"He's alive. I hate it and I hate him, but it's done," she said, turning back to look at Niamh.
• • •
Lyse and Niamh watched from their perch behind the bushes as the Lady of the Lake stood vigil over the dead man until the morning light crested the hill and split open the day. Luckily, the dead man started to stir just as the first jogger of the morning hit the playground and began her lonely circuit of the park. She passed him, already breathing hard from her exertions, as he sat up and groaned, grabbing his head in pain.
To the jogger, he was just another homeless drunk sleeping off a bender. Only Lyse knew who and what he was. She watched as the dead man climbed to his feet, his dark clothes stained with dirt and sweat. He coughed and spit a globule of phlegm into the grass before stumbling off in the direction of Sunset Boulevard.
Lyse watched him go-and she cursed him:
May your end be painful, Uncle David. Painful . . . and long . . . and in a dark place of my choosing.
• • •
Once her uncle David was gone, Niamh turned to Lyse.
"That wasn't the moment, was it?"
Lyse shook her head.
"No." She wished that it had been . . . had hoped that it would be. But it wasn't. She felt gutted. She didn't know what to do now.
As if reading her thoughts, Niamh asked, "Where do we go from here?"
Lyse sighed and said, "You don't go anywhere."
Niamh stood up and walked back over to the Lady of the Lake. There was a bench not far from where the Lady stood, and she sat down on it. A moment later, Lyse joined her there. They stared out past the water at the massive downtown skyscrapers that rose up in the distance like metal mountains.
"You have any clue where you're going?" Niamh asked, finally.
"I think so."
Lyse was a liar. She had zero idea of what the next step would be.
"And will I be stuck here when you go?" Niamh asked.
Lyse shook her head and held up the Dream Journal-it was brown and singed where the magic had burned a hole through its middle.
"I'm taking you back to when we left."
"No," Niamh said, shaking her head. "I can't let you go alone. What if you don't come back?"
All Lyse could think to do was to hand Niamh the Dream Journal.
"I have to come back. You have the Dream Journal."
It was a lame attempt to reassure Niamh-and she could see from the look on Niamh's face that it hadn't worked.
"C'mon, it isn't the end . . . just hold on to this and give it to me when you see me again," Lyse said, forcing a smile onto her face. "If I do this right, then the power will shift and we can stop The Flood from killing everyone on the ship . . . or maybe even stop The Flood from coming into power at all."
Niamh's eyes filled with tears, but she took the Dream Journal and held it to her chest.
"Until we meet again," she said-and then she leaned over and hugged Lyse tight.
• • •
As soon as they arrived on the ship, the others surrounded Niamh, surprised to see them back so soon. While Niamh kept them occupied-like they'd prearranged-Lyse took her leave, calling up the neon-blue orb as quickly as possible. She didn't have the heart to say good-bye . . . again.
• • •
Once more, Lyse stood on the red lacquer bridge over the koi pond at Eleanora's house in Echo Park. It was the place she felt safest, her refuge. She had come here because she didn't know where else to go. Everything she'd done had failed. She wasn't sure what else there was to try.
And then a thought popped into her head. If she was The Hierophant . . . then that meant she was, literally, the crossroads. She was the place where everything started and everything began. As soon as she realized this, she knew how-though not where-to go.
Take me to the beginning of me, Lyse thought-and closed her eyes . . .
• • •
. . . and when she opened them, she knew immediately that something was different. Lyse was not a watcher this time; she was a participant. She was inside the body of someone else.
The cot she was sitting on was hard, her back pressed into the corner between two concrete walls, arms wrapped around her knees. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a white men's undershirt and a pair of men's striped pajama pants. Both were too big for her.
She reached up and instinctively twisted her long brown hair into a knot at the back of her neck. Then she began to nervously play with the striped pajama fabric, running her fingers along the curve of her knee.
He was on the floor, a cigarette in his hand, his back against the wall. He'd unbuttoned the top two buttons of his plaid shirt and he was staring at her. She knew that face. Knew instantly who he was and who she was . . . Desmond and Eleanora.
"I don't know what any of the answers are," he was saying, as he put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply. She could tell that he wanted to impress her. "But I think there's more to things than we can see or hear or touch or taste with our senses."