Academy of Magic Collection

by Angelique S Anderson et al.

  “Tonight at dinner.”

  “Then they don't know yet…I don't know when Uri is planning to tell them.”

  “You said we're not leaving for a week. We have time then. We can still sabotage it somehow like we were talking about last night,” I said, pacing. “We can go tonight and warn Eve, and maybe she can protect the people who are marked. She has to have some kind of power or they’d have killed her by now.”

  “Bryce will never agree to that.”

  “Then we won’t tell him. Someone has to be helping Eve, Leo. She has an archangel and an Elemental queen trying to kill her, and they haven’t been able to do it yet.”

  “Halsey…”

  “Do you really want to be responsible for killing most of humanity? We have to try,” I said, moving deeper into the fog.

  Leo followed me. “Where are you going?”

  “To find the way out so we can get back to the cliff,” I said, trying to push the fog out of the way.

  “No, Halsey, listen. You can’t just go wandering around in here. Bryce said The Fold is—” Leo started, but his voice quickly faded as I toppled down and landed on something hard. Water splashed me, and I panicked that it would burn my skin, but it didn’t.

  The fog was several yards above my head, but I could see it sitting on top of the dark lake that surrounded me. I looked down and found myself sitting in a rowboat, which I nearly fell out of when another rowboat came out of the fog. As it came closer, I saw a vacant-eyed, older woman inside who was slowly paddling. Before I could say something to her, dozens of other rowboats appeared in the fog, each of them carrying a person who seemed to be in some kind of trance too. “What is this place?” I whispered to myself, watching the boats slip in and out of the fog.

  “Halsey!” Leo shouted as he descended from the fog above, his dark wings sending currents of air that rocked my rowboat. I reached for the sides to keep from falling overboard, but Leo’s arms hooked under mine as he lifted me out of the boat and back through the tear.

  We toppled to the rocky ground that we couldn’t see, and I was confused about why we were both desperately out of breath.

  “Where…was that?” I gasped.

  Leo’s wings snapped closed, then disappeared. He dropped to his hands and knees, trying to suck in slow, deep breaths.

  “Limbo,” he finally said. “For human souls—their world between planes.”

  “Are you talking about Purgatory? People riding around like zombies in rowboats on a foggy lake?” I asked, then coughed and sucked in a breath.

  “It’s just another tear, Halsey. I was trying to tell you…The Fold is the veil.”

  “Bryce told you all that? That’s what he found out in his research?” I said, getting to my feet.

  “As of this morning, yeah,” Leo nodded. “The raven messenger just called it The Fold because everything has to be a stupid puzzle,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It extends out past this island—it’s the fog, just like by the cliff, and it’s the reason why planes and ships go down if they don’t know how to avoid the tears like the one you just fell through. The Bermuda Triangle is just a bunch of tears in the veil.”

  “But you said they were doors. You said we just needed to find the right ones to go back and forth between home and here,” I said, confused.

  “Yeah, more tears in the veil,” Leo agreed. “But we don’t know which ones lead home and which ones lead to the first ring of Hell, or Limbo,” he added, throwing out a hand in the direction we’d just been. “That’s why Bryce was researching.”

  “OK…” I exhaled, and took a deep breath. “Then we go back to the cliff and fly the others back here. And Bryce will show us where to go. We'll talk to the others about warning Eve, and Bryce can just think it's the day trip he's been trying to make happen all this time.”

  “We can try it,” Leo said, resigned. He sighed, and his wings slowly extended behind him. I watched the shadow grow under him as they unfurled again, his shoulders, chest, and stomach flexing to balance the weight.

  The sight of him was enough to send a wave of heat through me, and I quickly channeled it to my own wings. I closed my eyes for a second once they were fully extended and pushed the rest of the prickles out through my fingertips. When I looked back at Leo, he was smirking at me and shaking his head.

  “What?” I asked, curious why he wasn’t elated for me.

  “I was hoping I’d have to kiss you again to get that to work,” he said, his dark eyes flashing a deep golden glow.

