Connor Halling opened his eyes, and refocused on the man speaking. His media advisor—a man who had stuck with him through thick and thin, making the enigma that was Connor Halling likable to the gullible masses.
In other words, a genius.
The man had kept talking, even though Connor’s eyes had been closed. That was a rule to all who worked under the statesman.
It was like Justin imagined leaving a cocoon would feel like. Leaving a warmth and a belonging—to a cold nothing. A place between places, between minds. Death. Ice. Then he was in Daldion’s. It was different, but it was not nothing.
Daldion turned to Justin, golden eyes dull. “The feeling will lessen. The pain will become…normal. It is a cost of traveling the gap between minds—in the Thin Places.”
“I cannot trust you,” the Judge said, “because you do not know yourself. Your feelings are convoluted.”
Justin was in his mind. The Judge, Rigel, was pacing before him, his dirty-gray coat shimmering.
“I know myself,” Justin said. “I know myself and my enemy.”
Rigel gazed at him. His eyes were deep. They did not invade, but drew. Drawing Justin’s feelings from him.
Justin closed the book.
It seemed real—like it actually existed. He willed it away and it vanished. No smoke, no flash. It simply stopped existing.
It had been On the Art of War—word for word, just like the one still one his shelf at his home.
Justin was sitting cross-legged in his mind, in the gray mist. His body, he could feel, was sleeping off the effects of Iridess’ healing.
Hiram turned away from the news. Maine’s finest were still looking for the boy without luck. His mother, teary-eyed, had appeared on the television multiple times to plead for his safe return. But it was beginning to be old news. Soon they would stop playing the footage and Justin would be forgotten by all but his closest friends. Life moved on.
“Who is he?” Justin asked.
Daldion was distant. “The Watcher and his companion. Two in one. Like us.”
Justin’s eyes, within his mind, narrowed. “Like us—“
“Keep your thoughts silent, Justin Kobe. He is the Watcher and the Judge. He can sense your mind and feelings. He can feel your thoughts if you do not keep them to yourself.”
Justin felt a cold surge.
Fifteenth Sequence.
Was it a dream?
Warmth. No—heat. Fire. His body melting beneath him.
The snow turning to water as his he fell to his hands and knees. A blue light enveloping everything—the blue light of the Thin Places.
Hands molding into paws, fingernails to claws. Teeth to fangs. Fat to muscle. Shivering skin to fur…
The herd of caribou stood in the glade, free from the wind in the calm of the storm.
