“An angel,” Talia answered. “And I mean that literally. As in from the Hereafter. Don't let his rough edges fool you.”
Angel. Talia's answers were just as absurd as Khan's were about magic. About Shadow. How could she believe? Considering the day, how could she not?
“Wraiths?” Layla croaked.
“Regular people who gave up their souls for immortality. My father accidentally let something bad into the world, and I took care of it a couple years back. Segue mostly now hunts and kills the remaining wraiths, though”â
big sigh
â“they seem to be reorganizing now, gaining momentum. I should warn you: Segue is not the safest place these days.”
The whole world wasn't safe with those creatures on the prowl.
“And what is Khan?”
How can he do all the things he can do? Why do I feel so strange when I'm with him?
Talia's expression sobered. “Custo and the wraithsâand ghosts, for that matterâall have their origins in humanity, but Khan is of an altogether different race. Khan is fae.”
Fae.
The word had a lot of meanings, but Talia had to be referring to an abbreviation of fairy. More fantasy stuff. Magic.
But, if what Talia said was true, the fae existed. And if Khan was fae, then Talia had to be, too. Just one look at those tippy-trippy eyes confirmed it.
“It's simple, really.”
Layla felt a spark of joy-shock as Talia squeezed her hand for a moment. Layla's heart hammered as Talia took a deep breath and blinked away tears herself. But what had caused the welling of emotion, Layla could not guess. She was near bursting with it, though.
Would it be too creepy if she, a stranger, was to touch Talia's hair? Layla fisted her hands in her lap so they wouldn't stray.
Yes.
Way too creepy.
“There are three worlds,” Talia began. “Mortality, Shadow, and the Hereafter. Mortality is where humanity livesâghosts are the souls of people who don't want to cross into the Afterlife; wraiths gave up their souls to live forever and have become monsters because of it; mortal angels, like Custo, are the souls of very good people who died and came back to dedicate themselves to humanity's well-being.”
“So all this is about life and death?”
“Isn't everything?”
Not necessarily. Didn't have to be. Those stakes were way too high. Why couldn't everything be about beaches or going to the movies or . . . love? Why did she have to be afraid?
“Where does Khan fit in?”
Where do you? Where do I?
“Ah. Shadow is the realm in between here and the Hereafter. It's the place of dreams and nightmares. It's where all the stories are true.”
“His magic comes from there?”
You must have some, too.
“Yes. In fact,
Shadow
is a much better word than
magic
, because it connotes all the borderland possibilities of inspiration and impulse that the twilight Shadowlands promise.”
“What about me?”
Because these last four yearsâno, my entire
life
âhas been a hell of questions and searching and life-ruining obsession. Why? Please, if you're answering questions, answer that one. No one else will.
“You've been a bit of a traveler through the three worlds. You just don't remember.” Talia's expression strained as if to hold back strong feeling. She stood, stepped away a short space, wringing her slight hands. “But some of us have crossed paths with you before.”
Impossible.
There was no way.
Layla had crossed paths with
none
of them. She'd been
alone
from the day she was born. Her life had been a misery of foster home after foster home. A stint in some halfway house for troubled teens. A chance at a prep school scholarship. A ruined engagement because she didn't know how to love.
That
was her life.
Now this . . . this . . . madness of a story. Shadow. Angels. Fae.
It took all her effort, but she tried to smother the bursting feeling. She couldn't trust it. No. That feeling always ended in heartbreak. Every. Single. Time.
She couldn't breathe. And what the hell was a traveler between the worlds?
Her heart labored for oxygen. Sounds cluttered her mind: a
shush-shush-shush
with no possible source and the
kat-a-kat
of the gate.
She was going crazy. Freakin' certifiable. She gulped for air.
“Take it easy,” Talia said. “You're okay. It's a lot to take in at once.”
Layla's eyes spilled over. She tried to inhale again, but she couldn't get anything good because her chest was already full. The space that had been empty all her life was near bursting with a
Yes!
and
It can't be
and . . .
I don't believe any of this.
But when she looked into those faery eyes beside her . . .
“We've crossed paths,” Layla had to say. How terrifying to utter those words, but she couldn't feel this way without some kind of . . . of what? A shared history? “I know we have.”
Talia nodded. A smile flickered. “Briefly.”
“And Khan is so familiar. He acts as if . . .”
As if he knows me already
. Maybe she shouldn't confess the exhilaration that came when he was close. The coil of need that turned in her belly when she looked at him, regardless of his silly hair.
But Talia laughed freely. “Yes. I expect Khan is
very
familiar.”
“Then we wereâ?” Layla meant to say “a couple” but wasn't ready. She'd been “a couple” not too long ago, and look how that had turned out. And now Khan? A . . . a . . .
faery
?
Oh, God, this was not happening.
“You bet.”
“And . . . um . . . why did I travel between the worlds?” Layla was afraid to hear the answer. “How?”
Talia shrugged. “I'm not sure.” Her face had drained of color. Her black eyes were wide, shimmering with feeling. “But I'm glad you're back. Very glad.”
Life and death. If Layla had traveled through the three worlds, particularly to that last one, she'd have to have been dead, then returned to life. . . .
“Am I an angel, too?” Seemed preposterous, but in the scheme Talia had described . . .
