Havenfall

by Sara Holland

  In town beneath the ridge, it’s just another lazy June morning, the start of a bright day. Haven wakes up in the slow rhythms of summer. People in bathrobes or sweats drift onto their front porches, smoking or sipping coffee. Somewhere I hear a radio playing Willie Nelson. One stooped old man is feeding chickens in front of his house; a middle-aged woman walks an ancient, rotund beagle down the cracked sidewalks. Ms. Douglas arranges cookies in the window of the town’s lone café; Lisa at the general store emerges from inside as I pass and flips the wooden sign on the front door to Open.

  Shutters open in windows.

  Birds sing in the trees.

  But a slow dread is gathering in my stomach all the same.

  The antique shop, where the drop-off is supposed to take place at 8:30, is at the far end of Main Street. It’s 8:10 now. I pull off at the still-closed gas station and lock my bike to a broken pump, out of sight from the road. There, I sit for a few moments, taking deep breaths and going over what I need to do. Intercept the Heiress. Stop this deal before it goes down, and make her tell me what the hell she’s doing.

  The Heiress used to be like family. But that was before she went behind Marcus’s back and undermined Havenfall’s secrecy for some quick cash, put the doorways at risk, and exposed all the Adjacent Realms to discovery. It’s a betrayal almost too big to fathom.

  At a quarter after eight, I leave my bike and set off toward the antique store, skirting the back of the gas station and the small cow field that sits between the two buildings. My boots leave marks on the dew-damp grass, and big-eyed cows look up at me inquisitively as I pass.

  It seems peaceful, but anxiety prickles the back of my neck, and I can’t stop myself from glancing a few times toward the woods. The Solarian could be anywhere. The people on their porches, the guy and his chickens, the lady and her chubby dog—they’re all in danger as long as the monster is out there. I’m in danger too. I have to fix this soon.

  And then, just as I’m slipping into a copse of pines running along the side of the antique shop, I hear hooves from the road.

  It’s not actually that unusual to see people on horses here in Haven—there are plenty of narrow, windy, rocky paths where cars can’t go. But the Heiress had better hope most of the townspeople are still asleep and not looking out their windows, because her grasp of modern fashion is … not great. This morning she’s wearing her usual riding outfit: elegant leggings, a tunic, leather boots, and a flowing green cape that drapes over the back of her chestnut horse as it trots down the road. And a cowboy hat.

  I have to swallow an incongruous bark of laughter as I step out of the trees and into her path. But it dies fast as the anger bubbles up inside me, heating my face.

  The Heiress jumps at the sight of me, yanking the horse to a placid halt. “Maddie,” she says, and shock tinges her voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “Trying to find out what you’re doing here,” I growl.

  Some of the color leaves her cheeks. “Madeline, this really isn’t a good time.” She has a black linen bag slung across her body, bulging with something that looks heavy.

  “A good time for what?” I glance up and down the road to make sure we’re alone. I’m having a hard time keeping my voice down. “How long have you been running this little one-woman black market?”

  The Heiress tugs on the reins, a quick, violent motion to bring the horse trotting over to the side of the road, opposite the antique shop. I stalk after her.

  “Quiet,” she hisses over her shoulder, her eyes darting to the storefront—still quiet, closed, the small parking lot empty—before drilling back into me. “Listen to me, Madeline. This isn’t what you think. And it’s certainly not a one-woman affair.” She dismounts, ridiculously graceful for someone her age, landing lightly on the pavement. “But we can’t talk about this now. It’s not safe.”

  “Because you’re meeting that guy Whit. That buyer. You’re pawning off stuff from the Realms.”

  “No, actually.”

  The Heiress comes toward me. I don’t back away, even though part of me wants to, and she opens the bag a few inches so I can glimpse inside. I expect to see silver, but instead I see green. The Heiress is carrying a crap-ton of cash.

