Free Noah by Jacquelyn Frank

inconceivable. He was still struggling with denial and unanswered questions as he groped into the smears of light and dark in search of Corrine.
    “Hush, Leah, you’re safe,” he rasped soothingly to the child, somehow managing to sound far more convincing than he felt. Suddenly his hand hit silky soft curls, his fingers weaving into the red strands that came into focus as he leaned closer to them. Everything seemed so loud, hurting his ears. Everything smelled so harsh and tasted so bitter. But it all seemed to calm down just a little when he finally touched the cool, clammy skin of Corrine’s face.
    He heard her cough, and she jerked beneath his touch.
    “It is all right,” he reassured her as she rasped and gagged for breath. He blindly pulled her against him, instinctively bringing both females into the circle of his safeguard. He might be sightless and disoriented, but he’d be damned if he was going to let either one of them move a millimeter away from his protection.
    Noah turned his face to the right when he abruptly realized something very important.
    Sunlight.
    There was no mistaking the sensation of sunlight. Especially after being taxed by whatever ordeal it was that they had just been churned through, there could be no other cause for the unmistakable lethargy that meant pure sunlight was shining down on them.
    “It is dusk,” he argued out loud. “It is night!”
    Corrine went rigid against him as she realized why he was in conflict over that point.
    “We’re still indoors,” she said with a whisper, her hands brushing over the floor beneath her knees. She recognized by touch bits of the things belonging to her sanctum, until she swept her fingers to the left toward Noah and touched carpeting that was unmistakably deep with pile.
    The floor to the sanctum beneath the pillows was only bare, polished wood.
    Noah couldn’t remain on his knees a moment longer. He hauled both of his charges up with him as he gained his feet, bracing his legs apart. He closed his eyes to discontinue the reflexive need to visually identify his surroundings. He took a deep, cleansing breath and reached for the power that centered everything that he was. It cast out of him like a net, a wholly different sensory network that blanketed the entire area. He sensed the pure energy of the sunlight, the life forces of a few animals and a dense population of humans.
    Kane and Corrine lived in solitude, their closest neighbors all Demons themselves for the most part, and even they were a good mile away. At first it felt no different than anything else he had always sensed with ease and an almost careless ability, but the information Noah’s power was giving to him made no sense. It felt as though he were standing on the edge of a city. A human city.
    That was the moment his vision finally decided to cooperate and join his other senses. He hadn’t even realized he’d opened his eyes until they focused on something in front of him.
    A room, large and expansive, carpeted from wall to windows. Windows that looked down on an enormous metropolis. It only took him a moment to recognize enough buildings to identify it as Chicago.
    And yet…
    When he turned his head to the right, he was still in Corrine’s particularly designed sanctum. He focused down at his feet, trying to make sense of the trick of his eyes.
    There, as if spliced together, was the line where two drastically different floors met and fused, polished oak and halves of pillows meeting up with plush carpets and pristine barrenness. He stood between this unlikely meshing of rooms, a foot on either side, holding Corrine to his right fully in the room he knew, and Leah on his left, fully in the room that was foreign to him.
    For a moment, it felt as if he’d been frozen still in the middle of one of his sister’s teleportations. When a Mind Demon teleported someone else from one point to another, those two points appeared to squeeze together, making it seem as if you could