossing the pile on the mattress. She’s still standing in the middle of the room when I turn to her and say, “Quit your bullshit and get moving.”
Her expression turns murderous. She stomps her foot in anger. My body instinctively tightens in response. Groaning, I push down my feral response and turn back to her with my hands out. “For real, Viv. I need you to come here. Please.”
She stares at me, indecision on her face, but after a moment, she slowly walks forward. The huge weight that had been descending on me dissipates, and by the time she’s standing beside me, I can take a full breath again. “This is going to sound crazy, but you can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Put distance between us.”
“Zion, sweetie pie,” she drawls. “If this is some big ruse to try to get me never to give you a problem or be mad at you, good freaking luck.”
I smile as I shove her clothes at her and then go about changing my own. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I stoop over to put on my boots, glancing up at her as I say, “If you want to wait, I will happily dress you again.”
With narrowed eyes, she snatches the clothes from the bed, making a big show of removing her wrinkled clothes and putting the clean ones on her own body. I stoop over lower, hiding my smile as I tie up my boots, taking a little longer than is absolutely necessary.
Then I’m standing beside the bed, moving so I’m only a few inches from her as I lean down low enough for her to meet my eyes. “It’s like we already briefly discussed. We’re different, Cornelius is different, Jacob is different. Everyone in that fucked-up-looking dungeon room is different. Your crazy ‘sister’ is drastically different. Do you understand so far?”
She looks away briefly but then meets my eyes again as she nods. “I think I got it.”
“And what we did last night? Did you feel that?”
Her lips twitch, and she gives me a somewhat unruly look that has me shaking my head. “Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
She bobs her head around but then laughs and sighs. “Yes. I recognize that it was absolutely wild for other reasons.”
I motion toward the door, and she proceeds me out of the room, and we walk down the hall toward the stairs as I continue, “I'm not exactly certain what all of that was, but I do know what it did.”
“What did it do?”
“Scorched earth.”
“Yeah? And?”
We stop at the bottom of the stairs, turning toward each other as I reply, “Someway, somehow, it opened a portal. Neither Cornelius nor I nor even Jacob has been able to open a portal in ages. But something about us in that moment flipped a switch.”
“A portal to where?”
“That’s just it,” Cornelius interjects from the end of the hallway. “These portals are specifically coded to individuals. Depending on where you are in the hierarchy, it will determine where the portal goes.”
She turns her attention to Cornelius and asks, “Do you think it would take all of us to the same place?”
