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  Sandra studied the handsome prince in wary fascination. If only he could speak, what would he say? Had he really left? Or had the machine forced him into a coma-like state? And if he’d gone, why hadn’t he returned? Or had he changed his mind and couldn’t find his way back? Most important of all, could the same thing happen to her?

  She inhaled deeply to steady her nerves. “How long has he been like that?”

  “Several years. He’s my only deviation from the norm. I assure you, Ms. Lowell, my machine is perfectly safe.” Sandra looked to Liza, who perused the monitors. “He’s in a vegetative state—almost no brain activity. Sandra, I have a bad feeling. You should reconsider.”

  “Nonsense.” Dr. Flores patted Liza’s shoulder. “Your concern for your friend is admirable but unwarranted. At first, I blamed the prince’s predicament on my machine, too. We stopped the astral projections, double and triple checked our data. But it wasn’t our error or a technological malfunction.”

  “How do you know?” Sandra asked, still skeptical.

  “We received a letter dated before the prince left, stating the unequivocal fact that he didn’t intend to return to an existence trapped inside a body.” He handed her a note. “This is a copy. Read for yourself. Experts verified the handwriting. It was his choice not to return, not any fault of my machine.”

  “And what’s to prevent this fiasco from recurring?” Liza asked.

  Flores didn’t appear to take offense. “We screen our candidates more carefully now, and we also subject everyone to the same exhaustive battery of psychological tests Sandra took last week.”

  Sandra sighed. Flores had impeccable credentials. And the fact that he’d openly admitted one failure was to his credit. “Am I a good candidate?”

  He didn’t flinch. “You’re perfect. Now come. It’s time to experience my invention for yourself.”

  They followed Dr. Flores down a long corridor, and Liza whispered in Sandra’s ear. “You don’t have to do this. No job is worth ending up like that.”

  Sandra ignored her suggestion. “I have a few more questions, Dr. Flores. Why is the Romanian at the institute instead of a hospital?”

  “If we move his body, the astral spirit won’t know where to return—if he should so choose.”

  Since Flores’s sincere tone reflected complete frankness, Sandra swallowed her disbelief. His spirit refused to return? She found it much more likely that the guy had had a mental breakdown. Flores had sent her a DVD of background material about astral projection. She’d watched a patient sit in a chair, his heart rate slowing a bit on the monitor. Breathing deepened. Then absolutely nothing happened for twenty minutes until the patient returned and made all sorts of unverifiable claims.

  Perhaps the Sun’s experts could discredit Flores’s machine, if not his theories. “Could you describe the mechanism behind your invention?”

  “Later. I’ll explain everything once you experience astral travel for yourself.” His tone implied she’d be more receptive later. Didn’t he know reporters lived to poke holes in other people’s theories?

  Dr. Flores opened a door into a well-lit room. If not the same room, it was a twin to the one she’d viewed on the tape. A reclining chair in the middle of the floor eclipsed the rest of the equipment. Overhead, a brown box hung from the ceiling.

  “Have a seat, please.” He gestured to the chair, his tone confident. “Don’t worry. I’ve done this thousands of times.” Sandra handed Liza her purse and ignored her friend’s disapproving frown. Flores must have noticed Liza’s dubious expression because he redoubled his assurances. “I’d hardly invite the press to a demonstration if I hadn’t worked out the bugs, now, would I?”

  “Of course not.” Sandra settled back in the chair and grinned at Liza, reminding herself that the larger and more outrageous the scientific scam, the bigger the headline.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m ready. Let’s do it.”

  Chapter Two

  The planet Farii

  Central Milky Way Galaxy

  “SIRE, HAVE YOU signed the document?”

  Daveck Gorait, head warrior of West Farii, strode across his ruling chamber to glare down at the parchment in his chief counsel’s hands—a document he didn’t want to look at, never mind sign. But even he couldn’t delay much longer. Backed into a defensive stance he’d never wanted, he restrained his annoyance. It wasn’t his advisor’s fault that after Daveck had poured so much credit into spies, he still hadn’t found where his enemy, Maglek, had hidden the Zorash, an ancient totem that protected their world from climate changes.