  “I’m the buyer,” she tells me, enunciating each word. “I’m recovering artifacts sold away from Havenfall long ago. I’m bringing them back to the inn so they’ll be safe. So can you please make yourself scarce and we’ll talk about this later?”

  “No,” I say, planting my feet, trying to hide that her words have taken me off guard. Then who sold them in the first place? “If that were true, you wouldn’t be sneaking around. Marcus would have known if something like that was happening.”

  At that the Heiress laughs, short and harsh. “You think I’m the one who brought this trade to Haven?”

  My stomach drops. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that there are many things your uncle has kept from you.”

  The anger roars up under my skin in a heartbeat, like embers sparking to life. “Marcus would never do something like that. Havenfall is his whole life. Literally his whole life.” I step forward. “He would never put it in danger like this—”

  A faint rumble makes us both look sharply down the road. In the distance down the mountain, a rusty nineties station wagon is making its winding way up toward town, the sun reflecting off its tan hood.

  The Heiress grabs my shoulder, making me jump. Her cowboy hat falls off into the dirt and she ignores it; her strong fingers dig in like claws. “Listen to me, Madeline,” she says again. “The purchase I’m about to make—it has to go through. Hide and watch in the trees if you want, and I’ll explain everything after. I swear it. But you must let me do this.”

  There’s something new in her tone now, a ragged urgency. Her rich, throaty voice has always been the only part of her that really has seemed centuries old.

  “Think,” she tells me, one hand on the reins and one on me. “If I were the orchestrator of all this, why would I have left Havenfall for so long? It was my home too, and the center of the trade besides. Why would I have left the black market’s black heart?”

  I don’t know what to say to that. I can scarcely process anything she’s said. She’s accusing Marcus of being involved in this, somehow. Just the thought makes rage race through my veins.

  But she’s buying, not selling. The idea of hanging back and watching feels so wrong, but the thought of letting Whit carry away any piece of Havenfall is even worse. It makes my skin crawl. If my goal is to keep Realms objects safe and secret in Havenfall, I need to let this deal go through.

  The station wagon chugs up the road, closer and closer.

  “Okay,” I finally say. I jerk free of the Heiress’s hand and back away, toward the trees opposite the antique shop, where there’s a clear view of the window. “Fine. Do what you have to do. But then you’re going to tell me everything.”

  15

  I feel stupid, hiding in the trees like this. This isn’t a child’s game. I should be in there with the Heiress, and yet here I am, on the outside, waiting.

  Earlier, someone opened the antique store and let both the Heiress and Whit in. All I can see now is their shapes in the lighted window. Occasionally, the Heiress breaks from their huddle to pace the floor, the hem of her cloak one misstep away from knocking over all the dusty silver and porcelain and bringing the whole place tumbling down. A buzz in my pocket makes me jump.

  I fumble for my phone to put it on silent. See that I’ve gotten a text from Dad. Miss you too sweetie!!

  I ignore him. No time for that now.

  Finally, finally, Whit leaves and drives away. The Heiress comes out and we head to the twenty-four-hour diner in tense silence; she’s leading her horse on foot down the side of the road.

  She has her cloak balled up under her arm, worry and annoyance creasing her usually serene face. It’s starting to get hot out, but my insides feel cold as ice with anger and confusion.

>   Inside the diner, the girl at the hostess stand—maybe fifteen, brown ponytail sticking out of a green O’Connor’s hat—looks uncertainly between us when we come in, clearly picking up on the tension, although she doesn’t bat an eye at the Heiress’s strange outfit. She seats us at the big booth in the far corner and leaves the Heiress and me to stew in our solitude, the expanse of speckled plastic table stretching like an ocean between us.

  The Heiress is glowering, clearly agitated, waves of distress and irritation rolling off her. She gazes out the window at Main Street, and I can’t tell if she’s lost in thought or avoiding my gaze or both. But I’m not going to let her off the hook that easy.

  “So.” I put my elbows on the table, leaning forward so she’s forced to meet my eyes. “You said that this wasn’t what I thought it was. Fill me in. What is it really?”

