Blissfully.
Stopped.
I have foggy memories for a time. I know Mac came and sat with me, wherever I was, somewhere deep in Chester’s. Barrons even came sometimes, and once he held my hand and I remember thinking I must have been dreaming because Barrons would never hold my hand. But I still remember the feel of his hand, how strong and big it was and how it felt like he was sending some of his gargantuan strength into my body, taking some of my pain out of it.
I have distant, gray memories of Kat, Enyo, and Christian lurking beyond the veil I couldn’t see past. Or didn’t want to. Even Jack and Rainey sat in my room, keeping watch, with Mrs. Lane fretting nonstop, tucking my blankets close, feeling my forehead, sometimes just sitting on the bed, touching me somewhere.
I have clearer memories of Ryodan. Each time I awoke, if one of the others wasn’t in the room, he was. Always. Sitting. Chair by my bed. Watching. Waiting. Forcing me to live. Sometimes stroking my forehead and making all the hurt go away for a time. Other times punishing me by forcing me to live.
I’d wake up but refuse to open my eyes. He’d know anyway and threaten to hook up a feeding tube if I didn’t eat. He’d lift me up and lean us both back against the headboard and pour protein drinks down my throat until I gagged (there was no way in hell I was chewing, chewing was a commitment to getting out of bed and that was a commitment to living), and I’d roll over again and melt back into the gray place.
Of all the things that happened to me in my life there are only two that nearly crippled me: losing Shazam and losing Dancer.
I thought about that in my gray place. And eventually realized it was because I’d chosen to love them, to give them my whole heart. And losing someone that you’d willingly given all of yourself to hurts far more than the many indignities and cruelties of the world. It’s pure. It’s a gift that gives back tenfold. And once you’ve lost it, you can never have it again.
In the end, it was both of them that brought me back.
In my gray place, I dreamed that Dancer was yelling at me through a pane of glass and he was saying Shazam’s name over and over. And he told me that just because we didn’t get to hang together anymore didn’t mean I could be a complete jackass or that Shazam didn’t need me, so I needed to pull my shit together and take on the world again. Like superheroes do.
He loves you like pi, too, he said. Eternally. Wake up. Seize the day. He needs you now. There will always be someone who needs you. And you’ll always answer the call. That’s your place in the Great Slipstream, Dani. And you’ve always known it.
“It was a lovely service,” Mac said as we walked through the cemetery.
We’d had a big memorial mass at the abbey and buried Dancer and Alina next to Jo, in the private graveyard behind the fortress. I still couldn’t believe Jo was gone. It seemed like just yesterday I’d seen her at Chester’s, but thanks to some Unseelie prick, I never would again. I nodded. I still wasn’t big on talking. It seemed like too much effort.
But I was getting stronger every day. And finally gaining some weight back.
“I like the inscription on Dancer’s headstone,” Mac said when we stooped to place flowers on the stones of three side-by-side graves.
ALINA MACKENNA LANE
JOANNA MACLAUGHLIN
DANCER ELIAS GARRICK
I’d chosen it myself: NEVER THE SIDEKICK, ALWAYS THE HERO. I’LL SEE YOU IN THE SLIPSTREAM.
I swallowed hard. He knew I loved him. I’d said it before he died and showed him in a thousand ways. I didn’t see much point in getting maudlin with his epitaph. If he was hanging around somewhere, I highly doubted he was checking out his headstone and reading the inscription. He’d be hanging out in the bathroom when I was naked in the shower.
“I miss him.” I had two holes where my heart used to be. The temptation to become Jada again was intense. But I lacked the energy to pull it off. It took effort to stay ice cold all the time when you’d pretty much been slapped together at birth from passion, fire, and a teaspoon of stardust.
Mac put her arms around me and pulled me into a hug. “I know, honey,” she said. “We all do. He was one of a kind.” After a time, she said, “Are you ready to do this?”
I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure I was up to it.
While I’d grieved, Ryodan and Barrons had gone through to Planet X and stacked Silvers so I could go get Shazam and bring him home.
The problem was, Shazam was nowhere to be found. There’d been nothing on the small island but the enormous mirror. No force-field cage. No half-naked tribesmen wearing feathered headdresses. Not there and not anywhere else on the small world.
It was deserted, void of both humanoid and Shazamoid life forms.
Yes, they’d called for him. Mac told me Ryodan had stood on the island, calling for Shazam for the better part of a day.
With no response.
I suspected they still weren’t completely convinced Shazam wasn’t a figment of my imagination. And if I didn’t find him, they might never be convinced. Might think me even more of a nut job than I currently was.
It was possible, after decades, Shazam was still waiting for me, somewhere up in the air, refusing to come down for anyone but me.
But it was just as possible that he’d died or left that world long ago.
Either way, I needed to know.
Facing the truth is always better than living in limbo. And as I’d recently learned, there were a lot of people far more nosily concerned about my well-being than I’d ever realized. People willing to take time out of their own lives to make sure I was okay. I couldn’t say I was comfortable with all the fuss. But it wasn’t the worst thing either. “Yes, let’s do this, Mac.”