I watch the knife spin and land with the same expert precision it possessed when Calla demonstrated the maneuver. A smile spreads slowly across my face.
“Aha,” Calla says with glee. “It does work after all.”
I look over my shoulder at her. “Do you think it’s cheating?”
“No, it’s just a different skill you’re using. If the point of the exercise is to get the knife to hit the target, then it doesn’t matter how you get it done.”
“Cool. Maybe I can do it faster. Maybe I can do it with other weapons. Maybe one day I’ll be able to fight as well as you, but using words instead of my own physical strength.”
Calla smiles. “I don’t see why not. But you wouldn’t be able to completely replace actual physical fighting, because as I said before—”
“What if someone prevents me from speaking,” I finish. “I know. So we can carry on with the lessons you were giving me, but maybe I should practice fighting this way as well. I mean, if I’ve got the ability, then I may as well use it. You fight with yours, right?”
“Yes. I use it to distract and confuse.”
“Well it’ll certainly be distracting and confusing when I start talking to my weapons in the middle of a fight,” I say with a laugh.
I try again with our collection of knives, and each time, the blade strikes exactly where I tell it to. I practice saying the words faster and faster, then test out my speed by placing several knives on my palm and telling them to fly through the air one after the other. Calla walks back and forth behind me, checking the Seer visions tablet and giving me the occasional suggestion. “Tell the knife to return to you after it reaches its target,” or “Tell the knife to stab the target several times after striking it once.”
Eventually, when my brain feels like it needs a break, I bend over and lean my hands on my knees. “Whew, this is exhausting. You wouldn’t think the only thing I was doing was speaking.”
“Well, you were using magic too, and that gets tiring.” Calla crouches down by the backpack and searches inside. “Do you want a chocolate apple?”
“Sounds amazing. Oh, hey, Bandit,” I add as Bandit transforms from a cat into a small dragon covered in silver scales. “That’s, what, the fourth time today you’ve decided to be a dragon?”
“He seems to really like the dragon form,” Calla says, standing and walking to my side.
“Yeah, probably because he knows how much I loved riding the dragons at the Unseelie Court.”
“Here you go.” Calla hands me a small apple-shaped chocolate, dark and covered in gold dust, then focuses on Bandit again. “I don’t know if you know this, but he won’t easily be able to shift into a dragon for much longer. As he gets older, he’ll assume the shape of the older version of whatever animal he’s shifting into. Problem is, an adult dragon is enormous, so that would take a huge amount of a formattra’s magic to achieve.”
“Oh.” I pop the tiny chocolate into my mouth and bend to pat Bandit’s silver-scaled head. “Sorry, Bandit,” I say around the chocolate. “Oh, but—” I finish chewing and straighten. “I’m sure Jack told me Filigree became a dragon once. Was that when he was little?”
“No, he was fully grown then. It’s not that it’s impossible, it just requires more magic and makes them extremely tired. I’d never seen Filigree as a dragon before, but a witch was about to kill Violet, so I think Fili got a little overprotective. After he shifted back into something smaller, he barely moved for days. Vi wasn’t sure he’d ever shift again, but he recovered eventually.”
“Okay, so if Bandit is really desperate, he can at least—” I look around as the mirror’s melody interrupts me.
“Okay, someone’s definitely calling this time,” Calla says, heading back to the mirror. “Oh, finally. It’s Perry.” As I reach her side, she taps the mirror’s surface where an image of a wide-eyed Perry has appeared.
“Hey!” he exclaims. “Finally. I tried just now and had to abort when I realized someone in the shop was watching me.” He pushes his hair out of his face and continues before Calla can say anything. “I’m so sorry about what happened at Noxsom. No one had any idea the Council was using that as a trap for you guys. And I’m sorry I haven’t got back to you until now. I’ve been working all hours, and I feel like everyone’s looking over my shoulder, even when I’m not at the Guild. Everyone’s suspicious of everyone else now. I had to dig up this old mirror just in case the one I normally use has been tampered with. Flip, it’s getting more and more dangerous trying to do the right thing.”
