Chapter Twenty
Adelaide stood very, very still in the darkness and tried not to breathe. But this was not the same kind of black she’d just been pulled out of; it was a normal darkness, a simple emptiness devoid of light, and she could tell she wasn’t alone.
She waited. She held her breath. She waited some more. The silence stretched.
“Just turn on the light and tell me who the fuck you are,” she finally demanded, her nerves no longer able to take it.
A soft chuckle preceded the click of a lamp knob, and suddenly there was a soft yellow light in the small room where she stood. Nero, the man who’d spoken to her in the bar of the hotel, sat in a recliner beside a small table where the lamp rested.
Addie let out a whoosh of breath. She didn’t know why she should feel so relieved, but she did. She just did.
“Hello Adelaide,” he said in his British accent. His voice sounded a little deeper this time, or perhaps more… hollow. She didn’t know, but it was somehow changed. In fact, as she remained standing in the center of the room and studied him, she realized that it was more than his voice that was changed. But damned if she could put her finger on what exactly it was.
“Nero,” Addie said. “Right?” She was pretty sure she remembered it right. It was a cryptic part of her psychic ability. Which was hilarious, given that before she’d gained her psychic ability, she couldn’t remember a person’s name for squat. In fact, she had cousins that she actually lived with growing up whose names she couldn’t keep straight.
“On the money,” he said calmly, pushing himself out of the chair. “I apologize for the dark of the transport.” He moved to the wall and flicked a switch, turning on the overhead lights. It was admittedly a relief to be able to see everything around her with clarity. “But I’m afraid the darkness was a necessary component of the spell.”
“What did you do?” she asked. “Where am I? And why am I here?” She asked the questions as her eyes darted around the room, searching for something she could use as a weapon. And for a paper bag she could maybe breathe into.
The flashes she’d had the first time she’d brushed past him were coming back, reminding her. Crosses. Wars and battles. Death.
And yet he seemed a polar opposite to the chaos of the images. He was still wearing the suit he’d worn earlier that day, and now he slid his hands into his pockets. It was a deliberate gesture, and she knew it was meant to put Adelaide at ease. Hands in pockets couldn’t be used against you.
It helped just a little.
“Alright, then,” he said as if coming to a decision. “I cast a spell to pull you out of the Nightmare King’s castle and bring you here,” he told her plainly. “As to where you are, you’re in my office on the thirty-seventh floor of the Columbian Center in Seattle. As to why….” He looked down at the floor and paced slowly toward her. “I need your help, Adelaide,” he said, looking back up and into her eyes.
Addie stood her ground and stared back. For the life of her, despite the strange, static-like feel of the aura around him, despite the visions, despite the difference she felt in him, and regardless of the fact that he’d actually pulled her away from someone and somewhere else without her permission, she had to admit that he seemed genuine.
“My help with what?” she asked, flummoxed. How the hell could a normal human being like her help someone who had just cast a spell like that? Someone giving off the powerful vibe he was emitting?
“I need you to help me awaken my bride.”
Several beats passed, moments during which Addie attempted to process and prioritize. But after nearly a minute, she was still hopelessly lost and utterly baffled. “Say what?” she asked, bewildered.
“I realize this is a lot to take in.” Nero smiled, then chuckled. “You disappear from an airplane mid-flight, you meet strange people who can pull up portals through space and time, and then someone tells you they’ve cast a spell and they want you to wake up their bride. I don’t blame you for the mental double take. But think about it, Addie.” His expression grew more intense, more earnest, and he tilted his head to one side, narrowing his gaze. “You already experienced visions. You’ve actually died, Adelaide. You know damned well that things aren’t as they seem, and they’re certainly not as people believe.”
Addie stared at him.
He knew she had visions. And he knew how she’d come upon them… he knew everything.
When Adelaide was fourteen years old, she made a choice that would change her life forever. When her father found her, she was already losing consciousness. The ambulance arrived at the hospital shortly before she flat lined. She was technically and legally dead for seven minutes and twenty-three seconds.
She knew what was waiting for you after death. She remembered everything. And it wasn’t what people thought, either.
“How… how do I help you with your… your bride?” she asked softly. Her body felt numb and her heart was racing. But she was proud of herself. Because she was still standing, and her brain was adjusting to the supernatural. She was compartmentalizing the impossibilities – and dealing. Like a winner.
She crossed her arms over her chest in an attempt to hug herself because it felt better, and Nero came closer. His green eyes sparked like emeralds turning in the sunlight. “Come with me,” he said, holding out his hand. “She lies sleeping in a tomb, alone in the dark. It doesn’t suit her. Death does not suit her. It was not her time.”
As he spoke, Nero changed. His voice became quieter, deeper, and it seemed to carry less of an accent. He appeared to be speaking introspectively, from some place deep inside, some place hidden and private and older. The space around him darkened in sepia, as if she were watching an aging film. She felt transported by his words, beckoned by a promise in the past.
I’m already in for a dime, she thought numbly. Here comes the dollar.
She placed her hand in his. At once, a sensation rode from his hand and into hers. It climbed her arm and moved into her shoulder, a kind of buzzing, uncomfortable nervousness, like the feeling one gets with a very, very mild electric shock.
A sense of unease came over her. But it was too late. They were moving now, like vampires, the world speeding past them as they stood completely still. Unlike the transportation portal Nicholas and his companions had opened, Nero simply held her hand and looked into her eyes – and the universe raced by them at the speed of light. There was no column of swirling lights, no tube with prismatic walls, nothing. It was simply the two of them and an entire world speeding past as if the world were transporting, not them.
When he at last released her hand, the sense of unease lessened, and the static discomfort of his touch evaporated. The film she’d been watching was new and present, and they were some place cool and dark.
It was quiet but for the sound of wind, muted and forlorn.
“She is here,” said Nero softly beside him. “In these endless passageways. We must walk the path, I’m afraid. There is no other way into the Duat.”
“The Duat?” she asked, her voice no more than a whisper.
He looked down at her, and she could barely see his face in the dim light. “The Land of the Dead.”