“You should go to sleep. You had an exhausting day.” He lightly grazes his lips across my forehead and my heart does that stupid fluttering thing again. “You’re safe with me.”
Safe.
Safe.
Safe.
He wants me safe.
“Goodnight, Fost,” I whisper as exhaustion pulls me under.
“Goodnight, beautiful girl,” he whispers so softly I wonder if I heard him correctly. “I’m so glad I finally got to meet you.”
Again, his words puzzle me.
“What do you …? I think …” I fight the sleepiness inside my body, yet it’s too powerful to overcome, and I have no choice but to succumb to it.
Chapter 11
The next day passes by in a blur, and is mostly filled with practicing using my powers while we wait to hear from Emaline about the room of darkness.
After we’re done practicing, Easton decides we need to have some fun, mostly because he’s bored.
I’m learning that he’s bored a lot and likes to let everyone know when he is.
“No thanks,” Foster immediately turns down Easton’s suggestion of having a little fun and doing something crazy.
He and I are sitting on a sofa in the living room and a fire is blazing in the fireplace, the flames created by Foster’s power. Music is playing from a stereo, a song by the band Ash East Arrow. I like the sound of their music, although their pained and tortured filled lyrics make me worry how frightening some of the other worlds are.
Easton fires a playful glare at Foster as he plops down in a chair across from us. “Why the instant rejection, brother?”
Foster drapes his arm across the back of the chair. “Because, usually when you want to have fun, we end up doing something stupid like burning up an entire field or accidentally opening a portal to the Underworld.”
My eyes widen. I don’t even know why. I’ve heard so much crazy shit lately that nothing should faze me anymore. “The Underworld actually exists?”
“I love how she skipped over the fact that we accidentally opened a portal to it.” Easton kicks his feet up onto a table and tucks his hands behind his head. “Come on; let’s do something fun. I’m bored.”
Foster ignores him, looking directly at me. “The Underworld does exist, and it’s probably one of the scariest worlds there is, at least according to most of the creatures that’ve been there. And when we accidentally opened that portal, that scariness leaked into our house in the form of four grim reapers. It was intense to say the least.”
“Grim reapers exist? And there’re more than one? What the actual shit?”
Chuckling, Foster places a finger underneath my chin and guides my mouth closed. “There is, but unless you play let’s-see-who-can-build-a-more-powerful-orb-of-power with Easton that conclusively results in a portal to the Underworld opening up in your living room, you probably won’t cross paths with one.” He lowers his hand to his lap. “They mostly stick to their world unless they’re collecting souls.”
“So, if I see one, then they’re probably there to collect my soul?” I ask with a shudder.
He shakes his head. “Our kind’s souls aren’t collected by reapers.”
“Then what happens when we die?” I ask, leaning back against the sofa, the back of my head ending up resting against his arm.
“When our kind die, our essences leave our bodies and return to a field a lot like the one you saw when you went into that portal with my family,” Easton answers, slanting forward in his chair and resting his arms on his knees.
“That doesn’t sound too bad, I guess,” I tell him, stretching out my legs in front of me.
“It really isn’t,” Foster says, combing his fingers through my hair. “Some also believe that, when we die, our essence reunites with the essence of the creature we love.”
The touch of his fingers in my hair is like a little massage and makes my eyelids feel heavy. “That doesn’t sound too bad at all.”
“You know what does sound bad, though?” Easton asks with a cock of his brow. “The sound of your guys’ lust flowing down the link. Seriously, turn that shit off.”