Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
I waited.
He continued to stare.
“Chief?” I said, and then quickly corrected. “Lorne?”
“What?”
He sounded as lost as I’d been, and I had a moment to think that maybe, possibly, I was having some kind of effect on him as well.
“I don’t know. You said there was something else you wanted to discuss with me.”
“Yeah, I…”
Was he…flustered?
He took a breath. “Listen, I was wondering if you’ve considered that if you sell a customer something that gives them a rash or doesn’t work, they could possibly sue you.”
Wait. What was he saying to me?
“And if you sell something that gives hope where there shouldn’t be any, that’s a terrible thing to do, don’t you think?”
Did he have conversations with everyone he thought was a charlatan at the festival or just me? Was I the lucky one because he knew me?
“I know you purport to be a witch,” he pressed on, “but we both know you’re peddling that load of crap so you can sell your bottles and tinctures and whatever else, like the rest of the people here who claim to be magic.”
It took a second for his words to sink in.
Purport to be? Purport? Was he kidding?
“I gave the same warning to the other witches,” he said, stressing the word. “Cordelia Wormwood for one, who is at least dressed up, looking the part of something supernatural.”
The part?
Well, that definitely answered my question about me being special—he’d given the same talking-to to everybody else.
“Are you listening to me?” he asked irritably.
Why was I worried the other night about the vargr? Because it really should have eaten the man. He would’ve certainly understood what the supernatural was then.
“Xander?”
For a frightening moment I thought I was going to hyperventilate. I was utterly blindsided by his casual belittling of all that I was. I took a step back, feeling the flush of heat on my neck and face.
“Oh, c’mon, drop the act. You can level with me. There’s no one else here.”
If I remained there, staring at him in absolute astonishment, I would say something I’d regret. So I whirled around and charged away, stalking through the thick carpet of leaves, furious with myself for letting my guard down. He thought I was a grifter. I couldn’t remember ever being so horrified.
In my haste, in my anger, I turned right instead of left, and after a few moments, looked around to find myself not at all where I was supposed to be. I seemed to be in a grove of birch trees near the outskirts of the preserve, but I was on the wrong side of the park for that, and I wasn’t stupid enough to think any different. When I tripped over something, I bent and found a hag stone.
“Are you kidding me?” I grumbled, walking back a few feet, crouching down, and brushing a pile of leaves aside to reveal several fly agaric mushrooms.
I’d been so angry with Chief MacBain—Lorne, my ass!—that I’d walked right into someone’s trap. It wasn’t a fairy ring. That I would have sensed and not crossed because, really, I wasn’t raised in a barn. It was terribly rude to go about mucking up fairy rings when it took them ages to build them.
But normally, rings were made in the spring and summer, when the world was waking up from its long winter nap and everything was alive and fecund again. What I’d more than likely walked into was a pocket dimension—a slip, as my grandfather called them, because they were so small, you didn’t even notice you were in one until, like now, you missed your step, slipped, and found yourself quite lost.
I felt really stupid. I could see the tree line that bordered the park, but I wasn’t actually there anymore. My grandparents would have been horrified.
All portals, rifts, tears, and passages allowed individuals to move through from one realm to another, but based on how big or small they were, some only allowed a single person, creature, or whatever, to pass through.
The rift on my land, though considered small, was still large enough to bring through entire hunting parties, a group of soldiers, or a goddess and her attendants in one go. It also remained open at all times, like all portals, never closing, never sealing. This was why it needed to be guarded. If something tried to cross, the land would warn me, and I could either allow entry or repel the assault.
Not all doorways were mapped out and known, especially the small ones, which was how things could come and go without anyone knowing. So many doorways had been lost or forgotten, left all over the world like discarded trash. Just like there were overlooked and unaccounted-for standing pools of magic—from when the old gods walked the earth—now causing terrible, irreparable damage.
Most people didn’t believe in minute dimensional tears. Why would they? It was crazy. But the fact was, there were stories from all over where, for example, two people were walking down a city block or out in the woods, it didn’t matter, and when the first person turned a corner—and mere moments went by—when the second person followed, taking the same exact route, the same steps, the first was gone. Poof. Into the ether.