“At least tell me where we are!”
He laughed. “You’re exactly nowhere,” he said, and stepped through the wall.
Chapter Thirty
I followed him, which was easy because I was in spirit form. But he wasn’t. “How did you do that?” I demanded.
“What?”
“That. You just shifted through that wall—”
“I didn’t shift.” It was irritable. “I can’t shift.”
“I saw you!”
“You saw me phase. Some of us have had to learn how to get by without the bright, shiny Pythian power to fall back on—”
“You—what?”
“—which won’t work here anyway, so don’t bother trying.”
He strode off.
I caught up. “Wait a minute!”
“Would you leave me alone?”
“Explain what’s going on, and maybe I will!”
He made a noise, a harrumph of irritation, which made me stare. I’d never heard anyone actually do that before. But then he threw out his hands. “What?”
I honestly didn’t know where to start. “What’s phasing?”
“Going closer to or further away from the real world. The further away you get, the less anything holds you, including wards. You’re just not there as far as they’re concerned.”
“The real world? Then . . . where are we?”
“I already told you.”
“You just said nowhere.”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t help!”
“It’s not supposed to. This”—he gestured around at the nothingness—“is where they put misbehaving time travelers. It’s nowhere because it’s nowhen. You’re outside time.”
He took off again, and for a second I just stared after him. Then I ran to catch up. “What?”
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his longer-than-strictly-necessary nose. “You know that old story about time travel, the party analogy?”
“The—no, I—”
He sighed again. “Okay. Say you’re invited to a party—”
“What did you mean about outside time?”
“That’s what I’m explaining! You’re invited to a party, all right?”