Twenty-Eight

"Bran!" Justice's voice was filled with panic as he yelled at me in my mind. Something was going wrong, and I knew it had to be way worse than Justice trying to cross over. But Justice and I had prepared for this, and after compelling him he was finally free of the veil.

I listened as Justice yelled to Jordan and could feel him jerking on the rope. "Pull us out!" Justice shouted and instantly I pulled as hard as my powers allowed. Justice landed in a heap on the grass awake while Jordan was unconscious.

"What happened?" I asked Justice, as I hurried to Jordan and patted his cheek.

"Give him a moment," Janis encouraged.

Seconds felt like hours as I waited for him to wake up. "Jordan?" I whispered, and finally his eyes fluttered open.

"Justice! Where is he?" Jordan sat up and scrambled to the edge of the lounge. His eyes were frantic before he looked to the yard. Justice sat in the grass laughing while Buddy— his tail going a million miles a minute, he was so excited and happy—licked him.

"He's there," I said to Jordan, who breathed a sigh of relief.

"Take me home," he murmured, before nuzzling into my neck.

"He's okay," Janis reassured me as she helped me get him into the car. "Take him home." She patted me on the back before I leaned over and buckled him in.

"Thanks, Janis," I said, before walking around the car and climbing in.

"Thank you," Jordan murmured, before he fell back to sleep.

I drove home and all the way there I thought of all the things that could have happened to him but as far as I knew none of it had. He made it back and as far as I could tell he was tired but safe.

"I wish you could have seen him there. He was so brave," Justice said from the back seat where he sat with Buddy. But he didn't need to tell me that. Just the fact Jordan went at all told me exactly how brave he was. "Normally when I'm near Jordan I can't feel his emotions. Some of the living are so full of feelings it's hard not to sense them. But not him. Maybe it's because he's an empath and it makes him not as readable."

"You can feel our emotions?" I asked and glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

"Yes. All spirits can. Some of us are actually drawn to emotions, but I think you've figured that out already." Justice rarely spoke about what spirits did or didn't do. He kept most of our conversations to what was happening in that moment, and he mostly tried to pretend he wasn't part of the spirit world. "Yours are easy to read. They're visible and very much a part of who you are, but you hide them from humans. It's not easy to hide from spirits."

"What happened when you were there?" I asked, and hoped to take the focus off me and my emotions.

"We found a spirit who we thought the wraith would target, and we were right. It passed through the barrier with the mark, but it wasn't enough to destroy it or even wound it. When that didn't work, we tried the vial Janis gave us. At least it looked like a vial after Jordan used it to mark the first sprit."

"The mark didn't do anything?" That shocked me. I'd gotten that mark from that evil journal, and so far, nothing I'd used from it had failed.

"The spirit was past the realm so we couldn't see exactly what happened, but it did not stop the wraith from trying to feed on another. Jordan put the vial in that spirit's hand before it moved to the wall."

"That spirit's hand passed the vial through to the other side before being blown back away from it. It was one of my ancestors," Jordan whispered.

I turned to look at him, surprised to find him awake, and happy we were nearly home. "How could that be?"

"I'm not sure, but there's more." He grimaced as he shifted in the seat.

"Are you okay?" I asked, and pulled up to the house.

"Yeah, just really happy to be out of there. The spirit said the wraith would be fighting to come into this world and we need to prepare."

"But wouldn't an ancestor have crossed over already?"

"She said she was where my family came from, and I think she was waiting to warn me."

"Warn you?"

"The wraith isn't gone, and we need to be ready when it manages to make it into our world. It will cross the veil." Neither of us made a move to get out of the car, and when Jordan's eyes met mine, his fear was clear. "I think this might be the only chance we have to completely destroy it."

I cupped his cheek and met his eyes. "Then we'll destroy it. There's nothing we can't do together."

His hand came up and covered mine. "No, there's not." I kissed him the way I'd wanted to since he'd returned to his body. "I love you."

"I love you too, and no witch, or wraith, or spirit is going to keep us apart. We're strong enough to destroy it." His words were so full of conviction I believed every word he said, and any bit of doubt I may have had melted away.

"We fight," I whispered.

"We fight."