Page 37 of Entity

Orpheus’s hand between my thighs is still moving, still urging me on.

But my orgasm dies as terror and confusion win out, and I wrench myself from Orpheus’s grasp. I fall to my knees at the window. That now-familiar pressure bears down on me, theintensity of being crushed beneath an impossible weight, like I’m miles underwater. My ears pop painfully.

“What thefuck,” I gasp, heaving for breath, not sure if I’m taking in too much oxygen or not enough. I hold up my hands, turning them front to back. They’re whole and solid. I look down at my naked body, heaving and wet with perspiration. It’s also whole and solid.

Orpheus holds out a hand.

I stare up at him. His eyes glow gold, his face unreadable. The city outside lights the planes of his face. His hair falls in pristine waves over one shoulder. He shows no sign of fear, confusion, or exertion.

“What the fuck just happened?” My voice is weaker the second time, lost and afraid. I wrap my arms around myself. I’m humiliated by my nakedness, my tears, my fear.

Orpheus kneels before me, cupping my face in his hands. “It was a door to another world,” he says softly, almost wondering, almost worshiping. “You opened it, and you looked through.”

15

I tryto catch my breath, but panic overrides my body. I hiccup, choking on tears. The sight of my body like that, blurred and insubstantial, burns in my mind. The darkness spreading over the city. The heavy weight of it all, the crush against my bones. “Adoor?” I echo, incredulous. “No.No. My body was disappearing. Flickering. I was blinking out of fucking existence. What the hell do you mean, a door?”

Orpheus tucks a strand of sweat-matted hair behind my ears. “You might describe it more accurately as a bridge.”

“Awhat?”

His gaze softens. “A bridge between worlds.Ourworlds, more specifically. You reach out, sometimes, when you sleep. When your consciousness is untethered to reality. And when you do, you glow like a beacon. Did you know that? I could see you from worlds away.”

I stare up at him from where I’m sprawled naked on the floor, my breaths coming in short, sharp bursts. It takes me a moment to register his words, and another to understand them. But it doesn’t make sense. If he’s saying what I think he is, then…

But it doesn’t makesense.

I glance around until I see my discarded sweater, my skirt, and there — still folded, half fallen out of my skirt pocket — the paper from Ian’s study. I lean sideways and pluck the paper from the carpet. Time seems to slow as I unfold it. Smoothing its creases, I stare down at the page laid out on the ground before me. The sketch of that strange, jagged shape. The mirage.

A door to another world.

“This is a…” the word catches in my throat. “A wormhole? The door you’re talking about. It’s this?” I hold up the paper.

What the ever-loving fuck? That mirage was a crack in space-time, or a wormhole, or a kind of portal?

“Call it what you like,” says Orpheus, reaching for me. “Ian calls it a door.”

I’m dumbstruck. A million different thoughts blaze through my head.

Orpheus hooks his hands under my arms and lifts me effortlessly, cradling me against him. He moves us to the couch and sits, gathering me in his lap with my back to his chest, facing away from the window. Pulling a throw blanket over us, he covers my nakedness. He strokes my hair. Runs a soft hand down my arm.

“I don’t get it,” I whisper after a few minutes of quiet.

“I told you, I am not this body,” Orpheus says, voice thick with affection. “I only inhabit it. I am not from your world. I came here through a door like the one you just opened. And I know that you are gifted, because I’ve been watching you from my world.”

“How is that possible?”

He exhales slowly. “My people perceive things that others can’t. We drift close to the veils between worlds, sensing what’s beyond. But this ability isnothingcompared to yours. Your power burns as brightly as a star. Ever since I first saw you, Iknew you were one of the few who can naturally do what others spend years, lifetimes, trying to achieve: You can open doors.”

Everything feels dull. Far away. Even Orpheus’s voice fades as he speaks, turning to static as my mind rejects what he’s saying. It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. Science fiction. I don’t care what I post on my blog about multiverse theory, I know it’s notreal.

My breath catches as a memory comes to me. Ian talking over breakfast, going on and on about this building. How he built it on a geomagnetic hot spot, a convergence of ley lines, energetic paths across the world that enhance psychic power, magic, all the shit I blog about.

Everything was fine until I camehere. It’s the penthouse, these ley lines. The shadowy figures, the vertigo, even the city changing. Everything I thought were hallucinations were really shadows from another world, my ability trying to manifest.

“I really hate all of this,” I say. “Why me? And why does it hurt?”

Orpheus kisses the top of my head, wrapping his arms around me. “It hurts because it’s new to you. Like a child taking her first steps. You’re bound to fall.”

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