I sat back and crossed my ankle at the knee. My hips felt a delicious stretch which told me I needed to stop lazing around so much and get back to yoga. "You come here spouting doom and gloom and just expect me to buy it." I pointed to the window where the sunlight was streaming through. "Everything looks rosy out there."
"Appearances can be deceiving," she declared.
I wasn't sure if I liked Helen Reaper or not. She seemed too upbeat and cheery to bring such bad news to my door. Maybe that was the life of a necromancer? She was around death all of the time so why wouldn't she want to be happy?
"What would I get out of this?" I asked.
Helen's eyes sparkled. "I'm assuming you'd get into the good graces of Portia Kadish."
I snorted. "Is there such a thing? She seems pretty crabby all the time."
One of the woman's blond eyebrows rose. "Considering the stunt you pulled in the town square do you think she'd be happy around you?"
My face heated with a blush. "There was no other way to get her attention."
Helen rolled her eyes at that one. "I can assure you there are a thousand other ways to attract her notice. You just chose the scythe over the head option."
"It wasn't that bad," I grumbled.
"It was exactly that bad," she disagreed. Helen stood. "I suppose I must be leaving. I will tell Portia you were not amenable to my suggestion."
I watched her walk back to the door before I made up my mind. "Wait!" I called. "I'll try for you."
She spun around, a brilliant smile on her mouth. "Wonderful! Do you need anything?"
I shrugged. "If I do, I don't know what it is. I've never tried to tap into the heart of the world." At that I rolled my eyes because it sounded completely ridiculous. "I suppose we should go outside?"
She was already at the back door so I followed her out.
"Head over to the picnic area. I'm going to run inside and get a mat."
When I came backout carrying a thick mat just in case I fainted, Helen was sitting on one of the patio chairs with her legs crossed and her ankle swinging to and fro. She looked utterly unworried about what the end result of this might be. I supposed when you knew it was going to happen, maybe you had a lot of time to adjust. What the heck did I know, though? I was about to try to read the fate of the world. Something that seemed utterly ridiculous five minutes ago.
I sat down in the middle of the mat and was just about to try and center myself when Helen spoke.
"So...you and Lucas, eh?"
I cracked one eye open. "No. Not me and Lucas, eh. Not even a little bit."
She harrumphed. "What did he do to you?"
I let out a sigh. "My dating life is not going to get you the answers you need."
"Ah, so a date," she said.
I rolled my eyes, shut them again, and slowly sank my fingers into the rich dirt of my backyard.
Absolutely nothing happened. I tried to concentrate on the sun, the moon, the earth underneath my fingers but couldn't find anything to connect to.
After a few moments, I tried a different tactic. I focused on Midnight Cove and the magical border surrounding our town, keeping us separated from the rest of the world. I thought about the people inside of it, the magic keeping the town running and Portia Kadish. My fingers began to tingle and before I'd prepared myself, images began to flash behind my eyes like an old projector, quick and jumbled.
My heartbeat sped up and my breath became rapid as I tried to unravel everything I was seeing. But the images got darker, more disturbing. The sky swirled with a purple storm. Magic. Deadly. And all around us, chasms were opening up andthingswere escaping.
A few moments later, I slumped over and fell. The last thing I heard was Helen Reaper's gasp of shock.
