Frustrated, Connor glanced down at the glowing dial on his inner wrist. A clock, of sorts, that measured not time but instead the completion of intention. It was a senior guardian tool, one he knew intimately.
His dial read -4 percent. He gave his wrist a few unproductive taps with his finger, then sucked a sigh through his teeth. Never before had he had a negative reading of completion on his wrist dial. If the thing wasn’t broken—which was technically impossible—that could only mean he was somehow losing ground in getting Emma where she needed to go, instead of making headway. With a 100 percent completion rating required for this job to be signed off by Marguerite, clearly, this was already going badly.
Stubborn woman. But that was no surprise. Emma James—or whoever she was—had better hurry it up and get her head around her situation. Because he had better things to do than sit around waiting for her to—
He whirled at the touch of someone’s hand on his arm to findherstanding beside him, her wide-eyed gaze every bit as shocked as his own.
“Oh!” Emma cried hoarsely, pulling her hand away as if he’d burned her. “You—youarereal. I mean—” She stared down at her fingers, flexing them in a testing sort of way. “You canseeme. Right?”
Violet’s voice with a twenty-first century inflection.
Balls.
“Aye,” he bit out. “I can.” To him, her spirit looked every bit as corporeal as he himself did. Even though he wasn’t, in fact, corporeal at all, as evidenced by the nurse who had just walked right between the two of them.
Shocked, Emma stared down at herself. “Am I…dead, then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what isthis?” She gestured at the transmutability of her body, at him. At this other place they occupied.
This, Connor decided, was apparently Hell.
Because, just as he had the night before, he was momentarily incapable of pulling his gaze from the familiarity of her mouth or reconcile the effect the sound of her voice had on him or quit remembering the feel of Violet’s cheek against the backs of his fingers. In spirit, she bore none of the bruises or abrasions her body had suffered in the crash. Except she was minus one shoe, of course, and her auburn hair was a bit of a mess.
Which, to his chagrin, only hardened her appeal.
Oh, aye, he would have words for Roland the next time he saw him for forcing him into this—
Looking suddenly paler than pale, she reached out again, her fingers gripping his forearm, as if he could somehow keep her from falling, which she looked in very real danger of doing. He stiffened at her touch.
“I feel so…odd,” she said.
“Ye willna faint,” he told her. “It’s only the adjustment that yer feelin’.”
Her eyes were suddenly shiny with tears as she released her grip on him and backed against a wall. “The adjustment to…what?”
Still transfixed by this apparition from a long-ago life, Connor hesitated. He could almost remember when she was the one he could count on. Trust, even.
“Adjustment to what?” she repeated.
“To the in-between,” he said, hardening himself to the stricken look in her eyes.
“In between…what exactly?”
“That world,” he explained slowly, indicating her body in the bed, “and the next.”
“Oh!” she cried. “Iamdead!”
“Calm yerself. Yer not dead. Yet. Nor are ye quite all there on the other side, either.”
“Don’t tell me to calm myself! Hasn’t anyone ever told you that’s the wrong thing to say to a woman in a moment of crisis?”
“Not precisely, no.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating. “Okay.” The spitting image of Violet nodded unconvincingly. “And so…you’re also in this…in-between?”
“No. I’ve definitely chosen sides.”
