Talk about bad timing. Why was she so mad at me? What the fuck? I reached for her, but Karla evaporated from view before I could figure out why she was so angry.
“What? Wait! No! Not yet.”
A maelstrom of visions and senses engulfed me. The ghost of that scene in the Deeps—Karla and Brian and the dead Seraph—lingered in my mental retinas. It competed with the more tangible feelings of simultaneously tumbling through the sky and lying flat and still on warm concrete.
Snaky tendrils like prehensile tails wrapped around me, cinching tight. Claws ripped through my wings, shredding their edges. And then I was yanked away to another iteration of myself, scalp all gritty, face all sweaty and feverish, listening to the girls chatter softly with each other. Meg participated, sounding less like a hostage and more like a BFF.
My confusion fell away. I understood what was happening. I was back in Hanover. It was Billy who had torn me out of the Deeps. He was in trouble and channeling his intense distress to me. What was so important to that couldn’t wait for me to at least talk to Karla?
One eye blinked out with the rake of a claw. Pieces of Billy went flying off. Something vicious was laying into him, tearing him apart. But what? A real animal? A hawk, maybe? Or some figment? Another familiar?
Billy flashed images at me with his one good eye. He kept showing me cars. Three of them, driving through campus real slow like a funeral procession. Somehow he thought it was important and the thing ripping into him didn’t want me to see.
I caught a glimpse of the tennis courts. Those cars were headed this way. Three carloads? Was Wendell sending an army of his assassins after us?
Billy sensed my wish to know more and valiantly buzzed the lead car with that other thing nipping at his tail. Through the tinted windshield, his insect eyes shared a brief mosaic of shaved heads, tattoos, body armor and automatic weapons.
A text chimed in on the iPhone. I dug it out of my pocket and gave it a peek.
Wendell.
“This should be interesting. Got my popcorn ready.”
I shrugged off my fever and picked myself up off the concrete. The sooner I dealt with this, the sooner I could get back to Karla.
“Well, look who’s back … so soon,” said Ellen. “Meg was just telling us about their little getaway on the coast of Maine. Twenty-three acres. Seven bedrooms. five and a half baths.”
“I don’t care about any fucking real estate. Listen guys. Someone’s coming. We gotta get ready. Something just tore the crap out of Billy.”
“The Frelsian?” said Urszula, scrambling for her scepter.
“Three carloads of Frelsians, looks like.” I looked around for my sword. I didn’t remember where I had put it. And I wondered now if I could even trust it, considering it was a gift from Wendell. What if he had rigged it with some kind of booby trap?
Meg had this big, shit-eating, told-you-so grin on her face that made me want to smack her.
“Make sure she’s tied up good. I don’t want her able to even wiggle a finger. Better cover her eyes. Lay her down on the floor, away from the windows. I don’t want her to see a damned thing that we’re doing.”
“You think she can do that magic stuff?” said Ellen.
“I wouldn’t doubt it, not if she’s hanging out with the likes of Wendell.”
I squinted across the field to a white van parked on a dirt access road along the edge of the piney woods. It hadn’t been there before and it wasn’t part of the images that Billy found important to share with me.
