Emory stopped dead in her tracks, stumbling as a familiar energy hummed beneath her feet.
Vera steadied her. “What’s wrong?”
As the others caught up to them, Emory’s eyes went to Aspen. “Do you feel that? It’s like the ley line in the Wychwood.”
Aspen tilted her head, as if listening to the air and the earth, hoping to learn their rhythms the way she’d been attuned to the Wychwood’s. “I think I’d be powerful enough to scry here.”
Romie tensed, looking between the two of them like she was ready to tackle them off the ley line if she must. “Don’t you think it’d be best to keep the scrying off the ley line? After what happened to Bryony…”
But Aspen seemed undeterred. “I’m not my sister. Besides, the thing that possessed her is already possessing another.”
Keiran.
Before anyone could stop her, Aspen plopped down on the ground and grabbed fistfuls of dirt. She let the red earth fall from one hand to the other, watching it as if the motion werehypnotizing. And perhaps it was, because her eyes grew filmy again, indicating she was scrying.
Emory’s heart raced. There was an odd tingling at her fingertips, a hunger in her that had nothing to do with her empty stomach. She couldfeelAspen’s magic as it worked, smell its sweet, earthy scent. It called to her in a way she didn’t understand.
She watched mesmerized as Aspen’s eyes jumped unseeing from side to side. And when they stopped moving, Aspen gasped—and Emory along with her.
Emory was no longer seeing the world as she had a second earlier. Gone was the barren landscape and her friends, gone was the feeling of weak sunlight on her skin. She was in a dark tunnel, standing guard outside what looked like a cell. She wore golden chain mail, and a sword hung at her hip. This wasn’therbody. It was corded with muscles she didn’t have, had suffered through hurts she’d never known. The heart beating in her chest feltheavy, made of something other than connective tissue and fibrous muscle. Something warm and bright and magical.
A monstrous growl shook the walls.
Emory stumbled as she returned to her body. She was again looking at that barren land, and her friends’ concerned faces. They weren’t looking at her, though—they were looking at Aspen.
“That wasn’t Tol,” the witch said with a frown. “I felt him near, but something’s blocking me from him.”
Emory’s heart pounded as she tried to make sense of what happened. She hadseenthis, just as Aspen had. She’d felt this undeniable pull toward Aspen, hermagic, and then she was scrying along with the witch. How could that be possible? She was a Tidecaller, able to draw onlunarmagics, not magic from other worlds.
This ley line was doing something to her. Could it have opened her up to other kinds of magic? She could feel the residual power from Aspen on this very spot, could feel it traveling beneath herfeet like a live wire calling her name, begging her to grab hold of it, use it as her own.
Her friends’ chatter grew distant. Emory had to get off the ley line or she felt like she might burst. The scorching heat expected of this world was only mild at best, yet she was sweating profusely, something electric traveling in her veins. There was a darkness pressing in all around her now. Emory took a few stumbling steps, trying desperately to get off the ley line.
“Em, you okay?” Virgil called out behind her.
Before she could answer him, Emory fell, her vision going dark.
She did not know that falling into unconsciousness would involveactualfalling. But that was the sensation she got, interminable and heart-lurchingly fast. Then at last everything stopped.
She was in the sleepscape again, or rather, it looked like she wasbeneathit. She stood in utter darkness, solid obsidian under her feet, and above her was a black expanse filled with stars that hung threateningly low. It was, Emory realized, as if she’d fallenpastthe bridge of stars and into this darkly glittering pit.
“Hello again.”
Emory whirled at this voice she knew too well. The demon wearing Keiran’s face stood behind her. He smiled at her with the unsettling mannerisms of Keiran, all cool confidence and ease, nothing like the murderous demon she’d faced off against in the grotto.
“What did you do to me?”
“So quick to cast blame.” Keiran-not-Keiran tutted. “You’re the one who fainted. I merely called your consciousness here.”
“And where ishere?” She threw a wary glance around her. “What is this place?”
“It is many things and nothing at all. It is liminal. A seam between time and space and planes of existence.”
“The sleepscape.”
“Not quite. A little pocket that exists at the edge of it, if you will.”
Emory hoped that meant neither of them was corporeal—that he couldn’t hurt her here. The memory of his fingers wrapped around her throat made her retreat a step, bracing defensively. “If you’re going to kill me, go on with it.”
