Synergy (See #3)(15)

“Evan,” She said into her phone. “We’re fine, we just can’t get the boys to answer.” She listened for a second. “Are you sure they’re here, though? Not, you know, gone?” she listened again. “Alright, we’re going to Charlie’s. She sent a text to Draven that may make him upset, but we’re fine, OK?” She nodded once. “I promise – we’re fine. Bye.”

“A text that may make him upset? That’s an understatement,” I said, glancing at my phone again.

“Your bright idea to send it,” Madison said as she opened her sketchbook and began to add details to the images she’d made. “You know what? I bet Silas is the reason for that light this morning.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, gripping the steering wheel.

“Think about it. Escorts attract shadows to them. Obviously, we have a few guests in town. I’d bet you money that Silas has the power to help the whispers. What if he helped make them turn into light – leave, to make the Escorts weaker?”

“Since when are you Team Silas?”

“I’m not. It’s classic military procedure. Do you not watch movies? If he did that, he cut off their supplies. He was starving them out.”

“Well, if he can do that, he’s going to catch hell from me. I don’t know what you heard, but what I heard was more than I ever heard before. For him to help that many at once – he could have been helping them this whole time. With that kind of power, how could there be a shadow or whisper left?”

“Well, there’s no telling what it took for him to do that, and I don’t know what reality you live in, but in the world I live in, there’s more bad than good. Shadows outnumber us, no doubt.”

“What happened to that newfound ‘illumination love all act’ you’ve been going through?”

“Nothing. I’m serious. There are a lot of people that are sound asleep, drowning in their mundane lives. It doesn’t take much to create darkness, and I know I don’t get out much, but I don’t see people like Silas on every corner.”

“That could be a good thing.” I muttered.

“You wouldn’t say that if you were on the other side.”

“I’m on both sides. Why should one have to die for another to live?”

“There’s my Libra best friend, unable to take sides. Look, I agree with you about taking sides on this, but seriously, if we’re the only ones that know and understand that, the war will go on.”

“Not if we stop it.”

“It’s in The Realm.”

“What is?”

“The core of this evil. I swear The Realm is blocking something, or we’re not seeing the big picture. It’s a shared consciousness, which is what all those deep mythologists think we have in this world. What they think we don’t realize. Some of them even think dreams connect us to that on a subconscious level, and we both know The Realm is a lucid dream. For all we know, Bianca is a distraction from the bigger picture.”

“You’ve been reading too much,” I mumbled.

“Maybe. You should hear the things that go through my head sometimes. I know one thing: I don’t think there’s any such thing as coincidence. They’re footprints to our fate.”

“It would be nice to have nicer coincidences,” I said, nodding to the mile marker that said ’55.’

“Change might be good,” Madison said as she turned her attention back to her sketch.

I didn’t know if I agreed with that. The negative side of me would tell you that with all change, pain comes. The positive side of me would say that the pain is forgotten when the change comes. I knew one thing Madison was right about: The Realm was messing with our heads. I’ve caught myself wanting to move things or change things when we aren’t in that place. A few times, I could swear something did move or appear. My memories were messed up, too. Words or phrases would still cause them to spark; the only problem was that they would be memories of another life. I could almost remember every moment I spent with Draven in that past life, at least the good ones.

Draven remembers it all now. He knew who he was then, and I feared that he was forgetting our now and living in our then -- and that was a place that ended with both of our deaths.

Madison didn’t say anything the rest of the way to my house. When I parked in the garage, I had to nudge her to let her know we were home.

“That was quick,” she said as she reached for her phone, then began to answer a text.

“Is that them?” I asked.

She moved her head from side to side as she texted. “It’s my mom. She wants to have my birthday dinner tonight. She said Dad’s in town and so am I. I love how she makes all this out to be nothing,” Madison said, smirking slightly.

“Your birthday is still a few weeks away. Where was your dad?” I asked.

Her dad was a doctor, but he didn’t practice anymore; he led lectures at conferences and traveled just as much as, if not more than, my mom.

“He was in Washington. That’s probably why they were thinking of my birthday.”

“You were born there, right? By accident?”

“Yep. They were at a conference or something. My mom went into labor like a month early. So did some other lady. My dad delivered that baby, and the other doctor delivered me.”