  Twenty years ago, Maglek had betrayed the entire warrior caste by stealing the Zorash and using the totem’s powers to amass private wealth. Ever since the Zorash had vanished, hurricane activity had increased by a factor of fifteen. Disturbing volcanic lava flows disrupted trade routes that had previously been open for centuries. Those people who didn’t freeze during the chaotic winter storms starved through the spring drought.

  Despite Daveck’s vast resources, he had been unable to right the wrong, recover the totem, and return the Zorash to its rightful place on the ancient pedestal and restore their climate. With the Zorash missing and storms worsening every season, the need to reverse the climatic upheaval grew more dire by the day.

  Daveck kept his tone even. “An alliance is my only option?”

  “Not necessarily.” Dinar folded his hands within the sleeves of his robe. “It’s possible the lady doesn’t even know about her father’s theft.”

  “This alliance is the only way I can make a legal search of her property?”

  “We could go to war with the East,” Dinar suggested.

  Daveck sighed. “War will only breed mistrust. Farii knows I’m not eager to wed, but we need cooperation.”

  “An alliance with that traitor’s family—” Dinar practically spat the words, “will only build a false trust.”

  “If a false trust works, I will have done my duty. This alliance is only a means to recovering the Zorash.”

  “So it comes to you sacrificing . . . all.”

  “There is no other viable option.” Daveck’s voice dropped and he rubbed the serpent brand on his arm to remind himself of his duty. His people had suffered enough. War was not the answer. So what if he abhorred the idea of marriage? Lightning flashed outside his office window, reminding him that his personal preferences were nothing compared to the empty bellies of starving children. Daveck picked up the pen. With a bold flourish, he signed the document.

  Earth

  DR. FLORES TAPED the round pad dangling from the overhead astral machine to Sandra’s forehead. He flicked a switch, and the box hummed. “It’ll take a moment to warm up. Meanwhile, a mild tranquilizer will help you relax.”

  Flores removed a hermetically sealed bottle of pills from a cabinet and handed it to Liza. “Please give her one of these pills.”

  After checking the label, Liza broke open the factory-packaged medicine and popped the lid, and Flores handed Sandra a sealed water bottle. Sandra washed down the bitter pill with the water and disregarded Liza’s brows knitted with worry. The soft sounds of a classical symphony drifted down from overhead speakers. The lights dimmed.

  Sandra fought the urge to fidget, and averted her gaze from Liza, unwilling to reveal any apprehension. Nothing was going to happen. But what if it did? What if she left her body and freaked, or couldn’t find her way back?

  “What do I do?”

  Flores checked his machine. “Relax.”

  “Relax? Like going to sleep and dreaming?”

  He shook his head.

  Too bad. She wouldn’t have minded another bout with her dream man. At the memory of her dream lover, she squirmed in her seat. Then again, for that kind of dream, she’d require privacy.

  “The drifting-tin
gling sensation is different from anything you’ve experienced. You’ll remain alert, abnormally awake, and serene. If anything frightens you, your astral spirit will immediately return to your body. But most patients report only peacefulness.”

  His explanation reassured her—which was silly because if she didn’t believe she could astral project, she shouldn’t have felt any relief from his words. Stop analyzing. Close your eyes.

  Eyes closed, the man from her dream last night—all tall, handsome, and glaring at her as if she’d done something wrong—branded himself on the inside of her eyelids. She gripped the chair, tension settling into her shoulders. Let it go. It was only a dream.

  “Breathe evenly,” the doctor instructed in a sing-song voice.

  The comfortable chair cradled her, supporting her neck and spine. Tension eased out of her muscles and peace engulfed her. She drifted, her thoughts focusing on the most pleasant part of her day—her morning dream. Her lover’s eyes glimmered with promise. His lips curved into a haunting smile.

