Page 626 of Flirting with Darkness

Ghost was okay with that, too.

Maybe death wasn’t the more interesting form of revenge after all.

Thinking about that, Ghost laughed again.

Tumbling through space and time, he laughed, unable to help it.

22

THE PATH

He knelt down, panting, on a large, carved slab of stunningly white stone.

Ghost still gripped the sword.

His other hand still gripped the mage clock.

He held both things now against the white rock as he panted. He stared down at his hands, at the sparkling stone, which appeared to have been carved out of a quarry by hand. However it had been removed from the earth or a mountain, the piece was big.

When Ghost looked over one edge of the nearly smooth piece of stone, he realized the block stood nearly the same height as himself.

They were building something.

That, or they alreadyhadbuilt something.

The piece where he crouched was a part of it.

Shouts rose on either side of him.

Ghost heard voices overhead, calls back and forth below.

He had definitely been noticed.

Someone, or several someones…or many someones… had seen him materialize out of nowhere onto the large piece of dazzlingly white stone.

Ghost felt sick, tired, dizzy. It struck him that the time leaps, or “jumps,” as Natalie had referred to them, drained him in some way. That, or his father’s magick drained him, in addition to hurting every part of him, even his skin.

But the magick was gone.

He could feel its absence.

He could also recover now.

He had separated the clock from his father.

More importantly perhaps, he had also separated his father’s magick from the clock.

Then something else hit him.

He might be trapped here, he realized.

Panic infused him as the thought grew more sure.

God almighty, he had trapped himself here. In his attempt to trap his father, he had trapped himself. Or perhaps both of them, but definitely himself, too. He had no idea how to conduct the magicks his father used to awaken the clock.

He was no magician.

He raised his head at the thought, looking around at where he knelt.

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