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those of us who haven’t found anyone…”
Danny in the Dark
93
Goddamned Alex. Lars sighed. He and Jasper might have given
up on their parents’ stories, but he never had. The years he and Jasper
had spent trying to fully acclimate themselves to higher education and
jobs and house payments, Alex had continued to train, disciplining
himself, preparing to be a hunter and warrior. He had never given up
on the idea that there was some distant plane out there somewhere,
waiting for them to return to it, and that they would return there one
day to find love and fulfill their destinies. But apparently, fate had a
sadistic sense of humor. So far, Alex was the only one of the brothers
not to find a mate.
Which explained why he was spending so much of his time
interfering with Lars’s love life.
“What were you even doing out, anyway?”
Alexander winced. “Guarding the house.”
Lars raised an eyebrow at him. “From what?”
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just being paranoid, but…something
happened the other night between Ben and Jasper. Jasper has a cut on
his back that won’t heal. I asked him about it, but you know how he
is. Ben didn’t say much either. Something about scratching Jasper in
his sleep, or before he fell asleep, I guess, but…” Alex trailed off. “It
doesn’t make sense. If Ben did it, it would have healed right away,
but Jasper didn’t. It was like he’d gotten cut by something silver. And
you know we don’t keep silver in the house.”
Lars nodded. “I know.” Danny had long since gotten rid of the
silver steak knife.
“Right. So it must have come from somewhere else.”
From another plane. Lars’s body stiffened as if to rid his mind of
it, but this time, it stuck. It was coming back to him now, the whole
terrible narrative of his own dream. He had searched in the dark for
Danny and found Thomas instead. He had wanted Lars to unlock the
red door, and Lars had opened it to find—
“Was he having a nightmare?”
94
Ellen Ginsberg
Alex nodded. “That’s what Ben said.” He shrugged as if to
dismiss the fact as unimportant, but Lars latched on to it, his mind
turning it over. “I don’t know, I thought if it was silver…maybe
someone who knew about werewolves found out we were living here
and tried to attack us. Maybe Danny’s dad or someone from his
family—”
The realization of what had happened suddenly hit him full-force.
It was irrational, unfounded, and impossible to prove, but he had
never been more sure of anything in his life except for Danny.
Lars cut Alex off before he had time to finish his sentence. “You
were wrong.”
It was uncanny how unlike each other the two of them were. If
Alex had been the one telling Lars that, the glare Lars would have met
him with would have been murderous. But Alex merely folded his
arms across his chest, waiting for an explanation.
Lars blew out a long breath. “The blood you saw on the sheets
was from me. I was sleeping when it happened, the same as Jasper. I
woke up, and Danny had shifted, and I was hurt. I thought he attacked
me in his sleep, but he swore he wasn’t sleeping when it happened.
He said he saw the scratches appear on me from out of nowhere.”
Alex stiffened. “Maybe he dreamed the whole thing.”
Lars shook his head. “That’s something else that was weird.
Usually we share dreams, but not this time. His was different from
mine. And I don’t think what I experienced was a dream. I think I was
on another plane.”
It sounded crazy. It was crazy. This was how all the textbooks
he’d studied in graduate school had described delusions as beginning,
wasn’t it? Life had dealt him a bad hand, and his brain couldn’t
handle it. So instead of facing the difficult truth, he’d started spinning
some crazy web of paranoid connections in to justify believing in
some pleasant impossibility. Any minute, he was going to be carted
out of here in a straightjacket.
Danny in the Dark
95
Lars flitted his gaze to Alexander to gauge his expression. But
there was no skepticism or concern there. Surprise and confusion,
maybe, but he could handle that. He took a deep breath and continued.
“What do we really know about Mom being a planeswalker? Dad
was a werewolf, too, and we’ve known how that affected us since we
were kids. But maybe he isn’t the only one we take after. Maybe
we’re planeswalkers, too. And the things that attacked me and Jasper
came at us…”
“From another plane.” He didn’t have to complete the sentence.
Alex was right there with him. Believing came easy to Alex. It was
one of his gifts. Lars had always been the opposite, always afraid he’d
get hurt if he let himself go.
Still, that kind of caution could be a gift, too. He remembered the
peace he’d sensed in Danny when his own obsessive steadiness had
rushed into him for the first time. It seemed like mating had taken
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