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“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah…” I angled my head to the side and grinned at him. “Just don’t get any funny ideas, back there.”

“Try to keep still and it won’t be a problem.”

“Okay. I’m going.”

Shutting my eyes, I let my mind wander. I thought about the breeze pushing through my hair and whooshing past my ears. I listened to the seagulls calling overhead. I drowned out the honking, and the horns, and mechanical sounds of cars rushing around underneath us. There was only the wind, and the birds, and nature.

In there, somewhere, was the barrier that separated our world from the Ether.

All I had to do was find it, send my mind into it, and hope I could find my way back in one piece.

Chapter

Twenty-Three

Drawing your essence out of your own body was no easy feat, even for an Ethera. It took months of study and practice to get something like this right, and though I’d done it a few times, it was only for short trips, and I’d never projected further than an adjacent room. This was much further away, and to find the crown I’d need to be in there much longer; but I was in the deep end, now, and I was going to have to swim…or drown trying.

“I have you,” said Lucien, his hands wrapped around my waist.

His voice helped make me feel anchored, tethered. I was going to need that. “I’ll be right back,” I said, “Unless I get lost in there.”

“I won’t let you.”

Lucien tightened his grip around me, and that feeling of sure-footedness got a little stronger. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and began to mentally search for the entrance to the Ether. It felt like trying to find the edge on a peel-off sticker, after a few moments my mind caught on a small spot that felt more like jello than the surrounding, solid world.

I had found the entrance to the Ether. Now, came the difficult part; the part that required effort, and a strong, forceful will—I wasn’t entirely confident that I ticked both those boxes. In order to cross into the Ether, I had to push past a kind of spiritual membrane; a thick layer of ephemeral stuff designed to keep things where they were supposed to be—material beings on this side, and ethereal beings on the other side.

Punching through it was difficult, my aunt Persephone’s amulet turned this crossing into child’s play, but without the amulet it was like pushing through river rapids, whilst also trying to stop the mud from sucking up your shoes. I felt stuck, caught in the membrane between worlds for hours, until finally, I opened my eyes and realized… I was floating.

As my senses reasserted themselves, I realized I wasn’t exactly floating, I only felt like I was. I was still on the rooftop, only everything was a little different.

The sky was a shade of shimmering green, the buildings around me seemed to shift, and warp, their features twisting and reshaping themselves as if I was living inside some kind of impressionist painting.

There, standing only a couple of feet from where I was now, I saw myself and Lucien. We were only shapes; dark, unmoving figures existing inside a shifting landscape.

“This is so trippy,” I said.

“What is?” I heard Lucien’s reply. It sounded like he was speaking directly into my ear.

“You can hear me?”

“You’re talking.”

“Woah…”

“Where are you?”

“Next to you. Next to us.”

I saw the dark shape that was Lucien turn its head left, then right, as if it was scanning for me. “Where?”

I waved. “Beside you.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Good. Let’s hope they can’t, either.” I walked over to the edge of the building. One of the first things I noticed as I reached it was the total and complete silence. I couldn’t hear the cars honking below because there were none. Beneath us was an expanding abyss of near total darkness that seemed to stretch on to infinity.