The End of Magic (The Witches of Echo Park #3)(8)

"These are the true dreamlands. Their 'resting' shape, if you will, when they're not molding to whatever they think a dreamer wants to see," Tem said-he was still in the same long green leather coat he'd worn when she first met him, his black hair in the same tall mohawk. Unlike Lizbeth, he remained unchanged in the dreamlands.

"Why do you look the same, then?" she asked, her eyes not on him but still marveling at the beauty that surrounded them. This place was everything and nothing at the same time. The vastness of what she saw made her feel small, imbued her with the sting of what it meant to be truly alone-except she wasn't. He was here with her.

"Because I'm dead and you're alive. I'm trapped here, an echo of what I once was, still moving and thinking and doing, but only because of the power I draw from the dreamlands," he replied-after a long silence where, he, too, seemed to be contemplating the vastness of the space. "It gives me a little play in your human world, but not for long or with much power. All of your Dream Walkers are like me. Those witches who choose not to move on to the next plane, but to stay behind, as I have, because they still feel the call of life and the needs of the living, the ones whom they left behind in death and sorely miss."

"Like Eleanora," Lizbeth said, and Tem nodded his agreement.

"And there are many others," he said, then added sadly: "And more will be coming."

"What do you mean?"

"More of your blood sisters will die, Lizbeth," he replied. "The balance has to shift before it can come back to the middle."

Lizbeth felt like a tear had opened in her heart.

"I don't want anyone else to die," she said-and she heard an edge of hysteria in her voice. "I just want things to be as they were. I want to go back to before all of this happened. Before my coven was split apart. Before I went up on that rock and used my dreaming powers to call magic back into the world . . ."



       
         
       
        

Tem let her speak, understanding that she needed to exorcise the fear and guilt she was feeling.

"I want to go back to Echo Park. I want Eleanora to be alive again. I want Lyse to never have come home. I want Daniela to be well. I want Weir. I want my mom to be alive . . ." The last word-alive-poured out of her in a pitiful moan, and on its heels came more tears. But this time they sprang from the deepest part of her, from the small child that lay buried in the dark corners of her brain-damaged and inconsolable and full of the basest of emotions: Need.

"But doesn't this place give you reassurance? That death isn't the end?" he asked, but she shook her head.

"It's not that . . ."

"Then what?"

She shook her head, unable to give voice to the feeling. More than anything, it was being in this place. It intensified things. Made her feel with a sharpness that was disconcerting.

No more tears, she thought. They get me nowhere.

She swallowed back the sadness that had invaded her without warning. Fought the lump in her throat, demanding it melt away. After a few moments, she was more composed.

"I just want it all to be like it was," she said, finally managing to corral her emotions.

Tem smiled down at her, lifting his fingers to her cheek and brushing away the wetness there.

"But, my little dreamer, change is the greatest gift of all. To be alive is to change and grow and accept loss and death. It's all of it . . . and without those sad and wonderful things that happened to you recently, we wouldn't be standing here, together, right now."

"I still don't like it," she said.

"Of course not," he replied. "Because you're young now. But wait a while and see how you feel then. I guarantee that one day you'll be so tired of life that you'll beg death to come. Eventually we all move on, Lizbeth. It's an inevitability that cannot be changed."

She grimaced, not liking what he was saying at all.

A flash of bright blue light filled the sky, followed by a rolling crack of thunder. Tem craned his neck, frowning as he looked up at the storm clouds gathering above them. He shook his head as if to clear it, then returned his gaze to Lizbeth.

"I believe that's our cue to get moving."

"Where are we going? There's only . . . this . . ." She pointed at the liquid landscape just as another flash of blue lightning lit up the water, making it shimmer like cut glass. 

"The waters of the dreamlands," Tem said. "They're whatever or wherever we want them to be."

As he spoke, a small boat appeared on the water in front of them. It was little more than a dinghy made of weathered slats of pale gray birch wood, but it sat primly on the surface of the water, waiting for them.