Shadowland (The Immortals #3)

I’m in the back room, hunched over the book when Jude comes in, surprised to find I’m still here.

“I saw your car parked out back and wanted to make sure you’re okay.” He pauses in the doorway, eyes narrowed, taking me in, before dropping onto the chair just opposite the desk where he studies me some more.

I gaze up from the book, eyes bleary as I glance at the clock, surprised to see how late it’s gotten, surprised to see I’ve been here so long.

“I guess I got a little caught up.” I shrug. “It’s a lot to slog through.” Closing the cover and pushing it aside as I add, “And most of it useless.”

“You don’t have to pull an all-nighter, you know. You can take it home if you want.”

I think about home, and the message Sabine left for me earlier, informing me of her plans to cook dinner for Munoz, making home pretty much the last place I want to be at this point.

“No thanks.” I shake my head. “I’m done.” Realizing I mean it in every possible way.

For a book that once held such promise, all I’ve read so far are location spells, love spells, and a dubious cure for warts with inconclusive results—nothing about reversing the effects of a tainted elixir—or how to get a certain someone to divulge the only thing I really need to know.

Nothing that holds the slightest bit of promise for me.

“Can I help?” he asks, reading the defeat in my gaze.

I start to shake my head, knowing he can’t. But then I think better. Maybe he can?

“Is she here?” I stare at him, holding my breath. “Riley—is she around?”

He looks to my right, then shakes his head. “Sorry.” He shrugs. “Haven’t seen her since—”

But even though his voice fades, we both know how it ends. He hasn’t seen her since yesterday, just before Damen caught us embracing on the beach—a moment I prefer to forget.

“So how exactly do you teach someone to—you know—see spirits?”

He looks at me for a moment, rubbing his chin as his eyes study mine. “I can’t necessarily teach someone to see them.” He leans back in his seat, propping his bare foot on his knee. “Everybody’s different—with different gifts and abilities. Some are naturally clairvoyant—able to see, or clairaudient—able to hear, or clairsentient—”

“Able to sense.” I nod, already knowing where this is going and eager to get to the good stuff—the juice—the part that helps me. “So what are you then?”

“All three. Oh, and clairscent too.” He smiles, a quick easy grin that practically lights up the room and makes my stomach go all weird again. “You probably are too. All of those I mean. The trick is to get your vibration raised high enough, then I’m sure—” He looks at me, knowing he lost me at vibration and adding, “Everything is energy, you know that, right?”

The words bringing me back to that night on the beach just a few weeks before, when Damen said the very same thing, about energy, vibrations, all of it. Remembering how I felt then, so afraid of confiding what I’d done. Naïve enough to think that was the worst of my problems, that it couldn’t get any worse.

I gaze at Jude, his mouth still moving as he goes on and on, explaining energy, vibration, and the ability of the soul to live on. But all I can think about is the three of us, Damen, me, and him—wondering how we truly do fit.

“What do you think of past lives?” I ask, cutting him off. “You know, reincarnation. Do you believe in that stuff? Do you think people really have leftover karma they need to work out, again and again until they get it just right?” Holding my breath, wondering how he’ll respond, if he has any recollection of us, who we once were.

“Why not?” He shrugs. “Karma’s pretty much king. Besides, wasn’t it Eleanor Roosevelt who said she didn’t think it would be any more unusual for her to show up in another life, than the one she was in now? You think I’m gonna quash old Eleanor?” He laughs.

I sit back, studying him, wishing he knew about our tangled past. If for no other reason than to get it all out in the open, put it right there on the table, so I could report back to Damen and prove that it’s over. And figuring maybe it’s my job to get the ball rolling, I take a deep breath and say, “Have you ever heard of someone named Bastiaan de Kool?”

He looks at me, squinting.

“He was—Dutch—an artist—he painted—and—stuff—” I shake my head and look away, feeling foolish for bringing it up. I mean, what exactly am I supposed to follow that with? Well, just so you know, Bastiaan was you, several hundred years ago—and the person you painted was me!

Seeing him sit there before me, lips quirked, shoulders lifted, clearly unaware of what I’m getting at. And short of escorting him to Summerland and re-creating the gallery, neither of which I’m going to do, there’s no way to continue. I’ll just have to sit this one out. Wait until my three lonely months are up.

I shake my head, determined to put it behind me and get down to the business at hand. Looking at him and clearing my throat when I say, “So, how exactly does one raise their vibration?”

By the time we’re done, I’m no closer to talking to dead people than I was before I started. At least not the dead person I’m actually interested in. Though plenty of other disincarnates made themselves known, but I pretty much blocked them all out.

“It takes practice.” He locks the front door and leads me to my car. “I sat in a weekly spirit circle for years before my powers fully returned.”

“I thought you were born with it?” I squint.

“I was.” He nods. “But after blocking it out for so long, I had to really work to develop it again.”

I sigh, unable to see myself joining a séance group and wishing there was an easier way.

“She visits you in your dreams, you know.”

I roll my eyes, remembering that one crazy dream, and knowing no way was that her.

But he just looks at me, nodding when he says. “Of course she does. They always do. It’s the easiest way to get through.”

I look at him, leaning against my car door, key in hand as my eyes travel his face. Knowing I should go, say good night and be on my way, but for some reason I’m unable to move.

“The subconscious mind takes over at night, freeing us of all the usual restrictions we put on ourselves, all the things we block out, telling ourselves it can’t happen, that mystical things aren’t really possible, when the truth is, the universe is magical, and mysterious, and much grander than it seems, with only the thinnest veil of energy separating us from them. I know it’s confusing with the way they communicate in symbols—and to be honest, I’m not sure how much of that is us—the way we arrange information—or them, and the restrictions on just how much they’re allowed to share.”

I take a deep breath, my whole body shivering though I’m not really cold. Spooked is more like it. Spooked by his words, his presence, the way he’s making me feel. But not cold. In fact, not at all.

Wondering what Riley could’ve meant with the glass prison, the way I could see Damen, but he couldn’t see me. Trying to view it as though it’s an assignment for English, like symbolism in a book. Wondering if it means that Damen’s misguided, can’t see what’s in front of him? And if so, what does that mean?

“Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” he says, his voice the only sound in this still and quiet night.

I nod, feeling like I should know that better than anyone as Jude stands before me, going on and on about dimensions, the afterlife, and how time’s just a made-up concept that doesn’t really exist, and I can’t help but wonder what he’d do if I gave him a treat. Just grabbed his hand, closed my eyes, and took him to Summerland to show him just how deep it really goes—

He catches me, catches me looking. My gaze roaming his smooth dark skin, golden dreadlocks, the scar splicing his brow, until finally meeting those sea green eyes, so deep, so knowing, I quickly look away.

“Ever—” he groans, voice low, thick, as he reaches for me. “Ever—I—”

But I just shake my head and turn away, climbing into my car and backing out of the space. Glancing into my rearview mirror to find him still standing there, still looking after me, his longing displayed in his gaze.

Shaking my head and focusing back on the road, telling myself that particular past, the things I once felt, have nothing to do with my future.