Calla folds her arms across her chest. “You didn’t exactly help your situation when you decided to send a letter around the various Guilds gathering support for your anti-Guild vendetta and sign your actual name on it, you idiot.”
Perry pauses, his mouth half open. He blinks, shuts his mouth, then says, “I don’t remember telling you about that.”
“You didn’t. The Guild members who rescued Em and me from Noxsom were trying to use it as proof that they’re on the Griffin rebels’ side. I’m still not sure if that was all an elaborate trick to get us to reveal who we’re communicating with inside the Guild.”
A grin spreads across Perry’s face. “The people who got you out of Noxsom were Guild members? That’s fantastic! Did they say how many supporters have been added to my letter? I haven’t seen it since I first sent it out.”
“Perry!” Calla exclaims. “Are you trying to land yourself in a prison of eternal torture for being a Guild traitor? Why would you put your name on that thing?”
“Look, to be fair, it was only my first name. And I’ve heard of at least one other Perry in the Guild system.”
“That was still a huge risk. I know you want to change the way things are, and that’s extremely admirable, and … I actually really want to hug you for doing something like that for us, but at the same time, you’re no use to anyone if you land yourself in a prison cell for being a Guild traitor. So be careful, for goodness’ sake!”
“Aah.” He gives her a big goofy grin. “This is like when your mom gets super mad at you for nearly getting yourself killed by crossing the street just as a carriage is about to land, and then a second later she hugs you and tells you how much she loves you.”
I tilt my head a little closer to the mirror and say, “Yes, I think it’s exactly like that. And we’re both very grateful you’re taking a risk for people like us.”
“Of course I’m grateful,” Calla mutters. “I’m just hoping it doesn’t get you arrested.”
“Hey, I was very careful,” he tells us. “I gave the letter to someone I was almost certain agreed with me. All he had to do after indicating his support on the letter was find one other person he believed to be on our side and pass the letter on.”
Calla heaves a sigh and drops her hands to her sides. “Okay. Well thank you.”
“So, I know you just said you’ve been busy,” I say to him, “but have you been able to find out anything more about where Vi and Ryn and the others are being kept?”
“No. I haven’t had time to do any snooping, and the Council members don’t exactly hang out in corridors chatting loudly about their private plans so everyone can overhear them.”
“And did Chase tell you we need information on a place called Reinhold?” Calla adds. “It’s possible Dash might be there, and if Dash is there, the other rebels might have been taken there as well.”
“Reinhold? I’ve never heard of it. But—” He cuts himself off, his expression turning thoughtful. “I wonder if that could be …”
“Could be what?” Calla prompts.
“Remember those experiments you stumbled across years ago when you were sneaking around the lower levels of the Guild? Those rooms where they were experimenting on Griffin Gifted fae? Well those rooms disappeared about four or five years ago. I figured they couldn’t be gone completely. They must have simply moved, right? I tried to ask around, but no one seemed to know much.”
“And then?” she a
sks. “You didn’t try to look into it any further?”
“Calla, I have so much to keep up with already. And right now, I’ve barely even—oh, crumbs, gotta go.” Perry vanishes from view as he lowers his mirror.
“Wait!” Calla calls. “Please can you try to find—” The mirror goes blank for a moment, then shows us our own perplexed faces reflected back at us. Calla shuts her eyes, exhaling sharply. “I know the Guild needs every guardian available right now to keep both sides of the veil from falling apart, but this is a seriously inconvenient time for Perry to suddenly become too busy to spy for us.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter.
“Anyway, we should probably pack up and get moving soon. I’ll shrink the weapons.”
As she turns away, my eyes are drawn to the tablet listing the Seer visions. The one about the movie theater has vanished, so hopefully someone took care of that. But a new one has popped up at the top of the list. Like most of the other visions, the details are incomplete. Several pieces of a puzzle that show only part of the finished picture. But all I care about is that one word at the end. That one word that sends ice traveling down my spine.
