Seasons End (The Hemlock Bay Series Book 3) by Amber Jaeger

Author:Amber Jaeger [Jaeger, Amber]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-29T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Machian hadn’t put the grate back but the girls didn’t come up and I couldn’t hear anything. Banging on the invisible wall holding me in only made the noise reverberate back on me and I stopped after my head began to throb again.

I could barely sit but I slid down and tucked my legs in the best I could. How long could he leave me like this?

A very long time, apparently.

I watched the blood stains on the floor slowly darken and the fire burned down. Whatever quality his ward or magic or whatever possessed, it allowed heat and cold to pass through if not sound. I shivered in my small corner and wrapped my arms around myself to generate what warmth I could but it wasn’t much.

I was powerless to keep my eyes from eventually sliding shut.

When I opened them again, it was to the dimly lit general store.

It was different again, but the same as it had always felt. Everything was where it was supposed to be, dust covered everything and the faint tang of smoked jerky hung in the air.

The floorboards creaked behind me.

“I know it’s another trick!” I yelled as I whirled.

But it was Abe behind me, his face was grim and hard. “Is it really you?” I asked. Everything was exactly as it had always been but after the last dream I wasn’t sure.

“Something’s happened, it isn’t safe here anymore,” Abe said, his voice cracking with emotion. “One of them is close, we can all feel it.”

Hope surged in me even though I tried to push it down. “David? Or Jordan?”

His brows furrowed. “No, someone else, someone trying to pull this place apart.”

“Pull it apart? Can he do that?” I asked, desperate again.

Abe frowned. “Who?”

“Machian.”

Abe’s brows rose up to his hairline while his face paled. “How can that be? He’s dead.”

I shook my head and leaned against one of the rickety glass topped counters. “He was hiding,” I told him. “In the ‘in between’.”

“Oh my,” he whispered. “That’s terribly dangerous, you’d have to be mad or a fool to do that.”

“Well, he seems to be both to me. That’s where he took me and tricked me. I thought I was dreaming, I thought it was you.” I stopped my explanation to take in the familiar lines on his face. “It is you, isn’t it?”

“It’s me,” he said, rubbing a shaking hand over his tired face. “I fear we may be in grave trouble; you’d better tell me everything.”

He took two warmish root beers from the clanking and wheezing cooler and pulled out wooden stools that always seemed ready to collapse under their own weight and I told him everything.

I started somewhere in the middle and he led me back to the beginning and through to the end, asking gentle questions and getting me another soda when my throat cracked from being so dry. He didn’t judge but his brow’s did raise at the mention of how I felt about Jordan and he grunted when I recalled what I could of my ‘dream’ when Machian was burned and the dead men insulted me.

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