Cheat the Grave

12

I stood, my chair bumping over the aged floor, wondering if we’d leave via one of the cabs at the neighboring yard or if we’d walk. Or, I thought, amused, maybe one of these grays would pick up their new “amiga,” fling me across their shoulders and vault into the night. Mackie was probably free by now. He’d start tracking my scent as soon as I was on the street. He could be tracking it now. I shuddered…then shuddered again when I saw what Carlos, still sitting, had done.

“You’re joking, right?”

He leaned back, a full smile branding those soft wide lips as he motioned toward the last of the mescal he’d poured into my shot glass…along with the worm. “Gusano rojo. It’s the ingredient which lends the true complexity to the drink.”

I crossed my arms. “I’m more than happy to keep it simple.”

Carlos nodded, but I could see he was enjoying this. “It’s a delicacy.”

“It’s a fucking worm.”

“Larvae, actually.” He laughed at my grimace. “But don’t worry. It’s nonparasitic.”

“I don’t want it.”

Carlos fell still. “This one is…special.”

I studied his smooth face like a map, then picked up the stunted glass for a closer look. The worm looked like a moth with no wings. It was bloated and soft from marinating so long in the alcohol, its destroyer and preservative all at once. I wondered if it’d sunk to the bottom of the bottle thrashing and alive, fighting in inelegant bends and sweeps, or if it had sunk resignedly to its fate. It might have been palatable stewed with some garlic or sweet onion, but sushi style? I didn’t think so.

I followed the length of its velvety sides, which ribbed outward and wide, until my eye caught on an unnatural bulge in the middle. Some sort of device. “Tracking?” I asked, glancing back up at Carlos.

He nodded. “It’s old technology like most of our weaponry, but it works surprisingly well. The sensors inside react to adrenaline and body heat, so even if we’re not near you, we’ll know when you’re in trouble and be able to swiftly pinpoint your location.” He motioned for me to drink again. “Please. I’ve been saving this bottle for a long time.”

I stared at his hands, the liquor I’d already consumed making them appear larger than they were. Yet they tapered nicely, almost elegant in their jointed shape and warm skin. Not at all like the worm.

“Trust me, Joanna,” Carlos said, somehow both composed and imploring, strength and vulnerability living in the same melodious tone. “It will open your eye to things previously hidden.”

I sat the glass back down. “I’d prefer my taste of the forbidden in the form of an apple. Tradition, ya know.”

He pursed his lips, eyes lowered on the small glass containing the large worm. Larvae. I shuddered again.

“Did you know worms have been around for more than 120 million years?”

“This one in particular?”

Ignoring me, he leaned forward to explain. “They evolved along with dinosaurs. They have no brain, eyes, or feet, yet they have burrowed through centuries while those greater, grander, and larger around them have fallen.”

The bigger they are…

Which was the not-so-subtle point he was trying to make about the troops-the Tulpa and his relentless pursuit of power, Warren and his equally determined fight for the same. I sat down again, keeping my eyes averted from the glass. It was an invite to keep talking, but I still wasn’t biting.

“Night crawlers travel underground, hunkered deep and unseen by those who walk the surface. They help with decomposition, eating away the dead, aerating the earth with their movement, enriching the environment through this lowly work. Ask any biologist, and they’ll tell you everything on the surface thrives because of them. They ingest the old so the new can be born.”

I slid lower in my chair and eyed the drink warily. “All right. I get the analogy.” Worms and rogues, both underground, both working beneath the sight of those who ran the world. I’d have still asked if I could skip it, if not for the tracking device. Why couldn’t they have planted it in a chimichanga?

Carlos was gazing at me, dark eyes luminous in the tanned face, beautiful hands still as artwork on the tabletop. I knew he could force it down my throat, but he was waiting for my acquiescence. Not running me down with his desires and demands. “First rule of the cell. Do not underestimate the lowly.”

I see a woman with everything.

