Chapter 5: Erin

I didn’t know what I expected when I stepped across the salt threshold, Dez’s hand cool and firm in my sweaty grip, but I was surprised to find it painless and ... weightless.

It felt similar to when I got off the couch too fast, and the world spun. I was light-headed and needed to sit back down, but Dez’s hand kept me upright as my apartment faded, the black and white furniture and walls growing brighter as if the colors were trying to take over my view before blurring out of focus. The tips of my fingers and toes tingled, but it wasn’t unpleasant. The colors then returned, this time in hues of red and gold. As if looking through a focusing lens, the colors snapped into place, hanging in the leaves from trees twice as high as my twelve-story apartment building, spanning the golden field around us.

If I weren’t still shaking with adrenaline and fear, I would’ve found the landscape similar to where I’d open that bookstore, maybe purchase a cottage complete with a quirky orange cat and smoke billowing out from the chimney. It was beautiful. It was frightening. It was so, so far from home.

Dez abruptly released me, and I stumbled to catch my footing. I was thankful I wore sneakers and jeans, as the temperature was a lot cooler than my Georgia apartment in the summer, the ground covered in dying grass and colorful leaves. Again, I didn’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t to be deposited in the middle of a forest in autumn.

“Hurry up. These woods aren’t kind to strangers like you once nightfall hits. And no, I’ll not be saving you if you get yourself in trouble.” Dez walked ahead without looking back.

I sucked in a shaky breath. Ignoring the bizarreness of it all, I forced myself to accept that this is how things were now as I followed in Dez’s footsteps. Yellow stalks brushed under his knees, curling ever so slightly as if the land itself was welcoming him home. Meanwhile, they slapped at my faded jeans, tripping me—more than once—as I tried to catch up with an ever-fading Dez. I didn’t waste my breath asking him to slow down, knowing he’d walk faster, so I focused on taking big steps, silently cursing the animated moving grass.

The sun beamed between the tall stretches of trees, catching the falling smattering of leaves in the setting light, looking straight out of a painting or someone’s Instagram reel as soon as October hits. I lived in Georgia, where the leaves would turn late October, but nowhere near as vibrant as these trees. Too bad it required selling my soul to some shadow demon to see. Did demons even live in beautiful autumn forests?

A house grew closer in the distance, and it was when we were about a hundred paces away that I realized it was less of a house and more of an estate. The length stretched longer than my entire apartment complex, with architecture that made it look like it belonged on top of a private hill in LA and not in a romantic autumn forest. To be honest, the modern mansion, with its sleek geometric edges and white finishes, was gorgeous but seemed terribly out of place.

“Welcome home, Master.”

I squinted ahead, searching for the source of the voice but found nothing except a solid stone wall and a sheet of thick glass that acted as the entrance to the estate. When I stomped closer, my panting embarrassingly loud in the quiet woods, a face emerged within the slabs of stone. I jolted back, eyes wide.

“Yes, yes, allow us through. It’s been a long day.” Dez pointedly glared at me while I stared at the stone face.

“As you wish,” it said before blending back into stone. Instead of opening, the glass evaporated, and Dez hurriedly motioned for me to follow. A gray paved path stretched at least a quarter of a mile out, and I chided myself for skipping out on the gym with Megan the past few weeks when the path yanked forward and I lost my footing. I caught Dez’s mirthful smile and felt tempted to toss him an inappropriate gesture when the paved path stopped, dropping us off in front of a flight of pristine white stairs leading up to the mansion’s front double-door entrance.

“I feel like Alice in Wonderland,” I muttered to myself.

At the entrance, a floating glass staircase yawned upward multiple floors alongside the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a vast lake behind the estate. The style was clean and almost futuristic, but it definitely didn’t look to be put together by any human, at least not on Earth, where gravity would’ve had the levitating staircase falling with an ear-shattering explosion. The marble floors and half-glass, half-gray walls that enclosed the foyer entrance branched out into multiple rooms. It seemed like such a large place for one person.