Crux (The Aurora Lockette Series) (15 page)

While I’d been daydreaming, she’d recovered and was standing next to Sam.
“Can you teach me?”

“
If you want to learn,” he said.

“
Yes, I want to learn. That’s why I am asking.” She sat next to him. “How can we be so sure that I’m Spirit?”

“
There is a path to that certainty. Let’s go somewhere quieter.”

He grabbed her arm, pulled her out of the chair, and led her out the door. She looked vaguely uncomfortable when he touched her
, but she didn’t object, so neither did I. He seemed like an odd bird.

I followed them out the door. No damn way I was ever letting her out of my sight again. The pain of having her taken away still hit the inside of my chest.

Never again.

I almost had to run to keep up with them. He led her down
a long marbled floor hallway into another room. He definitely knew his way around the mansion.

This room was tucked into the corner down the main hallway from the sitting room that now appeared to be the nexus of our operation. This space was a study, with a giant, oak desk,
and lots of books and artifacts from around the world.

The several degrees on the wall
were all Abel’s—history, ethnomusicology and cultural anthropology. I guess if you live a hundred years, you collect a lot of knowledge.

“
That’s better,” Sam said. He closed the door behind us. “We need a quiet place to work.”

“
Okay,” Aurora said.

“
I need to stay with her,” I said.

“
Of course, you’re her handler and partner. I wouldn’t dare ask you to leave,” he stated.

I liked him a bit more, wacky as he was.

He ran his hand down the back of his head, through his long, brown hair. I studied his face, trying to understand the ethnicity that created it. I wondered if his parents were from different corners of the world, like mine.

“
Where is your handler?” I asked.

“
I don’t have one.”

“
What?” Aurora said. “All of the Gifteds have a handler. Have you not found yours yet?”

“
I don’t need one. The Shyama cannot sense me, and once I train you, they won’t be able to sense you. You may not need Gavyn as your handler anymore, but I have a feeling he will be with you nonetheless.”

What? She won’t need me anymore?
My thoughts tumbled with a mixture of relief and sadness.

I scanned her face, but she was stoic. Her pacing was the only signal that she was
stressed. “Are you the only Spirit?” she asked.

“
Yes, for many moons. Until you.”

“
Okay.” She stopped pacing. “Um, what do I do? How do I become non-corporeal? What happens to my body? Is this my true form?”

“
Please calm your mind,” Sam said. He crossed his legs underneath him, then rested his hands on his knees. His eyelids drifted close. “Join me.”

Aurora
looked at me and shrugged. I shrugged back. I helped her push a chair out of the way so we could sit on the rug next to him. She mimicked his pose, sitting cross legged, meditating like a yogi.

I sat down too, but
kept my eyes open.

We sat in silence. Other sounds
around us began to grow louder: the faint sound of cars pulling in and out of the front of the estate; footsteps echoing down the hallway; the occasional murmur of voices when people passed by the door.

Sam’s voice cut into my reverie.
“Your corporal body will slip into another dimension, a little hole in time and space. It won’t be left here, so don’t worry about it being damaged while you are gone. The corporal body that you are in is your true form; you can always go back to it. My form is different. I live in Spirit. You are both corporal and non-corporal. You simply must choose to slip your physical body away and move without it. It will be very uncomfortable and probably scary at first.”

He held up his hand. Her eyes were still closed, so she couldn’t see that it was almost see through, like a shimmering
sheet of glass. My heart was pounding so loud I was surprised they couldn’t hear it.

“
I’m going to touch your hand,” he said very softly.

“
Okay.” She slid her left open palm towards him and his hand drifted to hers. As soon as he made contact, they both disappeared.

I practically jumped out
of my clothes, screaming her name. The visceral reaction in my body from her disappearing was powerful. I had to clap my hands over my mouth to stop the noise.
This was supposed to happen
, I reminded myself.

I sank into an ornate wooden chair with a red-leather seat. I hunched over, twisting my hands in my hair. It was too soon for this, but too late at the same time. She had to learn this new thing, but it rattled me to the core to have her literally disappear like that.

I had to be strong for her. She was so bloody strong.

I pulled my hands out of my hair
and sat calmly while I waited.

The room was silent, but
there was an odd fullness to it. They were here—I could feel their presence. I strained to listen for any sound from them, but heard nothing. For a moment, I felt warmth and love surround me, and I looked up. I knew she was right in front of me. Then seconds later it passed me by.

AURORA

I heard Gavyn call my name. I hadn’t heard him yell like that since I jumped off a cliff to save a little girl, and he thought I was dead. But this time, he knew I wasn’t dead. I know my disappearing was like ripping a bandage off a fresh wound, but I couldn’t comfort him right now because something was happening to me that I didn’t quite understand.

Physical pain permeated every inch of my body. I felt
myself slip out my skin, I felt the disconnection as my heart stopped beating, and I pulled out of my body. My organs and flesh slid across my soul. My body thumped heavily beneath me, a too-skinny shell of me with vacant eyes, then it disappeared.

I frantically reached for it, panic making my movements frenzied and crazy, but Sam touched me, cautioning me with his haunted eyes to stop.

I looked down. I could still see myself, but I was wispy and weird. I looked exactly what I thought a soul would look like.

Panic rolled through me. Where was my body? Where was Gavyn? Where was I?

