"Okay. I'm gonna give it a go. Sometimes, it doesn't respond," Deidre said. She swung her legs off the bed and closed her eyes. Focusing hard on Wynn, she willed the portal to appear.
"Yes!" Toby exclaimed.
Opening her eyes, she saw the dreaded shadow world waiting for her.
"Don't be gone long," Katie reminded her.
Deidre wanted to flee and never return, but she nodded at the young woman who almost seemed normal. Deidre hurried into the shadow world. She was halfway to the portal when the low, unfamiliar voice reached her.
"A moment of your time."
She froze in the middle of the in-between place.
"Deidre, I believe?"
She turned to face the figure. Tall and lean, with eyes as black as Gabriel's, the man who stood too close for her comfort wore normal enough clothing, aside from the knives strapped to his thighs. He appeared to be any other Immortal.
"I'm Darkyn, and I work for another of the deities," he said. He neared, assessing her with a level of interest that made her uncomfortable.
"How many deities are there?"
"Several dozen."
"Is this where you live?" she asked.
"No, love," he said with a smile. "I happened to be passing through when I saw you. You came back as beautiful as you left."
"Oh, god!" she groaned. "Not another jilted lover out for revenge!"
He chuckled, a sound that somehow managed to be threatening. He paused between her and the portal beckoning her while keeping his distance from both.
"You're not, are you?" she asked at his silence.
"My relationship with you was …complicated. In any case, I went to visit you at your apartment recently to ask you something."
She waited.
"Did past-Deidre leave you anything?"
"Leave me anything?" she echoed. "I never knew she existed until a day ago, and I'm only now learning how awful of a person she was. I certainly never met her."
"She may have provided it to you in such a way that you thought it yours. A piece of jewelry. A trinket or bauble you inherited from a family member."
Deidre shook her head. "My parents died in a house fire when I was eighteen. It destroyed everything, and I was an only child from a small family. I came to Atlanta with nothing but the clothes on my back."
"No strange gifts?"
"No, nothing." She shivered at his penetrating gaze. Gabriel's made her hot from the inside out; this one left her cold. "What is it?"
"Nothing of interest to anyone but me."
"You can search my apartment, if you don't believe me."
"I believe you. I know when one lies."