  The sun had set while we were in The Fold, but only recently judging by the simmering purple on the horizon. Leo and I glided to the cliff edge, where Rhea, Alec, Alita, and Bryce were just coming over the ridge.

  “Perfect timing,” Bryce said to me as we landed. “I guess you really are a quick study.”

  “Wow!” Alita rushed over to me and ran her hand over my left wing. “These are huge. And soft.”

  “Halsey said you knew where the tear was that led to Portland?” Leo said, turning to Bryce as he folded in his wings.

  “The tears seem to be aligned with the constellation Orion. Our tear here is lined up with the star Mintaka on Orion’s belt,” Bryce said, typing something into his tablet. When he finished, a green series of lines and dots projected into the sky, one of the dots in the center shining brighter than them all. He typed something else into his tablet, and a red line shot downward, stopping in the middle of the fog. “That’s our tear.”

  “When you get close, it looks like burning rocks,” I said, glaring at Leo. “Which would have been nice to know.”

  Leo smiled. “I didn’t want you to chicken out.” He winked, then turned back to Bryce. “And the tear that leads to Portland?”

  “It’s north—aligned with the star Betelgeuse, Orion’s sword shoulder,” Bryce answered, typing another combination into his tablet and making a star to the upper left of the other one light up. “The tears in the veil move, though, because of the earth’s rotation. I was telling Red-Cloud it’s actually amazing you haven’t wound up in Limbo with your free dives since it’s right there next to our tear—aligned with the star Alnilam.” Another red line shot down from the highlighted, projected star in the center of Orion’s belt. “You fly forty-five degrees to the left, and we’re suddenly a long way from home.”

  Leo and I exchanged knowing looks. “We’ll be careful,” he said. “How do we get to the tear lined up with Betelgeuse?”

  “Go in through our tear and just keep going north forty-five degrees. We should run right into it. Space is compressed in the veil, so it shouldn’t take nearly as long as it would to fly to Portland from here, even if we could get through the tear landmines around the island.”

  “How did you find all these tears?” I asked, amazed, but at the same time, confused. “How did you even know about them?”

  Bryce exchanged looks with Leo.

  “It’s all right. It won’t matter if she knows,” Leo said.

  Bryce looked back at me carefully. “Uri’s Book of Muzaloth.” He waved his tablet in the air. “I digitized it after I found it one day while I was looking for the generator he had to have for the island. I was going to shut it down and kill the firewall I thought he had too, and then I could queue home.”

  I looked from Bryce to Alec and Rhea to see if they were trying not to laugh, but their faces were serious.

  “You saw the tears in a supernatural world divider in a book?” I said, incredulous.

  Now the others started chuckling.

  “Halsey, it’s the book the archangel Raziel—the angel of mysteries—wrote about the eighth level of Heaven.” Leo said. “We don’t know how, but Uri…Uriel, must have taken it.”

  “Sorry, the what? There are levels of Heaven?” I asked, shaking my head. I turned to Alita. “Did you know about this?” She shook her head, looking as utterly confused as I was.

  “We don’t really have time for this,” Bryce said, checking the Orion projection. “The stars are
shifting as we speak, but OK, crash course: There are ten levels. The eighth level governs the different realms: Limbo, all the other nine levels of Heaven, the constellations, wormholes, dimensions, astral projection, whatever. Raziel wrote a bunch of books, even gave one to Adam and Eve after they got kicked out of Eden so they didn’t walk off a cliff or try to pet a tiger or something.”

  Alec shook his head at Bryce. “Oh my god, can we go now?”

  “Wait, then how did you suddenly figure out that the stars aligned with the tears?” I asked. “I mean, if you’ve been reading that book for three years?”

  Bryce sighed. “Fine, this is going to sound stupid, but new pages appeared. I don’t know how to explain it,” he said, holding out the tablet that was still projecting the constellation of Orion. “I think after we finally found the first tear, it like, knew we were ready for more information or something. I don’t even know how new digitized pages appeared because it’s not like this is the physical, angel-touched book or anything.”