Why? I wondered, biting my lower lip. Because I was on my heels, back to the wall, helpless as a being without brains or eyes or feet, but somehow surviving still? The comparison didn’t repulse me as much this time around. Not with Carlos’s gaze on my face and his dark head dipped toward mine. He was a realist, rogues had to be, and my weaknesses were already laid before him like burnt offerings.

It made me feel more seen than at any time since donning Olivia’s flesh. My flaws were my only defenses now that I had none, but I suddenly felt myself lowering my guard willingly. Maybe they weren’t defenses after all, but pretense. Like a child sticking her fingers in her ears and saying she couldn’t hear.

I picked up the glass, eyed the death inside. Would sucking on it draw out the power to burrow to safety as well? If I chewed it into little pieces, could I then ingest the discarded bits of this world, pump life back into them, and create something new?

In the end, I swallowed it whole. Carlos was right about one thing. It was delicate, but for the device buried inside. That stood out like a wire ball of fury. It pierced the worm, took root in my throat, and stuck there like a metal spider until I forced it down. The tears along my esophagus were cold when I breathed. When my eyes had ceased watering, I looked up.

Carlos smiled, holding out a hand. I pushed to my feet again, then lunged for him as the room began to spin. I was in trouble, a teetering dreidel on the inside, but all Carlos did was hold my hand. Remembering the myth about tequila worms having hallucinogenic properties, I slurred, “Is this laced?”

And weren’t drugs supposed to make you feel a high before you hit a low? This one pulled me down to my knees, like a slap from on high. Right before my limbs numbed out, Tripp reached my other side. I imagined I could scent him as I once had in Midheaven, when he’d been sweaty and defiant and smelling of old burnt cedar.

Carlos, so forthcoming about the rogue agents and their desire to help me, about being the one to give me a chance to become “who I was meant to be,” not to mention a detailed history of the worm, simply dropped a silken kiss upon my lips, setting them to buzzing as he braced my arms. “Repeat after me, one word only: Midheaven.”

He whispered it into my opened mouth, his breath touching my tongue, tickling my throat. My lips moved around the sound, briefly touching his as they formed the word. Then my eyes crossed, there were three of him before me…and then there were none.

I hadn’t dreamed since Olivia’s lesson in trusting the T-Rex brain, and the knowledge that I was doing so now would have surprised me awake were it not for the narcotics sizzling in my system. They caught me like a firefly in a jar, and there was nothing I could do but wait until they wore off. So I opened my dream eyes…and found myself facing an endless ocean of desert terrain.

Not my beloved Mojave, I thought, looking around as the drug-induced sizzling increased. Blood was snapping in my veins, but the foreign landscape of sand sheets and shifting dunes was enough to distract from that. Ridges and mountains of filmy grit angled hard in the spotlight of a red sun. I shielded my eyes and took a step into the ever-shifting softness. I’d have felt weightless if each step didn’t shuffle beneath my feet. Licking my lips, I tasted lead, as if my body was made of metal.

Then a sound as bright and faint as a rainbow stretched overhead. I looked up, twisting as it whipped by, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Hello?”

My voice echoed, but unnaturally so. Less of a reverberation off canyon walls than a CD that kept skipping until the volume was turned down. Meanwhile, the sand continued to snake around my feet, each fine, pretty grain winking as it shifted. Every once in a while I’d hit a sinkhole and was forced to flail just to remain standing. Was it possible to be buried alive in a dream? If I died here, would I still wake?

I slipped, abandoning the thought to catch myself with my palm, the imprint blending into nothingness as soon as I’d scuttled back to my feet. A moment more gave me back my balance, and I held very still, though individual grains still threatened to give way beneath my weight. Then there was the full pregnant sound again, like ghosts whispering over the dunes.

“So you’re back.”

Whirling at the scratchy echo, I found a Chinaman perched directly in front of me. Blinking, I rubbed at my eyes.

Yes. Chinaman.

He was dressed in silk, a green brocade that lay sallow against his skin. His wide-brimmed conical hat hid most of his features, but the brown skin at his neck and jaw was wrinkled with age, his braided queue shot through with strands of thick silver. He was curled tightly over himself, a walking question mark, and jutted his chin to peer up at me.

