Falling Through Pages

28. Celestial Navigation

Lucina's POV

I held the necklace up to the light, looking through the center. It was a polished crystal disk, set in silver and attached to a silver chain. It looked almost like a magnifying glass except for the etched spiral on the crystal, starting at the top and ending at a small white sparkle in the middle.

"When you're in between dimensions, concentrate on your sister, the focus will do the rest." Castiel said, his voice tinny from the phone which was in Dean's hand, on speaker. There was a beep as he hung up, and Dean put his phone away.

We were back in a motel. They had furnished me with a new set of clothes, a wad of cash in my pocket, and a new knife tucked in my pants.

"Are you ready?" Sam looked concerned, frowning down at me.

I pulled the necklace over my head and nodded. "Yes." I hugged them both, aware that I might never see them again, and apparated.

It was easier to do the awkward sideways fall this time, now that I knew how, and I accomplished it on my first try, falling into the emptiness that is the space between worlds, surrounded by thousands of crystal shards. They're like stars, I thought, watching them swirl by. Little stars, different worlds...

Selene. The word was an anchor in my mind, and I held onto it. Selene. I thought again, picturing her. Not her body, her aura, her soul, her emotions that I knew better than anyone else.

The spiral from the focus appeared before me, superimposed on the sky of stars, and I seemed to be at the edge of it where the spiral begun. I was both everywhere and nowhere in the nothingness, but somehow I was on the spiral.

Selene. As I concentrated on her, I moved along the spiral, making my way slowly towards the center. I pictured her aura when she's lost in a physics book, her face flush with excitement as we ran from the basilisk, how she absolutely loved anything chocolate but would rather die than eat Bertie Botts.

As I neared the center of the spiral, the sparkle got brighter, almost painfully so though I had no eyes, and receded to become a star, like the other stars I was surrounded by, but brighter. Or perhaps the others had dimmed. Ending the spiral path, I stepped on the bright star.

There was a CRACK as I apparated in. I was in the back of a car (again) sitting next to a young man wearing a suit. He had a laptop on his lap and an earpiece in his ear. The car was parked this time, thank god, and there was a large, muscular bald man in the front seat who turned around to look at me.

"Um..." I fidgeted, wondering what I had gotten myself into. The boy's laptop screen looked suspiciously like a security camera feed. "You wouldn't happen to know Selene, would you?"

The young one next to me raised an eyebrow in what I think was surprise. "You're Lucina."

My face was obviously surprised. "You've found Selene? Where is she!"

He motioned to the camera feed on his laptop. "At the moment she's in the building, but-"

I pointed to his earpiece. "Is she on that?"

"Yes, but-"

Ignoring him, I grabbed it and put it in my ear. "Sel??"

"She isn't responding."

"Why not?"

"She's not on the cameras anywhere, so I don't think she was caught. She's probably hiding and can't make noise, it hasn't gone exactly to plan."

"And who the hell are you to be making plans and putting my sister in danger?"

He held out a hand for me to shake. "Artemis Fowl the Second."