I take Noah’s advice, go back to Aiden’s place.

I hop the fence again, knowing that it would be disastrous to run into Kent or Ellen right now. This time I fuck up my landing, nearly fall into the backyard. My body feels heavy, slow, clumsy.

I stop just inside the sliding glass door.

“Aiden?” I call, in my hoarse, exhausted voice.

No answer, but I didn’t expect one.

It takes an eternity to get my Converse off, to work my arms out of my jacket. I pad silently into Aiden’s bedroom, go to his bed, and crawl into it. I put my back against the headboard and curl up into a ball, my arms wound tightly around my knees.

It’s almost like I’m just waiting for him to come home from work. Unbuttoning his sleeves, speaking to me with that voice I love so much, all purring and warm. Hi, Linden. Did you miss me?

I close my eyes.

I’m trying to stay strong, but my Companion Plant has been uprooted. I’m fading, falling without him by my side.

My Aiden. So halting and unsure when he’s feeling shy around me. The stuttering nervousness in his words, his gestures. His soft, brilliant eyes blinking hard and fast.

Then there’s the other kind of Aiden. Comfortable, open, unwound. He stretches out on the couch and looks up at me and his body does all the speaking for him. Something about the way he lounges back against the cushions, the rumble of his rich voice, his arms lazily tucked back behind his head… he could be talking about anything, but the message he sends with his body is that we’re about to go to bed together.

He sends me messages with his eyes, too.

Those sweet, sensitive, observant blue eyes. Sometimes poetic and erotic. Sometimes full of playfulness, sometimes burning with fire.

I’ve been so happy, living in the heavenly floating garden of loving Aiden. He warned me that there were dark places here, that we would inevitably stumble into them. I wanted to think that when the time came, I would be strong enough, capable enough to navigate those places. To help Aiden through them, just as he helps me.

But nothing I’ve done has helped, and strong is the last word I would use to describe how I feel right now.

I’m so desperately lonely without him. The entire world feels cold. All I want to do is sit by the fire of my life and unthaw in his warmth.

The sound of birds chirping outside makes me open my eyes. I didn’t even think about it when I left Noah’s place, but - this is the second dawn I’ve spent without Aiden. No, not dawn - morning.

I check the time, do some math in my head, and realize that Aiden has now been missing for over thirty-six hours.

I’ve had the curious sensation of standing outside of myself, a few feet away, watching myself silently crying on the bed. Not existing in my body, because my insides are dusted with gunpowder right now, and if I go back in there to face my thoughts and feelings, everything will go up in flames.

But this realization rips the numbness away and slams me back into my body.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Thirty-six hours? Thirty-six fucking hours? Don’t they say that if a missing person isn’t found in the first forty-eight hours, the odds of finding them become very slim? Or was it twenty-four hours? And is that true, or is it just something I heard on TV?

I can't make my eyes focus on anything. Everything before me is swimming, expanding and contracting, a jumble of blurred, colorful, kinetic shapes. Black clouds touch the edges of my vision, and something tightens around my chest like a tourniquet. I’m trying to breathe, but the air may as well be one solid block of ice…

Suddenly I become aware that I’m on my side, curled up in the bed, my inhaler clutched in my hands. Aiden’s night table drawer is open, so I must have gotten my spare out of it. I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember anything about the last few minutes.

I only came back to myself because with my face this close to the sheets, I’m breathing in huge gasps of vetiver-scented air. For a second, it felt like Aiden was back.

I bury my face into his pillow.

“Please,” I whisper. “Aiden, please, I - I need you so bad, right now...”

A soft, musical sound meets my ears.

I open my eyes, confused, searching for the source. Am I hallucinating, now? It seems possible.

My gaze roams over Aiden’s room, then falls upon the malachite plant. The leaves have just shifted, making their gentle music as they brush against each other.

I sit up slowly, staring at the smooth, sea-green leaves, beautifully veined like gemstones. The window is open, but I know that those leaves didn’t shift because of the wind. The leaves of this plant are heliotropic, but in a unique way.

They don’t turn to face the sun. They turn to face the Heliomancer.

“Oh,” I hear myself say, and then - “Oh, oh my god-”

I stumble out of Aiden’s bed and rush over to the dresser where the plant is sitting, swiping my tears onto the sleeve of my flannel.

“You know where he is, don’t you?” I touch a fingertip to one of the leaves, my voice shaking. “You always know."

