No—the tree next to it had small green apples peeking out from tiny new leaves. And the next one had full red apples and foliage.
That was when I thought to finally look up at the sky. I realized that though time had passed since I woke up, even though I couldn’t tell just how long it had been, the amount of light hadn’t changed. The sky was a uniform twilight blueish gray with no clouds, no stars, no sun or moon. The only place that I’d seen a sky like that was in the Otherworld.
Slinging my bag back over my shoulder, I jumped up onto the broom and flew high, up above the trees so I could see the rest of the town. I was still in Madrone, but the town had changed somehow, warped by magic so things looked just a little bit off and the seasons were all over the place. It didn’t feel exactly like the Otherworld, where magic followed rules of its own, rules that I could understand now that I wore the Guardian’s scale around my neck. This felt chaotic—magic was mixing with reality, and everything kept changing as the two forces clashed together.
Something drew my eye in the center of town. Reluctantly, I turned my head until I faced the huge madrone tree. It was glowing brighter than fire, and where the trunk should have been, there was an opening in the fabric of reality, showing a glimpse of the Otherworld.
Someone had opened a gate—or worse, they’d completely torn through the Veil. The magic from the Otherworld was spreading into our mortal realm. From up in the air, I could see that the whole central part of town had already been affected, and as I watched, the distortion crept up the sides of the mountains like fog rolling in off the ocean. How long would it take to swallow up the whole county—and would it ever stop?
There was one person who might be able to help me fix this mess. But would Dandelion be in his world or mine? I hesitated, my broom hovering in midair, as I thought about how I could find him.
My hand went to the dragon scale hanging around my neck. In the Otherworld, it had helped me sense where things were located. Could that help here?
Only one way to find out. I closed my eyes and concentrated on him.
It felt like I was being torn apart, pulled in too many directions at once. With a yelp, I yanked my hand away from the necklace. The magic leaking into the world must be causing some kind of interference. I couldn’t even sense which side of the Veil he was on.
If I couldn’t find him, and I didn’t have any way to call my other friends for help, then I wanted to be somewhere that they could find me. Turning my broom to the center of town, I flew straight toward the source of the chaos.
My feet touched down on the patio outside What a Drip. The tear in the Veil was still halfway down the street. Up close, I could see the magic shimmering in the air as it flowed out of the opening. There were no people nearby or cars driving past; there were vehicles abandoned in the middle of the road, and one pickup truck had crashed into a metal post, tilting it to one side.
I looked back at the coffee shop and my eyes widened. The place was completely trashed!
Broom still in my hand, I hurried in through the front door and stopped to stare. Little coffee cups were thrown everywhere, painting the walls and ceiling with splashes of brown liquid. The center island had been completely overturned, spilling cream and sweetener packets on the floor. The chairs and tables were lying around at crazy angles. It looked like a lot of people had left in a hurry, because there were still some personal belongings left behind. A woman’s red purse had been dumped out near one of the windows and her lipstick was scrawled on the glass.
I cleared my throat. “Hello? Is anyone in here?” My voice sounded hoarse after days of not speaking.
A girl peeked up from behind the counter. “Is it safe now?”
“It’s just me.” I walked up and peeked over the counter.
The barista was huddled on the floor. “I mean, is it safe outside yet? Or are those—things still out there?”
I glanced back over my shoulder. “There’s something weird going on, but I don’t see anything outside right now. What was in here?”
“Goblins,” she said with a shudder. “They wanted coffee. They promised that they could pay. But after I served them, they went all crazy and started throwing everything around. I should have given them decaf.”
Goblins? They must have already discovered the tear in the Veil and come into our world. If there were goblins on the loose, that meant trouble. “How many were there?”
“Maybe a dozen?” The barista pulled herself up to take another peek outside. “Do you think I can make it to the back without anything seeing me? I thought about making a run for home, but someone said the cars weren’t working, so maybe it would be safer if I just locked myself in here.”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t see anything right now. But most of the creatures from the Otherworld aren’t dangerous. I don’t think you need to keep hiding.”
She looked up at me with wide eyes. “The dangerous ones are out, though. After the goblins came the centaurs and a bunch of other weird things, and they were all polite, but then there were these things that looked like they stepped out of some kind of nightmare…” She broke off with a shudder.
“Could you be more specific?” I asked with a frown. A lot of magical creatures looked scarier than they actually were.
She took a shaky breath. “There were two of them. They were huge birds, with these long beaks.” She frowned. “But they had hands, too, because they used those to open the door. And they wore these heavy robes, and their faces looked almost human. When they looked at me, it was like their eyes pierced right through me.”
I craned my neck to look around the corner and saw the door to the bathroom was standing open, and the door handle was lying on the floor, completely ripped out. So the things were strong. “I have no idea what those things are,” I admitted.
