I push the door open fully and step into the empty room, light from the glowing tiles outside illuminating the bare corners of what used to be Chase’s home. Nothing remains aside from the lingering smell of paint. Deep down I know that this is the only thing I could have expected to find here. Of course he’s gone. Of course he ran the moment someone found out who he really is. But I still feel an aching disappointment as I stand in the middle of this empty space.
Disappointment that I soon manage to replace with anger. Anger at Chase for having made a fool of me, and anger at myself for letting him. I spin around, walk out of the house, and yank the door shut behind me. Then I lift my stylus to the tunnel wall and write a doorway spell onto it. There’s somewhere else I need to go, even though I already know what I’ll find there.
I walk out of the faerie paths into another Underground tunnel, this one not too far from a place called Wickedly Inked. My suspicions are confirmed as I round a corner and see that the sign for Chase’s tattoo studio is gone. I reach the open doorway and find two women unpacking boxes and organizing the contents on shelves around the shop. Jars of herbs, bottles of colored liquids, bowls of dried flowers, a collection of dragon-eye rings, and an assortment of other ingredients used in potions and enchantments. Their long black dresses swirl around them like smoke, and when one turns to speak to the other, I see her black eyes and pointed teeth.
Witches? In Creepy Hollow?
A tendril of fear wraps itself around the core of anger heating my chest. Witches live in lands so distant that, at least half the time, their existence is thought to be a myth. I’ve never met one, though I’ve heard the stories. Stories children whisper to frighten each other.
The younger and prettier of the two women lowers a jar of teeth back into a box and comes toward me. “Can I help you with something?” she asks. Her voice sounds … odd. It’s sweet and feminine, but something reverberates beneath it. Something deep and ancient and threatening. It sends a chill crawling up my spine.
“I’m looking for the previous owner of this shop,” I say, noticing that the lower part of her dress is, in fact, made of smoke.
“Oh.” She scratches her arm with fingernails as pointed as her teeth. “I can’t help you then. We moved in yesterday, and the previous owner disappeared days ago. The sale was conducted through a third party.”
“Can you point me in the direction of this third party?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t.” She offers no explanation, and I don’t think I’m brave enough to pry further. Over her shoulder, I notice gouge marks in the wall beside the door leading to the back room. Marks that I’m pretty sure weren’t there before.
The chill creeps further up my neck. “Well, thanks anyway.” I turn and walk quickly away, waiting until I’m around a corner before hastily writing a doorway onto the tunnel wall. I hurry into it, unable to rid myself of the eerie feeling that someone is about to grab hold of me.
CHAPTER
FOUR
“So I looked it up in the rule book,” Gemma says, “and there’s a limit to the number of assignments a mentor is allowed to give you. Not because it’s too much work for you, but because of the rankings. You could spend all your free time doing assignments and earning points, and that way you’d be top of the class, even though you may not be the best guardian.” She idly drums her fingers across the book in front of her on the library table. “You should find out if Olive’s exceeded that limit with all the assignments she’s been giving you. If she has, you can submit a formal complaint.”
I fold my arms on top of the transformations manual I’m supposed to be reading. “I doubt Olive’s breaking any rules. She does everything by the book. And she schedules training for me far more than she schedules assignments. Is there a limit on training hours as well?”
“Yes,” Ned says from the chair at the end of the table. He’s so quiet I’d forgotten he was sitting there writing notes on his amber.
“Yes,” Gemma adds. “I mean, if you want to spend all your time training, that’s fine, but your mentor isn’t allowed to give you more than a certain number of training hours per week.”
“Well, I’m sure Olive is giving me the absolute maximum,” I say as I flip through several more pages without bothering to read them. “I don’t mind, though. I like training.”
“We noticed,” Gemma says, picking up her book once more, the cover of which depicts a woman winking while surrounded by a cloud of sparkling pink hearts.
“Ah, and what do we have here, Gemma?” Perry, who decided it was too boring to wait in the library for our assignments, reappears and drops into the seat beside Gemma. He scoops her book from her hands and reads out loud. “‘Her breast heaved beneath the corset as the duke slowly dragged his fingers—’”
Gemma snatches the book from his hands and whacks him with it. “It does not say that.”
“Oho, how the lady doth protest,” Perry crows. “Perhaps because that’s exactly what it says.”
“This is an autobiography and step-by-step guide by the runner-up of last year’s Create A Potion contest. It’s basically a textbook, not a romance novel.”
“Oh. Well if my textbooks were full of heaving breasts, I might open them more often.”
“There are no heaving breasts in this book!”
“That’s disappointing,” Perry says. “Why on earth are you reading it then?”
With a groan, Gemma throws the book onto the table and stalks off. Feeling like I need to support her on this, I pick up the book, lean across the table, and smack Perry’s arm.
“Hey!” he complains.
“You know,” Ned says quietly, “that at some point you should probably tell her you like her instead of teasing her all the time.”
“I—what?” Perry looks so startled that I find myself laughing. “What?” he asks again.
“Do you really think it isn’t completely obvious?” I say to him.
“What is?” he asks.
I look at Ned for confirmation. He nods. “It’s completely obvious.”
