Chapter 28

28

SYLAS

I remained quiet as Mina drove us to the place they kept her friend. I had to trust her skills with the internet this morning, but I also believed her—there were too many people out, carrying on with their day, experiencing only the general fears they possessed about survival.

No one was worried about themselves or a loved one being run through a supernatural meat grinder.

It was frustrating.

"This is it?" I asked. The building we were behind was innocuous, and it'd been there for quite some time. She'd parked us in a corner beneath a massive pine tree, so that the car was streaked by shadows.

"Yeah," she said, giving the building a determined look. "They've got my license plate on file, is why we're back here."

"Ah."

"How should we go about this?" she asked, turning toward me, her expressive brown eyes wide. Her heartbeat had picked up, and she bit the inside of one of her lips with anxiety. "There's a door at the back. Some of the people who work there smoke—we could try to get in that way."

"You've cased this place before?" I asked with bemusement, but instead of getting mad at me, her gaze drifted toward the ground.

"Yeah," she said, with a disappointed sigh.

"Don't worry, my queen. I can get you in the front," I said, flowing around her until I was standing outside her door and opening it for her. "As long as you promise not to let anything that happens after that scare you."

She stepped out of her car, looking nervously up at me, with hope in her eyes, while I watched her with all of my sight, and caught another thread of fate springing forth from her heart, to latch itself alongside the first one, pouring into the darkness of my chest.

It was all I could do not to rock back in pleasure.

Yes, I willed her. Believe in me. Trust in me.

Give me all of your light.

"If you can get me in there, I'll owe you my life," she said, daring to give me a smirk. "All that remains of it, that is."

"Sold," I said, gesturing her forward, and closing her car door behind her.

This time she followed me, and I went to the all glass front entrance of the building. There were a few visitors inside, I gathered from their lack of uniforms, and a stout woman wearing scrubs on the other side of a desk—and I could tell that Mina was hiding behind me, even though she knew other people couldn't see me unless I wished them to.

"Do you know where your friend is located?" I asked her, looking back, and I saw her nod. "Then be more brave, my queen," I said and flowed behind her so that she would be forced to lead the way.

"Sylas, they're going to—" she began, but then headed for the wide glass doors rather than fight me and I...

I slowed time for her.

Just like I had the prior night.

She caught onto it instantly, turning to gape at me. "You're doing this?"

There was a mother coming out of the door with a small child at her side—I'd frozen him mid-sneeze.

"It's only a moment or two out of people's days," I said, walking around the child, holding the door open for her.

She angled around the woman, doing her best not to touch her.

"But won't they remember it?"

"Oh, no. If you'd had an interaction with any of them, it would be harder—and I can't erase what's already gone before—but I can make sure that no one pays attention to you."

Mina stood in the lobby, looking all around. "If I'd had that power this semester, I might've been able to go to class."

I didn't understand this, based on what I'd gleaned from the man's mind the prior night. "I thought your schoolmates avoided you? Isn't that much the same? "

Mina snorted. "Sometimes non-attention has a weight to it," she said, and walked past the front desk, and down the hall.

I only kept the space nearest us frozen, gently releasing those we'd passed so that they'd never notice they'd had any time missing in their day, and slowly picking up those we were nearing, easing their transition from one state to the next, so they would be unlikely to realize anything was happening to the others around them.

It'd been a very long time since I'd had to slow time for so many people at once, so I was concentrating hard, but once Mina opened a door I felt a deep sorrow cut her like a knife.

"Hey, Ella," she said softly, right after walking in.

I closed the door behind us both, and released my control, allowing time to resume normally for everyone in the building.

There was a girl in a bed in front of us. She was Mina's age, and there was still youth in her size and the smoothness of her skin, but her body was flaccid as she unblinkingly stared at a wall full of pictures.

The whole room smelled like diapers and cleaning products were having a war, and the diapers were winning.

"This is your friend?" I asked, while Mina hesitated.

"My one and only," she said quietly, stepping forward, slowly taking Ella's hand in her own. "How are you doing?" she asked, stroking the back of the other girl's hand, and arm, until she started to cry and leaned forward to give the bedridden girl a hug.

More tears—and not for me.

My hands clenched into fists at my side, as I flowed forward—and felt something familiar and magical slice through the smoke I was comprised of .

