Lacey plunged into the spiraling portal after the mother that had left her so long ago, her heart left behind in a world that would be closed to her now that it was even on both sides of the barrier. The patterns that fell around her were blurred by the tears in her eyes. Lacey couldn’t reconcile the new pain in her heart at leaving him behind. It was silly. She hardly knew him.

The crash Lacey woke to was a rude wake-up call. Lacey blinked her eyes to clear them as she pushed up from the hospital floor to find her mother holding a pillow over her grandmother’s face.

“Security!” Lacey screamed at the top of her lungs as she lunged toward the pillow.

Once again there was a tug of war, but not over magic this time. The pillow was the newest toy that her mother wished to wrestle control over. It took too long for a nurse to rush in, and Lacey’s breath gulped through sobs of desperation. The war on this side of the portal was almost silent in comparison to the magic of the other side.

“Help!” Lacey called to the nurse. “She’s crazy! She’s trying to kill my grandmother! Get security!”

The nurse hit some panic button somewhere, but Lacey was only interested in keeping her mother away from the hospital bed. Codes were called over the hospital-wide speakers and the squeak of shoes on the floor was the only sign that Lacey had that help was coming. With a massive shove, born of adrenaline, Lacey pushed her mother, soppy wet velvet and all, into the curtain between the beds.

The nurse joined the fray and stood over Lacey’s grandmother as the curtain between the beds seemed to grab what was left of the Goblin Queen. Pans clashed to the tile floor, reminding Lacey of the crash she’d heard… was it only last night? Was it over?

The pounding of footsteps in the hallway reminded Lacey of the earthquake her magic had caused… was it only a few hours before? Security came as Lacey tried to shake the other world from her mind. She tried not to imagine how the war had gone with she and her mother gone from the battlefield. The White Wolf and his army against those elite goblins? Could she have done more? Lacey winced at the thoughts that plagued her as people took notes and her mother was dragged away.

It was a blur. Now that she’d been in the other world, this one seemed like the fantasy. She wanted to call the portal back and leap through it, but it wouldn’t be back. With both she and her mother in this world, where they belonged, there was no imbalance to be repaired. There would be no more portals to handsome wolves who flirted with her even in the direst of circumstances. Again, Lacey cried, as nurses tended to her grandmother and security people asked questions.

The constant beep of the machines was the one thing that allowed Lacey to lay her head down next to the frail hand of her grandmother. It was steady and slow, evidence that her grandmother was still alive. Her grandmother hadn’t woken since before Lacey’s adventure, though Lacey yearned for her comfort and counsel. Most of all, Lacey yearned to tell her grandmother about her own adventure, short though it had been.

It was almost anticlimactic how her life hadn’t changed on this side. She’d called in sick to work, still made it to her evening class and was back here that same evening as if nothing had happened at all. Her mother had been checked into the psych ward of a different hospital altogether. The machines still blipped and the nurse’s shoes still squeaked softly in the halls of the after-dinner lull in hospital business.

Lacey laid her head down on the side of her grandmother’s bed and sighed out. She let her mind drift to an imagined conversation. Maybe she was looking for some closure. Maybe she just didn’t want to stop the fantasy this time.

“What are you working on there?” she asked the White Wolf, too raw to talk about anything important.

“A potion,” he answered carefully, his fingers flying over the beakers and test tubes at his workbench.

“How illuminating,” she teased him, a hitch in her heart at the attempt at humor, not that he needed to know what it cost her to try.

“I must focus, or we could end up troll lollipops,” he countered, his quick glance at her showing a nervous smirk.

She surprised herself with a tiny laugh, so small as to be mistaken for a sniffle.

Stolen story; please report.

“You find the idea of being eaten by trolls funny?” he would have challenged lightly, finally turning from the potions as one particular beaker bubbled.

“Not particularly,” she’d have shaken her head, a ghost of a smile slipping away.

“Lacey,” he whispered and there was something awful in his tone. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t anything she expected. It wasn’t even compassion. It was something that made her want to hope and that was worse.

“Lacey,” her grandmother’s voice interrupted her fantasy, but Lacey didn’t mind. She could return anytime, at least in her mind. Lacey’s head bobbed up to catch the opened eyes.

“Gran,” Lacey blinked back the mist over her vision so that she wouldn’t miss anything the old woman said. “I love you.”

A smile bloomed in the familiar eyes. “Lacey.”

Lacey smiled, and it felt odd, but it was something Lacey was determined to do more often. While her grandmother’s eyes were open, they were looking behind toward the foot of the bed instead of at Lacey. No matter what her grandmother was looking at, Lacey didn’t look to see because she wanted to cherish what might be the last time she saw her grandmother’s eyes smiling and open.

