Lizbeth let him lead them away, but not before she caught the look of intense worry on Thomas's face. That look sealed her trust . . . and terrified her to the bone.
• • •
Lizbeth enjoyed watching Tem with Marji and Ginny as he occupied them with Bananagrams. He didn't let the girls win, per se, but it was obvious after the first round, when he was losing by a wide margin, that his concentration wasn't fully on the game at hand. He looked up at Lizbeth a few times from his perch at the kitchen island and gave her a wink, letting her know that he knew she was watching.
It was hard for her not to stare at him. They had this strange, intimate connection-had had it from the very moment they'd met-and even though Lizbeth knew that he was not truly available to her, she couldn't help wishing that he were alive again. It wasn't that she wanted to be his girlfriend, or anything so normal . . . she just wanted him to be a part of her life. And if he was trapped here in the dreamlands, she wasn't sure how their continued friendship would be possible. She guessed she could visit him here whenever she wanted, but it just wasn't the same. Just didn't feel right.
"Let Temistocles entertain them and we finish our conversation," Thomas said as he came to sit on the couch beside Lizbeth.
"Okay," she said-the first time she'd had a reasonably pleasant interaction with him.
He noticed and his whole demeanor changed. He seemed to relax, his shoulders lowering and his eyes brightening. Lizbeth realized he'd been waiting a long time for her to give him permission to be himself.
"Yes, it's been difficult," he said, then held up his hand, "and, no, I wasn't reading your mind. It's clear what you were thinking."
"What happened to you?" she asked, beginning to see that there were more similarities between Thomas and Tem than she'd been willing to acknowledge.
"We were cocky, Tem and me. We thought we could control the darkness, but we were naïve. The darkness cannot be controlled . . . only kept at bay," he said, a catch in his voice as he spoke. "We were caught and Tem was spelled out of existence, but I was given to your world, to The Flood, so my powers might be used against the woman I loved . . . and her family."
Lizbeth's heart broke for him. She couldn't imagine what that would be like-to be used as a tool to destroy the person you loved. It was a terrifying proposition.
"Time runs differently in our universe than in yours," he continued. "When I left Devandra's mother, she was a young woman . . . and I truly did think I'd find a way to get back to her. But sadly, time does not run backward anymore and the window passed. So shocking to see the one you loved grow old without you. And you only having left her days before. It's chilling."
"Will that happen to us here?" Lizbeth asked, and Thomas shook his head.
"The difference in time between your world and the dreamlands is very slight. That cannot be said for our world-"
His eyes flicked over to Tem, who was trying to convince the girls that stegalump was a word. To his pretend consternation, Marji and Ginny were having none of it.
"-but that's neither here nor there. Suffice it to say, I was used against my will to do damage and it was only the combined effort of your coven that broke the spell I was under. Of course, I don't expect any of you to believe me."
He said the last part with a yawning sadness that made Lizbeth feel awful for treating him badly.
"You brought the girls here. You saved them."
He shrugged.
"It was all I could do. I didn't know the house had been compromised until it was too late."
"By what?" Lizbeth wasn't sure she understood what he was talking about.
"The girls were given a magical object. A stone. They didn't know what it was or what it would do, but its presence made all the work we'd done less than worthless-it made our spells dangerous. It borrowed the energy we'd expended and turned it back on us," he finished.
Sitting at the kitchen island, the girls were giving Tem a hard time, but he was taking it like a champ. He was good with them, treating them not like children, but like human beings that had opinions and thoughts and needs of their own.
"You say we can't stop it, but we can keep it at bay?" Lizbeth asked. "How do we do that?"
"We train you so that you can take Tem's place."
Lizbeth shook her head and sat up straighter on the clean, white couch.
"His place?" She felt ridiculous asking so many questions, but she really didn't know.
"We are-were-the guardians between the dreamlands and your world. Our job was to make sure the darkness didn't slip past us and leak fully into your world like it did into ours and countless others . . ."