“Listen,” I say, trying to be calm, soothing. “You know that —”
Muta doesn’t give me a chance to offer up any further explanation. Essence writhes over his bushmaster form, and then he’s cinched — just a little too snugly — around my wrist and forearm in his alternate form. Bands of gold-and-brown topaz are now framed around the raw, puffy snake bite.
I’m panting a little, but in frustration more than anything else. Muta has never bitten me, not once in all the time we’ve been together. I start to cross back toward the still-running car — but the intersection point has other ideas.
Thick ropes of power twine around me, momentarily holding me in place. I could push against it, force it to release me, but I don’t. Instead, I try to open myself up to it, reminded of when I first claimed it, though this isn’t the same feeling.
It’s almost as if the energy anchored deep within the earth here is seeking … assurance. Did it lose all connection with me while I was behind Bellamy’s blood runes etched in my aunt’s blood? But the estate didn’t revert to being in stasis …
Energy coalesces around my dormant amulet. I tug it free of my T-shirt, holding the gold-encased pink diamond in my palm. It begins to glow as the intersection point replenishes it, quickly growing so bright that I have to look away.
That’s when I realize I can’t feel anyone else on the property. Not a single other person with essence in their blood.
I open my senses further. I can feel other life forms … mice, rabbits, a few owls … but no people.
Where is everyone?
The destruction at the secondary border crossing in the Federation comes back to me. The smoldering ruins of the outpost, the presence of that antithesis of essence that the Cataclysm wields, and residual essence from my three mates …
Did … did I miss them there?
I reach for the bond anchored in my chest. It’s still there. I would know, wouldn’t I? If Rought had died? But … I don’t have that connection to Rath or Reck. And the Outcast would take Precious if something happened to her brothers. Even if she didn’t want to go, I’m not certain the intersection point could stop him. Just as it couldn’t stop Oso from snapping my neck all those years ago.
I dash back to the car, barely getting the door closed before I’m speeding up the long drive.
The house comes into view. No lights on in any of the windows. Coda’s trailer is still tucked behind the barn. There is no way the awry tech would voluntarily …
The door to the trailer is hanging open.
I slam the car into park, remembering to shut off the engine before I fling my door open and run for the trailer.
The universe reaches out for the first time in hours, yanking me toward the house. I stumble to a stop.
A terrible knowing aches through me as I pivot. As I look all the way up to the tower.
My chest constricts. Maybe I don’t want to know … maybe I just need a moment to absorb everything that’s happened, all the other revelations …
But the universe isn’t done with me yet.
At its behest, I leave the car behind. I leave the mystery of Coda’s trailer. I walk up to the house, up the few steps to the patio. The front door opens to my touch.
The house closes around me, feeling utterly empty. Dust tops all the dark-wood wainscoting and the stair rails.
The knowing — though it feels more like a walk of doom — ghosts around my feet as I climb the stairs to the second floor. Bedroom doors hang open. The bed is unmade in Presh’s room, clothing strewn around. I walk all the way down the hall, then up the spiral staircase.
Then I’m standing before the tall armoire in the office tower.
I know before I reach for it that it will open for me. I know that whatever was hidden from me, hidden within the armoire by my aunt, will be just as devastating as everything else has been. All the mysteries of Disa’s past coming to light. All the ramifications of her choices for my own life.
I know, because what is hidden within, what I could always feel on the top shelf, belongs to me. Yet it’s also no longer mine.
It’s possible that the armoire was sealed to me because Disa’s essence hadn’t completely returned to the aether, but I suspect it’s more than that. It feels as if this is my last trial. My final tribulation.
The last of the tasks set by the universe between me and the future, the present, that I so desperately want to be mine. All the things I had to do before I could go home.
Because home was never the estate at all, but rather the people I want to love, want to experience life with.
Finding my aunt and releasing her vessel into the aether, then destroying the compound. Getting the children, including Cal and Jewels’s unborn baby, to relative safety. Allowing Isaiah to heal me of a wound that would likely not have been treatable by any other means. Not quickly, at least.
