As Celia went to bed in Rowena's body, she still couldn't escape the thought that this was all some sort of delusion, despite the fact that she had every reason to take her pain seriously.
'I might just wake up in a VAULT issued hospital bed and, in that case, a shitty one,' she imagined, 'I should probably enjoy this bed while I have it.' Who would stand to disagree?
Maybe she was just in another country? But if this character existed as a real person, wouldn't she have filed a copyright lawsuit against the author of the book?
In a moment of shock, she opened her eyes in the now darkened room. 'Sarah Dent!' Of course, how could she forget? If this was the world someone had imagined, how had she ended up there?
Was it the eccentric author who had somehow brought her here? The theory might be lacking, but it was the only thing that added up in her mind.
What was this? Her heart had stopped beating back then, she clearly felt it, which was impossible. But could it have happened if her soul had actually traveled to another body? In that case, would she have broken the contract she had with Pan?
'Maybe that's why he's gone,' she mused, but didn't want to go in that direction any further.
It was hard to acknowledge the fact that she had left her body behind. To admit that this was real, that she had actually woken up in the body of another, as well as in the world of a book, would be to admit that there really was another world besides her own.
But if Rowena had died as in the book, why did Celia wake up and live in a body that was already dead? If there were three weeks left of her punishment, that meant she had already served the first week and should have died approximately today.
"Souls carry life," Celia remembered as she thought about that fact. That's what they taught her in fourth grade.
It meant that the Visitors had originally been souls cannibalizing each other in the World Beyond the Surface. The moment they did that, they would have turned into a spirit that lived for consumption. They craved the energy of life and followed its scent all the way to the world of the living, where there was an abundance of it.
They became smarter and more vicious as they grew more twisted. But souls did not interest them. Once they had turned into a will-o'-the-wisp, they came for the living.
'So there definitely was Life Force that could have helped, but...' Her thoughts got complicated. "Would that be enough?" The question fell softly into the empty room, with no one to answer it.
'Indeed,' a deep male voice invaded the space in her head, "it would be enough to bring the body back to the brink of life."
"Sure, makes sense, but what if the body's so trashed it won't make it anyway?"
'Then it will revive still, only to die again.'
"Sounds horrifying..." Her words trailed off as her tired brain suddenly jumped back into a fully capable working mode.
She sat up straight on her bed, her heart racing as fast as a mouse's. "Pan?"
'It is I.'
'Where have you been? What happened?' Celia tried not to speak out loud in her excitement, lest she alarm anyone who might be wandering the halls of her annex.
For a long moment, silence filled the bedroom again. She almost thought she had imagined his voice, for she had wished for him to be there.
'I have followed your soul.'
YOU ARE READING
The Crazy Daughter of the Duke's Family - Book One: Pandora
FantasyCelia, who had been a puppet playing to the tune of the government, had spent her life fighting creatures called "Visitors", who had been invading earth for centuries, for as long as she could remember. Together with Pan, her partner in crime and a...
