A growl from Elliott let her know he disagreed, but he didn’t say anything more, and Christian only nodded before he faded out of view. It was just as well. Cadence was exhausted. She didn’t really want to talk to anyone else, just let her husband pick her up in his strong arms and carry her back to the SUV so she could take a shower and fall asleep for a few years.
“I hate to interrupt,” Scarlet said, taking a step closer to where they were sitting. “Cadence, it is wonderful you’re okay. But Jamie, what about that serum you made? Do you think we should try it? If we can get the Hybrids back up there, we might be able to save some of those people who are still trapped in the holes.”
“Oh, right.” Jamie scratched his head, like he’d forgotten about the serum. “Yeah, why don’t you and Cale start working on that. The serum is in my backpack, which is in the trees near where we first encountered the black creatures. You can take Heather, but Cassidy needs to stay here for a minute.”
Scarlet nodded and turned to go, Cale giving Cadence one more thoughtful smile before he went with her.
“Sure is great to see ya, Cadence,” Heather said. “I wanna know whatcha remember later. I reckon you mighta got a firsthand account of the ever after. See ya later!”
Cadence said goodbye to Heather, but her forehead wrinkled in confusion as the Hybrid bounded away. “What is she talking about?” Cadence asked to no one in particular.
Rather than answer her, Aaron said, “Everyone else can go help with that operation.” Almost the entire team recognized they were included in that order. They waved or said goodbye, smiling at her, as they followed the two Healers and the cowgirl away, leaving Cadence sitting in a pool of drying blood with her sister, her husband, her best friend, his son, and the man who’d brought her back from the dead.
She had to ask the question again. “What did Heather mean by that? Why would she think I remember anything about being out?”
All of their eyes shifted to Cassidy. “Right before you opened your eyes, Heather and I picked up on some strange thoughts in your head. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. After you fell, we couldn’t detect you at all. It was like the guys when they were in the portal. Almost the whole time Jamie and Aaron were doing CPR, your mind was blank, and your IAC wasn’t registering. But then, a few minutes before you came back to us, I started picking up on a conversation you were either having or were remembering having had recently. You were telling someone you needed to make it back here. And you called her ‘Grandma.’”
Cadence’s knitted brow furrowed up even more. “Grandma?” she repeated. “What? Why would I...? Do you think I was talking to Grandma?”
“I have no idea,” Cassidy admitted. “But you seemed to think you were. You said it was lovely there and you were so happy you got to see everyone, but you didn’t want to stay.”
Elliott chimed in, “You said you didn’t get a chance to talk to Jack.”
“Jack?” Cadence’s eyes widened. Ever since she’d accidentally shot Jack, she couldn’t think about him at all without the feelings of regret and sorrow filling her gut like lead. She’d dreamt about him so many times since that night, and he was usually angry, trying to chase her down and kill her. She shook her head. No memory of anything she’d seen while she was technically dead would come back to her. Not even of seeing Jack.
“And then I registered a man’s voice and thought you might’ve been talking to Grandpa—or thought you were.” Cassidy shrugged. “You took off running, or again, thought you were, trying to get back to the people you love who love you, and then Heather said you collapsed on the ground, and a few seconds later you opened your eyes, gasping for air. Aaron was breathing for you the whole time, so it doesn’t make sense to me that you felt like you weren’t breathing. You had air in your lungs.”
Cadence did remember that part—the not being able to breathe part. She looked at Jamie.
“Even with Aaron breathing air into your lungs, you weren’t getting as much oxygen as you would if you were doing it on your own. So that’s probably why you felt that way, although you did seem more out of breath than most people I’ve performed CPR on.” He seemed unsure of an explanation, and Cadence didn’t have much to offer either.
She sat back slightly, glad to have Aaron and Jamie to lean on. In her mind, she pictured her Grandma Janette’s face. Thinking about seeing her, having talked to her recently, almost brought a tear to her eye. It would’ve been lovely to see her grandparents, especially since she’d never met her grandfather. But she couldn’t conjure up any pictures of where she’d been.
Cadence went back to the last thoughts she’d had after Daunator exploded. She remembered hanging in the air for a second, telling Aaron she was sorry, and then she was falling. It was hard to think about the journey to the ground, and the pain she’d suffered when she hit made her stomach roll over, even in her memory. She’d laid on the ground for a long moment, struggling to breathe, wondering where Jamie was, and then her eyes had failed her. She remembered closing them, expecting to see black, but it was a white light instead.
Then what? Her sister’s recounting came back to her. it was lovely there, but she didn’t want to stay. She needed to make it back here….
“Why, we’re here, of course. Everyone is. Isn’t it lovely?”
Cadence’s eyes flew open as the words her grandmother had spoken came back to her. “Wait—I do remember! I do remember speaking to Grandma!” She looked around at the faces of the people she loved most. Each of them had had someone there, where she’d just returned from, too. “Cassidy—Grandma and Grandpa were there! I spoke to them. So were Jack and Drew. Jack was playing baseball, so I didn’t get to talk to him, but Drew was shopping. I ran into her on her way out of a little boutique. She looked so happy.”
