Page 88 of Into the Abyss
They exchanged more stories about theirlives, and I came to realize this was a weekly dinner date forthem. It was a time for them to catch up with their daughter, whowas a resident in a hospital an hour away from their home.
When the meal came to an end, they exchangedhugs, and her parents promised to let her know they’d arrived homesafely before saying their goodbyes.
“I miss them so much,” Wren whispered besideme. “This… this is what they would look like now if they’d lived. Iknowit is. They would have come to visit me weekly, and Iwould have looked forward toeveryone of their visits.”
I glanced at her as she wiped the tears fromher eyes and straightened her shoulders. Then, the scene shiftedagain to reveal Wren sitting in her car. She dialed her phone, andI realized she was speaking with her boyfriend when she told himshe’d meet him in twenty minutes.
Wren hung up before pulling out of theparking lot and driving through a green light. She was halfwaythrough the intersection when a truck barreled through a red lightand toward her car. Brakes squealed but not in time to stop thetruck from crashing into the driver’s side door of her car andspinning it around into another vehicle. The screeching of metalreverberated outside the cell before Wren’s car skidded to stop ahundred feet away from where it was initially hit.
Within the car, Wren’s head lulled at anawkward angle on her broken neck.
Then, the scene vanished.
CHAPTER 37
Magnus
“Every few minutes it loops through the same thing,”Wren said and turned away from the bars. She walked to the back ofthe cell and slid down the wall to sit on the floor again.“Thankfully, you can’t see or hear it from back here. There’s onlyso many times I can watch myself die, although the first time, Iactually heard and felt my neck snap. It was horrible.”
“You experienced your death?” I asked.
“Yes. Well, sort of. The mortal version ofme died in that world, but I was still alive when the scene startedover.”
“Your torment is different from the otherswe witnessed, probably because the jinn and horsemen want youalive.”
“Why?”
“Because you are Corson’s Chosen and few arecloser to the king than he is.”
Fire blazed from her eyes when they metmine. “They’re in for a rude fucking awakening then because I won’tallow them to use me for anything.”
I smiled at her before glancing at the hall.“What made you realize something was wrong in here?”
“His kiss,” she said. “Real or not, it feltsowrong. I went through the entire play once, but when hekissed me the second time, I almost threw up and my hand went toCorson’s marks.” Lifting her hand, she rested it against the fadingmarks on her neck. “Touching them woke me up to what washappening.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
Gripping the bars, I braced my feet againstthe cell door as I attempted to pull the bars apart. They didn’t somuch as groan, never mind bend or move in any way. My shoulderpopped, my injuries protesting every movement, but I strainedharder on them. Nothing.
“Then, I woke to find myself in here, andthat…thatplaying over and over again. Do you want to knowthe weird thing?”
“Always.”
“I think it’s real. I mean, I know it’s somekind of movie or something, but I think that’s the way my lifewould have gone if the gateway never opened. I think I would havegone to school to become a doctor and dated the cute resident. Myparents and I would have remained close, but it all would have cometo a screeching halt the night I died in that car accident.”
I stopped yanking on the bars to look ather. “The jinn cannot reveal the future in such a way, and none ofour paths are set for us. Free will tends to get in the way ofthat.”
“Maybe, but something about what happenedout there feelsright. For so long, I wished many thingswere different in my life. I wished my parents had lived and thegateway never opened, but I think if it remained closed, I wouldhave died young. I think the death I was supposed to have inthatworld transferred over to this world when Greed’s horsepummeled me beneath its hooves and becoming a demon is the onlything that stopped it.”
“That’s not the way things work.”
“Then why does it feel so real?”
“Because the jinn are very good atimprisoning people in their thoughts. Before coming here, did youmake a wish to someone?” I asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t wish life could be different? Orthat the gateway never opened and demons never came to Earth?”
