Page 30 of Sequel to the Easter Bunny

A wonderful bonus.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate having the Power. After all, being able to do what we did today is important… but it’s not like I get to sit up in the tower and pretend like I don’t have a mountain of problems here in the real world.”

“Their world is real too, but I understand what you mean.” I hear her hands tighten on the steering wheel. “If I can offer some advice… You don’t really know the full extent of the Power yet. If you’d had more time to explore it, I imagine Juun’s assumptions would make more sense.”

“You mean I get to do more than patch up two generations of neglect?”

“You’re not omnipotent by any means, but next time you think of something wild… just go for it. The worst thing that happens is that nothing happens.”

“It doesn’t work in the old gods’ domain.”

“I didn’t imagine it would.” She offers me a smile. “Or if it does, it’s muted to the point of seeming like it’s not there.”

I don’t like feeling powerless. I don’t want to go back to being the lowest in the hierarchy. And that’s what I am in the old gods’ realm.

The blur outside darkens and something fuzzy washes over my skin. It makes me sit up straighter. “What was that?”

“You’ve never been to the godswood?”

The forest that surrounds the Valley is enchanted… a barrier from the world beyond where people had forgotten the old gods. There weren’t many reasons to travel to them, much less through them.

“No…” I search the trees ahead. “The only time I’d planned to leave, Ester gave me a reason to stay.”

“Well, I’m glad she did.” Ari pulls the car off the road and into a strange little clearing. “If you’d gotten out, I never would have met you.”

There’s something strange in the way she says it… like she knows another thing I don’t.

A chilling thought strikes me. “Can we leave?”

It seems like a silly thing to ask, but with the old gods’ fickle ways….

“You and I? No. We can’t leave, but others could. If the gods have no plans for you, or if you’ve never been touched by one of them… leaving is possible, albeit difficult.”

I get out of the car with her, but before I close the door, I stop, looking at her over the glossy black roof. “Sometimes, it scares me when you say stuff like that… especially right before you’re going to lead me into the woods.”

She chuckles. “Remember, you have the Power. You could throw me all the way back to the tower if you wanted. The gifts the gods gave me are all gone but one… and that barely serves me at all.”

The way she says “gifts” is a sour slithering thing and with the way her mouth twists as she looks away from me—as if remembering. I’ll file that information away for now and ask what it means later with all of the other things I plan to find out once this is over.

Ari leads me down something that might be a trail, but the undergrowth is thick, dragging at my legs. It feels like we’re going the wrong direction. Like little fingers snag at my clothes, trying to pull me back, to warn me.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” I ask, shivering when a leaf falls against my shoulder.

“Yep,” She taps a tree and a puff of bioluminescence bursts beneath its bark… like a hundred lightning bolts climbing toward the sky. “The godswood likes to try to turn you around, to make you go back where you came from. But there are ways to find your way through it.”

She pauses, waiting for me to catch up and when I do, she slips her arm around my waist, leaning close so she can point at the trees ahead of us.

“Can you see the path?”

I shake my head. There’s nothing but trees and ferns.

“Let your eyes lose their focus.”

When I do, I see it. Ahead of us, trees glow in pale blues and greens, some magic seething beneath their skin.

“Oh.” I blink myself back to focus and it’s gone.

“Want to see them even better, close your eyes. But I don’t recommend keeping them closed. The rest of the forest is out of sight… but that doesn’t mean you’ll be safe from gopher holes or roots.”

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