I pick up the pot, hold it to my chest, and turn around to face away from the dresser. As I thought, the leaves move again, shifting to face the same direction they were before I moved it. North.

And if they moved before I picked up the plant - that means that Aiden moved. It means he’s okay enough to move, at least a little bit.

I stand there for a second, wide-eyed, then let out a bright, gasping laugh.

Sunfire bursts to life in my heart, pours through my chest. The days and nights of no sleep fall away like they never happened. Hope and energy and excitement roar in sparkling ladders down my veins, dizzying in their intensity, and my hands start to shake so hard that I nearly drop the plant. I set it back on the dresser, then sprint into the living room, on the hunt for some scissors. Moving as if carried on a wild wind, geed up by my realization, by my renewed hope.

I emerge from Aiden’s apartment a few minutes later, my jacket and shoes back on. In my hands: a cutting of the malachite plant, in a clear jar half-filled with water. I hold it to my chest like it’s the most precious treasure on this planet.

My magic-borne compass. My guideline to my Companion Plant.

I put it in the cupholder of the silver rental car. The three leaves growing from the cutting turn on their slender green necks, facing north.

“I’m on my way,” I whisper, putting the car in gear. “Stay where you are, Sugar Maple. I’m on my way.”

~~~~

Rain starts pelting down against the windshield as I drive. It makes the going slow, and this was already taking longer than I hoped.

The roads don’t conform to the movements of the malachite plant. If it shifts to face northwest, and there’s no turn I can take to go that way, I have to double back.

No matter. I’m undeterred. I’ve felt so empty, an echo of myself for the last thirty-six hours. I finally feel like me again, and now I have a plan. A path to follow, a way to Aiden.

My eyes flick up to the stormy clouds overhead as a huge rumble of thunder rolls through the air. Lightning forks through the sky, throwing into illumination the place where I’m going.

I glance down at the malachite plant. It’s telling me that I’m still headed the right way.

“Are you sure?” I ask, but the plant stays obstinately facing its chosen direction.

It looks like I’m headed directly for the mountain where the Fling Thing happens. But that doesn’t make sense - can’t make sense. Kasey already checked the field and the road. Aiden left no footprints there.

I start to follow the road that curves around the base of the mountain. It rises in a gradual slope around the eastern side, leading all the way up to the field. But the malachite cutting moves in its jar, telling me not to go that way.

I pull the car over to make sure that its movements aren’t affecting the direction I’m being sent. They are not. The plant wants me to turn, then go straight ahead.

There’s not even a road there. If I go where it’s telling me, I’ll be walking right into the forest that blankets the mountainside.

Did Aiden… walk here in a direct beeline from Kent’s house, right up the side of the mountain, ignoring the road?

No time to spend on theories right now. At this particular moment, I could care less about why or how. I only care about where.

I stare through the windshield at the rocky, wooded, superstructure of nature before me. I hesitate for a second, wondering if I should drive around to the other side of the mountain. See if it’s not the mountain at all, but something beyond it.

No. Something is telling me I’m on the right track.

I stuff my phone into the glove compartment so that it doesn’t get destroyed in the rain. Then I carefully take the jar with the cutting out of the cupholder and get out of the rental car.

The freezing rain is coming down in sheets. I’m soaked through in seconds. I gasp, slick my drenched hair out of my eyes, and then shield the malachite plant as if I’m holding a lit candle. Its leaves are softer than cotton, despite the noises they make when they brush together. I have to assume that they’re extremely delicate.

But the rain doesn’t seem to affect them. The droplets bounce off of each leaf, make a quiet, musical little noise, and fall away.

Turns out this soft little plant is tougher than it looks.

I check to make sure no cars are about to come tearing through the downpour, then cross the flooded asphalt and weave my way into the trees.

Evergreens rise up on all sides, veiled by curtains of falling water. The constant rushing sound of the storm is punched through now and then by hammer-strikes of deep thunder.

I scramble up over rock outcrops, struggling against the swift currents of water formed by the downpour, treading on waterlogged beds of pine needles. Fog drifts around my ankles, swirling as I move. The storm clouds have made both the sky and the forest dark.

The rain is freezing, but I’m heated from within by the fire in my heart. I’m half surprised that the droplets don't turn to steam on my skin.

