Page 13 of The Zagorath
“Just step through and you will be home.”
Liv turned eagerly toward it and was ready to step through it when her excitement to see her mother and best friendagain suddenly waned. She looked back at Dahtao, her heart constricting uncomfortably.
“Will you be okay?”
His lips curled and he inclined his head. “I am eternal.”
And alone.
Liv ran a hand through her hair in frustration. She wanted—no needed—to reassure her loved ones that she was well, but she didn’t really want to leave Dahtao either. She wanted to explore more of this world, learn from the book piled in his home, practice her magic in a place that hummed with power beyond her wildest dreams. She wanted to wake up in Dahtao’s arms again and sharing many more days with him not only for herself but so that he would no longer be tormented by the forest. She was the one who silenced that for him. How much less destruction would come from his hands if she was there with him? She couldn’t halt it all, she was only human, but the idea of leaving him there alone with nothing but the forest for company did not set right with her.
“Is… is there a way I can come back?” she asked.
A look of surprise registered on his face. “You wish to come back?”
“Of course,” she retorted with a small laugh, “but I don’t think that this thing is going to cooperate much from the other side. Or how I would even find it.”
He nodded and before she could get another word out, he lifted his hands and bit hard on one of his claws. The sound of it breaking was surprisingly loud and she cringed a little as he spat it into his hand. His fingers closed tightly around it and when they opened again the claw had reshaped itself into a gold key. He held it out for her, and she took it with nervous fingers.
“You do not find the portal. It finds you,” he rumbled. “With this key you can summon it to you. Simply go to a tree and slide the key into its wood. All trees belong to the forest, and it willanswer your call. By this key, the portal shall arrive and open for you.”
“That’s all?” she whispered.
He inclined his head, his eyes following her movements as she removed her chain and quickly struck the key onto it so that it wouldn’t get lost.
“That is all.” He turned away, giving his back to her, his shoulder stiff with pride despite the sorrow that she could clearly discern for some reason. “Go if you must.”
She nodded even though she knew that he didn’t see it. “I will be back. I promise,” she whispered, and slipped through the portal, never seeing the way his shoulders slumped as she disappeared from the woods and returned home.
Chapter
Twelve
The trip back through the portal was as wild and dizzying as Liv remembered but when she saw the park just outside her apartment complex and the same familiar trees that had greeted her view from her window every morning, she knew that she was home. She stumbled forward and then broke into a run, racing across the park. Maybe she wasn’t too late, and she’d caught her mother and Jessie before they left! Her legs and lungs burned with exertion, but they carried her across the distance to her building’s door. The fact that she didn’t even have her apartment key didn’t stop her. She raced up the steps and ran down the halls until she was standing in front of her door.
She stared at it for a long moment, very aware of how simple and coarse it looked compared to Dahtao’s door. Just a short time ago she’d prided herself on having one of the nicer apartments in town and yet now all of its charm was muted. It was nothing but a plain, ordinary door fitted with a simple brass nob. Liv’s hand wrapped around it, and, to her relief, the door swung open to reveal its sparse, sunlit interior. Somehow, in that very short time it took for her to walk through the portal,even more things had been removed. She was surprised to find, however, that the muted brown-gray walls and wooden flooring with its cream rugs seemed almost drab though they were as clean and neat as ever.
When had she become so… beige?
Granted, Jessie’s crowd wasn’t her speed but… neither was this. And somehow she’d fallen into becoming her mother without even realizing it.
She turned slowly as she stared at her colorless apartment. The pictures still hung on the walls but not one of them were sentimental to her. They were all prints her mother had picked out as being tasteful and elegant—ideal for a grown woman. She grimaced. This was not her, this was what her mother cultivated her into being while she dutifully stood at her mother’s side through all of the various social functions of their family coven. There was none of the Baroque elegance and over-dramatization that she loved, nor the darker themes that accompanied the art of the period. There wasn’t a hint of the dark cottage cord fad she’d gone through before her mother insisted that she grow up.
Her fingers itched for her cello, suddenly wanting to dig out something appropriately moody to express the whirlwind of emotion and horror and desire, passion and companionship that she’d experienced in such a compact amount of time. She was certain that Dahtao would love it. Perhaps it wasn’t packed away yet. She turned to head for her room when a sharp gasp sounded just behind her.
“Olivia?”
Liv spun toward the sound of her mother’s voice, her heart in her throat. “Mom?”
Her mother stood there, her hands pressed to her lips as Jessie came out of the room, a look of shock, followed immediately by relief, filling her face.
“Oh my gods, Liv,” she whispered. “You’re fucking alive. Everyone’s going to freak.”
Her mother shook her head and swatted the air in Jessie’s direction, her eyes bright with tears. Jessie didn’t have a chance to even make a grab for Liv because her mother suddenly rushed toward her, her arms flinging tightly around her. “Olivia, I thought you were dead! My poor baby girl, what horrors you must have been subjected to!
Live winced as her mother’s words ended on a wail, the sharp sound far too close to her ear for comfort. “Mom, really, I’m okay. No horrors, I promise.” At least not in the way her mother was obviously thinking. “But I need to talk to you about?—"
Her mother stepped back and shook her head, refuting her words stubbornly. “Don’t try that on me, missy.” Dabbing at her eyes, she reached into her handbag. “I’m going to call your father. He’s been worried sick. We’ve both been having all kinds of nightmares about what might have happened to our baby.” Her fingers shook as she quickly dialed and hit the speaker button. “Jessie told us everything and then the police showed up at our door— we were so certain we would have to go down and identify your body!”
