“I’m going to find out,” Chase assures me. “I’d like to travel around with the two of you, make sure you’re both safe, but—”
“No, you need to find our family,” Calla says. “Oh, and see if you can find out anything about a place called Reinhold. It’s a research station, apparently, and there’s a chance Dash might be there. If this Reinhold place exists, that is.”
“Reinhold. Okay. What will the two of you do? Vacation in a different spot every day?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of following Roarke’s mess around and cleaning it up. Discreetly, of course.”
Chase bends to scratch Bandit behind his cat ears as the shapeshifter comes close enough to sniff his shoes. “Good idea. Stay in touch with Perry. He’ll know about things before they become public. And the Seers will See some things before they happen. If the Guild discards any of those visions, you can take care of them.”
Calla nods. “So, it’s pretty much business as usual then. Except I’ll be doing it with Em.” She looks at me. “You don’t have to be involved. Or you can assist from a distance. We can assess each situation as it comes.”
“Bandit will need to travel around with you as well,” Chase says as Bandit purrs contentedly. “He must have breathed in the same spell you two breathed in.”
“That won’t be a problem,” I say, “considering he follows me everywhere already.” Bandit opens his eyes and looks at me, as if he knows I’m talking about him. “Okay, so you promise you’ll do everything you can to find Vi, Ryn and Dash?” I ask Chase. “And you’ll tell us the moment you know anything? I know both worlds are falling apart around us, so this is probably a selfish thing to say, but they’re kind of a priority to me.”
“Don’t worry, they’re our priority too,” Chase says, straightening and producing his stylus. “The Guild and the Seelies are dealing with the worlds-falling-apart problem.” As he opens a doorway to the paths, he adds, “I’ll stay with you for the night, then return to the oasis. You two can sleep, and I’ll keep watch in case Em’s command didn’t work and guardians happen to show up earlier than expected.” He looks back at us. “Any suggestions for where you want to spend the night?”
“As long as it’s not on this cold, hard ground, I’m happy,” I tell him.
“How about orange three?” Calla says, stepping forward and taking Chase’s hand.
“Orange,” I say. “Sounds warm.”
She smiles as she reaches for my hand. “It is.”
I follow her into the faerie paths, choosing to be optimistic for now. My Griffin Ability command has worked, I tell myself. The tracking spell is gone. We’ll confirm it tomorrow, and then we’ll return to the oasis to focus on what really matters: finding Violet and Ryn.
The following morning, after Chase leaves us, Calla and I remain in the small seaside town where we spent the night. We hang around the busy marketplace in the town square, concealed by an illusion of invisibility and ready to escape through the faerie paths at a moment’s notice. The afternoon passes slowly by, and eventually it’s been fifteen hours since we arrived here last night. My heart pounds as we wait in silence, watching people go about their business. As we approach sixteen hours, I begin to feel sick. It’s not that I’m afraid we’ll get caught; it’s the anticipation I hate so much. The doing nothing.
But the sixteenth hour passes us by, and nothing happens. I know we need to wait until twenty-three and a half hours, just to be certain, but already I begin to feel hopeful. I remember the optimism I chose last night as I walked into the faerie paths.
But my optimism is short-lived. At about half an hour after the sixteen-hour mark, the guardians show up. I thought a horde of them would suddenly appear—if they arrived at all—but they’re subtle about it. I don’t know how long they’ve been there when Calla nudges my arm and points out several pairs of faeries who don’t quite seem to fit in with everyone else. Their eyes dart around too much, never settling on one person for more than a moment. Clearly they’re not interested in any of the items for sale at the stalls set up in the square.
For several moments, disappointment threatens to overwhelm me. I want to scream out, Why is everything so hard? Why is there always another obstacle between me and the happiness I’ve been trying to get to my whole freaking life? But I breathe deeply, push my disappointment down, and swallow back my angry tears.
I’m a survivor.
