Bridge of Dreams by Anne Bishop Read Free Book Online Page B

home for the next year. After locking up for the night, he took the sleeping draught he used occasionally when he needed to block out everyone and everything for a few hours.

Chapter 5
     
     
    L ee frowned at the footbridge that spanned a narrow creek. It
should
have been a stationary bridge that connected two of his mother’s daylight landscapes and one of Glorianna’s. And it did. But the bridge now also resonated with Foggy Downs, a dark landscape tended by Michael.
    This wasn’t the first bridge he’d come across in the past two weeks that suddenly provided access to one of Michael’s pieces of Elandar, but he was getting tired of dealing with this weird piggyback. Seemed like there couldn’t be a landscape connected to Glorianna anymore without there also being access to something connected to Michael. That meant someone crossing over a stationary bridge they’d used for years could suddenly end up in another part of the world because the Bridge—meaning him—couldn’t unravel the resonance of Michael from Glorianna.
    Damn Magician. Just another way he had fouled up their lives.
    He lied
, something dark whispered inside Lee.
You thought Michael wanted to be your friend, but it was just an excuse to get close to your sister, to use her for his own purpose. Caitlin Marie is a Landscaper too. She could have been the bait used to trap the Eater of the World. But the Magician chose to sacrifice your sister instead.
    Lee rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the ache between his eyes. Yes, Michael had lied to all of them, had known from the beginning that Glorianna could stop the Eater of the World. But he didn’t tell any of them, didn’t give the family a chance to discuss what they should do. He waited until he and Glorianna went to one of his landscapes.
Then
he told her that damn story about the Warrior of Light and convinced her to throw her life away to save the world.
    “I could have reached her, you ripe bastard,” Lee whispered as he stared at the bridge. “There had been time to get into that landscape before she locked it tight. I could have gotten in and gotten her out if you hadn’t entangled us all in a fight, hadn’t broken my arm. Damn you, Michael. She wouldn’t have suffered in that place for so long, wouldn’t have come back different. If you hadn’t stopped me, I could have reached her.”
    He sneezed twice, then felt the burn in his chest.
Sick? Now? Damn it!
    Well, a cold wasn’t so bad.
    Then again, a cold could make a man fuzzy-headed enough to impair judgment, and a man working alone and trying to make decisions about the resonance of bridges that connected one piece of Ephemera with another couldn’t afford to have his judgment impaired.
    Nothing he could do about this footbridge, so he would check out the other bridge he sensed was nearby and then rest for a day or two.
    Where to go for that rest? Ah, that was the question. If he went back to Aurora, he could stay in his own cottage, using his illness as an excuse not to socialize. He’d get sympathy—and plenty of food—from his mother and Lynnea, Sebastian’s wife. Food and sympathy and quiet when he didn’t want company.
    Or he could go back to the guesthouse in Sanctuary. There would be food and sympathy there too. But there was also a chance Glorianna would be visiting Sanctuary, and he wasn’t ready to see her again—especially if he looked into her green eyes and saw Belladonna looking back at him.
    She scared him now in ways she never had before, and he didn’t know what to do about that.
    Aurora, then. Or maybe the Den. Sebastian would let him use the roomthe Justice Maker still kept at the bordello and wouldn’t be inclined to fuss over him.
    First he would check out the other bridge. It wasn’t in his notebook, so it wasn’t a bridge he had made. Which meant another Bridge had created a means of reaching Nadia’s landscapes, and anyone who could reach Nadia’s landscapes had the potential of reaching