Chapter 4

When Kristabell woke Rowan was already awake watching her. There was resolve in his eyes as he kissed her. “Waking up with you makes everything a little bit easier.”

“I love you.” She smiled and ruffled his hair. It was as if a healthy scab had formed over everything that had been so raw and immediate the day before and it was just a little easier to be objective.

They dressed, went downstairs and ate breakfast with Sheila, then headed out to her car. The horse was still in the garage along with the gear. Sheila gave Kristabell the key. “Here, just slip it under the back door before you go.”

Kristabell had slung her shoulder bag across herself under her cloak before leaving the previous morning, and the bag and all its contents had made it safely across. She wore her jeans with Rowan's old boots, the plum coloured tunic and a borrowed wool cardigan from Sheila. Seeing Rowan and Leif dressed in the clothing of the world that she had come from was something else altogether. Rowan looked like a rock star and Leif looked Big and Bad and somehow more menacing and intimidating than he did in armour with a sword. Kristabell couldn't stop grinning at them. If Allan from the garden centre saw her with Rowan and Leif, he wouldn't dare call her a freak. He'd be too scared.

Rowan and Leif had, obviously, never ridden in a car before and they almost needed to be coaxed into Sheila's little Honda Civic. It was, to them, like so many things in this world, both frightening and fascinating at the same time.

“So. What's the address you need to get to?” Sheila asked as she turned right onto Knight Street heading downtown.

“550 Burrard.” Kristabell answered looking at the card that had been in her wallet for years.

Ever since she was little her parents had drilled her, “If anything ever happens to us who do you call?” She had figured that it was just the paranoia of two over protective parents with no family and few friends, but the card with Smith, Flanagan and Flanagan printed on it was always on the fridge and from the time she had started kindergarten she'd had one with her, either in her backpack or in her wallet. She didn't know what to expect from the visit but this was the sort of circumstance her parents had planned for, so she figured that before she left this world for good, that she should do this. Sheila pulled up in front of the huge modern office tower then turned to look at Kristabell, “I'm never going to see you again am I Sprite?”

Kristabell shook her head, “I've found my place and it's not in this world.”

“If you ever need me, you know where I am,” there was a look in Sheila's eyes for a moment, a look of what might have been.

They got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk. “Goodbye. Thank you,” Kristabell threw her arms around Sheila.

“Goodbye.” Sheila gave Kristabell one last complicated look, and then got back into her car. For the briefest moment, as Sheila pulled out into the busy downtown traffic, Kristabell thought about the photograph she had found on Evan's dresser top the night before. It was of herself. The day she had climbed into the blossoming cherry tree in Evan's yard and he had snapped a picture of her from his bedroom window. It was soft and white at the edges as if it had been, many times, held in sweaty hands, and spotted, as if it had been cried upon. Kristabell banished the thought.

“Let's go,” she said to the two men who were standing on the sidewalk gawking at their surroundings. “Stay close. This place might be a little weird.”

She took Rowan's hand and Leif followed closely behind as she lead them through the automatic glass doors and into the seamless foyer that, like the mouth of a concrete giant, seemed to swallow them whole.