I’ve never given up on anything before, and I’m not about to start now.
And I’m not facing any of this alone.
I take Calla’s hand and follow her into the faerie paths, and so begins our nomadic life.
Nine
VIOLET
Time was a concept that didn’t seem to exist in the ever-changing landscape Violet wandered through. It was a place full of shadows and memories and the dark, fading edges of a vignette. It was a place of terrors, of pain. It was a place she might have lived in for a day or a year, or perhaps a hundred years. She couldn’t tell how many times she’d relived the nightmares.
The only thing she knew was that none of it was real.
She looked around at the distant echo of a cry. The others—the friends who’d tried to rescue her—were here somewhere, trapped in this world of waking nightmares. They came close sometimes. Close enough that she could almost touch them before they were yanked away.
Seeing no one, Violet turned and hurried in the opposite direction. She was in the Guild’s foyer now. The old Guild, the one that had been destroyed. An ache twisted in her chest at the memory of her beloved Guild lying shattered and broken across the forest floor. She ran for the stairs, hoping to leave the memory behind. Hoping to outrun what always came next.
But suddenly she was no longer running. Instead, she found herself on her knees among leaves and twigs, acrid smoke burning the back of her throat. Without having to look, she knew the devastation that filled the scene: a mound of debris, a forest in ruins, and a body crushed beneath a fallen tree. Tora’s body.
Tora had been a mentor first, then a friend, and eventually, she’d felt almost like a sister. And now she was lying dead in front of Violet. And though none of this was real, it hurt just as much as when it had happened. It was a knife stabbing into Violet’s chest, through her heart and through her lungs, so that she couldn’t breathe and the pain radiated from her heart to fill every inch of her being.
She fled from the memory of Tora’s death and found herself in a nursery. A nursery with a crib and a baby that didn’t move.
Another Victoria.
Another death.
Pain and absolute bone-chilling horror.
She couldn’t bear to look, but the nightmare wouldn’t have it any other way. The crib was right in front of her and the baby inside was unnaturally pale, completely still.
But this wasn’t right, Violet reminded herself, finally managing to tear her gaze away. A spark of hope ignited inside her as she remembered the heart-stopping words Em had shouted on Velazar Island. They’re my parents! How could Violet have forgotten those words? How could this nightmare have distinguished a light so bright and warm as the news that her own child was still alive? She shut her eyes, blotting out the image of the crib and the tiny lifeless body within it, trying with all her might to hang onto an image of Emerson.
But the nightmare wouldn’t let Violet go that easily. A heavy weight bore down on her, and when she opened her eyes, she was leaning over the crib. Her hand reached out, and one finger touched the cold skin of the baby’s cheek. That moment—that exact moment when she realized her baby was no longer living—hit Violet square in the chest. She sucked in a desperate breath as her heart shattered and the echoes of her own heartrending scream from that night assaulted her ears over and over again.
She pushed herself away and ran. Into the night. Into the forest. She’d been here before, and here she would stay forever. Running from her father’s death, running from Nate’s betrayal, running from Victoria’s lifeles
s body. “It isn’t real,” she kept repeating. “It isn’t real. It isn’t real.” But the pain was real. The heartache was real. And try as she might, she couldn’t outrun it.
“Vi!”
She stumbled to a halt at the sound of someone shouting her name. She swung around and saw him coming through the trees toward her. Ryn. She ran for him, reached for him, but as always, she couldn’t get close enough. He was always just a little too far away.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, though an echo of her pain still pulsed through her body. “I keep seeing … the crib.”
“Me too.” He swallowed. “I keep reminding myself that she’s actually alive, but it does nothing to remove the pain every time I have to relive that moment.”
Violet nodded, looking up at the tangled branches above as she blinked away tears.
“They’ll pull us out of this nightmare eventually,” Ryn said as the forest around them shifted and changed. They were in a different part of it now, where the ancient gargan tree they’d loved as children lay fallen.