“You!” I accused once he did, but fear rushed me all the same. I’d left this man in the Rest House the last time I’d fled Midheaven, neither expecting nor especially eager to see him again. Shen hated me.

Panicked, I turned again, searching for a way out-and succeeding in only sinking some more. Though the desert terrain was unique, the magic in this place was known to me. Only Midheaven took something normal and turned it on its head. “I do not want to be here. I don’t, I don’t…”

I pinched myself as my voice scratched the air, but the chemicals in the worm kept me under. My bloodstream was burning, while my thoughts were vicious jabs, needles trying to wake me up. It wasn’t the first time my dreams had been invaded this way-and I didn’t mean my mind’s hopeful conjuring of Olivia either.

No, the Tulpa had visited me in my dreams before too, months ago, also under the influence of sleep-inducing drugs. Something about the altered state made the mind more susceptible to influence and suggestion. And, appar ently, gave the spirit the ability to travel between worlds.

“I don’t want to be here!” The echo married with the metallic taste, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

“Of course you do. One’s truest desires are always revealed in Midheaven.” I’d have thought the sand would mute Shen’s soft clipped voice, absorbing it like a sponge, but his dismissive tones stood up well, bright as bells. He hadn’t liked me since we sat together at a table of soul poker and I accidentally gambled away some of his personal information.

That’s what Midheaven ran on. Names, desires, attributes, powers and skills-all the building blocks of a viable life-form. I had to admit, I’d probably still be irked too. But I’d paid him back with a chip of my own, and the power he’d taken was more than a revealed name. Shen had stripped me of my ability to heal quickly, like a superhero.

Not that it mattered now.

I could tell it also didn’t make us even in his eyes. He scuttled over to me like a bug, a sourceless wind catching the sandy dunes behind him, making them shimmer and slide in the cold red light. “If you didn’t want to be here in some small part of your thieving heart, then you wouldn’t be…and neither would I. So just tell me what you want. I have to get back to my game.”

“I’m the reason you’re here?” I asked as he came to a stop in front of me.

“Men are never allowed into the elemental rooms without invitation.”

Because women ruled Midheaven. Gazing around, I wondered which element this room represented. The last time I was here, I’d visited only one of the four rooms upstairs-Solange’s fire room. It’d been remarkably absent of fire, but for the stars burning up the night sky of her makeshift planetarium.

Yeah, makeshift. Comprised of people’s friggin’ souls.

But what could a vast expanse of arid desertscape be? The earth room? Or was that too straightforward?

“Am I really here? I mean, I was drugged. I didn’t cross here via the line.” I swallowed hard, hopeful even though my body continued to buzz like a live wire, and the question rebounded back at me.

Shen tilted his head, looking at me like I’d just gotten off the short bus. “Your ignorance is appalling. Drugs allow incorporeal passage for those with the ability to interact with this world. If you didn’t want to be here, you shouldn’t have taken the drug. Or called forth the world in your mind.”

Carlos, I thought, gritting my teeth. That’s why he’d had me repeat the word he whispered into my mouth. But why? What was I supposed to do here? And, more importantly, how the hell did I get out?

“And you’re going to help me?”

“I am a man. You are a woman.” Shen rolled his dark, jaded eyes. “And the task would be infinitely easier if you actually told me what you want.”

But I had no orders to give him. I had no idea why Carlos would send me here, or what I was supposed to do now.

Then the other sound rolled over the sky again, not in the tinny tones of my voice’s echo, but the whipping arch from before, like the bright sweep of a lionfish’s tail as it sped along the ocean floor. It sounded like color, and moved like it came from within me. I followed it, neck craning from one side of the “ceiling” to the other, though the room sat like an island between red horizons. “What is that?”

“Finally,” Shen muttered, as if I’d made a wish. He reached into his robe, and I braced for the appearance of a weapon, wondering if he could go Jet Li on my ass in my own dream. The question became moot when all he did was pull out a forked branch and held it in front of him.

I palmed my hip. “What are you doing to do, poke me in the eye?”