“You have his eyes,” Gran said, her lips smiling, and her eyes lost in nostalgia.

“You were his smile,” came a voice from Lacey’s fantasies.

“I was,” grandmother’s eyes closed on that whispering smile, and Lacey darted a disbelieving look toward the foot of the hospital bed.

The White Wolf stood there in a doctor’s coat and a sinful smile. His eyes weren’t quite sure, but his smile made her stomach drop out.

“Lacey,” and this time it wasn’t her grandmother’s voice.

“What are you doing here?” she asked inanely, feeling like an idiot.

“I brought you something,” he looked almost bashful as he took a vial out of the coat pocket and held it out to her. “It was the least I could do, but it is terribly difficult to find a quiet place to make potions in this world.”

Lacey reached out to take the vial, her eyes filled with bafflement. There was still half of her mind that thought she must be hallucinating even as she could feel the cool glass in her fingers.

“It’s for her, actually,” he pointed at her grandmother with his chin.

Lacey looked down at the pale blue liquid and back up at him.

“You should feed it to her,” his brows lowered as she didn’t talk. “It’s most effective when it’s fresh. I fed her one this morning when I was still mostly invisible, but it wasn’t enough. The magic doesn’t like to switch sides. I made another one in a very quiet breakroom that wasn’t as quiet as I thought it should be.”

Lacey’s hands shook as she dumbly looked down at the vial. “Uh,” she tried to say something and failed horribly.

“You want me to do it?” he nervously took back the vial, skirting her carefully almost as if she was the wild animal. “I’ll do it. Are you okay?”

She watched him grip her grandmother’s chin as he’d gripped hers. He dribbled the liquid past lined lips while lifting Gran’s head so that she wouldn’t choke. It was so gentle. His hands were steady until he finished and then they betrayed him with a slight shimmer of the quivering glass tube that he stuffed in the coat pockets along with his hands.

“Your ears?” Lacey pointed toward his white hair where there was no sign of wolf ears.

“The longer one of us is on this side, the more we fit in,” he tucked a clump of white hair behind very human ears. “As the invisibility fades, so do our animal characteristics.”

“How are you here?” Lacey demanded, finally catching up to ask a reasonable question.

“I came with you,” he shrugged, though the tenseness in his shoulders belied the casualness that should have been part of the gesture.

Lacey paled. “The army…”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” he lied to her, his concern evident even as he tried to hide it.

While she’d gone on with her life, they’d been fighting without their most prominent and powerful leader. Sure, she had taken the Queen away with her, but that elite goblin squad had looked challenging even with the White Wolf fighting alongside them. She had an image of Graham without a healing potion to combat a sword wound and shuddered.

Gran stirred, but Lacey’s eyes were caught on the White Wolf.

“You have to go back,” she insisted, again feeling her heart lurch at the thought of it.

“Come with me,” he whispered almost too soft for her to hear.

“Gran,” Lacey’s eyes filled with tears. “Besides, if I come back, the imbalance could let my mother come back too, couldn’t it?”

“You think so?” his eyes narrowed. “On this side, I have the same magic that you had on my side. I’ve had a quieter day than you had to fiddle with the magic.”

“It’s a risk,” Lacey shook her head, still pretty sure he wasn’t really standing there at all. She wanted to throw her arms around him and run away again, but not if it put his world and his people at risk.

“It is,” he nodded, pressing his lips together and looking down at the bed.

“Take me with you,” came a new feathery voice and Lacey snapped her attention to the woman on the bed.

“He isn’t there anymore,” the White Wolf warned Gran. “There is little left of what you knew in my world.”

“I don’t care,” Gran insisted, more color in her face than she’d shown in years. “I won’t make the same mistake again.”

“But,” Lacey stammered. “You can’t!” What she meant was that if Lacey couldn’t go, then her Gran certainly couldn’t. Lacey winced at the selfish thought. “Half of this stuff is keeping you alive!”

“I’d rather die there than live here,” Gran breathed out, miraculously pushing herself up into a sitting position. “Would you deny me, Little Wolf?”

“Never,” and he smiled at the woman Lacey hardly recognized.

“But!” Lacey was racing to catch up.

“Don’t stand there gawping,” Gran demanded. “Get me some clothes.”

“But!” Lacey’s gaze darted back and forth between a very determined Gran and the White Wolf’s laughing eyes.

“Are you coming or not, girl?” Gran said, her eyes twinkled as the White Wolf’s grin turned flirtatious again.

The portal swirled into existence behind the White Wolf, and he raised his eyebrows at her.

“Hell yes!” Lacey grinned.