I’m navigating purely by my senses and the malachite plant. I’ve lost all sense of time, but I know that I’ve been going for a while, that I must be kind of far up the mountainside by now.

I stop as the malachite plant moves slightly, telling me to turn. The beeline I’ve been following breaks to the left. I stare out into the ocean of evergreens, my labored breaths misting in the cold air, raindrops running down my face. Catching on the stubble that’s grown in after two days of no sleep and no shaving.

I check the malachite plant one more time, then abandon the straightforward path.

I shout for Aiden as I go, over and over again, my throat growing raw - but the sound of my voice is swallowed up by the storm. I snag one of my Converse on a bramble and hear the fabric tear. I wrench my foot free and keep going.

The channel of energy I've tapped into runs deep. It’s carrying me onwards, pushing me through branches that scrape at my face and hands, over tangled roots and beds of fallen leaves, through the rain, the thunder, the flashes of lightning, the cold. I just keep going and going, wiping the rain out of my eyes, clutching the slippery jar with the little magic growth inside.

And then -

I jolt to a stop. Everything comes to a complete standstill. The jar falls from my hands and tumbles to the ground.

I take a huge, gasping breath, and sprint for my Companion Plant.

I’m some bizarre mixture of overwhelmingly relieved to see him and fucking terrified of how I’ve found him. He’s sitting on the forest floor with his back against a white oak tree, as if he fell back against it and then slid down it. He’s slumped over, unmoving, his head hanging down. The rain is pouring over him, but he doesn’t appear to be aware of it. I can’t even tell if he’s breathing.

I fall to my knees before him, take his face in my trembling hands, and tip it up to mine. Push his drenched chestnut hair out of the way.

He doesn’t move or react at all, doesn’t so much as open his eyes.

“Aiden!” I start hyperventilating, a stab of icy panic plunging through my heart. “No, no no no no-”

Hot tears are mixing with the frigid rain on my cheeks. Aiden remains motionless, silent.

“Please,” I stammer, smoothing my thumbs over his face. “Wake up, wake up, wake up…”

I tip forward and start pressing rain-soaked kisses all over his face. Then his mouth - this time a hard and urgent kiss - still holding his jaw in my hands.

“Aiden,” I say desperately, when this gets no response. I press my forehead to his, trying not to fall apart. “It’s me, it’s Jamie, can’t - can’t you hear me? Wake up, please wake up, it’s me, and I need you, please-”

I break off sharply as Aiden’s eyes flutter open. They’re dazed and hazy, but they find mine and stop there.

I freeze, then let out a staggering, breathless, euphoric laugh. To see Aiden’s eyes open is a miracle - more than a miracle, it’s the best fucking sight I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Oh my god!” I sob, and fling my arms around him. “Thank god, oh my god…”

Aiden’s forehead is against my shoulder, and I can feel the warmth of his breath against my chest. But his breaths feel wrong, strained and shallow.

I draw back and take his face into my hands again.

“What happened?” My voice is shaking just as hard as my fingers. “What are you doing here, what-?”

Aiden lifts his hand. It looks like the movement is costing him, as if his arm weighs a thousand pounds. He puts his fingers to his throat, trying to tell me something with his eyes.

“What-?” I look at his hand, then look back into his beautiful blue eyes. “You - you can’t talk?”

He nods, looking absolutely terrified.

“Okay, don’t - don’t worry, we’ll fix it,” I stammer, smoothing my palm over his face. “But I need to get you home first. Can you walk?”

Aiden puts his hand back on the forest floor and tries to push himself up. He ends up slumping back against the tree, his eyes fluttering closed again.

I have almost no energy left, myself. And I’m scared that if I feel what Aiden is feeling right now, on top of what I’m already feeling - that might be enough to put me away. But I see no other choice.

I put my hand on his neck and open the connection. I try to send a burst of my energy through to him as fast as humanly possible, then wrench my fingers back.

Aiden takes a heaving breath, and I sway on the spot, briefly overcome by the impact of the few emotions of his that managed to slip through. Or maybe I’m just running on empty, on fumes.

Somehow I manage to stagger to my feet. I take Aiden’s hands in mine, and when I pull him, he stumbles upright.

I could fall to my knees, I’m so exhausted. I’m half-carrying Aiden’s weight as we go, since his head is hanging and he can hardly keep himself on two feet. It’s clear that he can only move slowly. The only direction I know for sure to go is downhill, so we might emerge from the forest nowhere near the car. And the rain is still pouring down.

All of this means that we have a long way back ahead of us.

But I don’t care. I don’t give a damn about any of that.

Aiden is back in my arms, and that’s all that matters.