Page 134 of Nightshade

Running a hand through my hair, I thought back to the moments before I drank the tea. Perhaps a brief flash of a smile on Xhiphias’s face, but no sense of urgency. In fact, I was convinced he’d have preferred to save the tea for someone more interesting.

“I’ll admit there is one puzzling piece in all of this. The scent you carry is one associated with a living soul, which is quite unusual here. It begs the question—how? How would your soul remain perfectly intact?”

“I’m not dead. I can prove it. Let me return.”

Van Croix studied me in silence for a moment. Always studying me, it seemed. As if trying to read my thoughts, or something. “And if you’re wrong? Do you have any idea what it would feel like to remain suspended in nothing? No way back. No way to communicate with anyone?”

“I saw a man jump from the rooftop, and there was no body left behind. No. Body. He disappeared. Xhiphias told me my body goes with me, and returns with me.”

“Your physical body would never survive the traversing of planes. Humans are not designed to do so. Your flesh is as fragile as paper in a flame, and therefore would disintegrate the moment you crossed over.”

The fog. It was thick in the alley each time I visited Xhiphias. And the cats? What the hell was up with the cats?

Hand lodged in my hair, I shook my head again, still not believing a word. “So, if there is no body, because it disintegrates …”

“You return to nothing, as I said. A horrible void. Which is actually worse than returning to a corpse, I would imagine. It is a fate we refer to as Ex Nihilo.” Hands still linked at his back, he paced at the end of the bed. “Pretend there is a miniscule chance that your theory is right. At what odds are you willing to risk it?”

“I have to go back. You don’t understand. I have a life. School. My cat and ferns.”

“All of which were so very important to you when you sought out this world. Are you telling me there wasn’t the slightest thought that you might not return?”

I’d be a fool if I admitted that. “So, no one returns? Ever?”

“I didn’t say that.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks and shrugged. “There are those capable of traversing both planes and smuggling souls back to the earthly realm.” When he pulled one hand from his pocket, a silver coin sat tucked between his fingers. Just as in the library, he rolled it over his knuckles as fluidly as a wave. “But like your swindling friend, they only do so for their own gain.”

“How does that work? If my body disintegrates, won’t I be going back to a corpse, as you said? Or nothing?”

“Some immortals, like the Fallen, are capable of time reversal. It is not that you would return to the body of today, but the moments before you jumped off that roof.”

“So … would I have an awareness to walk away?”

“Perhaps. Or you might be drawn back.”

While the possibility that I’d been swindled was there, I was still hellbent to figure out a way to return. And I would. “You did catch me from falling off that cliff last night. I know it was you. I could sense it.”

Like a seasoned gambler, he remained expressionless, unreadable.

“Aurelia was real, too.”

“Yes. She was at one point. She was Anya’s daughter. Why you saw visions of her is puzzling, I’ll admit.”

“What?” A beat of shock hit me like a baseball bat, and I sat dumbfounded, puzzling what he’d just said. “But Anya acted as if she …”

“Has forgotten her own daughter? Yes. That is a side effect of staying in Nightshade for too long. Tell me, what is it that has kept you at this cathedral so long, Miss Ravenshaw? I’d have expected you to go tearing through those gates a long time ago.”

“I need answers. Every time I resign myself to going home, some other small bit of information pops up. It’s maddening.”

“And what is your latest conquest?”

Eyes locked on his, I backed myself to the bed, reached beneath the pillow, and pulled out the book, turning it to the portrait on the first page. “Why is high-school-aged me in a book that looks like it’s centuries old?”

Cocking a brow, he peered down at the image. “Strange likeness.”

“Very strange. And this particular individual in the back?” I pointed to one of the men wearing the vest, standing behind her. “Looks an awful lot like you.”

Again, he looked down at the image, studying it for a moment. “Yes, I suppose he does.”

“And? You don’t find that odd? Coincidental that both of us happen to look like two people in what seems to be a very old book?”