Shadow Kissed 03 - Shadowman

no sense to her. Too bad she hadn’t figured it out.
    With each cold draw of breath, the people in the mirrors grew less and less recognizable, the madness of Twilight tweaking Layla’s mind. In her head was the thick, sluggish feeling that preceded sleep. She bit her tongue to wake herself.
    The problem was that Fate had posed the question; therefore, Moira controlled the answer. It was biased, slanted, weighted in her favor.
    The faces were blurring; Layla was losing her mind. Or maybe the faces were blurring because they didn’t matter.
    â€œIt’s warm and safe here under my skirt,” Moira promised.
    Talk about twisted. Layla dismissed her. Maybe the question wasn’t so much, Who was she? as, Who did she want to be?
    Layla’s gaze darted from person to person. Lonely child, the housewife, beautiful Kathleen, the old lady, the young woman, the present-day Layla. And in a circle before them, the three Fates walked. Maid, mother, . . . crone.
    She stopped, gazing at herself— Yes, that one —and inhaled the surety of her answer.
    In the end it was too easy. So easy she had to laugh, yeah, a little like a crazy person.
    Shadowman, honey, here I come.
    Moira did a little cancan flourish with the material of her skirt. “I thought you’d last longer. Really, I did. With the store Shadowman set by you, I thought we’d play for a while.”
    What Layla needed was something to bash in the mirror. Bash it in and get back home.
    Her fists would have to do. She tightened both with all the feeling she had left: The fullness of her first meeting with Talia. The tuning-fork strike of her connection to Shadowman. The unlikely fit in the madhouse of Segue. She had a place, a family to call her own, and God damn it, she was going to have them if it killed her.
    Moira shook her head. “You can’t harm me.”
    She actually hoped the glass would cut a little, too, and bring some color to this place. “I’ve chosen.”
    â€œOh . . . ?” But Moira’s attention snapped to the circle. The big-breasted sister with the spindle had held out her hand, palm up. Her gaze had gone distant as the spindle stood on its own spinning thread of shining gold, the good stuff. Lots and lots of thread for a long life.
    â€œHow?” Moira demanded, settling her fae eyes, now gone malevolent black, again on Layla.
    Layla pointed at the mirror image of the old lady. “I want her.”
    Faces didn’t matter. This second life had taught her that. What mattered was soul.
    â€œWhat, so you can be on the brink of death again?”
    Layla grinned like a maniac. “Someday. But to earn all those wrinkles”—her gaze fastened on the crumpled skin, the branches winging the eyes—“all those gorgeous laugh lines, I figure I’ll need at least fifty years of laughing in your face.”
    The mirror was across the circle, but Layla was crazy enough by now to know distance didn’t matter. She brought her right fist up, as tight as a stone, and struck with everything she was. She caught the swift flush of color into Twilight, the shrill scream, “No!” just before she leapt through the frame.
    Segue.
    Â 
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    The helicopter was not as fast as Adam promised.
    Shadowman had assumed that time was fleeting, had grasped after it for moments with Kathleen, and then Layla. Now time was a torture of uneven beats strung together and stretched into a warp of perception. Frustration hampered each draw of air and accelerated the thump of his heart. He closed his eyes, seeking peace, but swirls of amoebic light danced on the insides of his lids and his mind was battered by the racket of the rotors. Eons passed more quickly in Twilight than this interminable flight across the land.
    And all Shadowman could do was sit. And sit. And sit. While Layla suffered.
    This world should have long gone mad.
    The yellows and greens and browns of the slowly changing landscape below were tainted by gray. A river of black water broke through the land, and beyond, a great city, barbed with tall buildings.
    Finally.
    Only then did he realize he’d been fisting his hands so tightly they ached. He stretched them open and stared in confusion at the black web of Shadow gathered between his fingers and against his palms. Shadow.
    A push of feeling, and the dark stuff pulsed with faelight.
    Oh, how stupid of him. Of course.
    â€œAre you all right, sir?” Kev