sleep.”
His fingers are on the glass and I touch them because I can’t help it, and I feel my energy slip slip slipping away, and I can’t resist it and I drift away in sleep.
I think I’m only asleep for moments, but it might be years. I don’t know anymore.
But
When
I
Wake,
the road is humming beneath us and we are at a fork, and instead of turning left, Dare turns right, and the tires shriek in the rain.
There’s a fork in the road and even though I see it, I can’t avoid it.
One road goes left, one goes right, and neither of them ends well.
I feel it in my bones,
In my bones,
In my hollow reed bones.
“Why are we going this way?” I ask him curiously, and I’m scared, because it’s like a magnet magnet magnet is pulling me, and I know it’s pulling him too.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, and he seems as perplexed as me. “I just feel like we have to.”
Because it’s fate.
I’m unsettled and terrified, but we drive and we climb, and the road twists and turns and the cliffs, and I know where we are.
We’ve been here before.
“You died here,” I tell Finn and my words are anxious and Dare nods.
“So did your mother,” he says uncertainly.
“This place...this place…this place,” I whisper, and I’m drawn here and it’s a magnet.
Dare is pale, he’s white, like a ghost and he’s silent, because there are no words. This moment is important, it’s relevant, and we can all feel it.
We’re pulled to it.
And we can’t turn away.
Finn takes off his medallion and he hands it to me because the car crackles with danger.
“Wear this,” he instructs and his voice is firm. “Don’t argue.” I try to give it back and he won’t take it, so I slip it over my head.
St. Michael, protect us.
The road curves and Dare sucks in his breath and I look.
His brother lowers his hood in the middle of the road, and stares at us with black eyes. Olivia Savage stands with him, her face paler than paler than pale.
“Dare… she’s not real,” I tell him. But we know that anything is possible. She’s a daughter of death, of Salome.