It was my turn to look at her strangely. “Want to be more specific?”
“Sure,” she said, reaching for Gram. “Come to me, Gram. Hug me. Let’s visit for real.”
“No,” I yelled at the same time Gideon did. There were a million ways it could go totally wrong. She could be out for days, or weeks, or months… or worse.
Both our daughter and Gram ignored us.
“Trust me. I’ll be back in five minutes,” she promised.
As the two most important women in my life embraced, Alana Catherine’s knees gave out, and she crumpled to the grass. Before she could hit, her five-person Demon protection crew caught her and gently laid her on the ground. My heart was beating so loud, I was sure it could be heard in the next state over.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I ground out, circling the women. I was trying not to lose it and not doing a very good job. When a Death Counselor did a mind dive, their bodies stayed on the Earthly plane. When I did a mind dive, what felt like only an hour in the Darkness ended up being a few days on Earth. Time ran differently on the different planes. My daughter had never done a mind dive. There was no way she would just be gone for five minutes. It wasn’t possible.
I was beginning to doubt our motto. It was becoming clear that not everything was possible no matter how hard one believed.
“Relax your crack,” Candy advised. “Ain’t a dang thing you can do about it now.”
What I wanted to do was scream. What I did was count the minutes. Literally. Out loud. It was the longest five minutes of my life.
At five minutes on the dot, Alana Catherine woke up with Gram. They were laughing and still talking a mile a minute. The conversation was so all over the place I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Alana Catherine,” Gideon’s voice boomed and echoed through the field. The Grim Reaper was about to lose it. Everyone got quiet. Fast. “You almost gave me a heart attack.” He threw up his arms. “Which is impossible. However, in the five minutes you were gone, I died approximately ten thousand deaths. I’d hazard a guess that your mother died at least twenty thousand. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Alana Catherine stood up and walked over to her dad, who was wound up tight. She hugged him, and his body instantly relaxed. She turned to me. “I’m sorry I scared you both. That wasn’t my intention. I wanted some real face-to-face time with Gram. I should have explained more to you before I did it.”
“How?” I asked, still in shock. “How were you only gone five minutes? Time runs differently on the different planes? I don’t understand.”
My daughter took my hands in hers and smiled. “Correct. Time doesn’t run concurrently on the different planes. What was five minutes for you was about three hours for Gram and me.”
I shook my head in bewilderment. “How?”
“I chose it. I spoke the words aloud—the parameters,” she explained. “From the plane you leave, you can set how long you’ll be gone. It’s finite. The time in the Darkness is not. You can hang out for days, but on the Earthly plane, I would only have missed five minutes.”
I was still digesting this news. “Help me understand how you knew this, please.” I’d been the Death Counselor and the Angel of Mercy for almost a year, and I’d had no idea it was possible just to decide how long I’d be stuck in a mind dive. That would have come in a real handy more than a few times.
Alana Catherine shook her head. “That I can’t help you with because I don’t know how I know… I just know that I do know.”
“Awesome,” I said a little sharper than I’d wanted to sound. My gut instinct was to keep picking it apart, but my brain was aware that it was futile. Magic wasn’t logical or linear. Trying to make sense of the mystical would take millions of years, and there would still be no answer. So, I went with it.
“Are you implying that the next time I mind dive, I can determine how long I’m out?” I pressed.
She grinned and winked. Again, I was reminded how much she looked like Gideon. “Yes.”
“Got it,” I said. My heart still raced in my chest. “How about this? Next time you do something that might send me over the edge, you explain it a little better before you dive in, so to speak.”
“Can do. Will do,” she promised.
“I have a thought,” Gideon said, recuperating quicker than me. “I’d like to do a couple of experiments,” he went on. “Shitty Ritchie, do you see that boulder to the left of the tree?”
“Shitty Ritchie has excellent eyesight along with a healthy sexual appetite,” he announced. “Of course, I can see the boulder.”
I wasn’t sure what sexual appetite had to do with an enormous boulder, but I wasn’t about to ask.
Gideon ignored the icky part as well and kept talking. “What would you like to do to the boulder?”
We all collectively held our breath and prayed that it wasn’t something super gross.
“Shitty Ritchie would love to blow the boulder to bits. Once it’s been reduced to rubble, I would make tiny army forts, then blow them up as well. Once the pebbles have been reduced to dust, I would bathe in it to get ready to pursue many busty women, paying close attention to coating my dong. Eau du Rock is a very manly scent. It would attract many ladies.”
