Page 18

I try to catch my breath, but panic overrides my body.

I hiccup, choking on tears. The sight of my body like that, blurred and insubstantial, burns in my mind.

The darkness spreading over the city. The heavy weight of it all, the crush against my bones.

“A door ?” I echo, incredulous. “No. No . My body was disappearing. Flickering. I was blinking out of fucking existence. What the hell do you mean, a door?”

Orpheus tucks a strand of sweat-matted hair behind my ears. “You might describe it more accurately as a bridge.”

“A what ?”

His gaze softens. “A bridge between worlds. Our worlds, more specifically. You reach out, sometimes, when you sleep. When your consciousness is untethered to reality. And when you do, you glow like a beacon. Did you know that? I could see you from worlds away.”

I stare up at him from where I’m sprawled naked on the floor, my breaths coming in short, sharp bursts. It takes me a moment to register his words, and another to understand them. But it doesn’t make sense. If he’s saying what I think he is, then…

But it doesn’t make sense .

I glance around until I see my discarded sweater, my skirt, and there — still folded, half fallen out of my skirt pocket — the paper from Ian’s study.

I lean sideways and pluck the paper from the carpet.

Time seems to slow as I unfold it. Smoothing its creases, I stare down at the page laid out on the ground before me.

The sketch of that strange, jagged shape. The mirage.

A door to another world .

“This is a…” the word catches in my throat. “A wormhole? The door you’re talking about. It’s this?” I hold up the paper.

What the ever-loving fuck? That mirage was a crack in space-time, or a wormhole, or a kind of portal?

“Call it what you like,” says Orpheus, reaching for me. “Ian calls it a door.”

I’m dumbstruck. A million different thoughts blaze through my head.

Orpheus hooks his hands under my arms and lifts me effortlessly, cradling me against him.

He moves us to the couch and sits, gathering me in his lap with my back to his chest, facing away from the window.

Pulling a throw blanket over us, he covers my nakedness.

He strokes my hair. Runs a soft hand down my arm.

“I don’t get it,” I whisper after a few minutes of quiet.

“I told you, I am not this body,” Orpheus says, voice thick with affection. “I only inhabit it. I am not from your world. I came here through a door like the one you just opened. And I know that you are gifted, because I’ve been watching you from my world.”

“How is that possible?”

He exhales slowly. “My people perceive things that others can’t.

We drift close to the veils between worlds, sensing what’s beyond.

But this ability is nothing compared to yours.

Your power burns as brightly as a star. Ever since I first saw you, I knew you were one of the few who can naturally do what others spend years, lifetimes, trying to achieve: You can open doors. ”

Everything feels dull. Far away. Even Orpheus’s voice fades as he speaks, turning to static as my mind rejects what he’s saying. It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. Science fiction. I don’t care what I post on my blog about multiverse theory, I know it’s not real .

My breath catches as a memory comes to me. Ian talking over breakfast, going on and on about this building. How he built it on a geomagnetic hot spot, a convergence of ley lines, energetic paths across the world that enhance psychic power, magic, all the shit I blog about.

Everything was fine until I came here . It’s the penthouse, these ley lines. The shadowy figures, the vertigo, even the city changing. Everything I thought were hallucinations were really shadows from another world, my ability trying to manifest.

“I really hate all of this,” I say. “Why me? And why does it hurt?”

Orpheus kisses the top of my head, wrapping his arms around me. “It hurts because it’s new to you. Like a child taking her first steps. You’re bound to fall.”

I chew the inside of my mouth. There are still so many questions buzzing in my head, but at least my fear is dissipating.

“But that paper I found in the study,” I object.

“That drawing of a wormhole and my name. Ian knew somehow. He knew about my gift. How?” I spin on Orpheus, suddenly realizing, pulling away.

A piece of the puzzle falls into place. “You’re the mind that controls the machine.

Ian made the machine. Ian brought you here. ”

“Yes.” Orpheus watches me with an openness that unsettles me. There’s nothing wary in his gaze, no hidden truth.

“So you told him about me; you got him to hire me for some reason?” A pang of realization. “Jesus, is the book even real?”

“I did not tell Ian about your gift,” Orpheus says, reaching for me.

I edge further away on the couch. My heart twists in grief, betrayal. “I don’t think I believe you.”

“You have to trust me.”

“I don’t trust anyone in this penthouse. Not you, not Ian.”