“I know,” she said, “but when? I’ve heard they pull people out every few days, but I have no concept of how much time has passed. Sometimes I think I’ve been stuck in here for years.”
Ryn shut his eyes and breathed out a shaky breath. “Soon. It has to be soon, or else … I don’t know how many more times I can go through this.”
Violet’s heart broke for him as much as for everything she’d endured in this nightmare. “You have to, though. We both have to. When they pull us out, they’ll question us. They’ll demand information. And when we refuse to give it to them, they’ll toss us back into this nightmare. They’ll do it over and over again until we give in.”
He opened his eyes. “I’ll never give in. I’ll never give up the people we love.”
“Neither will I.”
“And we’ll be tortured for eternity because of it,” Ryn added quietly. “We’ll never know Victoria. Emerson. We’ll never find her.”
“We will.” Violet reached across the space that seemed so small and yet utterly infinite at the same time. “We’ll find a way out of this,” she said, desperate inner strength finding its way into her voice. “I swear to you we will.”
Part Two
Ten
“Wait, hang on,” Calla says to me. “Your grip isn’t quite right.”
“Seriously? I thought I’d got it by now.”
“Almost.” She walks closer and adjusts the position of my fingers around the knife’s handle. “There.” She steps back. “Try again.”
I face the tree and the round frisbee-sized target Calla transformed from a stick. I repeat her instructions in my head yet again, trying to turn the steps into one fluid motion. Then I raise the knife, swing my arm forward, and let go. The knife spins through the air, whacking the target a second later. The blade strikes first—which is a lot less embarrassing than the handle striking first—but the angle’s off, and the knife bounces away and lands on the ground beside the other knives that have failed to impale the target. I stare at it for a moment before muttering, “I suck.”
“You don’t suck,” Calla says. “You’ve already improved. And considering you’d never thrown a knife before yesterday, you’re doing pretty well.”
It’s our third day on the run from the Guild’s tracking spell, and most of our spare time has been spent playing with weapons or throwing various forms of magic at one another—while Calla protects each of us with a bubble of shield magic, of course. The continued activity helps keep us distracted from the frustration of not being able to find or save Vi, Ryn, Dash and the others. They’re constantly at the back of my mind, though, no matter how busy we keep ourselves.
Perhaps it’s Calla’s preference, or perhaps this world is covered in far more trees than the human world, but each time we move, we end up in another forested area. This one’s my favorite so far. The trees, bushes, flowers, and even the creatures form a continuous palette of autumn colors. Orange, gold, reddish brown and bronze. Bandit seems to love it too. He’s been scurrying around exploring all day.
“Can we go back to the sword fighting lessons?” I ask as I fetch the fallen knives and the one that managed to land vertically in a tree root. The root heals itself as I pull the knife free. “I think I’m better with a weapon that doesn’t have to leave my hand. Arrows and knives and throwing stars have much greater potential for missing their target.”
“Yes, but arrows, knives and throwing stars mean you’re further away from your attacker. I don’t plan for you to get close enough to an enemy to use a sword.”
“You know you can’t really control that kind of thing, right?”
“Yes, I know,” she says with a sigh. “We can play around with swords again later. For now, try again with—” A lighthearted melody plays briefly behind us, then stops. Calla turns to face the two amber tablets and the mirror suspended in the air a few paces away. “Hmm. Was that someone trying to call us?” She moves closer to the mirror and frowns at its glossy surface. We have the mirror for communication, the one tablet for general news, and the other tablet for Guild Seer visions. The news spell was an easy one, apparently. The kind of spell anyone can apply to any amber device in order to read the latest news. The Seer visions feed, however, was more complicated to get hold of.