He shot me a look of ill-concealed disdain, gripped one side of the branch in each hand, palms down, and pointed it in front of him. Head bobbing beneath his conical hat, he began muttering as he circled me. I frowned, then straightened. “Wait-are you dousing?”

I tried to recall what I knew about divining rods and dowsers. They were used to find water. Only seconds after this great mental leap, the rod took a dive of its own, seemingly flying from Shen’s hands to bury itself, single point down, right between my feet. It found a soft, or softer, spot, and sunk straight down, though the sand around it, and beneath me, remained unmoved. Relieved, I glanced back at Shen.

He lifted his head, the giant hat sliding away to reveal a mocking grin. Then he flipped me off.

A whirring sound started up underneath me, growing louder as the grains began to drain between my feet. The rod’s handles became propellers, blowing sand outward in a whipping blast to sting my bare skin. The ground altered elevation, and I backpedaled as if balancing on a rolling ball. I did a fair job of remaining upright-my dream, remember?-until a pair of rough hands found my lower back and gave me a good hard push.

“You little-”

Flailing, I slid in a roller coaster arch down the waterfall of sand, the light of the red sun disappearing like it’d been swallowed in one bite. Or maybe it was me. I thought of Carlos’s worms, burrowing through the years, existing underground, ingesting the old and birthing the new in the gritty darkness. Was Shen right? Had I called all of this to me? I waited for the drugs to wear off, and-as I continued to fall-prayed for a soft landing.

Sliding to a surprisingly easy stop, as if flowing off a large silk veil, I spit grit from my mouth, wiped it from my eyes, and tried to regain my bearings.

“Here.” An unsurprised voice-one that didn’t echo-sounded next to me, before a cool, damp cloth was pressed against my cheek. I wiped the sand from my face, noting the sound of running water as my dirtied rag was replaced. As I wrung water into my eyes, another voice, farther away, piped, “If you hadn’t fought it you would have arrived as you were meant to, clean and on your feet.”

I sighed, because I knew that voice. It was both chipped and singsong, with a light tone and dark smoky texture. I’d left its owner, Diana, in Midheaven too. “Ah, but this makes such an impression,” I muttered, then squinted, gazing about. “Where am I?”

The metallic taste was worse down here, weighed down and compressed like a silver bar in my mouth.

“The water room, of course.” Her voice didn’t echo either.

So it was one of the elemental rooms. Squinting, I looked about. At least more of one than the dust bowl upstairs. It had glass sides and a sandy rooftop, yet it tinkled and flowed, its perimeter completely awash in clear water that fell over the walls in a steady rush. Slate shelves caught the musical liquid, spilling it to the ground in beautiful, almost balletic, designs.

The room’s center was dotted with basins: black marble, clear crystal, hammered copper, and rose glass. Each bubbled in competing heights, and where there wasn’t water, there were mirrors, including underfoot. Strawthin streams backlit with firefly lights filled in the blank spaces, and behind all the watery reflection was the constant movement of white sand shifting against crystal walls. It added to the eerie movement of the room, so that I felt caught in the middle of an hourglass.

There was no music, but the various pools sang as though charmed. The thought kept me alert as I turned my attention to the room’s occupants, three in total. The one with a waist comprised of dangerous S-curves still loomed above me, but two others lounged in webbed hammocks winking with gold fringe. None looked particularly surprised to see me, and the voluptuous one even offered me a hand up.

“It’s a water vein,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “Both the water and the electromagnetic current from our bodies allow the dowsers to measure our depth and location.”

“And time,” Diana added, swinging in her hammock like a bright, overgrown black widow. She wore voluminous skirts in layers of taffeta, and black fishnets studded with crystals that flashed when she kicked her heels. The venomous spider analogy, I thought as she smiled, was something to keep in mind. “They can also douse for a specific place in time.”

And time didn’t pass the same way in Midheaven as it did in the real world. Here it bent and twisted upon itself, eating large chunks of a lifetime even in a blink. I hoped that wasn’t also true when visiting in your dreams.

