“What about the rooftop deck?” I asked, recalling the time we’d run into him in the elevator.
“Would he do something that easy to find?” Angel asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s like a lot of the extras these high-end places offer, rarely used.” As I recalled the dream, I wondered why I’d gone up a thousand stairs. Was it indicating the roof deck? Or simply trying to get me to give up?
Angel stared at me for a long minute, then nodded. “Let’s split teams. One larger team to comb the rest of the building, and one smaller team to look at the roof deck.” He studied the teams for a minute. “Victor, Kerry, Jude and me, with two wolves as backup. The rest to clear the rest of the apartments.” He glanced at Remi. “You’ll be able to see magic residue?”
He nodded. “For the most part.”
“You’ll call if you think you need our scanners?” Bobby asked, holding up one of his many devices.
“Yeah. If Jude sees something, we’ll call. Be careful.”
Angel gave the signal, and the teams moved fast melting into the stairwell to sweep the lower floors while our group turned toward the roof access. The werewolves took point, their noses twitching at the stale air as we climbed. Though any sign of the weird smoke I’d seen on the lower floors had vanished, even without maintaining my shield.
Each flight of stairs felt heavier than the last, because with every step, the dream came rushing back. The endless stairs. The weight in my lungs. The certainty that something waited for meat the top. I had a long heartbeat of worrying again about Ivan and had to remind myself he was safe.
When we reached the landing for the rooftop access, the door stood slightly ajar. No lock, chains, or any sort of coded entry. Just a sliver of twilight bleeding through the gap.
Victor pressed a finger to his lips and nudged it open with his boot.
The roof sprawled before us, clean white concrete, a sterile display of lounge chairs, and a fancy bar setup closed off with a padlock. Everything empty, untouched, and unremarkable.
Except for the strange, wriggling wall of shadow in the corner.
19
The darkness pulsed as thoughin time with my heartbeat.
A vertical gash tore through the rooftop’s corner, its edges weeping strands of shadow like unraveling stitches. The air around it twisted into a funhouse mirror of distortions that didn’t appear to be of the human world at all. My breath hitched. A Veil tear inside the Veil? That shouldn’t be possible.
On the rare occurrence that the worlds merged completely, like they had in the district where Angel now lived, one place transitioned seamlessly to another. No tear needed, no lightning or magic required to walk from one realm to the next. It was part of why so many avoided places settled into the Veil. New tears took decades to settle, merge, and open, often creating shifting ripples between worlds that would take anyone who crossed a new tear to somewhere else completely, from either side. But I’d never heard anyone speak of a tear within a tear, and this looked more like a door than a slice through the Veil.
Would it lead to another realm? The human world? Maybe even that nightmare prison we’d found ourselves stuck in before?
I seized Angel’s hand. Our shield rune ignited with a sizzle, snapping into place and clarifying the dark wriggling edges. Thetear yawned wider, edges curling back like scorched film, but it looked very much like an open doorway to another reality.
“Holy fuck,” I whispered as the smell of ozone singed my nostrils. The outline snapped with electricity, wild and jarring. Inside the opening, a dim flickering of lights reminded me of the dying fairies from the otherworld prison we’d barely escaped.
I took a step toward it, but Angel gripped my hand.
“Absolutely not,” he said. Angel hauled me backward, arm around my waist like a vise.
“What is it?” Victor asked.
“A doorway?” I glanced from the opening to Angel, wondering if he saw it the way I could. “A tear, maybe, but more defined?”
Kerry’s nostrils flared. “I smell magic, but it’s faint. And I don’t see shit.”
Victor waved his gloved hand through the distortion without resistance. “Here?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Victor said, practically staring directly into the opening. “Let’s get Bobby and Wade up with the scanners.”
I tilted my head to catch Angel’s gaze. “You see it too, right?” Could he see it through our bond?
His jaw clenched. “No. But your eyes are black.”
