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Nothingness.

“I wouldn’t walk out there if I were you. You might never make it back.”

I spun around. Xavier was walking toward me. He looked wrong, as if I were looking at him through heat waves on a hot summer day. He kept coming, then stepped through the strange distorted-looking air, stopping in front of me.

“What the hell is this?” I said, backing away from him, putting more space between us.

He slid his hands in his pockets. “You’re in my world now, Jasmine. And in my world, no one can see or hear you, and you can’t leave it unless I allow it. This is where you’ll remain until you finish the work you’re here to do.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I told you when you first came to see me that I wasn’t an explorer of realms, that I preferred it here. Well, I created my own realm. It’s exactly like my home in every way, except no one can ever find it.”

Ronan could create alternate realms—their home was in one—and apparently so could Xavier. “You don’t need to keep me here. I promise I’ll help you. I’ll come back as many times as you need. I will. But I can’t stay here. I have people who love me. My family”—Ren—“will be worried about me. They’ll come looking for me.”

He stared at me, his eyes terrifying in their utter lack of empathy. “They won’t find you. No one can until I choose it.”

“What about Ronan?”

“Why would he ever come looking for you here? Ronan thinks that when he developed his emotions, he became like me. He thinks my emotions have always been as developed as his now are. He also sees me as a friend. He’d never think I could do anything like this.”

His words slid over me like ice. “Thinks you’ve developed emotions?”

“I’m good at imitating them. Although I’m not completely without them. I was, after all, raised by my human mother. I’m definitely not a victim of my specie’s defect, losing them completely through maternal abandonment. No, my lack of emotion is due to my own actions. I omitted the extent of the blocks I’ve created in my mind, which is why letting you leave isn’t an option. If we start and you decide not to come back, there is a chance I could lose my mind all together.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“I can’t risk it,” he said simply and without sympathy. “We’ll begin in the morning.” Then he strode away through the quivering wall between realms, leaving me there and ignoring my screams to let me out.

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Chapter 31

Ren

* * *

My apartment felt cold.

I quickly chugged back my coffee and dumped the mug in the sink. I’d only been gone a couple days, but it felt as if all traces of life in this place had faded to nothing. I got back from Philly late last night, but it’d been a fucking waste of time. I thought she might have gone home. She and Zinnia still owned a house there, but Jaz hadn’t been back, and none of her friends there had seen or heard from her.

Shoving my feet in my boots, I grabbed my keys and walked out, got in the hearse and headed down to Daisy’s, parked and walked into the house. Everyone was already here, and they’d all been searching for Jasmine frantically.

Iris looked up when I walked in, her familiar, Nia, at her side. “You look exhausted.”

I didn’t need sleep, couldn’t sleep, not until Jasmine was home. “Any news?”

She shook her head.

Warrick leaned against the wall, Draven and Ronan there as well. Bram stood behind Mags.

“Nothing,” Rose said. “None of us have heard from her since she asked us not to contact her for a while.”

The last two weeks, I’d called and texted her repeatedly, and she hadn’t picked up or replied, not once, which I guess should be expected if she was trying to get away from me, but then why had she asked her cousins to give her space? For the first few days she’d written them back, even if her replies had been stilted and distant. But for the last week there’d been no word from her at all. Wanting space or not, that wasn’t Jasmine. She put others first, always.

I shook my head. “No, fuck this, she wouldn’t do that shit, not to any of you.”

I’d tried to trace her phone and so had Bram’s brother, the male was good with that kind of thing, but not even he could find her.