A magical eruption inside a restaurant with pink shutters. Uniforms with insignia of the Unseelie royal guard. Shadow length and quality of light suggest late afternoon. Town name: Stanmeade.
“Stanmeade,” I say out loud. “That—that must be my Stanmeade. Unless there’s more than one? But the pink shutters—that’s Bloomberry Cafe. It has to be.” I turn around. “Calla, we have to go there.”
Calla drops a handful of tiny weapons into the backpack before standing. “Roarke knows you used to live there, doesn’t he? Didn’t he abduct you from Chelsea’s home the first time you met him? This may be a trap for you.”
“Why would he do it this way, though? He doesn’t know you and I are following the Seer visions. And how would he know if this would even show up in a Seer’s vision. If he wanted to get me to Stanmeade, this would definitely not be the best way to go about it.”
“I suppose so, but then don’t you think it’s a very big coincidence that something’s happening in Stanmeade of all places?”
“No. I’m sure he is doing it intentionally. But not because he wants to draw me there. Probably just because he hopes I’ll hear about it at some point and it’ll seriously piss me off.” I pull both tablets and the mirror from the air. “We have to go there. We have to stop it.”
“Em, slow down. The Guild is probably going to send someone. We need to wait.”
“We can’t wait!” I crouch down and shove the tablets and mirror into the backpack. I pull my jacket out, and Bandit scurries into one of the pockets in the form of a mouse. “What if they decide to label it ‘alternate’ and then it’s too late for us to do anything? We have no idea what time it is there right now.” I stand and pull my jacket on, then close the backpack. “At the very least, we need to go there and see what time it is. If the Guild sends someone, then fine. We can watch and make sure they do their job properly. But I’m not going to sit around somewhere far away and hope it all works out.”
“Em, it isn’t safe. We can’t just—”
“I have friends there!” I shout. “My best friend. She’s … I haven’t seen her since my magic almost killed her. If she happens to be nearby when that magical eruption takes place, and she ends up—” I cut myself off and shake my head. I hoist the backpack onto one shoulder. “I can’t let her get hurt again.”
A beat of silence passes. “Okay. I understand.” Calla closes her hand in the air near the floating countdown numbers, hiding them for now. “Let’s go. You’re directing the faerie paths.”
Eleven
We step out of the faerie paths into the alley between Tygo’s Diner and the abandoned library. The intense familiarity of it—the graffiti on the walls, the stench of garbage, the damp, gritty ground beneath my shoes—is disorienting. For a moment, it feels as though I never left. It could have been yesterday that I stood here selling one of Chelsea’s homemade herbal remedies to Slade Murphy after my shift in the diner’s kitchen. Yet at the same time, it feels as if a lifetime has passed between then and now.
“Em? Come on.”
I blink, shake my head, and follow Calla to the end of the alley, pulling the backpack’s second strap onto my other shoulder as I go. It’s brighter out in the main street, but still difficult to tell what time of day it is. Clouds gather in the sky, darker along the horizon and lighter directly above us, along with that odd greenish tinge that signals a storm is brewing. “You know,” I say, “it would be great if amber devices could automatically update to reflect whatever time zone we’re in, the same way cell phones do.”
“Some ambers have that capability as part of their enchantment set,” Calla says. “As Perry pointed out to you, mine’s a little simpler than that. The one we bought you yesterday probably can’t do it either.”
I turn onto the sidewalk and walk to the diner’s nearest window. “We should be able to see the clock inside.” I squint through the dirty window at the clock on the wall behind the counter. “It’s ten past four. I hope we’re not too late.”
“Where’s Bloomberry Cafe?”