“How would you prefer to die?” The woman next to me tilted her head prettily. “Fire or ice?”

“You giving me an option?” I said, returning the dirty cloth to her. My echoing voice made the question sound more forceful than I intended, but she took the cloth without moving to harm me. I remained wary. The women in Midheaven, powerful to the last, were never exactly what they seemed.

This one seemed to be a forgotten flower child, with dried blooms woven through her hair and light brown curls streaked with gold and red. Round cheeks dimpled beneath a cheerful spotting of freckles, but the sweet visage changed drastically below the neck. Cleavage bloomed over a black bone corset, covering the sinuous slide of those hips to end in a skintight pencil skirt. The outfit, and the body it encased, was totally out of place beneath a face of such abject innocence.

She took the cloth, smiling, and folded it in the crevasse between her milky breasts. “It’s only a question.”

But in case it was a trick one…“Old age. In bed.”

She shifted, causing gold flecks to spark from her limbs. Musk, like a tobacco rose, wafted to strike me in the gut. I hadn’t scented anything so heady and delicious since losing all my amplified senses. Though fully clothed, the sight and scent and sound of her were a promise of pure sex. The men in the Rest House, like Shen, and Tripp when he’d still been here, probably fell to their knees in front of her, begging for a taste of all that softness.

“In seven and a half billion years,” she said, breathy voice filled with wonder, “the earth will be dragged from its orbit by the sun, and spiral to a vaporous death.”

I blinked.

“Fucking cheery, Trish.” Diana rolled her eyes at me, then turned to address her companion on the hammocks.

“Does she know how to bring down a party or what?”

That woman said nothing, her silence a rebuke after Trish’s bubbling friendliness. She could have been either white or Asian, porcelain skin almost translucent atop chiseled cheekbones and piano-black lips. I thought about checking my reflection in them. Her hair was a severe bowl cut in the same glossy ebony as her mouth, but the thick bangs cutting straight across her face obscured her eyes, rendering her expressionless.

Covered from neck to ankle in form fitting black, she reminded me of a severe Audrey Hepburn without any other adornment beyond long dark nails. Yet every bit of her skinny body was revealed in a way even Trish hadn’t dared. Her ribs could be counted, her elbows jutted sharply, her nipples looked set in concrete.

She reminded me a bit of Mackie, I thought, shifting uncomfortably. Alert even without the use of her eyes. I glanced at Diana, who was lazily swinging a leg just above the ground, and when I looked back, the woman’s long, elegant fingers were tucked beneath her chin. A mannequin striking a different enticing pose, not moving into the position, but simply there, rigid and aloof. I frowned.

“I’m stating fact, right, Nicola?” Trish said, breaking me of my study as she whirled to join Diana, curls flying to emit another whiff of sweet muskiness. “Just because you don’t talk about it doesn’t mean we’re not all going to incinerate as the globe is engulfed by fire. Though we won’t even make it that long,” she turned, saying to me, “the sun will be ten percent brighter in just a billion years, causing all the oceans to boil away. No water, no life. Want a drink?”

“No.” Taking a drink was how I’d gotten into this mess.

Or was it? Shen claimed I’d called him to me, and these women were acting as if I’d stepped in from another room, rather than another world. I blinked again. “I am dreaming, right?”

“Of course,” Nicola said. Amazing, because her chrome mouth never moved. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t really here. You’re a part of this world now, or didn’t you know?”

Maybe giving up two-thirds of the essence de vie gave me free admittance for the rest of my natural lifetime. If only Disney had the same policy, I thought wryly. “So I need a drug to induce some sort of deeper level of sleep-”

“The theta level,” Trish said helpfully.

“And then I call the world to me just as I go under.”

“So telling someone to go to hell at that moment isn’t probably the wisest course of action.” This from Diana, hers a more mocking helpfulness. I scowled, and she smiled prettily. “Hope you have someone to pull you back out, though.”

“What?”

The smile widened. “You know. In case she finds out you’re here.”

