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But for all I could tell, my little tadpole was alive and well…real. He was real.
“Any other tests we should run?” Mesmer stared at his fingernails and huffed.
“Yeah, there’s bloodwork we can run here… Don’t know if it’ll be the same. But they’re not open until the morning—” Jess flinched as Mesmer lifted his hands and made a gesture to flip a page. “No!”
Mesmer fumbled as he did the gesture, and something in me twisted. “Shit!”
Jess reached for me as a horrible pain twisted in my belly.
“Mesmer, you dumbass!” Jess’s voice vibrated as if it were coming through a fan, and my stomach knotted up, everything I’d eaten that morning rising up as the horrible pain twisted my insides.
“You don’t fucking flip chapters unless you know what—” Jess’s voice cut off and I screamed, unable to form words as the world around me wrenched away, peeling from my mind as my body twisted.
A cold, wood floor slammed against me. The horrible pain twisted my belly, and as I clenched my fist, those little plastic film photos of our baby blurred beyond a wall of tears as my vision whited out.
“How was I supposed to know the author skipped around?” Mesmer’s frantic voice reached a pitch that needled my brain. “It’s never an issue!”
“Oh, shit—” Jess’s horrified voice was the last I heard before blissful nothingness.
Nothing at all.
Nothing but me in an endless void of words, floating in that sea of literature, pages rippling like water. And from the sky rained ink in the darkness, black bullets that hit the pages around me, sending ripples of chapters, telling a story I was too far gone to read.
I wiped my hand over my face, my sobbing breaths echoing around me, whispering featherlike as the subtle glow of a single bead of light above me highlighted black ichor over my fingertips. Pain welled in my belly, and I relished the sensation, holding on to that anchor. For as long as I felt that pain, it reminded me that at least part of my baby remained.
And beneath that pain lay hate. Pure, suffering hate for Mesmer and whatever he’d done boiled within me.
“If you don’t make it, little guy, I will kill that asshole.” I sobbed through the words as they came out.
Another wave of pain drew through me, and I curled into myself, choking on bile as my stomach roiled.
“Please be okay.” I whispered it, but at the same time, someone else did. Our voices came as one, and warmth cocooned me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Zeke
With a clash and clatter, the book Lex dove into threw itself to the ground with a violent shudder, pages twisting in a way I knew all too well—multiple archivists going different ways in a book. Multiple archivists abandoning a dive mid-parting.
They’d be dizzy and sick, and I swore as Jess and Mesmer were expelled from the book.
Mesmer wretched as he collapsed to his hands and knees. Jess crawled over, fighting the urge to heave as she pounded her fists against Mesmer’s back, swearing at him viciously. “Fucking stupid!”
“Where’s Lex?” My heart seized for a moment before Lex shot from the book, as if the very pages themselves spat him out in a crumpled heap.
“You don’t fucking flip chapters unless you know what—” Jess flinched as Lex clutched his stomach and screamed, retching hard. I knew he’d been nursing seltzer waters, but what came up was about 99 percent water—grapefruit-scented water…and foam.
I shoved Mesmer as I ran, my mind whiting out as I scooped him into my arms.
“How was I supposed to know the author skipped around?” Mesmer shrieked behind me as I whispered Lex’s name, tilting his head to keep him from choking as his body shook violently.
My mind was a blur as I whispered to him. “Please… Please be okay.”
With the reaction…I had to be looking for something. Blood? I wasn’t sure. Our bond was shrieking in my head, Lex’s fear and my own. “Someone do something!”
Jess swore and Mesmer stepped away from the scene, eyes wide with panic.
I wasn’t sure what needed to be done, but I bundled him to myself and stood, bolting for the back room and to the stairs, taking them two at a time to get him to my bed.