“You—that’s—ridiculous.”
Ned sighs. “And you say I’m scared of girls.”
“I’m not scared of anyone,” Perry protests.
“You really should tell her,” I say, “otherwise she’ll keep pining after Mr. Perfect from upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Perry frowns. “Who’s upstairs?”
Oops. I guess it isn’t common knowledge that Gemma has a gigantic crush on one of the Seer trainees. I prepare to give Perry a vague answer, but all thoughts of Gemma and the Seer upstairs vanish from my mind as Ryn and Violet walk into the library and stop beside our table.
“We need to talk,” Ryn says.
Shoot. I’ve managed to avoid him all day, probably because he’s been busy catching up on the work he missed while on honeymoon. I had hoped that work would keep him busy for longer.
“Do we really?” I ask. “I have an assignment race just now and I don’t want to be late.”
“You won’t be,” Ryn says, putting his hand on my arm. I have a feeling he’s going to drag me out of my chair if I don’t willingly go with him. I’d prefer not to make a scene, so I stand and follow him and Vi to a quiet corner of the library. Ryn sweeps his arm briefly around us. I sense a ripple of magic.
“Did you just put a shield up?” I ask.
“Yes. A sound shield. I don’t want anyone overhearing the conversation we’re about to have.”
“You’re so paranoid, Ryn. No one is anywhere near us.”
“It’s not the people he’s worried about,” Vi says. “It’s the surveillance devices all over the place.” I follow her gaze as she watches an insect with needle-thin legs and a bulbous body zoom past us.
“Oh. I thought that was a real bug. I thought all the bugs I’ve seen flying around here were real.”
“Some of them might be,” Ryn says, “but most of them aren’t. Now stop stalling and start explaining.”
??
?Explaining what?” I demand. “It isn’t my fault this guy turned out to be Lord Draven.”
“Why was he there? What was flipping Lord Draven doing visiting you at our union celebration?”
“We’re friends, okay? At least, we were before he turned out to be the supreme halfling prince of evil.”
“Friends?” Ryn asks, eyeing me closely. “That’s it?”
I’ve never been the blushing sort, but I can’t help the heat that rises to my face as I remember Chase taking my hand and sliding his fingers between mine. I so badly wanted it to be more. Ugh, how could I have been so deluded?
“Wonderful,” Ryn says with a long sigh, his eyes on the betraying flush in my cheeks. He looks at Vi, who seems to be refusing to meet his gaze. “The awkward moment in which I discover that both my wife and my sister have made out with the same guy.”
My brain stumbles over Ryn’s words and comes to a horrified halt. “WHAT?”
Vi glares at her husband and crosses her arms. “Thank you, Oryn. Probably not the best time to bring that up.”
“Is there a more appropriate time to mention something like this?”
“You kissed Lord Draven?”
“Hey, so did you,” she replies defensively.
“I did not. I might have wanted to—” Ryn interrupts with a groan “—but fortunately it never happened.”
“Look, he wasn’t Lord Draven back then. He was just a regular guy I’d saved on one of my assignments.”
“Whoa. Whoa. One of your assignments? How do I not know this?”
“Because you didn’t need to,” Ryn says. “Barely anyone knows that all of this started when one simple assignment went wrong and a guy who thought he was human accidentally ended up in our realm.”
“He … he was …” Words fail to form as my brain rushes to fill in some of the gaps of Chase’s story. The gaps I was wondering about just this morning. He grew up in the human realm. He thought he was human. And then Vi tried to save him from something, and he ended up here in our world. “You knew him,” I murmur. “You knew him before everything went wrong.”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “He was a good guy.”
Amidst the confusing mess of emotions already pulling me in a hundred different directions, I find myself feeling oddly … left out. As though I’ve arrived in the middle of someone’s retelling of a story and missed out on part of it.
“Okay,” Ryn says, his tone suggesting that this is the point where he attempts to take control of the situation. “We obviously have to inform the Council of this, but we need to know more. There’s no sense in creating mass panic for no reason. So the question is, what kind of guy is he after having destroyed half our world? Calla?” He looks at me. “You’re the one who knows him now.”
I lift my shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. He kept a lot of secrets from me, and I don’t know if what he did tell me was the truth. The only thing I know is that you won’t be able to find him. I went to his house Underground—”
“Underground?” Vi interrupts. “Here in Creepy Hollow?”
“Yes. I went there this morning and he and all his belongings are gone. I went to his tattoo studio as well, and that’s also gone. Some creepy witches have a shop there now.”
“Witches?” Ryn says. “That can’t be right.”
I’m not in the mood to argue, so I simply say, “I don’t know, Ryn. They looked like witches. My point is that I have no idea where Chase is, and I doubt you or I will be able to find him. If he’s remained hidden all this time, he’s obviously very good at it.”
“There must be something else you can tell us,” Vi says. “Something he said that might—”
“Hey, Calla, we’re starting the race now,” Perry calls to me as he and Ned head for the library door.
“Great. Gotta go.” I slip past Ryn and Vi and hurry to catch up to my friends.
