The constipated expression on Silas’s face would’ve made Darien laugh, if they hadn’t been in a tough spot.
Silas shook his head. “Not sure how that’s different, exactly, but nothing’s happening.”
“We just need to wake up, right? Get back to reality.” Darien glanced around. “What wakes someone up from a dream?”
“Dying?”
“Let’s save that for a last resort,” Darien said as dryly as he could, enjoying the snort he got from Silas.
“I agree.”
“How about orgasms? When I have those dreams, I wake up right on the edge.”
Color streaked Silas’s cheeks. “Are you suggesting we, um, get off? Here? In Coldwell’s house?”
“In your head-version of Coldwell’s house.”
“I never told him I was gay, you know.” There was more sadness in Silas’s eyes than in his calm voice. “He was decidedly old-fashioned. It would not have gone over well.”
“I’m sorry.” When Silas raised an eyebrow, Darien said, “That you couldn’t be honest with someone who mattered that much to you.”
“You haven’t told your father either.”
“No.” Darien laid his hands on either side of Silas’s face and drew him down for a kiss. “Sleeping Beauty. Wake up.”
“You’re the beauty, not me,” Silas murmured against his lips. “Are you seriously suggesting…”
Darien thought about their bodies lying on the floor, under the scrutiny of sorcerers and familiars. And, if they went much further, suddenly sporting matching hard-ons. “Maybe as the second to last resort.” But he still kept Silas cradled between his hands for a long, long kiss, letting the fear he’d felt at watching Silas’s empty husk turn to relief at Silas’s mouth warm and welcoming under his. My Silas.
Eventually, Silas gently pulled free. “Pinch yourself?” He gave his own arm a hard pinch, then slapped himself on the cheek. “Ouch. Nope.”
Darien pinched Silas’s arm too, startling him enough that he jumped, glared, and then his shoulders slumped.
“I guess not that way either. We’re in my own damned head. I should be able to control what happens here.” Silas made another gesture, empty of power.
“I think we should just pick a direction. I walked through the mists to get here. Do you have any hunches?” Darien pivoted in a circle. The room looked thinner, less real, but the rest of the darkness was a thick, uniform, velvet black.
“I don’t—” Silas suddenly yelped as if in pain and vanished.
“Shit!” Darien lunged, grabbing for where Silas had stood. He stumbled, then a sharp pain lanced through his arm. “Ow!” Falling, his arm throbbing, he flung his hands wide, reaching out for a floor that didn’t come up to meet him. Instead, he dropped into cottony dark and ruby red and gold flashes behind closed eyes—
He blinked his sticky lids open and choked a shout as Pip’s wet, black nose almost took out one eyeball. “Pip!”
“You’re awake!” Pip slathered his face with licks, before backing off enough to let Darien move. “You’re back!”
Warm fingers squeezed Darien’s hand, and he turned to find Silas pushing up on one elbow at his side. To hell with sitting up. Darien rolled sideways, landing on top of Silas with a thud that drove the breath out of both of them. Silas wrapped both arms around him, and Darien kissed him and to hell with who was watching. “Hey there.” Another kiss was as vital as water in the desert.
“Touching as this reunion is,” Grim said, “do you perhaps have news for us? Did it work?”
Silas squirmed out from under Darien and got creakily to his feet. “Ah, ow. Yes, I hope I have an answer. Why does my hand hurt?” He squinted at his left palm.
“Grim bit you!” Pip danced from foot to foot in front of Darien. “Grim bit you and I bit Darien. We couldn’t think what else to do. You were moving and mumbling but you wouldn’t wake up. Not properly. Grim said it was a calculating risk.”
“Calculated, puppy.” Grim stretched front legs and then back. “And it worked.”
Pip nosed at Darien’s arm. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? Grim said to bite hard, but you had your coat on, so I wasn’t sure how hard was hard.”
“I’m fine.” Darien managed not to rub the sore place on his forearm, instead scooping Pip up for a hug. “And I don’t care. You did it.”
Pip wriggled in his arms. “Jasper said the synchronicity of Mrs. Vaughn’s cookies might be wearing off, and we don’t have any more cookies.”
“I thought it might be important,” Jasper put in. “Since we used a cookie in the homing equation.”
“Yes. Quite.” Silas ran a hand over his hair, then reached down and hauled Darien to his feet. “And we should go now, while I remember most vividly how they used the gate’s power. Are we all ready?”
“I was readier before sitting for five hours on a hard floor,” Magda grumbled, but she hefted her bag over her shoulder. “Lead on, Silas.”
They reassembled in front of the gate rune. Conservator Kell said, “May you prevail,” and raised the red barrier between them and a much-reduced group of spectators.
At least hours of lying on the floor thinned out the gawkers. Darien settled his backpack in place over his shoulders. It was much lighter than it had been, a reminder that if they couldn’t get home, their food supply was limited to another few days. Come on, Silas. He set a hand against Silas’s back and mustered the tired remnants of his power, feeding them into Silas. Have it all. If they didn’t get home, he wouldn’t need it anyway.
Silas flashed him a thin smile, turned, and raised his hands, He sketched new runes, green shapes that floated to the archway and merged with the structure there. “It’s a different energy,” Silas muttered. “A different path.” The mist inside the arched runes formed again. At first, Darien thought it looked the same as before, but then the center of the space darkened past the murky gray of the Veil. The color grew denser, a pitch black like a night without stars, and spread slowly outward. Whatever Silas was doing began pulling power from Darien, and he let his magic go, gathering more to follow it. Jasper took his free hand. “You can have whatever you need of me.”
Darien eyed Jasper’s graying hair and said, “Magda?”
She set her hand on their clasped ones. “Yeah. Fine.” Her power came stronger and less shredded than Jasper’s, and Darien held the edge of it in his grasp, ready to offer to Silas.
But Silas paused his working while Darien still had a few reserves. “We’re ready. Think of home, everyone. Picture it. A sturdy house with a fire in the fireplace and bread in the oven. Fields and trees and birds singing. Whatever is Earth and home for you. And cookies. Chocolate chip. Crunchy outside, chewy inside.”
Darien pictured the rambling mansion. If we make it back, I’ll never insult it again— Nah, who am I kidding. But he wanted to be there, deeply, viscerally, wanted to be in that outdated kitchen with the kettle coming to a boil and Grim wolfing down tuna while Pip babbled about some new adventure. Earth. Our home.