I frowned down, and then started dissipating at once, spreading myself thin, to trace it back, in a line from the girl in the bed to the walls—and then found another line of it, and another, like she was resting in the center of a spiked wheel.

"I'm so sorry, Ella," Mina said, smoothing the other girl's blonde hair back. "I didn't know—I swear I didn't."

"Mina, don't move."

She whipped her head to glare at me over her shoulder. "Why?"

"I mean it," I said, my voice like gravel, and she gave a contrite gasp, taking me seriously at last. I came up to her side, flowing around the magic. "Something is wrong here."

"Yeah, I know," Mina said sadly. "It's not a great place—it's just what her parents could afford."

"No. I mean metaphysically—give me your hand, and take hers with your other."

She gave me a dark look, but did as I requested, taking Ella's hand first.

"No matter what happens, don't let go of either of us. Promise me?"

I felt her hand squeeze mine. "Yes."

"Brace yourself," I warned, and then let her see the world as I could when I wanted, letting the confines of perceived reality peel away. Objects that looked solid became blurs of atoms and time became a rope that leashed us all, creating bright streaks of fortune or fate from one creature to the next, as all the opportunities that opened or contracted with every choice a human made, innumerable amounts of them per day, briefly branched and then disappeared, as an infinite number of potential universes were repeatedly lost .

It was beautiful in its own strange way, once you were accustomed to looking at it. It was like watching an image made entirely of fluttering butterfly wings—and in the center of everything for me, right now, was Mina.

The threads of fate binding she and I were the most obvious, but now that we were here, I could see the things that made her her from moment to moment—right now her grief, pain, and despair. They made her skin light up, like she was coming apart at the seams.

She looked around, her jaw dropped. "Is this how you see...everything?" she asked.

"Only when I want to."

I watched her inspect herself, and then the shimmering line pulling between us ever since she'd hired me, that could not be denied. "Oh," she breathed.

"Yes," I agreed.

"Where are we?" she asked, looking around, before inspecting her friend. The spokes of magic I could feel in reality were more obvious here, and they were pulsing like slowly strummed strings. "What's happening to her?"

"Time gives fate reason. Fate gives time a point," I said, just like the inscription on my side of the hourglass's band. "And this, is what the concept of both look like, when you can manage to perceive them." I gestured to the threads between us with my free hand. "And as for your friend," I began, then took longer to contemplate what might be happening. "I believe something magical is diverting her future away from her...stealing it, in much the same way I will be stealing yours, only you agreed."

Mina gasped in horror. "Can you stop it? "

"Yes and no. I could break the strands, yes, easily. But as for what would happen to her afterward, I cannot say." While the magic that surrounded the blonde girl was familiar, it had a human's touch—and I had never seen magic done by humans echo onto my plane.

It made me displeased—and then I noticed Mina's horrified expression.

At seeing me, here?

Because here I was the thing that ate the light.

But it wasn't that. Her hand squeezed mine more tightly. "They did this to other girls, Sylas. Before her. But they killed them."

"Are you certain?"

"One hundred percent. It was why I was in the library, researching. I knew it couldn't have just been Ella."

I considered her friend again. "And that boy, last night—he was capable of bending fate?" If so, he should've been a more formidable opponent.

"He...must be? Or maybe it's all of them together—they were all there the night of the ceremony. I saw it," she said, drifting off, her eyes glazing as her memories got the better of her.

I held her hand tighter so she couldn't let me go, and now I had the perfect lever to use against her: the truth. "I cannot read any future but yours, my queen, but if you want me to be able to undo this—you need to tell me everything. I need to know what I am up against."

"Do you think you can?"

"I think I can try—and my trying counts more than most."

Tears shimmered in her eyes again— so close to being mine!— but then she turned to the other girl. "Do you hear that, Ella?" she whispered. "I'm going to get you back!"

Only to leave her again—if I managed it—full of the knowledge that her reentry into life had had a terrible cost.

Maybe I would get to eat Ella's sorrow, too, before I was through.

"Is there anything else we need to start?" Mina asked.

"No. I have the tenor of the magic. I will recognize it again when it is wielded. We will rejoin reality together now. Brace yourself, I suspect the transition will be jarring."