Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(56)
Even stranger, the thought of it—of throwing caution to the winds that way, embracing the knowledge of my own power—brought a flood of sweet thrill, like molten sugar coursing through my blood. I wanted to do this; I wanted to flex a little, both for Morty and for myself. And the more I considered it, the more confident I felt. Bold, both in a way I’d never experienced and in a way that reminded me of how I used to be back in the day, before Sydney had dismantled me so thoroughly.
When I’d known what it was to feel in control, at the top of my game.
“If you’re down for it,” I decided, taking a step toward him, “then so am I. All you need to do is hold on to me, tight. And do not let go, not for anything. It’s going to make you dizzy as shit, and queasy, too. Like you’re falling in place, being pulled in too many directions at once.”
“I’m the one who does aerial silks, remember?” he said, with a wry arch of an eyebrow. “I promise my proprioception has been extensively fucked with before, and I’ve never even fallen once.” He considered this a beat longer, head canted. “Well, okay, maybe one time, but that was more Matteo’s fault than mine. And I didn’t even break any bones.”
“That’s my point: partner acts are harder by definition,” I replied. “So, like I said. Trust that I’m in charge, and that I’ll get us there. And hold on tight.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice, milady,” he said as I stepped into his arms again, fitting myself against him as closely as I could. “Wait, though, Nina . . . where are we even going?”
“I’m the one who’s in charge, remember?” I echoed into his ear, grinning into his collar. “We’re going where I’m taking us.”
“But I—”
Without waiting for him to finish the question, I flung a portal open and whirled us both inside.
* * *
All the other times I’d portaled before, I’d never thought to open my eyes.
It was such a disorienting endeavor—a part of me had been afraid each time, even while wresting my will into the monumental effort it took to portal—that I always kept my eyes tightly shut. Focused fiercely on the spell, and the need to keep myself knit tightly together even as cosmic forces acted upon me, tried to wrench me apart. Those other times had seemed to take only seconds, too, though even that could feel unbearably long.
This time was different.
For one, I could feel the rabbit hole of the portal unfolding open around us like some architectural flower, a complex schema full of self-contradicting lines and angles; as if I’d developed some extradimensional sense, a fresh perception I’d never been privy to before. As I flung us into the gateway, time itself seemed to grow slow and somehow languid, dripping like honey around our passage through space even as I burrowed through it for us.
I could hear Morty scream-laughing against me, his voice ringing in distorted slow motion, as if he were on the most awful and amazing roller-coaster ride.
That by itself was curious enough; I’d never made a sound of my own before while portaling, never thought the fabric of this space could even carry sound. It made me want to see, to look at what was around us—and so I opened my eyes. Expecting nothing but black, an infinite wall of impenetrable dark.
And there was darkness. A great unending swath of it, like a universe of black velvet expanding around the plummeting fall of our tiny selves. But there were also streaks of something like stars, dazzling and multicolored, like traveling through the bloom of a firework even as it exploded soundlessly around you. A little like the way some of my favorite shows depicted tunneling through hyperspace, traveling faster than light.
Except it was more beautiful, more breathtaking, more brilliant than even exploding stars.
And it wasn’t empty, far from it. Great luminous shapes in a jeweled array of colors moved alongside us, both near and far, breaching through the dark like unearthly sea creatures. Silhouettes that drifted alone or in small clusters, side by side. I could feel their intrigue, their surprise, their curiosity—and in some cases, their sharp and distinct disapproval—and abruptly I understood that some of the discomfort I’d previously experienced while portaling had nothing to do with distorting the rules of physics, with piercing the fabric of space and time.
Instead, I somehow knew down to my marrow, with fire-forged certainty, that this in-between space we traveled through belonged to the gods.
All of the many gods worshipped by the witches of Thistle Grove—and not only us, but everyone else who had ever prayed to or wished for or summoned something Greater Than. The deities that had been here all along, that predated humanity and would long outlive the brief and fiery contrail of our existence as it blazed across the heavens before we faded altogether out.
This in-between space was theirs, not ours—and some of them didn’t appreciate human trespassers, even if they happened to be witches. For a split second, I had the terrible thought that maybe that was what had happened to all the witches who’d portaled unsuccessfully, never to be seen again.
Possibly they’d snared the wrong kind of attention here, been erased by some fearsome regard. If there were gods, it was entirely possible some of them were more of the dread persuasion than others.
Even more confusingly, what disapproval there was seemed concentrated on Morty, not on me. As if I had a celestial hall pass, some special permission. A temporary allowance to move through here with impunity, just as they did.