But then the arching sound was back, bursting through the room like a low-flying phoenix. Ducking, I studied the cascading water walls, but the sound was already gone, lost in the rush. I held still, eyes darting, waiting for it again.

“So that’s why you’re here.” A slow smirk finally curled at the corners of Nicola’s black lacquered mouth.

“Should have figured.”

“Solange was right,” Trish singsonged.

The name alone sent shivers along my limbs, and apparently Diana felt the same way because she shushed Trish with a harsh glare. Maybe she’d done something to anger the woman too. Too bad for her…for us both. Solange’s was the sort of anger that blotted out entire planets. Basically, the difference between her and God was that God didn’t require the breath from your body, the bone from your marrow, the white from your eyes. Solange did.

Fuck the sound, I thought, and began looking for a way out instead. The other women chuckled, but didn’t look like they blamed me. “She sent Mackie after me,” I told them.

Trish shrugged, smiling sweetly. “He probably just wants to talk.”

Yeah, and porn stars just wanted to cuddle.

“Carlos?” I called the name tentatively, looking toward the ceiling. It echoed in that mix master’s scratch. Water continued to pour down the glass walls. I sighed.

“She sent him because you’re a danger to us all,” Nicola said, still stiff and autoerotic, like everyone else was incidental to her existence.

Diana flicked her fingers at me. “Joanna’s no danger to me.”

“She is if Solange catches you with her.”

“Stop saying her name!” This time Diana curled her delicate hands into fists, squeezing tight before forcibly relaxing them. “Besides, she doesn’t rule me.”

“She rules everyone whose soul has been melded into her sky!” Nicola said bitterly. Her sky, I thought, shuddering, remembering the planetarium.

“So you’ve all had parts of yourself put in her sky?”

Diana snorted. “It’s the first thing she does when someone new arrives. But you protected yourself from it somehow, and she hasn’t forgotten it. She thinks you’re after her power.”

“I don’t know why she wasn’t able to touch me.” I’d come awake while she’d been fashioning my gem, some how deforming it and keeping her from using it. “Besides, not everyone is after power.”

Nicola and Diana scoffed, but Trish lifted her chin. “Maybe Joanna just wanted to watch, like us.” She turned to me, wide-eyed. “Is that why you chose the water room?”

“I’ve no idea why I’m here.”

Yet even as I said it, the bottom dweller sound echoed again. Arching my head, I followed its path as it vaulted overhead, then fell like invisible rain into the basin sitting between Diana and Nicola and their four hammocks. I strained toward it like I had gills. What was that?

No, not a basin, I thought, frowning as I took a step to follow. A well.

Trish motioned me forward. “Come. Look.”

“No!” Nicola hissed.

Ignoring her, Trish slipped into a third hammock, and pointed to a fourth. I inched forward to peer in the thick crystal basin.

My anti-Olivia self was reflected in the water-dark eyes and choppy, blunt cut. Strong, lithe limbs, and a severe expression to match my mood. But I stared past my reflection, wondering where sound could go. Unlike the rest of the room, it was ice still. I waved my hand above the small pool.

“Not there.” Nicola was back in slideshow mode, bowl-cut fringe still perfectly arranged over the bridge of her nose. Her face was upturned, the shifting sands of the mirrored skies sending light to dance over her profile. She looked like a Roman bust, hard edges cut and sliced into soft curves.

“The water is merely a conduit for sound. You have to relax into the hammock, and once you’ve caught the rhythm of the room, look up.”

So I did, leaning back carefully, gaze on the blurred ceiling as I began to rock.

“You have to wait for it, since you are attracted to it, and not the other way around.”

Whatever “it” was, I thought sullenly.

“It’s not fair,” Trish sighed as we waited, airy voice rising, flowing upstream. “When are we going to get a turn?”

Diana hummed her agreement. “She gets to do whatever she wants.”

“Shh,” Nicola chided harshly. “She’ll hear you.”

But then I heard it, coming at me like it was shot from a pistol, but also from another room, another world.

“Ready?” Nicola turned her sharp chin my way, and this time her fringe parted enough for me to momentarily glimpse a startling blue eye before the hair fell back into place like a curtain. “Say hello to your mysterious sound.”

