one measured step after another, toward her mat. The side of her shoe grazed the green crystal on the floor, knocking it against the copper medallion with a tinny clatter that startled her. After one more step, she sat cross-legged across from Ping, almost hypnotized by his glowing eyes and repulsed by the thought of what might lurk beneath his skin.
She had to do something; she was losing him to the dragon. Haikus from the future or not, she could not sit here, pretending to have a conversation with Ping, knowing full well that he was slipping away with every moment. Ignoring the dragon’s folly was no longer an option, as far as she was concerned. She just hoped she wasn’t addressing it with a folly of her own.
Leaning forward, she scooped up the green demontoid in her left hand and picked up the Chronicle with her right. She held both palms up with the backs of her hands resting on her knees. She took a deep breath, and, for the first time since she had sat down, her gaze left Ping’s eyes, as she focused on the green gem in her left hand.
Her fingers fluttered, and the crystal floated above her palm, rotating and casting an arcing train of green smears, smudges of light that crawled across the concrete floor and slid across Ping’s torso, one after the other. As the crystal rose higher and spun faster, the lights whipped across his face and into Mara’s eyes. Once the crystal rose above their heads, the light spun faintly along the distant walls, encircling them more in motion than brilliance.
Squinting, Mara peered more deeply into the spinning crystal, willing it to open up like it did that night on the Oregon City Bridge. Spinning faster, it grew brighter until it exploded in a sunburst of emerald glass. Panes of green light sliced into the air, spanning the warehouse, sheering the space around Mara and Ping into sharp reflective angles, as if the crystal’s facets had expanded and engulfed them.
Mara peered into the crystalline walls around them. The edges of each facet shimmered with ambient green light, but their glassy planes were dark. Something was different this time. Before, she had seen her reflections, her counterparts from other realms, and they had helped her separate the consciousness of Diana, the reptilian cult leader, from the body of her mother. Not this time.
Mara turned back to Ping. He had not moved. She leaned forward, peering into one of the glassy walls to his left, to see if she could detect a reflection or something. She saw nothing. As she pulled back and settled on her floor mat, a hollow sound surrounded them—a high-pitched eeeee. The facets surrounding Ping glowed greener. The walls next to Mara stayed dark.
Now louder: eeeeee.
The light spilling over Ping grew brighter. In the wall around him, the glowing became amorphous, as if something were taking shape—many somethings, in many facets, taking shape—all surrounding Ping’s stilled silhouette and glowing red eyes. It looked like a gallery of photographs, or holographs, coming into focus.
And the sound grew clearer. It was a voice, muffled and distant; it now sounded more like reeeeeee.
Mara stared at the morphing lights and cocked her head to listen to the voice. No, it was voices, a chorus of them, coming from in front of her, from the facets surrounding Ping. The lights were getting sharper, and they coalesced.
Mara could see it was a person, a child, a girl.
The chorus of voices rang out around her. “Mar-ree!”
CHAPTER 51
Images of Hannah swam into view, as the green light within the faceted walls coalesced. Mara’s breath caught in her throat. Dozens of little girls, all Hannah, stepped from the glassy confines of the crystalline walls and stood next to Ping, as he sat on the floor facing Mara. Her heart pounded as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. What is going on?
Mara’s head turned from one side of Ping to the other, then looking into the faces of her niece, attempting to divine what all this meant. A flick of Ping’s eye, just a twitch, but a clear movement stopped her cold. The red shiny glint brightened. He was becoming unstuck in Time. Through gritted teeth, Mara stared at him and said, “Not yet.”
The emerald latticework of jeweled walls collapsed in a brilliant flash. Holding her head down, Mara cringed, as if falling glass might slice through her, but the light winked out, taking the