The barista reached across the counter and grabbed my hand. “I promise you, I didn’t tell them that she was in there. They already knew somehow. That poor girl! She must have known something was coming to get her, because she ran in here as soon as things started to go wrong, and locked herself in there. But it wasn’t enough!”
I frowned. “Do you know who the girl was?”
The barista shook her head. “About your height—” She stopped and stared at me. “Actually, she looked a lot like you, if your hair wasn’t so messy.”
I started to touch my hair self-consciously, aware that sleeping and then flying without brushing it back or tying it up had probably tangled it into a bird’s nest—and then her words sank in. “Like me, but a few years younger?”
The barista just nodded.
“That’s my sister.” I turned and looked outside again. “Which way did they go?”
She just shook her head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see! I think they flew off.” She looked to the door a final time and began edging toward the back room. “I’m going to hide now and hope nothing comes after me. If the firefighters show up to rescue people, tell them I’m in the back!” She turned and fled.
I hurried outside and looked up at the sky, hoping for some clue about where the bird-monsters had gone. Of course they’d taken Akasha. She seemed to be the focus of all of my problems. The monsters probably wanted to steal her to use her against my mother somehow—to make her open another gate, or force her to close it? It didn’t really matter. I was going to save my sister for real this time.
“Rosamunde!”
I flinched at the all-too-familiar voice. Mom was the last person I wanted to see right now.
She glided down on her broom and landed a few steps away from me. “Oh, thank goodness. I need your help,” she began in a wheedling tone.
I dropped my own broom on the ground and lunged at her with both hands, grabbing her shoulders. “What did you do? You’re destroying the whole town! And you let out monsters that kidnapped Akasha?”
Mom’s eyes widened. Her hands flew up, trying to pull me off of her. “You can’t blame me for every little thing that goes wrong!
”
“I can when it’s all your fault!” I yelled into her face. I let her push me back, since I didn’t really have the energy for a fight, but I folded my arms and glared at her. “Don’t try to tell me that it wasn’t you who tore open the Veil!”
She shook her head. “I know you don’t understand the reason why I did it, but I felt it was the right thing. I didn’t know the gate would just be open like this and let everything through. Akasha helped me, but then she ran off, and I thought she came here.”
“And then some crazy kind of bird monsters that you let out came and snatched her!” I pointed at the sky. “All I know is that they flew off with her somewhere. If you didn’t mean to ruin everything, then you’d better figure out a way to close that hole before anything else gets through. I’m going to find her.”
I bent to pick up my broom again, but Mom grabbed my arm and stopped me before I reached it.
“Wait. Let’s work together on this for once,” she begged me.
I jerked away. “Too late for that.” I swept my broom under me and took to the sky.
15
To Catch a Crow
Rosamunde
My heart pounded and I gripped the handle of my broom so tightly that my hands turned white. I was supposed to be looking for Akasha, but I was so mad at my mother that I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I had to calm down and think about what I was doing. I didn’t even know which direction I should fly in.
Finally, I took a deep breath and forced myself to land in the top of a giant sequoia. From my vantage point, I could see most of the main part of town, including the tear. As I watched, more magikin were creeping out from the Otherworld into mine: a pair of pookhas. They looked around warily, as if expecting someone to stop them, and then ran away from the hole when they realized there was no one there.
If the Faerie Court sent guards, they could contain the breach. A few armed knights would be able to stop any more forbidden magikin from getting through into our world. Why weren’t they here yet? And how long had the tear been open, letting all of these dangerous people through? I wished that I had some kind of analog watch or clock to keep track of the time, since it seemed like no electronics were working. But did time even have the same meaning anymore?
“There you are, witchling.”
The voice startled me so much that I almost lost my footing on the tree branch. Grabbing the trunk to steady myself, I whipped my head around and came face-to-face with Dandelion, standing on the branch next to mine—more than a hundred feet in the air.
“What are you doing up here?” I shrieked. “I’ve been looking for you!”
The Fae smirked. “And I was looking for you. Looks like we’ve found each other.” He frowned and reached out to touch my cloak. “Hm. Not the best work, but it will do. Still, you should have checked in with the Guardian to make sure that your test was complete before you started talking again.”
I jabbed a finger at the tear in the Veil. “There’s kind of an emergency.”
His face went blank as he turned to stare at the magical disaster. “Yes, indeed.” He looked back at me. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“What am I going to do about it?” I shrieked back, and the force of my anger made me sway on the branch. I gripped the trunk tighter and tried to wedge my broom in among the branches with my other hand, trying to keep my balance.
“Whoa! Easy there.” Dandelion stepped onto my branch and grabbed me around the waist. “Maybe it would be better to have this conversation on solid ground.”
I bobbed my head and pulled away from him, sitting back onto my broom. It was easier to keep my balance in the air. Then I looked back at him still standing on the branch. “Do you want a lift?”
He chuckled and stepped off the branch into the open air.
Yellow and purple gossamer wings, finer than a butterfly’s and glowing faintly, suddenly sprouted from his back. He spread them wide and glided down as light as a leaf on the breeze.
