Chapter
Eighteen
“What’s the in-between?” I asked.
“A godsforsaken wasteland,” Kaden muttered. “It’s a place neither of this world nor the Otherworld. It exists in the crevice where one realm meets the next.”
“But I thought . . .” I shook my head. “The Coranthe line created the veil between realms to protect mortal kind. How could anything exist that’s not on one side or the other?”
“It’s not aliteralveil,” said Kaden. “More of a dynamic magical field that has these sort of . . . voids. Folds in space and time. Over the millennia, the magic contained within forced those voids to expand. The in-between lies in one such void. It is a place that obeys its own laws of reality — one where no mortal or faerie can survive.”
I frowned. “And the author thinks Mankara’s last writing was hidden in this . . . thisvoid?”
“It would be an ideal hiding place. No one in their rightmind would attempt to steal a book guarded by the Watchman.”
“And who is the Watchman?”
“Notwho— what.” Kaden’s expression hardened. “The Watchman is a creature that bartered with the gods when the realms were first formed. Our legends say the Watchman so feared death that he begged the gods for immortality. What they gave him was . . . worse. An eternal existence of neither life nor death in exchange for guarding the in-between.”
“Guarding it from what?”
Kaden sucked in a breath. “From demons — and other sorts of creatures that prey on souls passing from one world to the next.”
I shuddered. “And you want to go to the in-between to retrieve the book from this Watchman?”
Kaden shrugged as if to ask what other choice we had.
“And how do you plan on getting there?” I asked. “All the portals are sealed.”
“You and I both know that’s not true. If it were, those demons never could have crossed into this realm.”
“And you know where this portal is?”
Kaden squinted. “It’s not a portal so much as a doorway,” he said. “One that goes in but notthrough.”
He stood smoothly, and I shivered as a buzz of magic rippled over him. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that Kaden’s street clothes had been replaced by a complete set of fighting leathers that clung to his broad chest and thick, muscular thighs. The hilt of a sword was just visible over his shoulder, and beneath his jacket I could see the glint of knives sheathed in a bandolier.
My eyebrows crept up. I’d never seen Kaden armed before, even when we’d walked into Caladwyn’s party.
“And where are we going with you dressed like that?” I asked.
Kaden’s eyes glistened. “To see an old friend.”
We hardly saidanother word as we set off into the gathering dusk. Even though the sun hadn’t set, I kept my head on a swivel. Vampires might not be prowling the Quarter at this time of day, but that didn’t mean Silas’s hunters weren’t.
Soon we left the gaudy main strip behind, and Kaden turned down a residential street lined with dilapidated old houses that had probably once been fine manors.
“This friend,” I asked after a moment. “What do they have to do with finding the portal to the in-between?”
Kaden didn’t turn to look at me as he said, “I told you. It isn’t a portal. It’s a doorway.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. How is this friend of yours going to help us find the doorway?”
“The doorway to the in-between has existed for as long as the veil has,” said Kaden. “Mirabella had her home built around it just so she could show it off to her guests — and threaten to toss them through it if they displeased her.”
Upon hearing that this so-called friend of his was female, something snagged at my insides. It wasn’t jealousy. That would have been ridiculous. Kaden was dark fae and over five hundred years old, which meant that his friends and hisfriendslikely numbered in the hundreds.
“She sounds charming,” I muttered, unable to keep the bitterness out of my tone.
