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CHAPTER FIVE

It wasn’t hard to convince Tennyson to stay at the house for the night, but it was on the condition that we tried out the tea and whatnot. He thought it was safer than trying it at school, which made sense.

We had a light dinner, unsure if wandering the spirit realm would purge our physical bodies or something, which had the added benefit of not letting anyone know we were there. It was much easier to steal a ham sandwich from the kitchen than order up a four-course meal, if you wanted to stay low profile.

“Nervous?” Tennyson asked me, as we waited for the tea to steep.

“Of course not,” I said, even though I knew he’d know I was lying. I was petrified. Of turning into a spirit, of drinking weirdo psychedelic tea, of everything. “You?”

He shrugged. “If she’s managed to poison this tea somehow, we have lycanthropic constitutions on our side.” He lifted the lid of the teapot and sniffed at it, screwing up his nose in a way that I knew he didn’t mean to be half as cute as it was. “It smells too disgusting to be poison.”

It was so nice to just have that moment, just the two of us together without anyone or anything else encroaching on it. I mean, sure, we were about to drink magic tea that would send our spirits to the astral plane or something, but we were doing it together .

The timer went off to tell us the tea had finished steeping. We sat on the floor facing each other and I adjusted my headphones while Tennyson poured the tea.

“Ready?” I asked him, as he slid my cup toward me.

He took off his headphones and double-checked them, then put them back on and gave me the thumbs up. I pressed play on the app we’d found, and my ears were flooded with a dull sort of hum. Tennyson lifted his cup, so I mirrored him and we both sipped the tea at the same time. I coughed and almost dropped the cup. It was disgusting . Like, if someone had distilled the sweat from the socks of the entire polo team, it would taste better than this tea. Still, we’d made it this far, so I took another sip. Maybe my taste buds had given up and died, because it didn’t seem so bad on the second taste.

By the end of the cup, I was definitely already feeling it.

The distance between me and Tennyson seemed too far, like a hundred miles, so I started to crawl toward him. His face suddenly came into focus and he was grinning goofily at me. I slumped onto my side and he did the same, but up the other way, so we were curled into each other, staring into our upside-down faces. The headphones poked the top of my ear uncomfortably but I didn’t care enough to move.

“Ready?” I asked him again.

He nodded, then reached out and took my hand.

The change happened immediately. One second, we were on Tennyson’s floor, the next we were standing on a pathway on the side of a hill. On one side was a sheer drop, and the other was a smooth rock face. There were no spirit guides or whatever, but it was pretty obvious that we had to go up.

Up, up, and up, we seemed to be walking forever. I could still hear that humming sound, though we weren’t wearing headphones anymore. Even though the landscape didn’t change, somehow, I knew we were making progress. It was as if I could feel myself rising, not physically but within myself. I knew that Tennyson felt it too. In this place, we didn’t need to speak silently, there was just a knowing. There were no barriers between us at all in this place.

Finally, or perhaps quickly, we came to the end of the pathway. And just as Mrs Spencer had said, there was the temple that we’d seen in our dreams.

Tennyson squeezed my hand, and we walked forward, toward it.

We approached the threshold but although we didn’t cross it, we were suddenly right in the heart of the temple, in the room we had been in before, with the pictures on the walls of the girl and her wolf. It all seemed so familiar, as if we had never really left it.

And in that place, it didn’t seem as if Tennyson and I were two separate people, but instead, different parts of the same whole. Any distance between us didn’t matter, because we occupied the same space. It wasn’t the bond, or anything external, it was just how it was, how it had always been. Rather than being connected because of the bond, the bond existed because we were connected.

His attention strayed to something in the center of the temple, and because his did, so did mine. A pillar, with various glyphs inscribed on it. One of the glyphs seemed to glow, to flicker on and off with a strange light from within. I knew without any doubt that this glyph held everything I needed to ascend to my next form, and that any fear I had about this ascension was unnecessary.

As one, Tennyson and I reached out and touched the glyph.

It happened immediately, but not in a way that was shocking or jarring. It was more like waking up from a refreshing sleep. I just suddenly knew , was aware of myself in a way that I only had been in sleep. Like someone had pulled back the curtain of a giant window, and everything was flooded in light.

Mrs Spencer had been right. I did know what I had to do. It was so simple. I didn’t need to lose my physical form, no more than you lost it when you were dreaming. Maybe it was more complicated than falling asleep, but no more difficult.

“I knew you could do it,” said a voice from behind us.

We turned, still touching the pillar, and found Mrs Spencer standing behind us, smiling proudly. She seemed completely solid, though at the same time, I knew she was still in the cell at the manor. Just as we were both at the manor but also truly here.

“It really is you,” she continued. “You will be the one.”

I wasn’t sure that was necessarily true, but it also didn’t seem important, not when I was standing in that place. Whether I would ascend further or not, things would happen as they should. It may be me or it may not, but either way, my journey would happen as it was supposed to. I just had to trust.

“It is time,” she said, and stepped forward. She also touched a glyph on the pillar, but not the same one that Tennyson and I were touching.

The temple faded around us, and merged into a forest. The pillar became a tree, and under my hand I could feel the cool stone become rough bark. The spiced scent of the temple turned woodsy.

“It is time,” said another voice.

I should have been surprised, I suppose, to find Vucari there, but it made sense somehow.

“But we don’t have the sword,” I said. I didn’t even know where the sword was, or how we’d get it.

Tennyson looked into my eyes and smiled. “It is time,” he whispered.

I nodded. It was time. The sword wasn’t essential, we could do the ritual without it. All I needed was here.

I turned to face the tree trunk. It was my tree, my magical tree that I’d grown with Tennyson, when our bond had become true. And that seemed perfect, far better than having the sword for the ritual.

Tennyson stood at my right and Mrs Spencer at my left, with Vucari opposite me on the other side of the trunk. We were at the four points of the compass. I knew it somehow, even though I had no sense of where we were. It was as if we had slotted into a place that had been designed for us.

It happened the moment all four of us touched the tree. It didn’t fade away like the temple had, but the atmosphere around us changed. No, not changed. It vanished. In that moment, there was nothing but the tree. Not even me, or Tennyson, or any of us, only the tree. We were all part of it, and it was part of everything. And for a brief moment, I understood everything. Every question about the universe, or existence, or anything, the answers seemed so simple.

But as soon as I became aware of it, it slipped away, and I once again came to be. The world formed around me again, and I stood with my hand on the tree trunk. The world around me was different. It looked almost the same, but the air wasn’t quite right, as if everything was covered in a blue-toned filter.

This was it. Somehow, without even really trying, I’d made it to that other world.

And I was completely alone.