“This way,” I answer as I turn and hurry along the street. It isn’t far. We reach the corner, turn left, and the cafe is across the street on the right. I can tell before we reach it that it’s unusually busy. The tall stools lining the counter tops along the windows are full, and as we cross the street, a bunch of kids run past us and straight into the cafe. I don’t understand it until I notice the writing on the large chalkboard standing outside the door. The board tells everyone that Bloomberry Cafe is celebrating its fifth birthday with ‘un-blooming-believable discounts’ on everything. “Well, at least we’re not too late. If something had already gone wrong, this place would be a disaster zone, right?”
“Right.” We pause outside the cafe, and Calla glances up and down the street.
I peer in through the window, my eyes traveling across the patrons seated at tables and the kids crowded around the ice cream counter choosing flavors. I’m relieved when I don’t see Val anywhere. I turn back to Calla and ask, “Are we going in? Or are we hoping to stop this Unseelie guard—or guards—before they get inside the cafe?”
“We don’t actually know where they’re going to appear, but yes, that’s the idea. If we can keep them from getting inside the cafe, then none of the occupants of this town need ever know anything was wrong. We can stun them, tie them up, and take them through the faerie paths to somewhere near the Guild. Which reminds me, I need to start gathering stunner magic.” She turns her right hand palm up. “And I’ll only be able to stun one of them. We’ll have to take the others down in a different way.”
“Right. Okay. I’ll be ready to say whatever’s necessary to stop them.”
“Do you still have Griffin power left after all those commands you gave the weapons?” she asks.
“Yes. I don’t know how much, but it doesn’t feel like it’s about to run out. It didn’t take much magic to direct the weapons. Just a lot of concentration.”
“Okay.” She watches the cafe door as a woman walks out. “You need to keep your distance, though. I don’t want one of the Unseelies grabbing hold of you and vanishing through the paths before I can stop him or her.”
“How will they see me, though? Aren’t you going to make us appear invisible?”
“Yes, but I’d rather not have you anywhere near the action. Although,” she adds with a frown, “I don’t want you out of my reach either. Anyone could show up and abduct you—including a guardian, since we don’t know if the Guild assigned someone to deal with this situation.”
“But—”
“And I know you think you can handle these things because your voice has more power than anyone else’s,” she adds sternly, “but I don’t think you understand how quickly things can get out of hand.”
“Hey, I successfully helped you with the other three
incidents we’ve got involved in, remember? I’m not as useless as I once was, so you don’t need to get all overprotective now.”
“Those weren’t Unseelie guards we were dealing with,” Calla argues. “They were random Unseelie fae that Roarke was using to cause mischief. But if the details of this afternoon’s vision are correct, then several Unseelie guards—trained to fight, to kill, to abduct—could appear at any moment. I think my overprotectiveness is justified.”
I doubt I’m going to get anywhere by arguing with her, so I give in with a sigh. I hook both thumbs beneath the backpack’s straps and ask, “Okay, then what do you want to do?”
She pauses for a moment before continuing. “We’ll go with an invisibility illusion, and you can stay here on the sidewalk with me. But keep your glamour in place in case I have to stop projecting the illusion. That will at least keep the humans from seeing you.”
I nod as I consciously probe at my glamour magic to make sure it’s there. I’m never entirely sure I’m doing the glamour thing correctly, but I think I can sense an extra layer of magic hovering just above my skin.
Behind us, the sun peeks through a gap in the clouds, sending shafts of orange light through the cafe windows. The table and chair legs cast long shadows across the checkered floor. A chill creeps up my spine at the memory of the Seer’s words: Shadow length and quality of light suggest late afternoon. I’m about to mention it to Calla when I notice tiny spots of water marking the pavement. I feel a few on my hands and cheeks. Casting my gaze beyond the nearest building, I notice the way the heavy purple-grey clouds are drawing in around that one spot where the sun refuses to be blotted out. “The perfect dramatic backdrop,” I say to Calla.
She smiles, though her gaze remains trained on the pavement in front of the cafe. “I have a certain fondness for storms. Even the dangerous magical ones.”