I push up onto one elbow, sand cascading off myarm, trying to get closer, to see her clearly, but the world lurches sideways. My vision narrows at the edges, black creeping in. My ears ring like struck bells.
Memories flash uninvited—the Wheel of Fortune card landing at my feet, heat flaring up my legs, the crack of lightning splitting the wheel in two. Declan’s hand reaching for me. The rush of wind, glass shattering, the world going white—
“I think…” My voice shakes. “I think the universe was trying to tell me you were real. Or that I was supposed to find you.”
Her head tilts, assessing.
“Notfind,” she murmurs, her voice crackling like fire through dry wood. “Remember.”
From somewhere nearby, Declan groans like he just got hit by a truck.
I twist toward the sound, the motion setting off a brief wave of vertigo that tilts the horizon and makes my stomach pitch.
He’s sprawled in the sand a few yards away, one hand braced against the ground, swearing under his breath.
When I glance back toward the possible figment of my imagination, she’s gone. Vanished without a trace. No footprints. No distant receding figure. No proof she was ever there at all.
“Shit,” I grumble. “I’m losing my mind.”
That awareness slips through the cracks in my hazy thoughts, slowly at first, then crashes in all at once, an avalanche of wrongness that threatens to bury me.
Golden dunes ripple around me like frozen waves. At my back, silk tents bloom across the sand in shades of red, orange, and yellow. Smoke coils from bronzetorches spiked with lit incense and tucked between tent aisles, perfuming the air with earthy, spicy scents. Heat wraps around my legs, crawls up my spine, licks at my neck with greedy fingers.
I’m in…the desert?
“This isn’t real,” I whisper, swiping the sweat from my brow, panic prickling beneath my skin as I stand.
A camel lumbers out from between two tents, completely unbothered. “Nope. No. No way. This is a hallucination. A stress response. My brain hit overload and now I’m trapped in a Sahara-themed metaphor for my relationship issues.”
The camel slows beside me, one massive glossy eye blinking down at me. It lets out a deep, guttural bellow then sneezes a wet spray of camel snot and desert dust directly in my face before plodding toward the dunes.
Declan fails to hide his chuckle behind a cough as he rises to his feet.
“You’re seriously laughing at me right now?” I throw up my hands. “This ismyhallucination. Is it too much to ask my own brain to give me a little more Prince Charming?”
“I’m…appreciating the spectacle.” He dusts sand off his black velvet jacket. Against the riot of silks and firelight colors behind him, he looks like an inkblot on a painting. “This isn’t a hallucination.” He straightens to his full height and stretches out his back with a faint wince. “Pretty sure hallucinations don’t hurt. And I’m very sure they can’t be shared by two people. Not on this level.”
“So, we’re actually here?”
Neither of us speaks as we both take in the scene—thecurve of desert dunes, the scent of spice and smoke hanging in the heat, silks rustling in the breeze.
“Yeah,” he says finally, his tone unreadable. “We are exactly where we are.”
For some reason it was better when I thought this was all in my head. Eventually I’d wake up in a hospital bed with Gemma hovering, ready to hear my wild, delirious story about the flaming space-time portal and the camel snot and the fact that Declan hadn’t once tried to save me.
But with no modern medicine about to surge through my veins and fix this, I’m left with a familiar question: What the actual fuck am I supposed to do?
Something catches my eye in the sand—my things, partially buried in glittering drifts. My purse lies on its side, the zippered mouth gaping open. A few feet away, my ritual pouch pokes out of the sand.
I snatch it up, clutching the warm fabric to my chest before scrambling to my bag. I yank it open and drop to my knees. Lip gloss, mascara, receipts, protein bar wrappers. I shove it all aside in my hunt for the one thing that might actually help.
My phone isn’t here.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
I stand again, purse and ritual pouch hugged tight, spinning in a frantic circle.
“What are you doing?” Declan calls.
