Radiance (Riley Bloom #1)(32)

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t the A to Z version,” he said. “Just the highlights, the movie trailer version, that’s all. But more importantly, are you saying I seriously did that—swallowed her grief and moved her toward the bridge all on my own?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, seeing his face light up in a smile for the first time since I’d met him, and amazed by the way it completely transformed him. “Like I said, the only thing I offered was hope, nothing more. And they can’t fault a person for hope, can they?”

He looked at me, still smiling when he said, “Nope, they most certainly can’t.” Leading Buttercup and me out of that room and glancing over his shoulder as he added, “So, what do you think? You still up for that flying lesson?”





22


Here’s the thing—even after I’d mastered the art of being successfully airborne, neither of us had any idea what to do about a little problem named Buttercup.

Since we couldn’t speak canine, and didn’t know the first thing about how to go about reading his mind, well, let’s just say we were totally and completely flummoxed as to how to get him off the ground.

Like everything else in my world, learning to fly all came down to one thing:

Desire.

Everything ran on desire.

Nothing was exempt.

Which meant no wings were necessary.

(Though some people happened to like the way they looked so much they wore them anyway. Which is how, according to Bodhi, that whole angel-with-wings thing got started.)

But still, in the end, it all came down to just how badly you wanted something.

Just how well you could imagine yourself having it and/or doing it.

And just how much you believed you truly could have it and/or do it.

It was simple.

Easy peasy.

All you had to do was know how to manifest it.

But the question was: Could a dog actually manifest something?

Something as foreign to them as flying would be?

And almost more importantly, why would Buttercup even want to pretend he was a bird gliding from tree branch to tree branch, when he so clearly loved being a dog?

But then, when I thought about it, really thought long and hard about it, I remembered the growing number of times I’d found him in his own little self-made nirvana—surrounded by piles of his favorite brand of doggie biscuits as he napped in a solitary warm patch of sun that hadn’t been there a few moments earlier.

And at that moment I knew just what it would take to get him to take flight.

All we had to do was find a way to make Buttercup want to fly.

Otherwise, one of us was going to have to carry him all the way to London.

We were in one of the many gardens of Warmington Castle, having decided to use the one with the maze and the tangle of roses as a sort of runway. Even though I’d warned Bodhi that if I failed to launch, and ended up all snarled up in those sharp, thorny rosebushes instead, he’d never hear the end of it.

But he just laughed, that good-natured, wonderful tinkling sound of a laugh he’d definitely held firmly in check just a little while before, but after releasing the Wailing Woman, he seemed to use freely.

I guess his fear of failure, of possibly being demoted and all, is what made him so grumpy and serious. And, after he explained it to me, well, it seemed he had good reason.

That wasn’t his first go-round with the Wailing Woman.

He’d been there before.

Went with his own guide, who, by the way, he still firmly refuses to either name or describe but who he swears I’ll get to meet someday—maybe (he put major emphasis on the maybe)—if and when (again, emphasis) he feels that I’ve earned it. Though he totally failed to elaborate on just how I might go about doing that.

But anyway, the way he told it, the first time he approached her, he took one look into those horrible, bottomless eyes of hers and hotfooted right down the stairs, through the corridor, down the other stairs, and bippidy blah blah, until he found his way outside in the garden, white as a sheet, and gasping for dear life (yep, even though he was already dead).

The second time, he knew he could not possibly behave like that again, not if he ever wanted to get his “glow on” (a term he also put great emphasis on, yet even though I pressed him, he completely refused to explain it to me), and so, when she turned and met his gaze, he didn’t hold back even though he really, really wanted to.

He also didn’t scream and go running out of that room.

Instead, he just dove right in, determined to swallow her grief and prove he could do it.

But, as soon as he started, he was so overwhelmed by her unending despair, he just spit it right back out at her, watching it drip and cling until she was able to absorb it back in.

And just after that, he was marched (so to speak) right back to the Here & Now where he was urged to enroll in some advanced classes on tolerance and compassion, where he finally grew and learned enough to graduate from his level, and move on to a higher level, where he was then urged to take on the not-so-easy task of guiding a spunky, snappy, snarky, slightly rebellious (his words, not mine) twelve-year-old girl who’d recently had her life ripped right out from under her.

Then when (not to mention if!) he gets a good handle on me, well, they told him that maybe, they just might consider letting him go for round three in the match of Bodhi versus the Wailing Woman.