“There will be a test, a trial personal to you I can only imagine, and you can only defeat him in the Spirit Realm.”
Again, with the trials. I wait expectantly but there is no more.
“That’s it? That’s all I get for everything I just did? I already know most all of that.” Not the part about defeating it in the Spirit Realm though
. That’s new and useful. And I know I didn’t exactly do much to help her, but she doesn’t know that.
“I told you, bits at a time. Now do you think that I should go and be with him or should you come back and do it? Maybe make it more believable the first time?”
“What? I am not coming back here to sleep with him!”
“Do it and I will tell you everything,” she says with a mean gleam to her eyes.
“Do you love him?” I ask, needing to know. “Or do you just want what I have with my sire?”
“I love him,” she says, not all that convincingly.
“Then how can you ask me to come back here and fuck him for you?”
“Because he wants you,” she snarls, and I take a step back from her hostility. “Whatever it is about you that he wants, I don’t have. Do this and you will get everything you need to defeat your Thirteen. And believe me, you need it.”
“I don’t know when I can return,” I say in a small voice because as much as I hate to admit it, she has me exactly where she wants me.
“Find a way. I will know when you are here. It’s like a pop. We aren’t supposed to be occupying the same space.”
“But as from tomorrow, I will be in Miami and then on to Europe.”
“Doesn’t matter, you come to my world, I will find you.”
“Fine. But whatever it is you have to say had better be worth my while or I swear to the old gods, I will kill you.”
She laughs at me. “Sure, you will. I have five hundred-and six-years’ worth of Queen Power on my side. Plus, also Empress now. Doesn’t seem likely you could best me.”
“Ah, but I am the one who taught you to time travel…oh wait…you don’t seem to have grasped it much, only to get yourself back to your own timeline. And there’s me jumping all over the space-time continuum,” I say sweetly.
Her face flushes with anger. “How do you know I can’t time travel?”
“You said you’d come back, and you never did. Catch me if you can,” I say with a little wave and, hoping that I am right and she can’t follow, I relocate myself back to my own timeline.
Chapter 25
I find myself alone when I come back to my time. Well, I hope I am back in my time. I was expecting a mass Q & A session but apparently, everyone had better things to do.
“You’re back,” Cole says from behind me, coming out of the bedroom.
“Yes.” I smile at him and hug him fiercely to his surprise.
“All good?”
“It is now,” I tell him, and he beams.
“What happened? Did she tell you anything useful?” he asks this casually but deep down he wants to ask what I did to gain any info she had to give.
“All she said that was new, was I can only kill him in the Spirit Realm. Problem is, she didn’t tell me yet how to get there and back. I know she is not saying a lot, but I can’t quite place my finger on the extent to which she is holding back.” I ponder this. Her facial expressions and her word usage have me piqued. Not once did she say “kill” only “defeat”. She told me there was a way to get rid of it, but that she defeated it. Am I being paranoid here? Probably. I am too suspicious of just about everyone’s motives at the moment.
“Do you have to go back?”
“Yes. But don’t worry. Her Constantine is on to our plan. I can’t pull her off, she is too…” I shudder. “He saw right through me.”