I closed my eyes and stayed as still as possible. It would be over soon and the veil would be closed again. I had to hope so. I wasn’t sure what would happen if it didn’t close and we were left walking in and out of differing realities.
Never once had I found myself on the Earth plane. If I had, I might have tried to find a way to stay on that side of the veil. Not that it would work. Nothing I’d tried so far had worked, and Erna was of the mind that I should stay out of this issue completely.
What I didn’t tell her, never told anyone, was that in these episodes, I could hear a voice. It was the same voice that whispered to me sometimes.
Come home, Summer. Find him and come home.
The only trouble was, I didn’t have a home and I wasn’t sure who he was. At times I thought this was the longing deep inside of me to believe that I belonged somewhere.
I jumped as there was an audible pop that signaled the end of the episode. I took a deep breath and started walking toward the lake. Why was someone pretending to be Devinshea Quinn? It made little sense to me. If someone wanted to manipulate me, it made more sense to come as my mother or father. Devinshea had been my mother’s friend, but they hadn’t known each other well. He’d been kind to me when that horrible witch had betrayed my mother and attempted to take me from her. It’s hard to remember sometimes. I was newly born and yet even then I knew I was different. It was precisely why my parents had sent me away. They’d given me over to a group of faeries, the same ones my magic had destroyed.
The Destroyer. I hated the name. I never meant to hurt anyone. I’d been born of love and desire. That deep love was still in my soul, the center of my being, but something had gone wrong with the magic that created me and now I couldn’t help but leave destruction in my path.
At least I’d avoided Turi again. I had done the job I’d needed to do and had the prize in my bag. I had to count it as a win.
A chiming broke through the quiet of the forest and I felt the bag against my side vibrate. I reached in and pulled out the tablet I kept from my time on the Vampire plane. Vampires are incredibly invested in technology. They have no real magic of their own, but vamps are super competitive and found a way to make magic through their many inventions. I found the small tablet to be helpful when it came to talking to Erna and Dean. Even with my magic bound, I could use a mirror to communicate with them, but you would be surprised how little that works. First of all it can take a while to find a mirror. They’re not exactly hanging off trees or laying around in fields. I could carry one with me, but I get into a lot of fights and mirrors are pretty fragile. I’ve used them as knives more often than I could actually get them to work for communications purposes. Even if I did manage to keep a mirror on me and keep it whole, Erna or Dean would have to be hanging out around a mirror, and neither of them is all that vain.
So the tablet really worked better. Score one for the vamps. I pulled out the tablet and swiped my finger across the screen. Erna’s face popped into view.
“Are you all right?” She was standing in the small living area of our brugh, in front of the row of three rocking chairs where we often spent our evenings. Dean was behind her. In the short time he’d been with us, Dean had gone from being a bit shorter than Erna to towering over the woman.
“Hey, that was a rough one,” Dean said, staring through the screen with his crystal blue eyes. He normally wore his hair in a queue, but it fell down around his shoulders now, an icy-colored waterfall. “You make it through okay? The last time we talked you thought someone was following you.”
“We were worried they might use the convergence against you.” Erna held the tablet up, staring through as if she could see