“Excellent?” I queried.
He looked to me. “Of course. This is good.”
“How is this good, Tor?” I asked. “We don’t have magic in our world! This witch is probably a charlatan or something!”
“Uh, we so totally do have magic, girl,” Phoebe put in. “You were at Selena’s party with me when that chick put the whammie on that other chick for flirting with her boyfriend and she fell down the stairs.”
“Her ‘whammie’,” I lifted my hands and did quotation marks even around my coffee cup before dropping them and reminding my friend, “consisted of her pushing the flirting chick down the stairs.”
“She wasn’t anywhere near,” Phoebe returned.
“That was what she said but the other girl said she was totally there because she felt her hand in her back and she saw her at the top of the stairs when she was on her way down,” I fired back.
Tor (wisely) cut into this exchange stating, “There is no harm speaking to this Marlene and then to this witch.”
I looked to Tor and told him, “Okay, you’re right, honey, but what if we find out there is magic in this world. This woman is untried. What if she messes it all up? What if she sends us to, I don’t know, some other place? What if she sends you someplace and sends me someplace else? What if Circe isn’t in Korwahk but some other savage, barren place with primitive hordes? What if one of us gets sent there? I don’t want to go to a savage, barren place with primitive hordes!”
Sensing my rising panic (though it was hard to miss), his arm around my back shifted up and his fingers curled around the back of my neck as he leaned close and said gently, “There are many what ifs, my love, but this is also the only hope we have. Right now, we are powerless. But if there is any possibility this witch can control the blue mist then we must speak to her, ascertain if she can control it and, if she can, convince her to use it to send us home.”
I stared into his eyes thinking he was right at the same time thinking that sucked.
Therefore I sighed, Tor knew that meant I was giving in and he grinned, giving my neck a squeeze and pulling me to him until my cheek was resting on his shoulder.
“You guys are totally cute,” Phoebe announced, smiling brightly at us then her eyes slid to Tor. “Dude, you are, like, crazy hot in a scary macho way but, still, you know how to work the cute.”
I couldn’t help it, I was freaking out but still, what Phoebe said made me giggle.
Then her phone rang, she jerked it up, looked at it and said to us, “Brianna,” then she flipped it open, put it to her ear and wandered back toward the kitchen ordering bossily, “Talk to me.”
Then she disappeared.
Then I heard Tor mutter, “Your friend is very strange.”
Then, still freaking out but also still unable to help it, I wrapped my arm around his abs, pressed close and burst out laughing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
You Hold the Other Half of My Soul
We sat in the coffee house; Tor resting back against his chair, legs straight out, ankles crossed, sipping regular coffee, calm as you please; me with my legs crossed, foot bouncing, fingers of one hand tapping on the table while slugging back my third latte (decaf due to confirmed pregnancy – yikes!), not calm by a long shot but wired like I’d actually had a shitload of caffeine.
“Love,” Tor called and I turned my head to him, surprised to see his eyes on me. A minute ago, he was taking in the bustling environs of the coffee house and the busy slick sidewalks outside with avid interest.
“Yes?” I replied.
He leaned in as his hand came out and covered my tapping fingers, his fingers wrapping warmly around mine.
“Calm,” he said quietly.
Yeah, right. Calm.
We were waiting for Brianna and her friend to show at the same time we were waiting for Phoebe, who was hanging at my place, having volunteered to hand Noc his packed suitcase personally and see if she could pump him for information.
I wasn’t all fired up about this controlling blue mist magic business and I wasn’t because anything could go wrong. What if the world this Circe had been to wasn’t the Korwahk on Tor’s world? What if there were a bunch of worlds and Tor and/or me were sent to one of those – where there were savages and mighty kings with the strength of ten men?
Not to mention, what if Phoebe did something to alert Noc to the fact that all was not right with the Cora he knew and set him to doing something that would not bode well for Tor and me? And, I should mention, I wasn’t hip on Phoebe being involved in any of this, especially not Noc investigating the other Cora. My friend wasn’t exactly a super-sleuth. She was an administrative assistant, like me. And she couldn’t be swept away to a safe fairytale land, like me. She would be stuck behind, maybe considered an accomplice in whatever Cora was up to… or something.
But Phoebe had no qualms about wading in and actually seemed excited to be in on it all.