  The Heiress turns her gaze on me finally, looking like she’d rather be somewhere, anywhere, else. Without makeup, she looks even older, softer. She has a heart-shaped face, a sharp chin, and eyes that are still gray and clear and piercing.

  “What do you know?” she asks me.

  “I found some papers in your room.” There doesn’t seem to be any point in talking around that bit now. “I know you’re trading magical artifacts. Enchanted things.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought a modern girl like you believed in such things,” the Heiress says, witheringly. “Everyone knows the magic of the Adjacent Realms is bound to its bearers. Only people carry magic.”

  I feel my hackles go up. “It doesn’t matter if the magic is real. You’re telling people it is.” My anger, held at bay while I hid in the trees, is rising rapidly now. “You told that creepy-ass dude from earlier that magic is real, and it can be found at Havenfall.”

  The Heiress’s eye twitches when I swear. She might not understand the slang, but she understands my tone just fine.

  “I’ve told him nothing he didn’t already know,” she said. “There are many who know the true nature of Havenfall. Humans all over this world of yours. There always have been.”

  My face must betray my shock, because she tilts her head at me.

  “Come, Madeline, did you really think a place such as this could truly be a secret? This is the nature of magic. The green children of Woolpit. Canneto di Caronia. The Fairy Flag. I could go on. There are always leaks, but the world doesn’t end.”

  I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t. My mind races. If I take her at her word—that magic really can be bound to objects … what does that mean? I think of her room, glittering with dusty trinkets, and I skim over Havenfall’s grounds and perimeter and everyone who walks through its doors every day. Marcus trusted his people, and I trusted him. How could he not have known about this? Or worse, how could he have known and done nothing about it?

  “It predates Marcus’s term as the Innkeeper,” the Heiress says, reading my face. “It predates even my time there. Secrets—and magic—always find their way free.”

  My head feels like it’s spinning as I try to wrap my mind around this new information. “How many people are involved?” I whisper. “How many have had their hands in this?”

  “It’s hard to say,” the Heiress says calmly. “Hundreds. Maybe more than a thousand.”

  “That’s—” Anger and fear twine together inside me. “A thousand? How are you so relaxed right now?”

  “We’re still here, aren’t we?” she retorts. “The inn is still standing. And I’m on your side of this. I am trying to right the wrongs.”

  “You don’t understand! There’s no such thing as an open secret in this world!”

  I clench my hands hard under the table, nails digging in. How can I make the Heiress understand a world full of cell phones with cameras and microphones? The Internet? “Everyone talks about everything online now. If you don’t keep something a total secret, everyone will know soon enough.”

  “Ah, but you forget that humans are selfish creatures,” the Heiress says evenly. “If there’s something to be gained by it, they will hold their tongues.”

  I bite my own tongue as the waitress approaches with our food: a chicken sandwich for me and coffee and scones for the Heiress.

  She breaks off a corner of the scone and eats it delicately, then makes a face. “Too sugary.”

  That’s a joke between us ever since I was a little kid. I’d bring her some Haven food to try, and she’d pretend not to like it. But I’m in no mood for games right now, nostalgic or not.

  “How long has this been going on?” I demand.

  The Heiress’s face stays placid. The unshakable calmness in her voice somehow angers me even more. “I don’t know. Before either of us was born. As long as people have been crossing through the doorways, I expect.”

  “And you’re trying to put a stop to it. By buying the objects back up …”

  “And returning them to the Adjacent Realms where they belong,” she finishes for me. “Yes, that’s the idea. I’ve used their magic to get past the barrier on the grounds.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell Marcus a long time ago?”

  For the first time in our exchange, a flicker of emotion shows. The Heiress’s face falls, only slightly, and only for a second. But I don’t miss it.

  “Madeline,” she says slowly. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to want to believe it, but you must. It’s true.”

  Dread fills my insides, heavy, cold. “What is it?”

  She looks me straight in the eyes. “Your uncle knows about the trade,” she says. “He is the seller.”

