Grave Visions (Alex Craft, #4)(93)

Falin held up his hands, moving slowly as if approaching a wild animal. “What happened?”

I might be going mad. It was wholly possible Falin was just another hallucination created by the Glitter Ryese had force-fed me. But what if he wasn’t?

Ryese was setting a trap for Falin. He’d said as much. For the trap to spring, the real Falin had to show up, right? Was I more or less crazy if I tried to warn a fake Falin on the off chance he was real? I’d already fought a hallucination, and argued with one. Why not try to work with one?

“I’ve been drugged.” I told him everything. Well, almost everything. I told him about the struggle with Ryese and what he’d said, and I summed up the fight with Tommy Rawhead. I didn’t explain Death’s presence. “He’s not real,” I said, nodding to the fake collector. “Ignore him.”

That statement didn’t make the fake Death very happy. He began bellowing his questions, pacing around me as he jabbed at my insecurities.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Falin said, taking me by the arm and guiding me toward the door. “We need to find the queen. And Ryese.”





Chapter 32





“Wait,” I said, jerking my arm out of Falin’s grasp and stumbling backward.

If Falin was another illusion, I couldn’t follow him anywhere. Things were dangerous enough trapped in one room, but what would happen if I left? And who else would my hallucinations endanger? And if this wasn’t another mirage, what kind of danger was I putting Falin in?

Ryese had said I was Falin’s weakness. If I was the bait, where was the trap?

“How did you find me?”

Falin frowned. “I received a note. It said you’d left your quarters and were in trouble. Then it told me how to find you. I’m assuming Ryese sent it and I should watch my back.”

Well, that seemed plausible. And coming here was definitely something the real Falin would do, but the fact I thought so meant my imagination could have conjured up the explanation.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Falin’s frown deepened. “What?”

“To prove you’re real. Tell me something I couldn’t know about you.”

Falin stepped back, evaluating me, or maybe the request, I wasn’t sure which. Then his gaze cut to the fake Death still yelling questions at me. “Why does he keep asking you his name?”

“Because I don’t know it.”

“But aren’t you . . . ?”

He didn’t finish the question. He didn’t have to. I knew what he was asking. Wasn’t I Death’s girlfriend? His lover? His something, at the very least? Hell, he was my oldest and dearest friend before he was . . . whatever he was now.

And I knew nothing about him.

After several moments of only the fake Death speaking, Falin sighed.

“If I tell you something you don’t know, how will that prove anything? You won’t know if it’s true or not.”

Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. I pressed my palms against my eyes. Then I stopped.

My eyes. I hadn’t been able to pierce the hallucination of Rawhead, hadn’t been able to disbelieve him away, but his lack of soul had betrayed he wasn’t alive.

I dropped my hands and opened my shields. I blinked, looking around. Death remained exactly the same as I opened my mental sight to the other planes, but Falin had a hazy silver-blue glow haloing his form. A soul.

I smiled in relief. He was real.

Unless of course, my mind could conjure up a soul glow around a hallucination. Why did I have to think about that possibility? I hated my brain right now.

Falin watched my thoughts shift with my expressions, and then asked, “You want me to tell you just anything you don’t know?” He paused. “You know that I was switched with a human and grew up outside Faerie, right? Well, maybe the spells they wrapped me in weren’t quite good enough, or maybe I was just unlucky, because I was abandoned by the family who should have raised me. I don’t know. I was too young to remember. I grew up in foster care, but never really fit anywhere. I’d stay in a home for a few months and then they’d send me away, off to a new family. When I reached puberty, the spell began breaking down, my fae nature emerged, and a FIB agent brought me to court. I felt like I belonged for the first time. Faerie felt like the home I’d never had. The home I’d missed.”

I studied him. I’d asked him for something I didn’t know, and he’d given me a doozy. I hadn’t known him when he was younger, and I knew very little about his past, but this information fit. In unguarded moments, I’d recognized the part of him that had spent too long without a home, that wanted to belong and be valued. It resonated with me, and had since I first met him.

Well, okay, not when I first met him. The first few times we interacted I’d thought he was a major jerk.

But after that.

The story made me want to hug him, even though the pain he’d revealed was decades old and likely well scabbed over. I hadn’t grown up in foster care, hadn’t bounced around houses, but I’d felt unwanted. I’d felt alienated from my family because of my wyrd ability. Because my father had shipped me off for most of my childhood. Had made a point of disassociating himself from me. So while I couldn’t understand exactly what Falin had gone through, I could commiserate on some level.