I’d only intended to talk to Mace, yet the moment I stepped foot outside the door something fucking snapped inside of me, and all that made me, me, was gone.
Luckily, or unluckily for me, Mace got to come with.Chapter 19Going to Target with Wink is about as much fun as going to a bar with my AA sponsor.
-Ian’s secret thoughts
Ian
I felt it the moment she was gone.
One second she was standing right outside the front door, and the next she wasn’t.
Her mind seemed to just disappear, appearing as if she never existed at all.
I’d just gotten to my feet, when, suddenly, I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing down there in the first place.
My body swayed, and it didn’t take long before I was on my knees with my head in my hands.
A scuffle from my right had me lifting my head, my eyes taking in who was in the doorway.
“Hello?” I called.
An old man appeared in the doorway to the large room I was standing in, and it took me a moment to place him.
“Eldridge?” I asked in confusion. “I thought you had today off.”
My mind, which only moments ago was clear, was now confused and cottony like something had clouded my brain. Alcohol or something.
Mr. Eldridge looked at me like I’d said something amusing.
“You’re forgetting already?” he asked.
“Forgetting what?”
“Forgetting what should never be forgotten.”
Then, just like that, he was gone as if he’d never fucking been there in the first place.
“Fuckin’ crazy old man,” I mumbled, pushing myself up to my feet.
My body started to sway, but I stiffened my spine and put one foot in front of the other, heading to the bathroom.
Except the bathroom wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
What I thought was the bathroom had morphed into a fucking kitchen, and what used to be an old storage closet I could tell was now the bathroom.
“What the fuck is going on?” I yelled, looking around the space.
I’d never once seen it before.
Was I in the right place?
When nobody answered my bellowed question, I made my way to the bathroom and immediately headed to the sink, turned it on, and then cupped my hand under the faucet to gather water.
The moment the cool water touched my face, I felt something shift. Something that I knew I’d forgotten.
The cobwebs cleared, and a soft flash of strawberry blonde hair flashed through my brain before it was gone as if it’d never been.
I looked up, staring at my eyes in the mirror, and instantly flinched.
My eyes had lines that weren’t supposed to be there.
My face had fucking hair!
I had a goddamned beard!
Then my eyes lit on the…tattoo?...on my neck.
Since when did I have a tattoo?
“Ian?” someone, a woman, called from the other room.
My hand resting on the small handprint on my neck, I whirled around and stared at my sister.
My sister…my aged sister. She must’ve been twenty years older, but I knew it was her. I would know her beautiful face and gorgeous eyes anywhere.
“Can I help you?”
I acted like I didn’t know her, but I knew she knew it was me.
“Why are you talking to me like that?” she asked. “You were the one to tell me to meet you here. For the life of me I can’t figure out why, though. I haven’t seen you since I was fifteen. Why do I know where you are?”
“What day is it?” I asked her.
She pursed her lips.
“Umm…” she hesitated. “I have no idea.”
My eyes went around the office, looking for a calendar of some sort like Old Eldridge used to hang on the wall, but I didn’t find a damn thing on the wall but a single picture.
And what I saw in that picture made my heart stop.
My sister looked at me.
“I think we’re missing something here.” She looked at the picture, shoulder rubbing my shoulder.
“That’s…” I strained to come up with a name for the woman wrapped around me in the picture, and couldn’t. “I don’t know. She’s mine, though. That much I can tell.”
“Then where is she?” my sister countered.
I shook my head, unable to come up with a plausible answer.
“I’m fucking lost, and I don’t know where to look, or what to do.”
That’s when the whole goddamned building shook, and I ran outside just in time to see the mill’s entire fucking parking lot fill with dragons.
I stared at the large, dark headed man, wondering what in the hell I’d done now.
My sister, not one to back down from a fight, grabbed hold of my hand.
It didn’t matter that I was only just now seeing her after years upon years apart.
She knew I would protect her, just as easily as I knew that if it came down to a fight, she’d be at my back the whole way.
But the man now dismounting his dragon didn’t mean us harm.