“Perry,” Maximus warned again, reading me. “Don’t do it. I can’t go in there and get you out if something goes wrong.”
“Maybe I can,” Ada spoke up. We both looked at her sternly.
“Don’t even think about it,” I told her. “You won’t be able to handle it.”
“And you can?” she shot back.
I ignored her, hoping that if anything did go wrong, that Maximus wouldn’t let her. That was the thing about the Veil. While it seemed you could use your mind to open doors and create portals, shimmering holes in the air, you actually needed to step in with your body. Usually, anyway. Even if I created or found a passage in the air here in Bryant Park, hundreds of New Yorkers would watch me step through and vanish into thin air. Not exactly a subtle practice.
And it’s not that Maximus and Ada would physically let me.
“Fine, fair enough.” I stretched my arms above my head and eyed the paid toilets in the corner of the park. I thrust my iced coffee into Ada’s hands and said, “Hold this for me, just going to use the washroom.”
She frowned, as if she was trying to scan my mind, but I willed myself to be as blank as possible. It seemed to work and she nodded lightly. Perhaps I could learn to control these gifts after all.
I didn’t even bother looking at Maximus though. Who knows what the lumberjack could pick up on.
I walked across the park, utterly conscious of their eyes on me and disappeared into the toilet. It wasn’t as gross as I had expected, perhaps because you did have to spend a quarter to get in. I went pee anyway and after I washed up, I tried to figure out what to do next.
Usually it was Pippa who either pulled me into the Veil or to some other limbo-like place, somewhere between reality and dreaming. Other times, it was my possessed soul that was banished there while my body stayed behind.
Truthfully, I had no idea what to do or how to do it. I remember how Pippa explained how it worked for her, how she had to concentrate and imagine the air bending before she could physically step through, but perhaps that wasn’t the same for everyone.
I stared blankly at the toilet for a few moments until it began to feel like a smelly tomb, then closed my eyes and decided to try from inside myself. At first I called for Pippa, asking for her in my head over and over again, willing for her help, for her to appear. Then, when nothing happened, I moved onto Dex, asking the same. I pleaded with all my heart and soul.
Just like the many times I had tried since his disappearance, I heard and felt nothing. Sweat had formed on my skin and stuck my t-shirt to my back. The washroom was growing hotter and my head was starting to hurt.
But I wouldn’t give up.
I took in a deep breath through my mouth and tried to steady my heart, which was thumping hard from exertion and nerves and the mounting feeling of helplessness. Maybe I just had to imagine it, create it, concentrate my thoughts like I did when I was trying to project onto people.
I stared at a blank spot right in front of the door, using the sight as a means to visualize and focus. I imagined the air started to shimmer, like a mirage inside of the bathroom, but though I could see it clearly in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t actually see it happen.
I kept at it, sweat pouring down my arms, my face growing hot, trying so, so hard to make this happen. I had almost given up when it happened. As it was, I looked away from the area I was concentrating on for just a moment, enough time to see a small bug crawling up the wall, when the area around the door, just in my peripheral, started to move. I looked back at it quickly and it was still again.
Rubbing my lips together, I tried to both concentrate on the area and look away from it at the same time. I focused but let the focus blur.
And when I did just that, the air started to warp and shift. I slowly brought that into focus and now I could see it clearly. There was a hazy shimmer in the air, like I was looking at the washroom door through clear, moving water.
Cautiously, I raised my hand and put it through the air. Once it passed into the shimmer, my arm turned a de-saturated shade of grey and was instantly chilled. My skin started prickling, all the hairs standing straight up like I was being electrocuted. Every part of my body was telling me to withdraw my arm, to take it back, to stay in this world, this dimension, this universe where the living belonged.
Every instinct told me to not cross over.
But Dex may be on the other side. Answers could hang from trees, ripe for the picking.
Sometimes your instincts were wrong. Your body wants you to survive but sometimes there are more important things than just surviving.
I took in a deep breath and stepped in through the shimmer.
My body instantly froze from intense chill and my limbs grew stiff and rigid as waves of electricity coursed through my body and the pressure inside my head built to a boiling point.