“By my faith, my lady, this is the safest way,” he said, taking her hands in one of his, hampering her futile efforts to remove his ring.

“I don’t believe in your faith,” Petra whispered as they moved through the camp.

One of their guides sent her a dark look over his shoulder and Petra stopped wrestling with Emory’s hand and his ring. Emory chuckled softly. “Your beliefs are irrelevant against the truth.”

“We are not married,” she whispered in his ear. “That is the truth and we both know it.” She suspecting that he referred to a larger, more universal truth, but with the gold ring weighing down her finger, she wasn’t interested in metaphysics.

“Yes, thank the Almighty, we are not married. But for tonight, for your safety, we are.”

Realization of her dependence on Emory started to sink in as their escorts paused in front of a caravan no bigger than her horses’ trailer at home. Each of its four wooden side panels had a scene painted on it, the closest depicting lovers entwined in a dark forest, a doe and buck watching the pair from behind a pine while a flock of birds flew into a faded blue sky. On the next screen brightly speckled fish swimming in a bubbling sea.

“Each depicts an earthly element,” Emory told her. “The Roma worship nature, the spirits of the sun, moon, air, earth, wind and fire.”

When Earring Dude rapped on the caravan, a panel slid to the side and a gray-haired woman stuck out her head. The two conversed for a moment and then the panel slammed shut.

Emory whispered in her ear, “Is this your dude?”

Petra shook her head. She’d known she wouldn’t find Fester—despite managing to find a Kyle look-a-like and Hot Horse Guy—yet disappointment still settled in the pit of her stomach.

The guides looked at Emory with a shrug and then all sat down on logs surrounding a fire. The small one drew a flask from his pocket, uncorked and took a swallow. After a moment, he passed his bottle to his companions.

Petra watched. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. “What did they say? What just happened?”

Emory leaned close. “Our chovihanis is preparing for a healing. That takes precedence. We may as well sit.” He settled on another log and one of the men offered him the flask. Emory held it out to Petra as she sat beside him.

She gave him her most disgusted look, one she’d perfected in middle school when she’d been assigned to sit by Lenny Jorgensen. Lenny was a paper chewer, tearing off bits of his assignments and masticating them into oozy tiny wads. He didn’t do anything with his wads. He didn’t throw them -- that Petra would have understood, even if she wouldn’t have approved. No, Lenny collected his spit balls on top of his desk like a minuscule, useless munitions pile. Although Emory looked nothing like the concave- chested, slobbery Lenny, Petra felt a familiar frustration.

“We can’t just sit here,” she said so sharply their chaperones glared at her from beneath their thick eyebrows.

Emory frowned. “We’re guests here, my lady. This is their land, not yours.”

Petra placed her hands on her hips. “But it’s not their land, right?” She glanced around, wondering if any of the gypsies understood English. She spoke quickly and quietly. “Isn’t that the point of being a gypsy? Vagabondness?”

“Vagabondness? Is there such a word in even Royal Oaks?”A smile curved his lips and she wondered if he was laughing at her. “Tell me, my lady Petra, if you were given the choice to shun the captivity of walls and ceilings and roam the earth, unburdened by possessions as the spirits direct, would you choose to stay at home?”

Petra swallowed a lump in her throat. She thought of her home, her dad. How since her mother’s death, the walls and ceiling had stayed the same but the home itself had changed. Same house, same walls, same furniture, but the home had changed. Too large and too empty. Until Laurel and Zoe came. Since her dad’s remarriage, the walls had shrunk and the volume had increased. Same house, different home.

Emory leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “A midnight ride across the earth? A sailing across the ocean at twilight?”

If she moved just an inch, her skin would touch his and she knew it would tingle, as it had before.

Whatever adventure she was on, she needed it to end so that she could continue with her life in Royal. Prom, AP classes, graduation, college, a career, marriage, two children, poodles, a house in the suburbs. No, not a house, a home.

Emory looked at her with intense steadiness. His gaze passed over her face, to her throat, to her waist, before rising back up to settle on her lips.

Petra felt woozy because she saw a life she never could have imagined, a life that defied time or space.

One of the men had lit a pipe, and its smoke curled with the revived campfire. Flames shot into the darkening sky. Embers popped midair. The stars, though faint, winked in the purpling haze. The night was fading. Where would she sleep? Did it matter?

Life in Royal had been perfectly arranged. There she knew exactly what she wanted, what was next on the agenda. As a freshman, she’d mapped out her high school schedule and had never deviated. Classes, clubs, service hours, she had everything she needed for graduation and UCLA. Here she knew next to nothing and had no idea what she needed other than a ticket back to her real life.

Emory picked up Petra’s hand and held it in his lap. Nearby, a fiddler began to play, and someone beat a rhythm on a tambourine. Someone added drums. Through the wheels of the caravans she saw other fires burning. Women, barefoot and laughing danced. Their clothes, loose and flowing, billowed, their jewelry glinting.

Emory’s thumb rubbed a circle against the pulse skittering in Petra’s wrist. Behind her, she heard low chanting. She turned to watch an old woman, the chovihanis, was performing the healing. The jingling tambourines grew louder, drowning out the wail of the fiddle. The healer’s voice matched the rising volume; the chants turned to moans and cries.

Emory looked over his shoulder. “She’s calling out to the spirits in the Otherworld.”

“The Otherworld? What other world?”

“You do not believe in the Otherworld?”

“Do you?”

“What you and I believe doesn’t matter. It’s the faith of the one being healed that’s important.” Emory listened. “The chovihanis is trying to stand in the shoes of the sick one.”

Petra smiled.

“What?”

She shook her head. “It’s just—well, they’re all barefoot.”

Emory sighed and continued his interpretation. “It seems the lad is troubled by a malevolent spirit. The chovihanis is attempting to lead his problems into one of the three levels of the Otherworld where they belong.”

“Do you think she can place me where I belong?”

Emory shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

He reached out and touched her cheek. “Because you don’t believe.”

“Then why are we here?” Exasperation tinged Petra’s voice.

Emory stroked her neck, pulling her closer. She knew she needed to lean away, to break the hypnotic contact. She couldn’t trust Emory and yet, sitting beside him in the semi-darkness of the gypsy camp, inhaling the tangy smoke of mugwort and rosemary she felt powerless as he drew her against him.

Emory whispered in her ear. “If need be she can also travel to the three levels of the Otherworld for soul retrieval, which occurs when someone loses a part of their soul in a past or present life. Have you been lost?”

Emory’s lips brushed across Petra’s cheek, a hint of a kiss. She felt, rather than heard, him laugh softly as her lips looked for his. This is it, then? She wondered. Is this why I’m here? To be with Emory? Could she really give up her home, her family, her life plans to be with this person she’d just barely met?

No. Of course not.

But she didn’t want to think that hard. She didn’t want to think at all. Not about tomorrow or the next day. At this moment, she just wanted to be.

In this time, in this place, all she felt was Emory pressing against her, his lips looking for hers. And that was all she wanted.

Until the world exploded in fire, smoke, and the sound of guns.