“Everything okay?” Perry asks. “Looks like your brother isn’t too pleased with you.”
“He isn’t, but it’s no big deal. I’ll talk to him later and sort things out.” We hurry down the stairs to the mentors’ level. “Do these assignment races happen often?” I ask.
Perry shakes his head. “It isn’t often that the Seers See enough things going wrong at the same time.”
“And all assignments need to be of similar difficulty level,” Ned adds. “That’s not something they can control either.”
We reach the second floor landing where the rest of our classmates are gathering. I aim for Gemma, who still looks miffed, but someone grabs my arm and pulls me aside. “You’re late,” Olive says.
“But … the race hasn’t started yet.”
“Ling was here before you,” she says, nodding to the girl standing patiently beside her. “That means you’re late.”
Ling gives me a sweet smile laced with venom. I choke down my desire to argue with Olive’s ridiculous logic and force myself to return Ling’s smile.
“Now,” Olive says. “If either of you return from this assignment in last position, there will be consequences. I have a reputation to maintain, and I don’t need the two of you ruining it.”
What reputation? The words almost slip out, but I manage to hold my tongue. I doubt Olive would appreciate me asking what makes her reputation more special than that of every other mentor.
“And please don’t forget, Calla—since you seem to have trouble performing this part of your duty—that if you have to kill someone, don’t hesitate.”
I bristle at her implication that I can’t do my job properly. “I won’t hesitate. But I won’t kill either.”
Her lip curls up slightly, almost as if she’s snarling. It isn’t an attractive look on her. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “Innocent people are going to wind up dead if you can’t do this.”
“I can do it,” I say as an image of the boy I forced off the top of the chef school building resurfaces. “But I’ve chosen not to.”
She sighs, her expression turning patronizing. “We all started off with our unrealistic ideals. You’ll learn.”
I certainly don’t want to learn that killing is sometimes the only option, and I plan to prove that to Olive by—
My thoughts are interrupted as someone shoves past, knocking me into Olive. “Lo-ser,” Saskia sings as she saunters past us.
Olive pushes me away with a growl of annoyance. “Somebody do me a favor and beat that Starkweather girl. Both she and her mentor have become far too full of themselves.”
Ling gives Olive a curt nod. “I’d be happy to.”
“Thank you, Ling. I don’t see Calla succeeding, so it’ll have to be you.”
I breathe in deeply and count to five. Don’t react, don’t react, don’t react.
“Here he comes,” another mentor calls out. I look around and see a boy of about fourteen or fifteen coming down the stairs, struggling to balance a pile of scrolls in his arms.
“So how does this work?” I ask.
“They’re handed out randomly,” Ling says, to my complete surprise. I’m fairly certain those are the first words she’s uttered to me.
“And then what? Do we go over the details with our mentors as usual? Or do we read the scroll on our own and then—”
“Stop asking silly questions and get over there,” Olive says, pushing me forward into the crowd of fifth years. Scrolls disappear from the arms of the flustered Seer trainee as my classmates jostle around him. As I attempt to get closer, the remaining scrolls slide from his hands and land on the floor.
“Oops!” Saskia says, grabbing a scroll from the floor and skipping away.
I crouch down and help the boy gather the fallen scrolls. “Sorry about that,” I say.
His eyes lock on mine as we stand. He frowns, then sifts through the remaining scrolls and hands me one. “Here. This is yours.”
“Oh.” I wrap my hand uncertainly around the rolled-up reed paper. “I thought these assignments were random.”
br /> “No, that one’s definitely for you.”
Unease pricks at the back of my mind. “How do you know that?”
He shrugs and smiles as the last few scrolls disappear from his hands. “I’m a Seer. Sometimes I just know things.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
I step tentatively along the edge of the swamp, careful not to slip into the murky water. Insects hover lazily above its still surface, and trees reach over from either side, their drooping limbs tangling with one another. A blueish green haze settles over the scene as daylight disappears bit by bit.
The assignment details were minimal: a swamp, two tourists, a dangerous dare, and a wolf-like creature that neither of them expects. I have to save them, of course. If the creature disappears, that’s great. If it fights back … well, then I hope to be able to restrain it and bring it back to the Guild.
Humidity clings to me, sticking my hair to the back of my neck. I reach for my jacket pocket for something to tie my hair up with, before remembering I left the jacket in Olive’s office. After seeing the location of this assignment, I figured I wouldn’t need it. I pull a twig from a nearby branch and transform it into a stretchy band. After a quick glance up and down the swamp to make sure I’m still alone, I scoop my hair up and secure it with the make-shift hair accessory.
Much better. I crouch down beside a tree and wait, watching the insects, the misty haze, the occasional ripple across the water’s surface. The smell of decaying vegetation fills my nose. How pleasant …
Above the high-pitched singing of insects, I slowly become aware of voices. I tense, readying myself to reach for a weapon. After another minute or so, they come into view on the other side of the swamp: two women who appear to be in their early twenties. They push noisily through the brush, laughing loudly, completely unaware of the danger that lurks within this swampy jungle.
“No way,” one says to the other amidst her laughter. “That’s got to be the stupidest legend of all. Where did you hear that one?”