Page 66 of The Mist of Stars
I back away. “You’re crazy.”
“Am I?” he questions with a laugh.
“Gemma.” Panic rings in Aislin’s tone. “Alex got sucked into the portal.”
“What?” I stammer, whirling around to look at her.
Henry busts up laughing. “Oh, this is great. Sure, Stephan isn’t ready to kill you guys yet, but at least half of his star is locked away in a portal where it can’t do any more nosing around.”
My hair whips around my face as I reel back toward him. “How do I get him out?” I ignore his mention of the star and the fact that he said Stephan is planning on killing us.
One crazy problem at a time.
I don’t expect him to tell me, but he easily does, probably because the solution is horrible.
“You go into the portal and hope you find your way out.” He gives a lazy shrug. “You’re a foreseer, so you’ll have an easier time since the portal is made of time and moments. But there’s also a chance you’ll never come out. Not that you’ll survive any of this, anyway. You’ll always be doomed. You just haven’t figured that out yet. Once you do realize that the world would be better off without you, you’ll be better off.” He turns back to the bathroom and sits down on the toilet, crossing his legs.
“I’m not a foreseer,” I insist, but doubt weighs in the haunting memories that have been tiptoeing through my mind lately.
He half-shrug. “If you say so.”
“Gah! Why are you being so casual about the fact that you’re trapped?” I snap, unsure whether to believe him or not.
But with everything that’s happened …
It makes some sense.
“Because I can feel the spell wearing off,” he replies with a yawn and a stretch. “Tick, tock. Tick, tock. I guess it’s time for you to decide if you want to waste your time here with me, getting more answers, or do you want to save yourlover.”
I stand there momentarily, desperately attempting to figure out a way to do both.
“Dammit,” I growl at the realization that I can’t.
“Gemma, we need to get to the academy—now,” Aislin pleads with me as she frantically begins stuffing her spell book into her bag. “We’re going to have to hotwire a car or something.”
“I said that as a joke, but I guess it’s our only choice.” I throw Henry-Nicholas the deadliest glare I can muster. “One day, Nicholas, I’m going to make you pay for this.”
He dramatically rolls his eyes. “You’ve said that at least a dozen times. It never works out for you.”
“That was the other me. This one is way more vindictive.” I coldly grin at him. “You better watch your back, sweetheart, because once you’re out of Henry’s body, I’m coming for you.”
His mouth opens, but I stride off before he can utter whatever stupid remark he was about to say.
“Ready?” I ask Aislin as I meet her by the front door.
She slides the handle of her bag onto her shoulder. “Yep. Let’s go.” She yanks open the door.
Sucking in a deep breath, I step out, hoping I can pull this off. The Gemma I am now has her doubts. All I can do is hope the other version of me is living inside me somewhere with some sort of extra knowledge on how to navigate these kinds of messes.
The carwe hotwire is an average model, which will make us less likely to be pulled over and caught. Laylen and I text for a bit. He tells me about what happened at the academy, and I inform him all about what Henry—Nicholas—told us.
Aislin speeds down the highway while we occasionally talk and decide that when we arrive at the academy, we’ll go to the professor’s office and meet Laylen there, where he’ll then lead us to the portal.
The closer we get to the academy, the more my nerves build. It doesn’t help that Aislin is driving like a madwoman. I’m not positive what she’s thinking about, but my thoughts are centered on the fact that I’m making the decision to nonchalantly waltz into a portal. In class, we spent about ten minutes discussing portals, because no one believed they existed.
“Really, they’re probably just myths,” Professor Greytin said.
The irony that one was hidden in the academy isn’t lost on me.