Unseen

Finding each other was easy. The co

Speaking was all but impossible between us, but the feelings that cascaded back and forth were not. His hand reached for mine, and as he touched me I saw that my fingers glowed moon-silver on the right, dull copper on the left, because half of my left arm had been replaced and reworked with Dji

On the aetheric, though, the contrast was striking.

Intoxicating as being in his presence again was, I knew we couldn’t linger here; Luis’s time was limited, and he needed rest. There was an underlying flicker of gray around him that spoke of exhaustion.

But he’d come to me, despite everything. And I knew, because I could feel it, that his instinctive pleasure in my presence was as intense as mine in his.

I held his hand as we shot up in a parabolic arc through the mists and lights, dodging dimly seen figures of other Wardens on their own affairs and Dji

More of that black shimmering curtain, but this one rose higher and twisted with more power than before. It seemed to move like a silently blazing fire, reaching up to brush the roof of the aetheric world and stretching down into the physical world below—a burning black tree of power.

Of all the things that I had seen so far of Pearl’s influence, that was the most alarming. The power involved was staggering.

More than that—it felt aware.

She’s here. She might not have taken physical form yet, but it was a certainty that her energy was stored here, readying itself.

Something in me reacted to her presence with a kind of longing, and panic, and I dragged Luis to a halt, hovering well beyond any approach to the column of force. Shafts of multicolored light crackled within it, lightning without a storm’s logic, and on the real world I dimly heard Luis’s voice on the phone say, “We can’t handle this alone, Cass. This is way above our pay grade.”

He wasn’t wrong, but the fact was that there were no others to call on. Marion couldn’t leave the children; most of the other powerful Wardens had been called out to the emergency at sea. Pearl had timed her move to active strikes just perfectly; Ashan wouldn’t commit the Old Dji

We were very much on our own, and very vulnerable indeed.

“Go,” I said aloud, in the real world. “Break loose. I can’t risk you.”

“You can’t do this alone. If she’s that powerful, she’ll destroy you in ten seconds and you know it.”

“And your help will only add another ten seconds to our lives! I’d rather do this alone. Ibby needs you more than I do.”

“You think I’m just going to back off and leave you? That’s you who leaves, Cass. Not me.”

On the aetheric, his glowing form turned toward me, and both our hands joined. We turned in slow, dreamlike circles, eddied by the currents of power. Beyond us, the fire of Pearl’s black hatred danced, and the smoke it gave off in the aetheric was the ash of a thousand burning Dji

“I’m not going. Ibby needs us both,” Luis said, down in the real world. “You can’t fight her. Not alone, Cass. Not now. Please don’t do this.”

“It’s the best chance we have to stop her,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I hung up the phone.

In that instant, the bonfire ceased to shimmer its toxic colors upward, toward the roof of the Dji

Now it was coming for us.

Coming very, very fast.

I tried to push Luis away, toward safety, but he hung on with a tenacity I hadn’t expected. Instead of pulling apart, he dragged me closer, closer ... and instead of a physical embrace, our aetheric bodies slid together.

They merged, sinking into each other, forming one heart, one spirit, one mind.

The resulting explosion of power was soundless, and bright as a star, and as Pearl’s poisonous tendrils of shadow whipped around us, I realized that she couldn’t touch us. Not as long as that brilliant light burned between us, within us.

I clung to Luis on the aetheric, and the power amplifying between us roared on, louder and louder, setting up resonances and waves that rippled in all directions. It disrupted the attack coming against us, and then broke in a soundless shatter against Pearl’s central column of force.

But Pearl’s column wavered under the attack, and came near to dispersing completely.

The blaze—Pearl herself?—pulled itself rapidly into a hard black shaft of swirling shadows, then into a ball, which contracted to a tiny pinpoint of darkness ...

And sped away through the aetheric, leaving behind the ghostly shimmer of power that I’d seen at other locations.

That was how Pearl moved from one of her camps to another. We’d just forced her to stage a hasty retreat.

On the physical plane, my cell phone rang, and I fumbled it open, still splitting my attention between the two realms of existence. “Madre,” Luis’s voice said shakily. “Can you feel this? What the hell is this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. We were still merged on the aetheric, and it felt ... incredible. I wanted to weep with the beauty of it, and scream, and run away from its intimacy. There was nothing in my experience like it, not even among the Dji

“I can’t,” Luis whispered, from a great distance away. “I can’t let you go. I can never let you go. Don’t you feel that? God, Cass, no matter what happens, no matter how we feel ... this is right.”

The truth of it echoed between us in breathtaking clarity. That was the painful part, as well as the beauty; we were not meant to feel this kind of co

I tried again to pull away, but I couldn’t. I wanted ... I wanted to stay co

The light between us flickered, and I realized with a jolt that he was the one fueling all this power, and it was draining him dry. He would allow it, in this state. He wouldn’t feel self-preservation, or fear. Not when we were too closely joined to differentiate ourselves.

I had to end it. Quickly.

It took the effort of my life, but I ripped us apart—and the pain was unbelievable, cell- and soul-destroying. On the physical plane, I heard Luis scream through the cell phone, and heard my own agonized cry. On the aetheric, we bled black waves of anguish as our conjoined bodies came apart, and wisps of our aetheric essence broke loose to swirl in bright, then fading colors around us. The wisps quickly cooled to ash gray, and fell away.

On the phone, Luis went ominously silent, and in the aetheric his form went still, drifting aimlessly in the visible and invisible currents of force. The colors of his body, normally so bright, were fading to pastel.