The End of Magic (The Witches of Echo Park #3)(63)

"Holy shit, that's me . . ." Lyse started to say, but Dev put a finger to her lips to shush her.

They watched as a man-Lyse's uncle David-stepped out of the elevator just in time to block the Lyse doppelgänger's path.

The doppelgänger came to a stop in front of him-and Lyse could see the doppelgänger shake with fear. It was insane, but now she knew exactly what she looked like when she was scared.

"Leave me alone, you son of a bitch," the doppelgänger yelled at David.

"That's not a nice thing to say about Eleanora," he replied, looking amused.

Lyse watched as the scene played out in front of her.

"I can't . . ." she whispered to Dev, and slipped back into the empty room.

She found one of the windows open a crack, and so she stood in front of it, gulping down the fresh air, trying not to think about what David was telling her doppelgänger out there in the hallway. After a moment, Dev came to stand beside her.

"That can't be true," she said, putting her hand on Lyse's arm. "About your parents . . ."

But there was no conviction in Dev's words.

"It's true," Lyse said, her voice flat. "As true as those idiots taking Freddy. We don't want to believe what's happening, but our world has gone to hell . . . and I'm not sure we can stop it."

Dev didn't try to argue. Instead, she went back to the doorway to watch. A moment later she called back to Lyse: "They're . . . you're gone now."

"Good," she said. "Let's go find Arrabelle and the others."

As much as she didn't want to, she might have to tell them that traveling to the dreamlands wasn't her only magical ability . . . She could travel through time, too.





Evan





Evan wasn't sure what he was supposed to be feeling anymore. There was a gnawing emptiness in the pit of his stomach that wouldn't go away, and he knew it was directly tied to the woman standing next to him. But until that moment he hadn't wanted to acknowledge he had a problem . . . a problem that came directly from him still being alive.



       
         
       
        

He'd been pretty sure he was going to die, so he'd thought a lot about death. And while standing on the precipice of the great beyond, he'd looked back at the life he'd led and found it to be a decent one. Nothing super exciting, more of an emotionally walled-off existence than he'd have wished for himself, but that was all.

He felt like he'd made his peace with death-and then, abruptly, and against all reason, he'd been released from the Grim Reaper's clutches. To his surprise, he'd found himself almost-but not quite-disappointed by the reprieve. Not that he'd wanted to die. The opposite, in fact. It was just that when you'd given up the lease, sold all the stock, and closed up shop, it was kind of hard to start all over again.

Which made him think, once again, of Arrabelle.

They'd reconnected at a time when he thought everything was lost. He felt guilty about the messed-up state of their friendship, and so he'd let her believe that if things were different-aka, he wasn't dying-he'd be willing to start a relationship with her. Of course, now that death wasn't on the table anymore, he was realizing just how selfish that choice had been.

Well, it was partly selfishness. He really did want to make her happy. But he should never have given her hope. Not when he knew he could never love her the way she needed to be loved.

He knew trying to explain was useless. His inability to act on feelings he may or may not have was not personal to her. He didn't think he was capable of being with anybody. If he could've chosen for himself, Arrabelle would be the first and only person on the list. But there was just too much . . . past. Too many things had happened to him as a kid and he'd been so damaged that the part of him that was supposed to want to be in a relationship . . . well . . . it had died.

It wasn't that he was asexual. He just couldn't be in a relationship. Vulnerability was not something available to him-and so he'd chosen to remain utterly alone to save someone else the heartbreak of falling in love with a man who couldn't love them back. He was broken, and keeping his distance was the kindest thing he could do in the situation.

But then he'd let Arrabelle get too close. They'd been best friends in college, and he'd thought maybe he could learn to be different with her. But when she'd tried to kiss him, just as always, the wall had gone up. He'd shut down, locked her out, and totally hurt her feelings. Their friendship had recovered, but it had never really been the same after that. They'd drifted apart and he hadn't encouraged her to visit once he'd gone up to the Pacific Northwest.