Talia shook her head. “No.” She backed her way to the door. “But
I
think you are.”
Don't go. Not yet.
Layla stood to beg her back.
But Talia already had her hand on the knob. “Now for sure you won't get any sleep tonight.”
“What am I supposed to do?” She couldn't possibly go back to her old life, not after today. She'd been lonely before, but now she was completely lost.
“Do? Your story is just getting started. I'll assist you with all the research you need. I've been doing a little writing on the subject myself. Actually, the wraiths are a very good place to start contextualizing the rest.”
Wraiths. Right. Her story. Everything else might be upside down, but her story was still valid. The only thing valid, maybe. There was work to be done. A war to cover.
Okay. Research was good. This world-traveler thing . . . Talia, Khan . . . she'd think about all that later. She couldn't handle it now. The confusion. The pressure in her chest.
“Try to settle in, if you possibly can. It'll all work out.” Talia opened the door with a quick swipe of her hand across her eyes and let herself out. “In the meantime, welcome to the family.”
Â
Â
Khan's Shadow settled at his shoulders with a gasp of relief. Segue remained secure, and he was here ahead of the devil. Layla's heart still beat, even and strong. All was well.
There was time left for them yet.
He sought the familiar form Kathleen had made for him, but it would not come. He organized Shadow into the shape of Khan's body, but it would not hold. It was a futile effort, but he had to try.
He'd found Layla, and lost himself. On the mortal plane, he could now only be Death.
Stretching himself into the dark corners of Layla's room, Khan had to make do with watching. As he'd watched and waited for Kathleen most of her life.
He observed as Layla sat unmoving in the center of the bed, her arms around her shins, her chin on her knees. Bits of yellow paper were scattered around her like petals. Thin eddies of disquiet trailed through the air, weakening as she deliberated silently. The trails cut off when she straightened, as if coming to a decision. Layla brushed the bits to the floor and leaned over to switch off the bedside light. The low-hanging clouds in the sky outside permitted no moonlight or starlight to touch the world, so darkness filled the space.
Kathleen. Layla. Both brave, both willful. Both lacking caution when it was needed most. Both treating with Death. And yet, still different. He'd thought that the soul alone constituted the entirety of a person, but perhaps that wasn't true. What defined her?
It was a question for the angels, with an answer they would not share with the fae. Hence, the great wall that divided their realms, a relic of an ancient war between the races.
Khan extended within the shadows, drew closer, the deepness of the dark a cloak to hide him. He could sense the wire of tension and anxiety that kept her consciousness high, away from rest. But sleep is kin to Death, so with a soft stroke, he released her.
“Please remember,” he whispered as she tumbled into fitful slumber.
He followed her down, into Twilight, where he could be anyone he chose.
Â
Â
Talia's voice echoed in Layla's sleep-slipping mind. “Welcome to the family.”
But the mouth that formed the words was on the face of some puffy lady who was escorting her down the front hallway of a house. “I'm Mama Joyce,” the woman continued with a smile. “You can shorten that if you want.”
Layla hugged her backpack tight against her chest to stop her heart from beating so hard. She hated new placements. This lady seemed nice, but Layla wasn't going to call her “Mama.” Her mother was dead, and only babies said that anyway, not seven-year-olds. So it had to be Joyce, who did kind of look happy, like her name.
“I have two special-needs kids here now.” Layla felt Joyce's soft arm come around her.
Layla knew that
special needs
meant like
you
. The arm on her shoulders felt heavy, just like the word
schizophrenia
that she carried from foster home to foster home. Layla still couldn't read (too dumb) but she knew that word. Schizophrenia meant she saw things that weren't there. Meant she couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what was “in her head.” Which didn't make sense, because what she saw was
not
in her head. Never in her head.
“This is a safe place,” Joyce said, pushing open a door. In her free hand was a plastic bag with Layla's new medication, handed over by the caseworker. The doctor was “trying something different.” But the way he'd said it made Layla's tummy hurt. Like he wasn't so sure after the last “episode.”
“Micah and Jonathan have been with me a long time,” Joyce said, “and they're doing great.”
One of them was in a funny kind of laid-out wheelchair. The boy's body was all wrong, his mouth stretched weirdly to the side like he was trying to tell a big secret. The other boy was kneeling, and he rocked, rocked, rocked his body while he mumbled,
Dead man, dead man, come alive,
which was part of a rhyme Layla knew but couldn't remember from where. The room was clean. Smelled okay, too. The TV was onâa kid's showâbut the sound was soft. Nothing like at the last house.
Layla's caseworker had said that Joyce wanted to save the world, one kid at a time.
Somebody needed to save the world. Dark people were everywhere, squeezed into shadows and trying to get out. And when nighttime came and the shadowy patches grew, the dark people came after her. Their long fingers scraped at her skin, so cold, snagged her hair, and the voices whispered bad thingsâ
should be dead, already dead
âin her ears so that sometimes she ended up in a ball on the floor, rocking, rocking, rocking like that boy. One day the dark people would find a way out of the shadows, and then, yep, the world would need to be saved.
The doctor called it paranoia. Said nothing could hurt her. But when the dark people pulled at her hair, it did
so
hurt. She wasn't pulling it out herself, no matter what anyone said.