I glared at him. “Thanks for the clarification. All I want to do is go home and go back to my world, go back to Boston, but what I really loved about Boston isn’t there anymore. Caroline’s gone and she’s gone forever. All I have left is you guys and I don’t even know you that well. You’ve got issues and it’s pretty obvious they’re starting to unravel. And I don’t know what’s going on with you and Ryder.”
“Don’t worry about me and Ryder,” Ratchet admonished. “We’ve got things to sort out, but that’s our business.”
“I can’t just ignore it,” I said. “That’s not how friendships work. It’s not helping people work together.”
“This is a different world for you,” Ratchet explained. “Don’t start judging this world based on what you think it is on your side of the fence. It’s not. The world of the Legendi is something totally different and you need to just let some of it go.”
“Don’t come in here telling me what I have and have not to do,” I argued.
“If I don’t tell you, who is going to? The witches?” Ratchet shrugged.
“At least they seem to have my best interests at heart,” I pointed out.
“What do you think I have?” Ratchet asked.
The truth was I didn’t know. Ratchet was an enigma to me. He was always with Ryder, his right-hand guy, ready to talk to me, but we’d never really gotten close and I always figured it was because that was the way Ryder and Caroline wanted it. Ratchet was totally hot and a fantastic friend up until recently. I had thought he was practically flawless, but now I saw his, I realized there was much more to him that needed to be fixed than I had originally thought. I closed my eyes. The last thing I wanted to be around right this second was somebody who needed to be fixed.
In fact, I was so broken myself right now, it seemed like all I could do to keep myself from being a mess.
“I think it’s best if you just go,” I said to Ratchet.
He was an addict. He was having withdrawals. He needed more help than I did right now, and I had none to give him.
It was as if the witches knew exactly what I needed at the right time. Katrina and Lady Albright entered. They carried with them incense, and a steaming cup of potion was in Katrina’s hands.
“I’m not having that again,” I said. “If ’s going to do weird things to me, like the last one did, I’m not having it.”
“This is just to settle your nerves,” Katrina explained.
“Was I that loud?” I asked.
“We could hear you over the entire command center,” Katrina said. “It’s okay. Grief takes a long time to fix and we understand. This potion will just help you settle down and calm down so you’re prepared for the next step.”
I closed my eyes. The next step. What was the next step? The next step was going to Undirheim. My mind suddenly shifted. Ryder had kissed me, but he hadn’t kissed me because he wanted me. He had kissed me… He had been distracting me, because he had let slip a piece of information I wanted, he knew a way for me to get to Undirheim that stepped past what the DGC would allow.
Ratchet stood by the doorway and the witches hovered around me. How was I going to get past any of them and get over to Ryder? Could I face Ryder again? Would he understand? Would he say anything? What I wanted to know was had he gone so far as to kiss me just to avoid me finding out how to get to Undirheim?
“What’s going on in that brain of yours?” Katrina tilted her head curiously at me.
“Nothing.” I kept a tight lip.
“She’s probably still trying to figure out how to get home,” Lady Albright said.
“Is that true?” Katrina asked. “Do you realize you can’t bring her back? And going to Undirheim will trap you?”
“I know it’s a dumb idea,” I said. “It’s something I should never do.”
“And yet you want to do it anyway.”
“What if Caroline knows something about defeating Cade?” I asked. “What if she knows something about stopping the monsters?”
“How would she know about any of that?” Katrina queried.
“Well, she may have learned something. We haven’t really discussed those options yet.” I shrugged.
“She has a point,” Lady Albright said.
“You can’t agree to her going down there!” Katrina exclaimed.
