After the bus leaves, I step off the road. The ground is all dirt and dead grass. It crunches under my feet, but a few dozen yards away, the landscape turns green along the banks of a stream. Lorn is there, sitting with his eyes closed and his back against a tree. He looks like he has all the time in the world to take a nap. So does Sosch. The kimki’s sunbathing in the blurred atmosphere that marks the gate’s location.

“The idea was for you to take Sosch back to the Realm.”

Lorn cracks open an eye. “Took your time getting here, didn’t you?”

“I don’t want Sosch with us when I shadow-read.”

“He’s perfectly happy where he is,” Lorn says. That’s true. The kimki hasn’t so much as budged since I got off the bus.

“He doesn’t belong on Earth.” It’s unlikely a human will stumble across him out here, but he’s stuck in this world until a fae opens a fissure close enough for him to scurry into.

“If he doesn’t use my fissure this time, I’ll send someone to pick him up. Here.” He hands me an Earth-made sketchbook. I wish I had mine with me, but it’s stuffed inside my suitcase back at my old apartment. This one looks like it belongs to another shadow-reader. The first half already has maps drawn in it. At least, I’m assuming they’re maps. I can’t decipher them, so I have no idea what the lines and scribbles mean. Whoever drew it would know, though.

“Whose is this?” I ask, but as I turn another page, I know. Kelia stares back at me. Unlike me, Naito can actually draw. He’s made his fae lover look delicate. Her hair is long and loose, shaded in with the edge of a pencil, and her eyes are soft and mesmerizing. Somehow, he’s managed to capture her otherness on the page.

I close the sketchbook and hand it back to Lorn. “I don’t feel right using this.”

“You can rip out the pages you use,” he says. “After that, I want you to return it to Naito.”

“You can return it to him.”

He still doesn’t take it. “I did mention I’ve been banned from the palace, didn’t I?”

“Lorn…” I fade off, fingering the sketchbook’s worn cover. Naito might appreciate having it back. It’s actually a pretty sweet gesture.

“He won’t mind,” Lorn says, standing. He pulls at his cuffs to straighten the barely there wrinkles in his sleeves, then he reaches into his pocket and hands me an anchor-stone. It’s smooth and the color of snow-white quartz.

“Where will this take us?” I ask. The stone is warm, a sign that it’s been imprinted with a location.

“Worried I’ll abandon you in the Realm, miles away from a gate?”

“Pretty much. Yes.” I’m not up for another six-hour walk through a forest, and tomorrow is Friday. I have to have my driver’s license and Social Security card turned in to Jenkins by then.

“Fortunately for you, the city we’re traveling to does have a gate.” He dips his hand into the stream. The water pours between his fingers before it turns into a strip of white light. He holds out his other hand to me.

“Where, Lorn?” I’m not stepping into the In-Between until I know.

“Nashville,” he relents.

“Tennessee?”

He tilts his head to the side. “Ten of what?”

“Never mind,” I mutter. There’s a gate in Nashville, so I’ll assume that’s where we’re going.

After I take Lorn’s hand, he adds, “My apologies in advance.”

I stiffen, but he pulls me into the fissure before I have a chance to back out. The cold air hits me, freezing my breath in my lungs. That’s not unusual, but the sharp pain in my chest is, and it doesn’t disappear when I stumble out of the light, hitting the ground hard.

Lorn’s on his knees beside me. Chaos lusters flash erratically over his clenched jaw. He’s having just as difficult a time trying to breathe as I am, and I realize that this is the real reason he didn’t take Sosch to the Realm. It’s difficult for him, working any magic. If he fissured back and forth between his world and mine, he might not have had enough energy left to take me through the In-Between.

If I’d known just how weak he was, I might not have agreed to come. Most of the time, fissuring doesn’t affect me like this. As long as my escort isn’t overly tired or hurt, their magic shields them from the drain of passing through the In-Between. Lorn’s magic hasn’t shielded either of us.

I squeeze my eyes shut, cough, then force myself to rise to my feet. I’m light-headed, and I notice the human standing a few paces in front of me only after the fuzzy black spots clear from my vision.

“Did you…were you…” He looks down at my knee. My bleeding knee. My jeans are ripped. “Are you okay?”

The man is holding a set of car keys in one hand, a brown paper bag that looks like it’s holding a bottle of alcohol in the other. He’s probably in his late thirties, a family man, and, if his black slacks and tucked-in white cotton shirt are any indication, he’s some kind of businessman.

And he obviously saw me appear out of nowhere.

“I’m good,” I say as lightheartedly as possible with a queasy stomach. “I just need to watch where I’m going. Tripped over my own feet.”

I start walking before he can say anything else. I’m not about to give him a chance to ask what he wants to. If he’s like the handful of other humans who have seen me appear out of nowhere over the years, he’ll doubt what he saw. He’s probably shaking his head now, thinking he needs some sleep or to check his vision or something.

“You could have warned me,” I hiss at Lorn, when he falls into step beside me. We’re on the back side of what appears to be a strip mall. Looking around, I think that one human might have been the only person who saw me. Most likely, the cars on the road to our left were driving too quickly to notice the girl stumbling into the parking lot.

“I believe I did warn you, my dear,” Lorn says. I think he’s trying to keep his tone light, but he doesn’t succeed.

“You could have been more specific.” I’m still feeling unbalanced, but at least the queasiness is fading, and my chest doesn’t feel quite so tight. “And was this your idea of a safe place to fissure?”

“It’s the only location I have memorized aside from the store,” he says. Then he lengthens his stride. “Now, hurry, please. We might have already missed our opportunity today, thanks to your delays.”

A human woman is walking toward us, so I stifle my response and follow as Lorn leads the way around the row of connected stores. Once we’re on the front side of the strip mall, he points to the corner retail space. The sign above the door is simple: it’s plain white with the words A Taste of Ether written in a sophisticated cursive script. Sunlight reflects off the store’s glass windows, making it difficult to see inside. The only thing I can make out for sure is a few wooden crates in the windows.

“Is this a wine store?” I ask, thinking there might be an arrangement of bottles sitting on top of those crates.

Lorn nods. “A human named Sara works here. Don’t let her know what you are. She’ll be absolutely furious.”

“She knows about the fae?” I ask, surprised.