Violet mentioned Seers to me when I first arrived at the oasis, but Calla explained again how they see glimpses of the future. They report their visions of things going wrong to the Guild, and the Guild sends guardians to stop certain things before they go wrong. Thanks to Dash’s father Flint, Calla and I now have access to some of these Seer visions. He went into the Seer department at the Creepy Hollow Guild and managed to illegally duplicate one of the vision lists. Specifically, the visions related to incidents of unglamoured magic in the human realm—incidents that Roarke and his followers will most likely be responsible for.
“If it was someone trying to call us,” Calla says, still squinting at the levitating mirror, “they obviously decided they have better things to do.” She takes a step to the side and peers at the tablet with the list of Seer visions. Having gathered all the fallen knives, I join her side.
“No important news from Chase yet, I see. Oh, and that vision still hasn’t been assigned to anyone.” I point the tip of a knife at a vision involving two Unseelie faeries and a movie theater. “It’s been there for hours. Time’s going to run out if they don’t send someone to deal with that problem soon.”
“Yes, but we can’t do anything about it unless we know for sure the Guild’s not handling it. We don’t want to get in some guardian’s way.”
I heave a resigned sigh as I nod. All visions remain on the list until a trainee or guardian team is assigned to deal with the impending problem. If a Council member decides a vision isn’t important enough to be dealt with, tiny letters appear in brackets beside it: alternate. Calla said the Seers believe those visions are taken care of in some other way they’re not aware of. But thanks to Perry’s sneaking around and eavesdropping, the Griffin rebels have known better for years. Any visions labeled ‘alternate’ are considered too minor for the Guild, with their limited number of guardians and trainees, to get involved with. So those visions are discarded. They’re the visions Perry’s spent years secretly gathering up every few days and sending to the Griffin rebels.
Calla and I have prevented two of these ‘minor’ incidents from taking place, and this morning we cleaned up the mess left behind from a third incident, since we arrived too late to prevent an Unseelie royal guard from appearing at a school swimming lesson and turning the pool water into sand. Calla planned to go around from child to child—while glamoured, of course—and apply some kind of charm to make them confused and forgetful about what they’d witnessed. But I had some Griffin Ability power stored up, so I told the whole class and the teachers to forget what they’d seen.
And it worked.
“Okay, try again with the kn
ives,” Calla says, turning away from the tablets. “We can check the visions again in about ten minutes.” She glances to the side at the glowing numbers hanging in the air that are counting down toward zero. “And we’ll need to leave in just over an hour.”
I nod as I turn back to face the tree and drop all the knives except one onto the grass beside me. It was a little disconcerting at first to be followed around by an enchanted timer, but I’ve become used to the glowing numbers suspended beside the tablets and mirror. It’s a useful reminder of exactly when we need to open a doorway to the faerie paths and move somewhere else. Calla resets it for fifteen hours every time we move, which gives us a cushion of about an hour to gather our things, open a doorway, and move to a new part of the world.
“Okay,” I sigh. “Let’s see if I can hit the target at least once before we have to leave. Too bad I can’t command myself to be expertly skilled at knife throwing.”
“Now that’s an idea,” Calla says. “Maybe that would work.”
“I doubt it. When I was at the Unseelie Palace, I told myself I knew how to dance every traditional faerie dance. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.” I raise the knife, but at the back of my mind I’m still wondering if I might actually be able to use my Griffin Ability for this. Part of the way my power seems to work is by knowing my intentions. The magic needs to know what I mean as well as what I’m saying. Obviously I didn’t know what I meant when I told myself I knew how to dance because I didn’t have the first clue what the steps were for any of the dances I hadn’t yet learned. But throwing a knife is different. I know what I’m supposed to do. I know how the knife should strike the tree. I just don’t seem to be able to physically do it myself.
“Em?” Calla says from behind me. “Everything okay?”
I realize I’ve been standing still with the knife raised for several moments. “Yes, I’m just … thinking.” I look at the target once more, then relax my hold on my Griffin Ability and say to the knife, “When I let go, you’ll fly toward the tree and your blade will strike the center of the target.” Then I swing my arm forward and let go.