Instead, they stopped and regarded each other, looking right through me. The blonde spoke first in an all-too-familiar musical language—the same one Kassallandra had spoken with Nightliss. Unfortunately, I didn't speak a lick of Cyrinthian. But as the whirling shadows around the brunette cleared for a second, I caught a glimpse of the face hidden inside.
"Nightliss!" I shouted.
The dark air stilled and cleared, revealing her petite form. Her almond-shaped eyes met mine. A sad smile lingered on her face. The blonde followed suit, revealing a nearly identical face with a scary crazy smirk. Obviously, I wouldn't be doubling my pleasure with these two. They were the Doublemint twins from hell.
"Why have you brought us here?" the blonde asked in a demanding tone. "Release us!"
"Huh?" I cast a questioning look at Nightliss but she looked just as confused as I did.
The blonde stepped closer but stopped abruptly as if she'd just run into an exceptionally clean sliding glass door. She pressed her fingers against the invisible barrier. "Vadaemos? Half-damned?" She gave a toothy smile and then screamed at the top of her lungs, pounding her fists against the solid air like a spoiled child.
Nightliss jumped back a foot and I pressed back against the wall as the madwoman raged just a scant five feet from me. What in the world was going on?
The blonde abruptly stopped her frantic activity as lucidity crept back into her eyes. "What? I'm still here?" She spun in a slow circle, taking in her surroundings, and focused on me again. "This is very rude of you."
"Who are you?" I asked.
She opened her mouth as if to reply when her eyes grew wide and horrified, focusing on someone else, namely Nightliss. "The girl spoke the truth. You're here. This can't be."
Nightliss pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes in what I gathered was an angry expression. Really, though, she looked too adorable to be scary. Plus, I couldn't stop thinking about how she looked as a little black cat, especially when I scratched her under the chin.
"Weren't you just speaking to her in Cyrinthian?" I said.
The blonde touched a finger to her chin. "Yes, now that I think of it." She sighed. "This is so troublesome."
"What is?"
"Insanity. I simply must accelerate events if I am to avoid a permanent descent into madness."
"Events? What events?"
She wound a strand of her golden hair around a finger and toyed with it. "I suppose it is of no consequence if I tell you everything since you will soon be dead. Many centuries ago we…" Her eyes focused on something apparently only she could see. Her jaw went slack with fascination and she snatched at the air, each time laughing with the joy of a child.
"Hey, you!" I shouted. I stepped closer to her, expecting to collide with the same invisible barrier she had, but instead, found nothing separating us.
"No! No!" Nightliss shouted. I turned to see her pounding on her own invisible wall, eyes wide with horror. "No touch her!"
The blonde woman's hand flashed toward me. I felt a whiff of air next to my cheek as she tried to grab her invisible butterfly yet again. Jumping back, I narrowly avoided her hand yet again and made it back to the sliver of safety.
"Why no touch?" I asked Nightliss.
"It might be bad," she replied in heavily accented English.
"Sounds like you're learning our language."
She beamed at me and blushed.
"Kassallandra told me you're an angel." I glanced at the blonde woman and prayed that they weren't all as insane as her. Turning back to Nightliss, I said, "Is it true?"
Her smile faltered as she gazed at her mirror twin. She shook her head. "Not the same."
"Oh." Disappointment smacked me on the back of the head. A part of me hadn't really believed Kassallandra, though the other part had secretly hoped Nightliss was my own personal angel. Since I was technically half demon spawn, it couldn't hurt to have an angel as a friend.
"Must feed," the blonde said as sanity cleared the glaze in her eyes.
"Wait, tell me about your plans. You were about to tell me everything, remember?"
The ground trembled and the flooring cracked. I tumbled to my knees. Despite the fact the two women were apparently hovering in midair, they staggered with the effort to stay upright. The remnants of the house groaned as though every fiber of it was being strained to the max. The splintered frame to my left where Nightliss crouched snapped away and fell into a dark void. She dropped into the pitch, vanishing without a sound. The other side snapped away and the woman in white screamed as the blinding light sucked her in.
The small section I stood on rocked back and forth, threatening to topple me to one side or the other. The wall behind me splintered. A crack ran down the surface and into the remaining hardwood beneath my feet. I gripped the crevice in the wall as the floor disintegrated, falling away into a swirling gray mist where the light and the dark met, perfectly aligned beneath my flailing legs.
