Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

He hung his head. “I’m scared, Wallace. What if it’s too late? What if I took
too long?”
Wallace turned over in midair, looking down at Cameron. He didn’t cast a
shadow. Neither of them did, but it didn’t matter. They were here. They were
real. “What’re a couple of years in the face of eternity?”
Cameron sniffled. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” Wallace said. “I do.”
Time seemed to move in fits and starts for the rest of the day. Hugo spent
most of it with Cameron. For a brief moment, Wallace was intensely jealous,
but he let it go. Cameron needed Hugo more. Wallace had made his choice.
“What’s it like?” Mei asked him. They were in the kitchen, Mei moving
back and forth between one of the ovens and the stove. Just because the shop
was closed, she’d told him, didn’t mean the work stopped too.
“What?” The leash was tied around the bottom of the refrigerator, cinched
tightly so that his feet brushed the ground.
She hesitated. “Hugo said you…” She motioned at her chest.
He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“Wallace.”
“Untethered,” he said finally.
She took her hand in his, tugging gently so his feet bumped the floor. “I’ve
got you.”
He smiled at her. “I know you do.”
“I won’t let you float away. You’re not a balloon.”
He laughed until he could barely breathe.
He didn’t know what they were planning.
He should have known it was something. They weren’t the types to let
things lie as they were.
He wandered the bottom floor of the tea shop, Apollo happily tugging on
the leash to hold him in place, Wallace doing his best to ignore the little
whispers at the back of his head. They weren’t like what he’d heard with