“You rang, my love?” he says with a slight bow.
“Very funny. Tell me later how you did that? Right now, what can you tell me about the Spirit Realm?”
“Not much. It is the place dead things go to…be.”
“Obviously,” I snap at him. “Something I don’t know.”
He shakes his head.
“What good are you then?” I ask him. “You are normally more informative than this.”
He laughs at me. “I am a lot of good. I normally just point you in the right direction and you take it from there.”
“Normally?” Cole sneers. “And exactly how many times have you steered my wife in the right direction?”
“Oh, plenty,” he says, and I purse my lips at him.
“Shut it.”
“As you wish,” he says blandly. “How about in your dreams?”
“In her dreams what?” CK is starting to lose his temper now with this and I have to say I am too.
“You kill him in your dreams. Somehow.” He taps his chin and says, “You say they are real, vivid, that you feel everything that goes on in them, maybe he does, too. Maybe he is vulnerable when he is inside your head. And remember it is your head, not his head.”
“I have the power to steer the dream, you mean? Like to the Spirit Realms where I find the sword and kill this bastard dead?” I am getting overly enthusiastic in my irritation at not being very effective.
Five sets of eyes bug out at me and my vigor. “Well, maybe not exactly like that…” Xane says trailing off, “But perhaps something along those lines. It is worth a think about.”
“Hmm,” I say and then fill them in on what Corinne has said about him being born under a cursed moon. “What do you think that means?”
“Cursed moons are very rare,” Xane says. “They come along in The Underworld once every millennium if that. Parents take great pains to ensure that their offspring are not born on that day, because if one happens to be born as the cursed moon rises, they are feared as no one knows the amount of power they will hold.” The thought of what happens to the babies that do unfortunately get born on that day makes me swallow loudly. I don’t ask, and neither does anyone else when Xane doesn’t offer up the information.
“Screw this then,” I say. “I am going to ask other me.” I add to CK, “Oh yeah, be a dear and fill them in on that would you, Devon and Linc too. I’ll be back when I’m back.”
He grabs my hand. “Not so fast. You mean to say that you went off half-cocked yesterday and nobody knew about it?” He fixes his steely gaze on Cole. “You were supposed to be watching her.”
“I was, except when she tricked me,” he says, annoyed, “into having a bath by herself. Explain yourself.” He snaps at me in a very CK-like tone, which has him nodding his approval.
“Later, sweetie. Right now, I am going to make a deal with the devil.”
“Aefre, no! You cannot comply to her demand.”
“A little flirting never harmed anyone,” I say with a shrug. I close my eyes and wish myself back to the other world and other me.
This is getting easier every time I do it. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I look around the hotel suite, only this time it is not empty. It is, in fact, full of everyone from this side, including other me and now proper me as well.
“Well, hello again, Lil’ Sis.” she drawls at me, hands once again on her leather clad hips. Black this time…super kickass…I want some. “I have been expecting you,” she says.
“You have?” I ask with a frown at her “endearment”. She clearly thinks of me as littler and weaker than her.
“Of course. You want to know how to get rid of The Thirteen and I know. There is the small matter of my payment though,” she says with a sidelong glance at her sire, who is staring longingly at me.
I close my eyes and try that thing future me did and I say in her head as I open my eyes again, “We can’t exactly switch now, can we? He is standing right there.”
She starts momentarily at my voice in her head, then she grins and projects back, “Not a problem.”
Out loud, she says, “Follow me. Alone.” I trail in her wake to the bedroom and she closes the door and zings a spell over it to stop anyone from listening.