Page 87 of Samhain

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Poppy covered her face and sobbed again. This time, Ivy pulled her into her lap, soaking wet, and wrapped a towel around her shoulders. My wife hugged her and rocked her until she calmed.

“Poppy,” Ivy said. “Listen to me. This is not your fault. The king did this. His actions are his own, okay?”

“If I didn’t exist,” Poppy whispered, “he wouldn’t have come for me. I am the Great Gift, the foretold.”

“That’s not your fault either,” I added. In this realm, prophecies didn’t exist outside of fairy tales and fiction. If they did, no one believed them, certainly not enough to rage after a ten-year-old child.

Poppy either didn’t believe me or she had gotten tired of arguing because she sank against Ivy’s torso and closed her eyes, hugging her like it was the first time Poppy had ever known affection. Then her eyes snapped open, completely white, like that waitress at the coffee shop. Ivy’s eyes did the same, the pupil and iris gone. I reached out to shake Ivy, maybe to break this trance, but she grabbed my wrist and dug in her nails.

One second, we were in the bathroom. The next, we were somewhere dark, surrounded by sand. City lights twinkled in the distance, but blinding spotlights burned my retinas up close, and I had to put my hands up to block them out. We were high in the air, standing on a platform.

No, not a platform. A decaying tan statue.

“Eh!” voices shouted from the ground. They screamed in a language I didn’t understand, probably telling us to get down from here. And that was when I realized where we were. We stood on top of the Sphinx sculpture in Egypt. I’d never been there before, but even from this angle, there could be no denying what it was.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Are we in Egypt?” Ivy asked, holding Poppy tighter in her arms. “Poppy, what is this?”

The little girl tightened her grip on me, wincing her eyes against the wind, and in the next blink, we were back in the bathroom. Poppy shivered, and Ivy slumped on the side of the tub, closing her eyes as she readjusted to the present. My head fogged, and I had to put a hand out on the wall to steady myself.

“Poppy.” Ivy put the girl on the floor in front of her, setting her hands on the child’s shoulders so she could get eye-to-eye with her. “Did you take us to the Sphinx?”

She nodded. “That’s why he wants me. But I can only go places I’ve seen before.”

“You’ve been to Egypt?”

“Siobhan has,” she said. “She showed me a picture. It’s one of the only things I know about this realm.”

I met Ivy’s gaze, an expression on her face like we were both thinking the same thing. This was a problem. She couldn’t go zapping through the human world, appearing and disappearing at will. That would get her locked up or killed. And if the king ever got out, it wouldn’t take him long to find the only person on earth who could teleport.

I kneeled in front of Poppy and rubbed my hands over her upper arms, trying to warm her and soothe her. “I need you to make me a promise.”

She gave me a small nod.

“Don’t tell anyone about this gift,” I said, keeping my tone light and casual. I didn’t want to scare her. “Lex and Miri are okay, but no one else. You keep it to yourself, and don’t show it to anyone.”

Poppy pulled her lips between her teeth, looking back and forth between the two of us with wide eyes.

“Just until we know it’s safe,” I added. “Okay?”

She nodded, and I held up my pinky for her.

“This is the first thing you gotta learn about the human world. Pinky swears are the real deal. You can’t break a pinky swear.”

“Why?” Poppy said, her voice trembling. “What will happen?”

“Nothing serious,” Ivy said. “But that person might not want to do a pinky swear with you again. You’ll lose their trust. Understand?”

That seemed to resonate, and Poppy wrapped her finger around mine, giving me another nod.

“Pinky swear,” she said.

We got Poppy clean enough for bed and, when we went back to our room, Lex had returned with some clothing options from Bill’s lost and found pile. I put her in an oversized hoodie and sweatpants, determined to keep her warm through the night. Then she crawled into my lap and held on to me until she fell asleep again.

“She can teleport,” I told Lex once I was certain Poppy was truly out.

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