Marvel: Thomas at Luke and Wren's Who: Thomas, Luke, possible Wren later? Not sure. What: The latest episode in the spellbounding series, Thomas' Bad Decisions When: After this. Where: Luke and Wren's House! Rating: Safe, except for some scary stuff. Nothing triggery except maybe... the dead.
Thomas could have used public transportation. He could have found a car to drive him. But he didn't have time for any of that. He wanted haste. So he traded five hours of life lived, a shell containing the voice of a dead girl and a skein of hair that tied a soul to a stone for the ability to get to where he wanted to go immediately.
Unfortunately that meant he had to end up on shadowed ground, and it turned out that Luke and Wren's basement was lined with cement. Thomas, by this time holding on to his control only by the reflex of long practice, cracked the gray sealant with a blow of power that took it from subzero to melting and back so quickly no substance could withstand him. From the other side of the Working, he made sure there was nothing further on the other side that might prevent his passage. Then he stepped in.
A cluster of the dead met him on the other side as he pulled his feet from the packed earth, gone sticky with the passage. They had been dead far too long for him to recognize their clothing. Their tongues had rotted and their eyes were soft-boiled eggs in the back of their heads. He pushed them aside, with his arm, not with power, and they fell back out of his way, the soft moans and sandpaper growls of dead air Thomas' equivalent of waiting room chatter.
He moved toward the stair, purposefully, spreading out his senses through the shadows in the house to find his son's presence there.