Page 627 of Flirting with Darkness

That time, he looked for real.

Immediately, he felt his throat clench.

Desert surrounded him on all sides, but in front of him, the desert was broken by a snaking river, wide and blue, nearly as wide as the English Channel. He gazed over those fast-moving waters, noting their clarity, noting the peace of the giant palm trees lining the banks on either side. He saw boats there, and structures, many of them tall and stately, many of them made of the same stone on which he crouched.

His heart hurt more as he looked up.

Other people were climbing down to him now.

Some of them held tools, but he saw no weapons.

Their clothing made him stare. The men were all bare-chested, but some wore elaborate necklaces and wigs upon their heads. All of them wore loincloth-type lower garments, almost like kilts. Ghost saw painting on some of their faces, especially those who struck him as higher status, at least not simply laborers or peasants.

Ghost made no attempt to try and escape.

He watched as they came up to him, and a strange calm fell over him.

Looking up at the gleaming, white, pristine-looking pyramid overhead, he realized he knew exactly where he was. And while he didn’t know the precise “when” of it, he had some idea of that too, at least within a thousand or so years.

They had magick here.

These people had magicks. He was sure of it.

His heart hurt just from thinking about the rest.

He knew just how distant it was from where he’d just come.

He knew just how distant he was from her.

Something else hit him, as he watched the men in linen loincloths approach.

He didn’t know her name.

Her first name, yes, but not her family name. He didn’t even know what year he had shared with her. He didn’t know the family name of her doctor friend, Rachel.

He knew she was in London.

He knew her name was Natalie, and that her friends, but not her husband, called her “Nat.”

That was not… a lot.

Really, it was almost nothing.

How in God’s deepest mysteries would he ever find her again?

At the same time, he knew something else, this time without question.

The mage clock jumped through time.

With enough magick infused in the mechanism, it allowed its owner to jump through time, and presumably through space.

Which meant that “other Ghost,” who lived in that time, who married his wife, that Ghost must have been Lazarus himself.

It meant hewouldmake it back to her, somehow.

Hewouldfind her again.

Which meant he would find some way out of this place.

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