  Her skin felt weird . . . like a silk handkerchief being tugged out of a pocket. At first she attributed the odd sensation to her daydream. But when she suddenly opened her eyes, she appeared to be about two inches from the ceiling. Oh . . . my . . . sweet lord. She was looking down on her physical body from overhead. From the freakin’ ceiling. Below her, she could see her body in the chair with her eyes still closed, hands relaxed. She appeared to be in a deep trance or sleeping—just like the patient in the DVD.

  Only she was floating by the ceiling.

  Her mind had actually separated from her body. She was astral projecting. And somehow the drug kept the calm washing through her free-floating mind, bathing her in peace, as she drifted on a current of air.

  So the good doctor wasn’t a fraud after all. Amazing. Awesome. What a story she would write. Except if she wrote the truth, who would believe her?

  Below her astral spirit, she watched Liza work on the physical plane. Liza lifted Sandra’s wrist and checked her pulse, smoothed back her short hair from her cheekbones, seemingly unaware Sandra had left her body. Flores hummed off-tune.

  Okay. She was doing it. Astral projecting. How far could she go?

  Drifting like a ghost through the ceiling and past steel girders, Sandra peered at the skyscrapers of downtown Tampa. The university’s minarets, onion-shaped towers of silver, glinted across the Hillsborough River. In Ybor City the trolleys ferrying tourists appeared no larger than toy cars, and the interstate was a thin ribbon heading west across the bay.

  Gliding higher through the scattered cirrus clouds and past a few drones, Sandra tested the limits of her newfound freedom over the splendor of the Florida coastline. How easy it was to soar across the state and the country in a mere moment. The blue-green waters of the coast merged with the deep sapphire of the Gulf Stream, the green of the Ozarks, the flooding Mississippi, the snow-capped Alaskan peaks—awe-inspiring images of nature’s grandeur flew by in an instant.

  The Pacific Ocean and Hawaii beckoned, but her career called— she had a story to write. A story so fantastic, so shocking, so controversial, it might be just what she needed to rocket her career, if anyone believed her. Still, she had to try. She wasn’t hallucinating. This was real. Reversing direction, Sandra began a downward spiral and steered gently toward Tampa.

  She floated calmly, certain of finding her way back to her body. Then like a huge, invisible hand, a force reached out and grabbed her.

  What the hell? It was as if something had ripped the steering wheel from her hands. And she was caught in the force. Trapped. Terribly out of control.

  Darkness engulfed her in a silent, starry womb—but oddly, she felt only calm, not terror, as a vortex sucked her into a spinning, twisting turbulence of slashing color and darting light.

  Sandra spun forward, backward, through a dark vacuum pierced by streams of color. But where was her fear of falling into chaos? Panic should have crashed over her in waves. According to Flores, fright should cause the automatic return of her astral spirit to her body. But despite her desire to return, she couldn’t summon fear—only a sense of marvel at stars streaming by.

  Whatever force had her strengthened its grasp. She floated past the moon in absolute silence, savored the sights of Mars, Jupiter, and Pluto. The sun shrank behind her until it appeared like other stars, a glittering pinpoint in an obsidian sky. Her reporter’s mind cataloged the details, a calm counterpoint to her unnaturally suppressed fear of the unknown. Cold black emptiness surrounded her. Sandra told herself to go back. But she couldn’t. Star after star sped past. Time lost meaning.

  Finally, her speed declined, and one orange star grew larger and brighter in the vacuum. Something wrenched her toward this sun’s fourth planet, a turquoise ball rotating under three moons. She spied three hurricanes lined up over the ocean, and a volcano erupting south of the equator. Questions tumbled in her mind, but the world rushed to meet her too quickly to sort through her myriad impressions.

  The horizon sped toward her, revealing a small continent. As if this was her fate and final destination, a force other than gravity tugged her downward, over rounded ice-capped mountains jutting through fierce snow storms and desert sands of whirling dust devils. Signs of civilization—square fields, silver roads, and golden skyscrapers—flashed by.

  A domed structure with a crystal roof stood perched on a hillside at the end of a row of similar structures. Sandra plummeted through the brilliant roof. Inside, windows of pink-colored glass rose from the dusky marble-like floor to the domed ceiling high above. The proportions of the tables and chairs seemed wrong, the legs too long and thin. A spectacular carpet of changing iridescent colors lit the room, causing odd reflections to dance over the walls and onto the people inside.