I have no idea what time it is; darkness stretches endlessly over the city. Rain pounds on the window. I wonder if the rain will ever let up. Or if it will keep coming, drumming on the ceiling, the streets, the Hollywood Hills, until everything flows into the ocean, washed clean.

Dread coils in my stomach as I remember the alien spires of an unknown city. I turn to the window, holding my breath, expecting the worst. But there are the familiar mega-scrapers. The cellphone ads. The Los Angeles skyline. Home.

I turn back to meet Orpheus’s gaze. His eyes are still pools of honey, unreadable.

“And Eros?” Orpheus murmurs. “Do you trust him?”

A swoop of nausea in my gut. “He’s dead. Destroyed. I found him in the vault, violently torn apart.”

Orpheus’s expression doesn’t change. “I know you were fond of Eros. Ian is known to have a temper. He was never satisfied with that model.”

I shake my head, biting the inside of my cheek.

My eyes burn. The traitorous choke of tears threatens at the base of my throat.

I don’t want to cry; I don’t want to be vulnerable.

Not now, when all that’s between me and Orpheus is a thin blanket and a few feet of space.

Not now, when my world is falling apart.

“You needn’t mourn him,” Orpheus says, reaching for my hand and taking it in his. His thumb swipes delicate circles over my skin. “He and I are not the same. He was a program. He was engineered.”

I remember the way Eros’s face sometimes changed, the way he seemed like he wanted to say something but couldn’t.

His warning still rings in my ears. But I don’t have the energy to argue with Orpheus.

I don’t have the energy for anything. He’s probably right; Eros was, and is, nothing but a robot.

Everything that seemed human about him was designed that way.

And everything else was my own mind playing tricks on me.

“Come here,” Orpheus murmurs, grasping my hand and pulling me toward him, my back against his chest, into his embrace. I don’t resist. I let him envelop me. Because even now, he feels familiar. He feels like comfort. He feels like home. He wraps me in his arms, and I let out a long, shaking breath.

“This should have been an easy job,” I breathe. “An interview, a book, a career. But just like everything else I touch, it’s fucking falling apart. Ruined.”

He rests his chin on the top of my head, and I can’t help but melt against him. “Kit,” he says, “you are pure. An innocent soul, luminous and sweet. There is nothing you could ruin that is not already rotten.”

I feel myself pulled into him, unable to resist. But I’m afraid that if I kiss him, I’ll never stop. I’ll let him kiss me until I stop caring about the world around me, until I’m starved, until I fade away into nothing.

“I need to talk to Ian,” I say, restless, needing to be distracted.

Orpheus’s hands rove under the blanket and over my still-naked body.

My heart staccatos, my skin too sensitive. I feel like I’m in a liminal space, suspended between reality and dream. I gasp as Orpheus’s hand slides over my breast. And God, I hate that he feels so good, so right.

But I have so many questions.

“Why did Ian…” I start, but Orpheus’s fingers move lower to the sensitive skin below my ribs, and my brain shorts out.

He pushes my hair out of the way, kissing my neck. His other hand seeks lower. “Do you want to speak of Ian right now?”

A wave of want engulfs me. “No, but… ah, fuck . I want… I need…”

He grabs one thigh with a strong hand, pulling my legs apart. “What do you want, Kit? What do you need?”

I make a humiliating sound, a pleading gasp at the back of my throat. “Do not speak of Ian when I am inside you,” Orpheus says softly. Then he eases a finger into me, where I’m tight and wet and desperate. He moves the finger in and out, pumping slowly.

“ God, Orpheus,” I breathe. “But—”

Another finger joins the first, and my hips buck without my permission. “But what?”

My brain utterly gives up then, fluttering limply into hedonism as I ride his fingers.

Orpheus rumbles approval at the base of my ear, his lips brushing my skin. “Mine is the only name you will speak when you’re like this.”

Then he bites down on my neck, just hard enough to smart, at the same time sliding a third finger inside me.

I choke on a cry of pleasure, reaching back with one hand to grab his hair, mindless and writhing in his lap.

The growing pressure of his fingers inside me is too much; his mouth on my skin is too much.

Everywhere he touches skitters bright with sparks of desire.

Then he finally gives me what I need, pressing the heel of his hand to my aching core.

“Come for me,” he says. “Tell me I’m yours.”

It’s all too easy to obey.

You are mine. Mine. Mine.