Prologue
Emelye did not know that she wasn’t dreaming until the woman beneath her hands had begun to scream. By then, it was too late.
Three times the sun had risen in an orderly fashion and with approximately the same amount of time between its setting and its coming again. Three times Emelye had been amazed by the idea that the clocks she had seen only had two hands, that they all seemed to be moving the same direction, with little variation from clock to clock. For three days, Emelye had witnessed what the world would be like in Sanctuary if Time paid as much attention to the city as it did to this entire new world. And now, Emelye wished very hard that she had never seen it, had never met the white butterfly in Sanctuary, and had never listened to the promises that it made to help her find her mama and papa.
The little girl curled up in the corner of the woman’s bedroom and wrapped her arms over her head.
What’s the matter, Emelye?
Emelye squeezed her eyes as tightly shut as she could and pushed away from the psychic touch of the creature she thought had been her friend. “Go away,” she muttered at her knees and pulled at her hair. “Go away! I don’t like you anymore.”
Don’t like me? Don’t like me? Emelye, I’m your friend. Emelye, I want to help you.
“No!” the girl shouted the word and rocked against the wall. “No, I don’t believe you! You made me hurt that lady, and you haven’t done anything to help me find my mama and papa, and I don’t believe a thing you say now!”
The thing in her head buzzed angrily and beat against her mind, and Emelye pulled harder at her hair because pulling her hair hurt less than the creature battering against her insides did.
I will help! I was hungry. I cannot help if I am hungry, can I? Can I? Emelye?
It was hard work to ignore the pain the thing caused, but Emelye did. “I don’t believe you,” was all she said, rocking and pulling her hair. “You lied to me and you hurt that lady, and she was going to help and you ate her.”
Something surged from one side of her mind to the other, and Emelye whimpered as a hot pain traveled from one temple to the other. This was not the first time that her former friend had been annoyed with her, but even in the most fluttery, anxious of times, it had never hurt so much to have the creature move inside her mind. A change had happened after she had used Emelye to kill the woman in the bed. She had become stronger, more vicious, frightening.
Emelye shrieked as the creature dug into her mind and shook her. “Go away!” she wailed desperately at the thing. “Go away! You don’t belong here! I don’t want to share with you anymore!”
There were no words after that, just a wild clamoring for anything that the creature could get a grip on, and Emelye doing the best she could to keep the lying creature away.
Emelye felt it pulling at her from all angles, and wished with all her might that it was gone, anywhere but with her, in this room, with the dead woman, where it lied and used her. She felt tingly in her arms and legs, as well as in her mind, and thought for a moment that she was probably dying. Dying without ever seeing her mama or her papa again.
This was not okay. Her traitor-friend was not going to promise to help her find her parents and then kill her instead, and she was not going to be using Emelye’s body to hurt anyone else again.
The tingling became overwhelming. It burned behind her eyes and in her nose, and it took up Emelye’s whole body in a sudden rush. The room filled with her shouting at the unwanted thing in her head, and she rocked wildly.
Inside the girl’s mind, the alp struggled to maintain a hold—any hold—on anything that she could grip for more than a moment. She didn’t know why Emelye awakened in the middle of her feeding from the delicious witch that had taken them in for the night, but somehow, the alp had lost control of the body she and Emelye shared, and she was having no luck getting it back. The physical movement, the wild protests, and now this burning from somewhere in the recesses of the girl’s psyche were all making the process much more difficult than the alp was prepared for.
The initial possession had been easy. A simple promise with the intent to have the girl gradually forget. This, though...this was like grasping the horns of a bull and trying to climb up its nose: easy in theory, but somehow severely lacking in practice.
Be still, Emelye! Be still and I will explain!
But something had severed the tethers of their connection, and the alp was certain that Emelye couldn’t hear her anymore. In fact, the alp would bet the girl couldn’t hear anything anymore. Not her shouting for Emelye to listen, not the girl’s own piercing screams. Every nerve ending in the girl’s body lit up in pain, and the wildfire now spread to the girl’s mind. It burned at the alp’s psyche in the way it burned at the girl’s, and the alp realized that all of her attempts to regain control of the situation would end with her as mindless as the little girl was bound to be.
It was flee or die at this junction, and the alp had no intention of dying.
The pain was now unbearable by as the alp gathered her strength and tore herself from the girl’s psyche. All she could do was hope the backlash of whatever Emelye did wouldn’t extend as far or as fast as she could fly.
She felt the heat of magic follow her, a plume, a wave, a crest... For one terrifying second of the alp’s long-ish life, she thought she’d make it.
And then she was bodiless again, floating just outside of the physical realm, and riding the psychic waves of the girl’s defenses as far away from Emelye as she could manage.