  As once Sandra had watched her own body from the astral plane, she now watched another woman who was lying on a circular crimson bed. The woman screamed. Sandra hovered above. What was going on? The woman screamed again, but no one spoke to ask what was wrong.

  What had happened? What was this place? Why was she here? And how could she return to Earth and her body? On Earth, when she’d astral projected, she’d easily chosen her own direction, soaring out of Flores’s facility, but here a force held her in place.

  The woman below clutched the crimson coverlet and her screams ebbed into great sobbing shudders. For a moment Sandra feared she’d frightened the poor lady. But no one paid the slightest attention to Sandra. She must have been invisible in her astral state.

  Surrounded by a group of attendants, the black-haired woman collapsed in the pillows, her eyes swollen and red from weeping. Sandra glimpsed two arms, two legs, a face with all the proper features of a human, and supposed she should consider herself lucky. She could have found herself on a planet of giant roaches or spiders.

  Oddly, the shrill wailing stopped suddenly but for no reason Sandra could discern. Yet, in the space of a breath, the woman’s expression had changed from hysterical sobbing to vacant-eyed serenity.

  The stranger’s aura ascended from her body and floated toward Sandra, explaining the sudden silence of the body below them. Oh my. The woman was leaving her body, astral projecting.

  As much as Sandra welcomed astral company, she had to warn the stranger to return before the peculiar force also pulled her away from her home, her world, and everything she held dear.

  Go back while you still can.

  I prefer to risk this existence than to remain on Farii.

  The other’s thoughts conveyed a grim hopelessness wrapped in overwhelming grief. Her golden aura flickered, then vanished through the crystalline roof, her telepathic communication leaving no doubt of her intentions. Like the Romanian prince, she’d given up, moved on, abandoned life.

  Sandra had no time to mourn her passing or to dwell on what had so saddened the woman. The same relentless force th
at had propelled Sandra across the galaxy tugged her toward the spiritless body. Closer.

  What the hell was happening, now?

  The force shoved, pushed, tugged, and Sandra’s astral spirit merged with the alien woman’s flesh.

  Sandra screamed in a low-pitched voice she didn’t recognize as her own. With vision sharper than any she’d ever possessed, Sandra stared at a roomful of females, some crying, others patting her back or arms in consoling gestures. Outside the room, the wind keened and rain pattered on the roof. Lightning lit up the skies and reflected through the windows. Thunder clapped and the acrid taste of terror welled in her mouth as she registered the physical sensations of strange fibers rubbing against her skin, breathed in the corky aroma of dry air, and licked the strange shape of her own unfamiliarly full lips.

  The gravity seemed too light, the air too thin and pungent. Every sense seemed skewed, alien, as disturbing as the violent storm raging outside.

  A long-nosed woman slapped Sandra across the face and spoke harshly. The stinging blow stopped her screaming and allowed the lyrical sounds of an alien language to chime in her ears. Sandra couldn’t understand them. But then why should she? By God, she’d traveled to the end of the universe and expected to hear English?

  Stifling a hysterical giggle, she breathed deeply, trying to steady the rising panic. She let the thin air out with a slow hiss and forced her reeling thoughts into a semblance of order.

  She was alive. Mostly unhurt. And surrounded by immaculately dressed women who all wore their hair down to their waists and who flinched at every clap of thunder as if unaccustomed to storms.

  The woman who’d slapped her stared down her long nose at Sandra. Her expression revealed she was considering doing so again, to stop Sandra from pitching a freakin’ fit. Her jumbled thoughts swirled, making her dizzy. She dropped her gaze to see unfamiliar hands—her hands—twisting the too-soft blanket. She couldn’t draw enough air into her oxygen-starved lungs and despite her now tall size and lack of muscles, her every movement was too big, the gravity too light. Fear soured her breath and the acrid scent of cork increased her light-headedness.