At his words, Wylder sucked in breath. The room came more into focus, the walls materializing around them as if they’d been somehow shrouded before. The room around them was a circle, and there were doors all along its dark wall. They were different shapes, sizes, and colors, and completely at odds with the laws of physics. After taking two more steps in, Fred appeared out of thin air directly in front of them.
“Shit!” Wylder jerked to a stop. Silva stopped, too, and the asshole actually chuckled. Wylder jerked his hand free of Silva’s grip. It only made Silva’s smirk widen.
Fred, for his part, wasn’t even looking at them. He had a sleeve of crackers tucked under one arm and was focused on squirting the canned cheese around and around onto the cracker in his hand. When he was satisfied, he popped the cracker into his mouth and crunched with absolute bliss on his face.
“That’s the stuff.” Crumbs rained down onto the lapels of his open robe.
Silva laughed again.
“You’re an asshole,” Wylder said to Silva, even as he fought back his own chuckle. This was crazy. He was standing in a room that made no logical sense with a man in a leopard-print robe eatingCheese Whizlike it was a delicacy after literally appearing out of thin air.
“Don’t think too much about it,” Fred said after swallowing. “You’ll only give yourself a headache.”
Wylder widened his eyes. Had Fred read his mind?
“Seer.Hello.” Fred squirted another massive dollop of cheese on a cracker and turned his attention to Silva. “Which door do you need?”
Silva raised an eyebrow. “Thought you were a seer?”
Fred sighed and looked back at Wylder. “I can’t actually read your mind. It’s not my talent. But I’m old. Like,so old. Your face wasn’t hiding much.”
Now that Wylder could clearly see Fred’s face, he knew it was true. His body didn’t look old, but hiseyes. Deep lines surrounded eyes, the color of pennies, in an otherwise youthful face. In sunglasses, Wylder would think Fred was in his early twenties.
“How old?” Wylder asked before he thought better of it.
Fred tilted his head while he munched on another cracker and cheese. “I was born in a cave, I think.” He swallowed and looked at Silva. “Which door?”
“Chicago.”
“Ah.” Fred nodded and started toward the left side of the room. He stopped in front of a deep red door with a black knob and knocked twice. “Good luck and tell Zavia she still owes me five bucks.”
Chapter
Four
Silva
Reaching back for Wylder’s hand already felt like second nature. Habitual. Even though this was only the second time he’d done it. They stepped through the door in Solston and stepped out into a similar room in Chicago.
Unlike Solston’s room of doors, this one was square, but it had the same smokeless fire. Only now that fire resided in a circular pit. Soft light emanated from everywhere and nowhere, no source to be seen.
The door clicked shut behind them, and Zavia, another seer, appeared on the opposite side of the fire.
“Welcome, Silvanir. Fred told me to expect you.”
“How?” Wylder whispered behind him so quietly that Silva was sure he wasn’t supposed to hear.
Zavia smiled, her dark skin shining like the smoothest marble in the firelight. She wore a simple deep purple slip dress andsomehow made it seem as elegant as a queen’s gown. “Welcome to you as well, Wylder, nephew to Sigurd.”
“Um, thank you.” Wylder stepped up beside Silva, keeping their fingers entwined. “You know my uncle?”
“I met him many years ago.” She turned her attention to Silva. Like Fred, she looked young, aside from her eyes. Deep furrows lined the skin around bright green orbs the color of Granny Smith apples. “Tread carefully in these streets tonight. There has been unrest in the darker pockets of our underbelly as of late.”
With that, she disappeared.
Wylder gasped.
Silva sighed. “Freaking seers.”