The sound buried itself in the basin. Then the haze above us parted like curtains, and light from the basin beamed like a projector onto the ceiling.

He lay in a skiff shaped like a lily petal, made of glossy teak and edged with imposing symbols. Immediately recognizing one of them, the same as that carved upon the treasure chest at Caine’s, I gasped. He stirred in his sleep, rolling his head on the red velvet tufted pillow until his body positioning mirrored mine exactly. I lifted my hand to my mouth in shock. He did the same. I ran it through my hair. He echoed the movement in his sleep. Meanwhile I took in the sight of him-white-blond cropped hair, thick neck, wide shoulders, skin as dark as Carlos’s-committing to memory how vulnerable the fierce man looked. Hunter…but laid out here in his true identity: Jaden Jacks.

“Oh, this is interesting.” Nicola’s reluctance veered to interest as our movements synched again. I dropped my hand to my chest. He did the same. “It really is a soul connection.”

“Solange is going to be pissed.” Diana.

Singing again, Trish. “Something tells me she already knows.”

It’s Miss Sola wants you dead, girl.

“But that one would almost be worth the risk,” Trish murmured, shifting luxuriously. “I mean, since we’re destined to be incinerated anyway.”

I swallowed back the metallic taste in my throat, ignored the drugs crackling like sparklers in my bloodstream, and lifted my hand in the air. Still asleep, Jaden Jacks did the same. I’d kick myself later over how lovesick I was acting in front of women who would have no qualms about using it against me, but for now my heart pounded in raw beats, my body knowing what it wanted despite my mind’s holler to cease and desist.

“Hunter-” I whispered, the scratchy echo of my voice clanging clumsily against the ceiling. I winced…and his eyes rocketed open.

His gaze burned with the same honeyed hue I remembered, though it was alive with horror as he found my face. He lifted his head from the red pillow, lunging for me, but his head banged against our ceiling like glass.

I strained upward as well, echoing the movement, but the hammock wouldn’t release me…and neither would his shocked gaze. “Hunter?”

“Jo?” The strange face with familiar eyes went rigid. “Oh my God. What are you doing here? I’ve been trying-”

“No!”

No warning. Just that one strained, screeched word. The women around me screamed and scrambled as a face of feral beauty filled the sky, looming, thrusting forward to distend the sky. The others fought to untangle themselves from their hammocks, yet caught in Solange’s gaze, I couldn’t move.

She didn’t scream again. She didn’t have to. Her original cry never ceased as she too strained forward, unfortunately with greater result. Her face broke against the projection, the reflected water wrapping around her bulging eyes, like Saran wrap. Rage carved her brow, and pressing harder, she leered. Her teeth went black. Her eyes white.

The singing streams shifted into raging rapids, and my hammock began to shake. The other women were free-

Nicola, unsurprisingly, had moved the quickest-but they couldn’t find an exit to the room. A sound like nails over a chalkboard etched its way over my spine and a hairline crack formed along the walls. Sand began filtering in, slowly at first, then pouring and pooling as the walls began to shake and splinter.

“What have you done?” Trish cried, ducking low, staggering against walls as Solange’s face pressed closer. The hourglass was being tipped. Marble basins cracked, and the crystalline walls shattered. Sand poured from the borders of the sky. And I still couldn’t move.

“Carlos!” I yelled as loud as I could, the taste of tin and sand flooding my mouth, while my pounding heart sizzled as though in a fryer. Willing myself awake, I screamed again. The sound clanked against shattering glass.

Then Solange took a deep breath, and in her mad gaze was a reflection of my grave: crystal shards and sandy dunes. “He’s mine!”

The ceiling burst, the scream blowing me backward in a deafening heat. I turned my head to the side, body scorching like a marshmallow over flame, and somewhere, faintly, Hunter’s cry rippled in my mind. Then, like debris, it was swept away in the torrent of sand and water that mixed to cover my burns, soothe my skin, shield me from Solange…and bury me in the shards of the destroyed room.