I couldn’t see anything around me but white smoke, like I was sitting in a dense cloud.

Sam put his unsubstantial hand on mine.
“You are in Spirit, you see?” he asked calmly. “Be still. Don’t fight it.”

I stopped moving. I took a deep breath, but there was none to take because I
had no lungs. Instead, I was still; so still I didn’t move at all.

When I was still, the panic subsided, and I felt other things: lightness, a sense of freedom, a sense of safety. The fog had diminished, only clinging to the corners and
the desk in the room.

I was still in the office. The same room where I was before. In fact, I was seated in the same exact spot. Gavyn was sitting on a chair, his face filled with tension, but he was calm.

“He can’t see me?”

“
No, or hear you,” Sam said. “Come.” He drifted from the floor, and I could barely see him.

I was unsure of what to do since I no longer had legs, but I had the shapes of legs. I pictured myself moving, and I drifted. I moved with Sam, drifting past Gavyn. He looked up, staring at the space in front of him when I passed. I think he could sense me.

We passed right through the wall, near the doorway. I could walk through furniture, walls and doors. “Can we walk through anything?”

“
Anything inanimate. Anything with its own life force, be it plant, animal or human, you cannot,” Sam said.

“
So this is how you normally are?”

“
This is where I am most comfortable.” He drifted down a carpeted hallway that seemed to wrap around the back of the house that I didn’t recognize. “I’ve never fit in with humans.”

“
What do you mean?” I wasn’t even trying to keep up with him, but nonetheless I drifted right alongside to him.

“
I’ve always heard the trees sing and the animals speak, but I’ve had harder time with people.” He paused in front of small square window. “Even now, I long to be out there.”

I thought I was getting used to this now. I was existing, but without the weight of a body. My feelings and thoughts were all there,
just not me.

“
What should we do? What do I need to do? What is the purpose of this?” I peppered him with questions.

We were drifting
upstairs now. “I don’t know if there is a purpose. It just is. I suggest you learn how to move to Spirit at will. You can also possess others, but that is jarring and tiring for both of you. I don’t recommend doing it unless it is absolutely necessary.”

“
Have you done it?”

“
Yes.” He did not elaborate, just drifted through another door. We were in a small, plain bedroom now with only a bed shoved in the corner. It looked out of place in the house.

Everything my captors told me was clicking into place with this new knowledge.
“The Shyama have lower and upper demons. The upper demons can possess, the lowers cannot. The one that captured me said I was a descendant of both bloodlines—from both Ki and Uras—so maybe we are upper demons.”

“
It is probably that simple. We are much like them. I have always suspected we were the same.”

“
Why?”

He solidified next to me, fully back in his human form.
“Because neither of us are human. We number in the thousands, but here we are on a planet filled with seven billion humans. We aren’t meant for this world.”

“
Then why are we here?” I was trying to get out of Spirit, but I didn’t know how. I must have been making some progress, because the fog was slowly coming back.

“
We are relics.” He grabbed my hands. “You’re doing well, but let me pull you all the way though.” My body appeared beneath me and I dove into it.

My heart beat again and filled my ears with the familiar steady
sound and my raspy breath came in and out. My skin felt heavy and strange, like my body weighed two-thousand pounds. “Yikes.”

“
It takes a few minutes to adjust between forms. You must ground yourself with the earth again.” He stood on bare feet.

“
How do I do that?” I stood, too. “What does that mean?”

“
You must reconnect with the earth.” He closed his eyes and relaxed his arms to his side. “Picture your feet rooted in the earth and let your energy drain into the ground.”

“
Um, okay.” I did, and I felt a little better when I opened my eyes.

“
It is better to do it outside, bare footed, standing on the actual earth until you get better at it.”

“
Let’s do that.” I propped open the window. We were on the third floor now, and the ground looked very far away. I leaned out. “Want a lift?”

He said nothing, but took my arm. We drifted slowly down to ground, and he slipped into
Spirit on the way. I went with him, easier this time. I let my body go faster, and I felt the lightness quicker. Shortly, we had drifted all the way down the ground.

“
You can fly in Spirit. Let us go there.” He pointed to a red peak in the distance.

So I
went; I soared through the air like a comet shooting through the sky. Without the weight of my body, I was just movement. I traveled so fast and no one could see me.

There
was great power here. I could be invisible, I could fly. I could go anywhere. I could fly whenever I wanted to.

The world just shrank around me.

It was also weird. This took me beyond the league of preternatural human and into the range of not human at all.

We landed on the top of the rocky peak. We
were at the very same rock formations where Asag was. Beautiful colors stretched out all around us; bright splashes of red and orange with large buildings glinting in the distance.

While I’d been gawking at the view, Sam was crouching, bare feet pressed into
the rock. He was solid again. “Use this.” He tapped the rock.

I did, pushing my form as it was into the rock. I felt vibrations coming through, running up my legs. Fog wrapped around me and my body rushed into me. It was heavy, but not
as heavy as last time.

I kicked off my flip flops, leaving my feet bare. Tiny grains of sand pushed into my arches and toes, but my body felt light, natural, and like mine.

Life was beautiful, like this. The sun heated my skin, the breeze whipped through my hair and my warm blood filled my soft flesh. I raised my arms to the sky and closed my eyes, relishing how wonderful it was to be alive.