I am lucky I got the chance to come out of it before I lost something incredible.
Thoughts of my sister have me leaning in to get a better view of the room.
Will I see Liz soon?
Will she enter the room my friends and I are spying on, this meeting of powerful beings, unknowingly ready to die?
The building is huge, I know, but I only have visual access to one meeting room.
Out across my magical stream, passing through worlds and dimensions, another meeting is beginning. My link with Jarron again flickers back to life.
What will happen if Jarron figures out what I’m doing? Will he storm from his assembly to take me away from this risk?
“Talk about something normal,” I whisper to Janet and Lola.
They freeze but seem to understand my request.
Lola begins explaining her last conversation with her pixie mate and how he asked her out.
Meanwhile, Jarron shares his minor anxiety as he prepares to face an assembly filled with all the different species of his world.
If there are conversations happening in the meeting, I can’t get a sense of them. It feels like a swarm of bees buzzing in the far reaches of my mind. There’s darkness and shadows too, but I don’t know if that’s just my imagination or reality.
A flash of something golden catches my attention in the portal, and my heart stops, pulling me from the faraway connection.
Everything okay there?Jarron asks.
Yes, I’m okay. Are you?
If Jarron notices anything amiss in my message, I don’t feel it.
Yes. I miss you, bright one.
I miss you too.
My link with Jarron fizzles out. I shift my full focus to the beautiful blond woman in the mirror. My stomach sinks when I realize it’s not Liz. She has golden feathered wings tucked behind her back.
She could fit human legends of angels, no doubt. A literal Greek goddess.
I point to the paper in front of me—the list of the current council members.
Dara: Griffin
I have to force my eyes from her shimmering beauty. Even across the portal, she’s hypnotizing.
The three council members chatter quietly in the room. The griffin smiles dazzlingly at the butler to request a drink. Her hand slides up his arm while he pours the wine. He doesn’t react, except that his face turns beet red.
“When are we getting this started?” the cyclops’s voice booms across the room.
The griffin scowls.
“There’s really no need to yell, Halvard.” The small witch reclines in the seat at the end of the elaborate table.
“Besides,” the griffin says sweetly, “you know Vincent planned to present the jinn at the Orizian assembly. He’ll be around eventually.”
My stomach flips. Liz will be at the assembly where Jarron is?
“Then, let’s get it started now. We don’t need him.”
