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Now that she’d moved on from the clown, the second voice brushed against my senses with the nearby janitor’s rhythmic sweeping. “Please, we’re down to the wire. The time has come to accept your fate—it isn’t what it seems. Listen to us before the transfer of power completes.”

“The time has come to move on,” the third voice corrected with the hard clank of the puck slamming into the goal.

Saliva bubbled over my teeth. “GET OUT OF MY LIFE!”

“That’s not the worst idea you’ve had,” one of the Voices bit back. “We are better off without you.”

Better off without you.

Better off without you.

At that point, I didn’t know who spoke it. I didn’t even know where it came from.

It honestly didn’t matter. Maybe they’d never said it outright before, but they’d been thinking it for a long, long time. All of them.

My stomach twisted painfully, but I assembled what little bit of mental strength I had and fired back, “Good, then leave.”

Violent flapping rustled the air, like a group of spooked pigeons scattering, as an invisible bind released me. It felt like a hand had been clenching my throat. My legs folded and my knees struck pavement as I took a ragged inhale.

Any bit of will, any wall of resistance, crumbled. I planted my palms and heaved.

Nothing cut the night except my weakened gasps, not even the hum of the generator. Or the sloshing of the salty waves meeting the lazy flow of the river, or the screamers on the distant rides…

I raised my head, half expecting to see a circle of implicating fingers or the flash of a phone or the reflectors of a security guard. Or, if lucky, Javi’s outstretched hand. But none of those things greeted me when I rose to my feet. Instead, I met a stillness I couldn’t explain.

The world around me mimicked a wax museum and the people, its mannequins.

I slowly spun in place.

Park employees’ mouths gaped open while taking food orders, and their bodies hovered over control panels. Their shiny, unblinking eyes reflected the carnival lights. The few attendees who hadn’t changed course for the concert were frozen in place, some caught in stride, others gripping arcade game joysticks. Rides hung mid-fall, gears stuck on the tracks, their multicolored bulbs stuck in the middle of a sequence.

I hurried back over to Javi but he too had been struck—in eyebrow-lifting, forehead-crinkling bemusement. His fingers lay in an identical pattern to Madame Myrian’s, gripping the lip of the table. My heart thundering in shock, I dared a glance over to her. Her oversized violet tunic draped her wrists, swallowing her whole except for her neck, head, and hands, but it was her unchanged indigo stare that made me catch my breath.

It bored into me, like it saw me, all the way to my soul.

Her presence felt more real in this alternate state than it had when I had spoken to her.

“Myrian?” I waved a hand in front of her face. She didn’t flinch, didn’t bat an eyelash. Then the tarot spread stole my attention.

The entire deck had been spread across the table into a position that resembled…wings.

Most cards were facedown, and the back of the deck featured an angelic figure drawn with metallic wispy lines that made it look like they were built of light and power. The faceup cards were all of one suit, golden cups: one overflowing, two intertwined, three being clinked together. Four, five, six—seven of them—centered on this symbol.

Any uncontained liquid depicted in the images seemed to ripple, like it was actual water. I bent closer and heard the faintest whoosh when something splashed the back of my head.

I craned my neck to see where it had come from, and another droplet hit my nose—trickles of condensation falling from the winding tube of the log ride above me.

Before I had time to realize what was happening, the waterway started flowing full force, piercing the absolute stillness around me. And in the blink of an eye, everything else roared back to life.

Chapter 4

The Cave Train let out its steam and with it came a declarative choo choo! signaling its arrival into the boarding bay—and my arrival to reality, too. Riders disembarked from their time-traveling voyage into the attraction’s eclectic version of the Stone Age, dusk settled amongst the stars, a hint of fresh caramel apple mixed with the stench of the estuary…

Life returned as if it had never paused.

But it did. It did pause. So why did everyone seem so nonchalant about it? I didn’t need a mirror to tell me I looked like a fish out of water. My gaping mouth did not match their beaming smiles.

“River?” I got the impression that was the third or fourth time Javi had said it.