I’d seen Fae fly before—some with wings, some without, but only in the Otherworld. I’d never seen Dandelion’s choice of design, but it didn’t surprise me how flamboyant they were. “Nice wings,” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Dandelion glanced behind him. The moment that he stepped onto the ground, the wings disappeared as if they had never been there. “Oh, I change them with my mood. Do you like them?”
I landed and dropped the broom, circling around to his back. “Why do you have them in the mortal world?”
He pointed at the sky. “My magic works better in my world, but it’s stronger now that it’s leaking into yours.”
“Do you or the guardian have a way to stop it?” I looked nervously up where he pointed. “Because this is really bad, right?”
Dandelion tilted his head to one side and put a finger on his chin. “That depends. Did you like your world the way it was before? Oh, and do you value your sanity?”
I shuddered. Humans who spent too much time in the Otherworld went crazy because everything was so different. So far, I hadn’t seen too much change because of the tear, other than the seasons being out of whack, and there was no electricity or phones, and everything looked a little bit crooked or wrong—oh, and not to forget my hallucination or whatever had happened in the hallway when I first woke up. The cloak I wore was making it easier to handle the changes, but if the barista at the coffee shop was anything to go by, everyone else was still having a rough time of it. I could see myself going crazy pretty fast under these circumstances.
I folded my arms and fixed him with a stare. “So you’d better hurry up and close it. I don’t have time for games today. Someone took Akasha and I have to save her.”
“You’ve been trying to get Akasha away from your mother for months,” Dandelion said with a sigh. “This is more important. I need your help. This is exactly the kind of thing I have to train you in.”
I shook my head. “No, Mom lost Akasha. Some big bird things came out of the tear and took her. Are there really monsters that eat children in your world, or is that just a bedtime story? Because her life could be in danger right this minute.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “The child-eating and blood-drinking are mostly done by vampires, who used to be humans and can only exist in your world.”
I let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, I know about the vampires. What else eats people? Or did they have a different reason for snatching her? Spare me the witty comments, because I’m completely freaking out right now.”
I was getting pretty worked up. The longer that I thought about Akasha being out there in danger, the more that my heart rate was rising and my breathing sped up.
Dandelion put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “Calm down. They sound like crow demons to me. We can track her down and save her. But first, don’t you think that we should deal with the tear?”
I shook my head. “Tell the dragon to keep an eye on the tear so nothing else can come through for now—”
“Nobody tells her what to do,” he interrupted me with an amused smile.
I looked away. “Or you go do it, I don’t care. I’ll come and try to help later. But I need to find Akasha, and if you won’t help me with that, then just let me go take care of it by myself.”
“Oh, my little witchling.” Dandelion pulled me into a hug. “Of course. Go find your sister. I’ll go talk to the castle and tell the Count what’s going on, and maybe he can send some guards to keep the wrong people from crossing over. But I am going to need your help to close the tear, so come back as soon as you can. Find me at the opening.”
I hugged him back tightly. “Thank you. I’ll try to be there as fast as I can.” I pulled back and looked up at him. “Any advice for catching a crow demon or whatever?”
He winked at me. “I think you know a fox who could help you track them down.” He sprouted wings and flew off with a wave.
“No, wait!” I shouted after him to stop, but he ignored me. I th
ought about chasing after him to yell at him, but he always enjoyed being cryptic and glib, so I doubted that he would give me any more help.
But asking a fox was no help at all, since he obviously meant my kitsune ex. I’d been avoiding Kai and things were really awkward between us. How could I run to him again now that I just needed his help? He would probably get mad and refuse.
But I didn’t have any other choice. With a heavy sigh, I hopped on my broom and headed to Kai’s house.
As I flew away from the center of town, the encroachment of the magic grew weaker. I’d only gone less than a mile before the effects of the tear faded entirely and everything looked normal again. So it hadn’t spread very far yet—but how fast had it spread, and would the magic only continue to grow? And obviously, the magikin who escaped from the other side of the Veil would be able to travel much farther. If they were kidnapping people, or hurting them, or causing trouble for the Faerie Court, they could be just as dangerous as a sudden change in physics or mass hallucinations.
Outside of the affected area, it was dark, my first clue about how much time had passed. The air was also much colder, and I saw snow on the ground again. I shivered, pulling my coat closed, and dug around in my bag hoping for gloves or a scarf. But I’d torn them off when I got home from court earlier that afternoon, and I must have left them dropped somewhere in my house, because I didn’t have anything else to keep me warm.
At the house, Kai’s truck was the only one in the driveway. Well, hopefully that meant I wouldn’t have to face any awkwardness with his moms—just him. I landed in the yard and rapped on the door hopefully.
The door flew open and Kai launched out, grabbing me in a hug. “Rosa! We’ve been so worried about you!” He touched my face. “Oh, you’re so cold! Get in here.”
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 60