With a final round of hugs, I turned to open the door. “Oh, I almost forgot.” Trissa pulled something from her satchel. The rolling pin, AKA motorcycle.
“You’ll need this. Have Mara give you lessons.” I took the rolling pin, slipping it into my bag.
Without another word, for fear of crying or getting too freaked out, I opened the blue door and walked inside.
I never knew what I was walking into with the blue door. Would it be the New York apartment where my mother died? A random library, or a part of Mara’s house?
I’d walked right into Mara’s office and she was waiting for us. The second we walked in, she looked up. Her eyes were red and puffy like she’d been crying.
“Ready to go hunting?” she asked in a peppy voice, wiping her eyes. As I closed the door, she craned her neck to peer outside and into Faerie. It dawned on me then that she must feel so alone and isolated here away from her home.
I nodded. “You okay?” I couldn’t ignore that fact that she looked like she had been crying.
Her face fell. “Your mother … was my best friend. I’d have liked to attend her celebration of life.”
Oh. Gods. That was sad. “I’m sorry,”
Mara waved me off and started to tinker with her table while Elle and I strapped in.
“Wait a minute,” I suddenly blurted out, remembering that no Fae or human could stay in one world too long. “How can you stay here and not get sick?”
Mara looked up from her table and a dark look crossed her face. “The elders permit me an hour every three days to sit by the Tree of Life.”
Gods, that was like solitary confinement or something.
“Same place as last time?” she asked, changing the subject.
I nodded as Elle leaned into me, lowering her voice to a whisper. “We’re going to do anything to get this crystal right? Anything?”
Her eyes said what her words did not. Would I kill Liam to get the crystal?
I gulped, nodding. “Anything.”
Faerie was more important than any feelings I had for my “possible soulmate,” who happened to be an evil, Dark Fae halfling.
“Seattle, here we come. Buckle up!” Mara yelled.
The spinning sensation pulled at my gut, but it was easier to handle this time. Less like being on a rollercoaster. When the room settled from its blurred state, I unclipped and stood, swaying on my feet a little. Mara led us through the house, past where Bash was asleep on his back, drool dripping down his face.
“So, did he just travel with us or … we left him behind somewhere?” I wondered aloud.
Mara opened the blinds on a window in her kitchen and I peered out into the misty forest of Seattle.
“My office is in the in-between. I picked you up from Faerie and Bashur was in my house, which I’d previously moved to Seattle last night, before making a stop at Venice Beach to see Jonah. Then I brought Bash back to Seattle before getting you. Make sense?”
Not really, but I nodded.
She walked through the laundry room and opened the door that led to the front porch. This house was backward from where you would think. The front door led to the backyard and the back door led to the front porch.
I was thoroughly confused.
“So, if you were to move your house while I was out on a mission and I open this door…” I needed to get some more info about this inter-world travel thing.
Mara nodded. “You would see the inside of a dusty old two-bedroom house.”
Elle said what I was thinking: “So cool.”
How powerful was Mara? Because that took some serious skill.
