She vanished the ball of light, then held him hard. “I love you so much. This, all this came from my father.” She pulled back. “There’s too much to explain. Read what I wrote. I need to go. I’m going to get my things,” she said to Keegan.

When she hurried into the bedroom, Marco turned to Keegan. “I know what I just saw. I don’t understand it, but I know what I saw. I still don’t trust you.”

“You’ve no reason to I can see. I’ll tell you I mean her no harm. More, I will give my life to protect her. As you would.”

“Do you love her?”

“She is the key to the lock” was Keegan’s answer. “A lock that holds back the dark. One that would consume my world. And yours.”

“Maybe you don’t want to hurt her. Maybe. But somebody does. I know my girl. She’s scared. I want to know why.”

“Read the file,” Breen said as she rolled the hastily packed, disorganized suitcase behind her. “It’s everything. I’ve left things. I know I have. I can’t think straight.”

“Sedric can come for whatever you want, but we need to go. Give me that.” Impatient now, Keegan grabbed the suitcase, shouldered the computer case. “If we join, the portal opens faster, easier.”

“Bullshit on portals. Breen—”

“I’ll call you from the cottage as soon as I can. The cottage is on this side. We’ll talk.” She hugged him again. “I’ll answer all your questions. But I need to do this.”

She turned away. “I don’t know how to open a portal.”

“I do.” Keegan took her hand. “With me.”

He focused, drew from her, and began to open what he’d already conjured.

Behind them, Marco watched light, a pinprick, spread into a ball. And grow, grow. He saw dark behind it, but a dark sprinkled with stars, a pair of moons, their light a kind of shimmer over shadowed hills.

“What the actual fuck!”

Breen looked back. “I love you, Marco.”

She stepped forward.

Marco didn’t think, only felt.

He leaped forward and, grabbing Breen’s free hand, tumbled through the light and dark with her.

“Oh God, Marco. Keegan, stop, pull back!”

Caught in the flash of light, the whirling wind between worlds, Marco only gripped Breen tighter. “You go, I go.”

“It’s too late to stop.” Risking a shift, Keegan pushed out power he hoped would cushion the fall as he glanced at Marco. “Hang on, brother.”

And with no time, no choice, Breen clung to the hand of the friend who drew her to one world, and the hand of the man who pulled her into the other.