I got the sudden sense someone wanted me to choose a side and they were forcing the issue. "I'm not playing this game," I shouted as the rumbling noise grew louder. Gripping desperately at the broken wall, I tried to pull myself into my bedroom, which floated like an island above the gray abyss. The drywall crumbled in my hands. I clawed desperately at the hardwood. My fingers slipped. I fell.
Wind rushed against my back as I plummeted toward oblivion. I twisted and turned facedown just in time for the gray mist to swallow me.
Chapter 23
"Justin?" said a soft voice. A warm hand caressed my jawline and I touched it with my own, pressing it against my cheek.
"Elyssa," I whispered.
The hand jerked away. I forced my groggy eyes open and found Lina looking down, her generous lips pouting. "No, it is me."
I pushed myself into a sitting position, expecting a pounding headache and sore muscles. Instead, I felt pretty darned good. Lina sat on the edge of my cot. "What happened?"
"Devon saved you."
A sharp pain lodged in my chest as I asked the next question. "And Elyssa?"
She sighed and stood, brushing lint or something off her red dress. I couldn't help but noticed how short the dress was and how it showed the muscular tone of her bronzed thighs. "The girl is fine. It was very close for both of you."
I blew out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding and looked around the room. "Where is she?"
"Drinking tea with Bella."
That definitely didn't sound like something Elyssa would do. I stood up and gave an experimental stretch of the old muscles. My body seemed pleased as punch to be up and moving. Heck, I was pretty darned happy to be out of that bizarre nightmare with Nightliss and her insane wonder twin. Lina walked to the door and stood with her back to me. Her dark hair hung shiny and straight. Flowery perfume tickled my nose and made me want to sneeze.
"Can you—"
"Yes, yes. Follow me." She took off without waiting.
I really didn't know what to say. She obviously liked me—I didn't need incubus super powers to know that. But Elyssa was all I could think about. Her rosebud lips were the only ones I wanted to kiss. I wanted to look into her eyes and see the love I felt looking right back at me. But the sharp thudding pain in my chest told me I knew otherwise. My Elyssa wouldn't have tried to kill us both. She would have said something. She would have helped me instead of using me like a human stepladder. And if she was already up and about, my Elyssa would never have left my side.
Lina abruptly stopped and spun to me, anger flashing in her eyes. "You still did not tell me the whole story of this girl and you. I want to know everything."
"It's really complicated."
"You promised me."
I sighed and gave her a ten-minute tour of my disastrous love life. How Elyssa's father had reacted to me, and how he'd threatened to erase her memory because of me.
"This girl is no good for you, Justin." She took my hand and pressed it between hers. "Her father has bad manners and is so mean."
I felt uncomfortable holding her hand, but she was squeezing mine so hard, I didn't want to hurt her feelings by prying it loose. "He is pretty mean."
"Men. I do not understand. Why are you all loco?" She opened her mouth to say something else and instead pointed out the front door of her house and down the narrow driveway. "Go right at the end. Bella's house is, how you say, um, rosa. Pink."
I opened my mouth to thank her but she stormed away before I could force the words from my dry throat. I felt really lousy, but what else could I do? It wasn't like I'd kept Elyssa a secret and dropped the bomb at the last minute. The situation only reinforced my notion that women were freaking crazy. And I would give anything to have my crazy woman back. Maybe that made me crazy too. I shrugged.
Guess we're all crazy.
Rather than streak at top speed down the driveway, I took my time with a leisurely stroll. I ached to see the girl I loved but I also dreaded it. What in the world would I say to her? How could I convince her of our past? I also wondered if she would beat the donkey snot out of me. Every step I took felt heavier than the last while my mind raced through a thousand different versions of what to say to her. I sucked in a deep breath of the heavy humid air and sighed. A group of black monkeys leapt from tree to tree in the dense growth to my left. Did monkeys have romance issues? Or did they just fling poo at each other until everything was okay?
Bella's house stood in sharp contrast to most of the whitewashed adobe houses with its vivid pink exterior and purple accents. Surrounding buildings hid the atrocity and prevented it from making a public spectacle of itself. Bella and Elyssa sat outside on lawn chairs, a round table between them, and a large umbrella shielding them from the sun. Bella wore a simple green dress while Elyssa sported a pink soccer jersey and ill-fitting cargo shorts.
She looked absolutely beautiful.
Elyssa stood the moment she saw me. Her fists clenched restlessly at her side and her violet eyes sparkled with what seemed like uncertainty. She glanced at Bella and the other woman nodded. I braced myself as Elyssa strode forward.