She pushed her hands back through her hair, smoothing the braids at the side of her head and then running her fist down the long, thick ponytail of braids that fell down her back. Was this all real? Maybe her grandmother’s illness was genetic and she was having hallucinations.
“Great. I’ll be seeing vampires next. She was right about the monastery. I just have to meet a man named Gary and then I’ll know I’m as nuts as she is,” Teagan muttered to herself.
She had to be alone and figure out what was going on. She couldn’t stay in Andre’s company like this. He was everything that drew a woman like her. A fantasy man. He probably wasn’t any more real than the slime she thought she’d put her feet into.
She put her feet down quickly and forced herself to stand up. Her stomach lurched. Definitely slime. She didn’t look down at her feet, but walked quickly to her backpack and found her clothes. With every step she took, she felt as if the slimy substance covered more and more of her feet, crept up her ankles and even onto her legs.
She had to breathe deep to keep from gagging because the sensation was so real. Still, when she went to pull on her jeans, there wasn’t a single bit of dirt on her feet or legs. The moment she had her jeans on, she put on socks and her hiking boots. Thankfully, with her boots on, the sensation of slime disappeared.
She dragged on a shirt and slung her climbing shoes around her neck just in case, and then with one last glance back at Andre’s still form, she took off through the labyrinth of chambers to make her way back to the entrance she’d used to enter the caves—only it wasn’t that easy.
First, the ground seemed unstable when she tried to move quickly. The floor of the cave rolled and pitched as if there was an earthquake. She lived in California and she’d experienced a few minor quakes, and although this was like an earthquake, it wasn’t the same. She stood very still and waited to see if she was dizzy, but it wasn’t an inner ear problem either. When she looked at the ground, it seemed stable enough. She even used her headlamp to make certain, but nothing was out of the ordinary.
She forced air through her lungs in an effort to clear her head. Every step she took away from Andre seemed harder than the last. Her body felt leaden, her feet heavy. She had to contend with that as well as the pitching floor. That served to disorient her, and she took a wrong turn somewhere along the line.
The moment she realized she didn’t recognize the chamber she was in, she backtracked. The rolling of the floor made her feel sick. She hadn’t eaten, nor did food sound good to her. Even the thought of her beloved tea ritual made her feel slightly nauseous.
Grandma Trixie drank tea, and they had their own ritual. She always used cold water in the kettle and brought it to a rolling boil. Loose leaf tea was the only real tea, according to her grandmother. All three of her sisters believed their grandmother was totally right about that. The few times Teagan had snuck a teabag for convenience when she was backpacking, the tea wasn’t quite as good, but then she was certain she’d been brainwashed from the time she was an infant.
The memories rose of her grandmother and sisters sitting around the table laughing together, drinking tea with her. She loved those times. She was ten years younger than her next sister, and she knew her older siblings treated her more like their child than their sister, but it was straight-up love. She’d been doted on and loved from the moment she was born.
Her sisters had a different father, a man who had, sadly, died of cancer. From everything Teagan had heard of him, he had been a wonderful man and he loved and took care of his family. Her mother had been devastated when he died and she’d moved in with Grandma Trixie. Ten years her mother had been alone with her girls and Trixie, and then she met Charles Drake.
He’d been a charming, sweet-talking man who, by all accounts, chased after her mother for months. The moment he heard she was pregnant, he was gone and things turned ugly. Her mother had died in childbirth, and Grandma Trixie and her sisters welcomed the baby with open arms in spite of her father. Teagan never wanted to see or meet him. She was given her mother’s maiden name and she loved it.
Teagan allowed the memories to absorb her mind so that her body went into automatic and instinctively found the way through the chambers to the entrance. There was that shield again. The harp strings in a terrible jumble, but through them, she could see the light of day.
She sank down onto the floor of the cave, right beside the tangled strings and began to tune to each note, just as she had when she first encountered them. She was faster than before because now she knew what to do. She had them all in place and began to rise when one string broke, flipped over the others, knotted and ripped the other strings free, tangling them all over again.
Teagan scowled at the mess. In another couple of hours she would lose the light for certain. If there were wolves hanging around the area, she didn’t want to be out at night, but she needed to go breathe the air, climb a little, take some time to think about what was happening.
Mostly, she hated the fact that even while she made plans to go out on her own, every single cell in her body demanded she turn around and run back to Andre. That was—unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. She had the sudden fear that when she left him, he needed her. That he wasn’t breathing. That his heart had stopped.
She sank down in front of the narrow opening, staring out into the light. Her skin prickled as if the sun might burn her. She’d never really had that problem, a legacy from her mother, but still, the feeling was there. She wanted to weep and run back to Andre, to hold him close and assure herself that he was breathing. She didn’t. Like everything else, the slime, the earthquakes, the labyrinth, even this shield, it had to be an illusion.