  I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Even after we return to the inn, when the Heiress brings me back to her room and shows me papers with Marcus’s handwriting on them, I can’t believe it.

  And yet … there’s no other explanation. No other reason I can think of that would explain the existence of letters in my uncle’s distinctive slanted handwriting, promising buyers riches beyond imagining, Havenfall silver infused with magic. Long lists of names and mailing addresses, each one noted next to what they purchased, when, and for how much. The records go back decades, since before I was born, since Marcus took over Havenfall from my great-great-grandmother. There are copies of receipts for silver objects passing hand to hand. This time I can’t deny the Heiress’s claim. She was buying. And my uncle—my uncle who I trust more than anyone else in the world—was, is, selling.

  The Heiress sits patiently and pours us tea while I go through the papers, watching me steadily. My gut churns. My body is slow to accept the truth even as my mind is forced to.

  “So that is what your big fight was about,” I say finally, letting the papers flutter from my hands onto the desk. “You were trying to get the objects back, and Marcus—he was—”

  “Selling them,” the Heiress fills in, when my voice breaks. “Yes.” There’s no satisfaction in the words. Just a quiet sadness.

  “And that’s why you left.”

  The Heiress nods again. “For a while. But …” She looks out the window at the mountains, the wrinkles deepening around her eyes. “I came to realize that Havenfall, and the sanctity of the magic within it, was more important than my pride. That it would be better to let Marcus think I’d made my peace with his doings, and then do what I could myself to remedy them.”

  I look down, blinking hard. How could he do this? Havenfall is home—that’s even truer for him than it is for me. Marcus spends all year on these grounds. I can’t remember the last time he left.

  That you know of.

  Because if these papers are to be believed, he’s been traveling all over the country, selling off Havenfall silver bound with the magic of the Adjacent Realms. There are names of drivers, people he trusted enough to make shipments. But sometimes, when he was dealing with a particularly rare magical object—a vase that bore Byrnisian tide-magic, or a watch carrying the Fiorden ability to manipulate emotions—he would make the trip himself. To Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, Minneapolis. Even f
arther afield sometimes, New York, Vancouver, Mexico City. There are flight receipts, itineraries. Marcus is nothing if not meticulous.

  “How did you get all this?” I ask the Heiress in a hoarse whisper.

  I don’t really want to know, don’t really care how these records ended up in the Heiress’s desk drawers, but it’s an easier question to put into words than the ones really weighing on my mind. Namely, why, why, why, and why didn’t he tell me?

  The Heiress doesn’t answer my question, but counters it with a demand of her own. “Before I tell you anything more, Maddie, I need your word that you won’t divulge any of this to your uncle.”

  “I couldn’t tell him if I wanted to.” I’m not thinking. The words just spill out. “He’s still unconscious.”

  While the Heiress’s expression softens a little, her gaze stays on me, waiting, expectant. “When he wakes up, then. You mustn’t tell Graylin or Willow either. They don’t know about this. They don’t need to.”

  I want to argue. I want to tell her that he’s my uncle—how could I promise her that? But the papers seem to whisper to me from where they rest uneasily in my lap. Telling me that Marcus was keeping secrets, dangerous ones, from me and from everyone else. Maybe he doesn’t deserve my loyalty.

  He’s my family, one of the last people I have. Dad doesn’t know about half my life, Nate is dead, and Mom’s soon to follow.

  But Marcus lied.

  “Okay,” I say, and though my voice is shaky, I mean it.

  The Heiress must see the truth in that word, because after a long moment of looking at me, she nods. “All right, then,” she says heavily. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you. Brekken of Myr stole these papers from Marcus’s office.”

  The name hits me like a fist of ice to my chest. When my voice comes out, a beat too late, it sounds like I’ve been punched too. “Brekken?”

  The Heiress nods. “He was helping me.” Her voice gentles. “I know you two are close. He loves this place as much as you do, and he would do anything to save it.”