Silas

We ended the call, and I was a little bit relieved. This didn’t solve a damn thing in my fucked-up world, but at least I didn’t have to go to work right in the middle of it.

Now. With that out of the way…

I put my phone on the nightstand, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at the floor. I took some more slow, deep breaths as I tried—tried—to stay calm and piece together what had happened and what was happening.

Last night was clear as day in my mind. George had come home from a conference. He’d been too tired to fool around, but that was fine. I’d just been happy to have him back after a long week apart. We’d fallen asleep and…

And here I was.

Alone. With no trace of George. With no sign that he’d ever been here at all.

I hadn’t run afoul of the fae, had I? I mean, I’d had to decline a business loan for one last month, and he’d been livid over it, but that wasn’t usually enough to warrant trickster fuckery. After all, it had been the credit union’s policies, not my decision. My hands had been tied, and I was pretty sure he’d understood that on some level.

Still. A pissed-off fae—especially one who was insulted—could be as irrational and impulsive as a pissed-off human. One of those humans had slashed a colleague’s tires over a foreclosure, so was it really out of the realm of possibility that an angry fae had done something to screw with my life? Or my mind? Or both?

I wiped a shaky hand over my face and exhaled. Was this magic? Some kind of revenge? A brain tumor?

And who could I tell? They’d all think I was insane and… I mean, they might not have been wrong. In that moment, I felt the farthest from sane I’d ever been aside from that one time I did a few too many edibles at once. At least I was pretty sure that wasn’t happening right now. I’d never forget the feeling of being way too high with my thoughts slippery, not to mention resetting every few minutes. This morning, I was definitely lucid. I was thinking clearly. Wasn’t I?

God. I needed to talk to someone. Ideally someone who was good under pressure and could sort this out rationally while I mentally unraveled the way I was this close to doing.

I was tempted to reach out to my sister, but that photo on the wall in my bedroom made me reconsider. I had no idea when it had been taken, so she could still be pregnant, or she could be dealing with a newborn who made her run on twelve minutes of sleep. No, she didn’t need this stress. Not now.

So that left…

I ran through names of friends and family, but my mind kept lurching back to one person in particular. Both because he had the calmest head in a crisis, and because I wanted some damn answers about why he wasn’there.

George.

He was a veterinarian who worked with exotics, including some of the more dangerous ones. Thinking on his feet and staying cool in chaos? That was a hundred percent George.

I grabbed my phone again, went to my contacts, and—

He wasn’t there.

There weren’t any texts or calls from him either. Not even the ones I distinctly remembered exchanging yesterday afternoon when he’d let me know his flight had landed and I’d told him I was waiting at baggage claim. I knew those texts had existed because I could still feel the little flutter of oh my God, you’re home when my screen had lit up with a simple message of, On the ground.

But they were gone. The messages. The text window. The man I’d been eagerly waiting to see. There was no evidence of him in my phone or in my condo.

What in the actual hell?

The panic that welled in me this time almost had me falling apart for real. Did George even exist? Had I hallucinated our entire relationship or something?

Hands shaking, I switched to an internet browser and looked up the name of his clinic. It came up, and—

There.

George Norton, D.V.M.

A photo, too, though that made me do a serious double take. I’d been with him for six years, and I’d never seen him that gaunt. And even last night, after a week at a conference (which always wore him out) and the long day of traveling home, he hadn’t had circles that dark under his eyes. He usually had a bright smile in his office photo, too. His expression in this one made me think the photographer had all but begged him to at least humor him and try to smile, and this was the best George could muster.

Suddenly I needed to see him. Immediately. I was freaking the fuck out about whatever had happened to my life and my mind, and now I also needed to know what in God’s name happened to my boyfriend.