Page 74 of Until the Stars Fall

My cord to Hannah tightened and solidified. How would I go back? What if I got stuck here and—

But the beautiful flame that was my sister gently pulled me, so I closed my eyes and let go. My limbs were heavy and jerky, like waking from sleep paralysis in a prehistoric tar pit. I pried open my gritty eyes to see Hannah—actual, physical Hannah—smiling at me.

“You did it!” she squealed, squeezing me tight.

My physical hand was holding Beck’s. He still lay on his back on the floor, but one of his knees was up and moving.

Zola and Summer wafted the smoke of four different bundles of leaves over and around his body, saying prayers or spells over him, I didn’t know which. His hand in mine moved experimentally, the other hand moved to his face. I turned my whole body to go to him but stopped. Would he remember what happened in the spirit world?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Beck sat up gingerly, and my mother’s ring fell to the floor with a clink. He rubbed his whole face with his free hand as Zola wafted the smoke behind him.

Should I go to him?

His gaze landed on me, and he leaned forward. “That was real,” he said quietly. “That really happened. You came for me.” He scrambled to his knees and threw his arms around me, whispering into my hair. “I didn’t think I’d ever hold you again.”

Choruses of cheers and “get a room!” erupted around us. He kissed me, and his aura felt to me like the Abundance.

“Yes,” Summer said, pulling up on our arms. “Get an engine room. That spell took almost three hours!”

Eyre rushed forward to help pull us up. “Later on I’m going to kill you for scaring me to death, but right now we’re approaching Gaia at four hundred and thirty-three miles per hour, and if you don’t get that antimatter drive online in the next ten minutes, we could burn up before causing a global extinction, but more likely we’ll be shot out of the sky.”

Beck stumbled to the side, and I threw my shoulder under his arm, wrapping my arms around his waist.

“Can you make it?” I asked.

He squeezed me tight. “I can make anything if you’re with me.”

My heart soared, and the more I moved, the more normal I started to feel. I explained the situation to him as we went down the five levels to B2. Once in the engine room, Beck tore up to the electrical panel, and I skidded to a stop beside the antimatter drive.

Nothing but clicks and snaps from above. Then Beck’s very emotional voice came back. “I hope we live through this so we can talk about what just happened. What’s the drive lookin’ like now?”

I tapped at the panels, but only the backup power remained, flashing an error message. “All propulsion systems are offline, and the atom smasher isn’t responding.”

“What about—” He grunted and a loud thunk echoed through the room. “Now?”

The blessed hum of electricity woke the drive. “It’s powering up!” I shouted excitedly, the glow of the screen lighting up my face. “The atom smasher too!”

He was at my side again, paging the others on the comms. “Eyre, are you all set for the reentry spell?”

“Wilco!”

“Summer, you got the wheel? Are our shields holding?”

“Got it, shields are perfect.”

Summer left our connection open, and a man’s voice crackled on her end. “New Houston to WitchCraft, you are not cleared for entry. Decrease your speed or we will fire! Acknowledge!”

“Affirm, New Houston, Wilco! Do not fire! I say again! Wilco! Do not fire!”

“Oh this shit’s gettin’ real,” Beck lamented, standing at my side by the atom smasher’s screen, tapping.

I hadn’t gone into the spirit world to get Beck back to lose everything now. “Drive’s online, propulsion engaged.”

“But our production’s not sufficient for deceleration. Shit, we’re gonna burn up if we don’t do something.”

I spun out the cache. “It’s not the production. The feed system’s strangling again.”

---