  I looked skeptically at Bryce, but Leo refocused everyone’s attention when he started talking again.

  “If anyone would like to go home, then we need to go before the tear moves again. I don’t want to hit Limbo instead,” he said, meeting my eyes, and all the overwhelming new information I’d just learned was washed to the back of my mind. We needed to warn Eve about Uri’s and Ghob’s plan. Now.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I carried Alita since she was the lightest of the three. Rhea carried Bryce, and Leo carried Alec as we made our way toward the fog and what we hoped would be the right set of flaming rocks. We followed Bryce's red grid line that descended from the sky, and I held my breath when I finally saw the flames.

  “Halsey!” Alita screamed.

  “It’s all right! It’s supposed to be there. Close your eyes!”

  Seconds later, we were through the tear, the familiar white fog and rocky terrain beneath us…which I only discovered because I still couldn’t seem to land on my feet. Alita and I crashed into the ground and rolled a few times before everything finally stopped spinning, and I got to my feet. When I looked up, Rhea was slowly clapping.

  “Oh, I forgot...you could fly into a flaming tear in the veil and stick the landing when you first got to the island, right?” I snapped. She raised a finely penciled eyebrow and sneered at me, but she also stopped clapping. Granted, it was only to punch Bryce in the arm for snickering, but I’d take my victories where I could get them.

  “Keep laughing and I’ll drop you in the ocean on the way back,” she said. Bryce just rolled his eyes, unfazed.

  “Are you all right?” I said, turning to Alita to help her up.

  She nodded and looked around, wide-eyed. “Wow, it’s just all fog everywhere,” she said, taking a few steps in the opposite direction. All at once, Bryce, Leo, and I all screamed for her to stop. “Whoa! OK,” she said, holding up her hands.

  “Limbo, remember?” Bryce’s eyes widened like this was the most obvious thing in the world. And I mean, we had just been talking about it. “It’s literally like, twenty steps in the direction you were just heading. Come on,” he added, waving for her to follow him.

  “How far is it supposed to be?” Alec asked, holding out a hand and watching the fog move through his fingers as we walked.

  “It’s a straight shot northwest,” Bryce answered, checking his tablet again. “No other tears for about an hour unless we get wildly off course.”

  Leo dropped back and walked at my side, slowing our pace a little to let the others get ahead.

  "I talked with Alec and Rhea," he whispered. "They'll help us warn Eve about next week. But Halsey... Next week, we won't be able to pull any punches. Uri and Sylvie will be watching everything we do then."

  "Then they can watch us look for someone who's not there," I said without taking my eyes from the empty fog path ahead of us.

  "What about Alita?" he asked, lifting his chin to her back, several feet ahead of us.

  "Maybe talk to Bryce about taking her under his wing? To look out for her, you know?" I said, turning in toward him so there was no chance she could hear me. "I think he likes her. But she’s kind of scattered. If she knows what we're really doing, she might slip and say something. It's better they stay together."

  Leo nodded. "So where's the first stop when we come out the other side? How will we know where to find Eve?"

  "She works behind The Citadel wall as the Crisis Management Director. I used to have her queue code, but I don't know what happened to it."

  "Should be easy enough to track her down with a title and a location, don't worry," he said. "But we'll need to get in and out. We can't afford to have all of us turn up missing tomorrow for the closing of honing week." I nodded.

  "That's fine. I just want to let Max know so he can stay close to her, help her keep that Knox guy safe so the veil stays down.”

  "All right, we'll find him too. I'm going to tell Bryce to keep Alita close." He angled his head toward the front of our group, then raised my hand to his lips and kissed it before he walked ahead.

  I took a deep breath and tried not to think of Max, of the danger he and my aunt and uncle were in now because of me. If this didn't work, Uri and Sylvie would kill them, and they would never know the truth about anything.

  I wasn't sure how long I was caught up in those thoughts, but I was startled out of them by Bryce's excited shouts.

  "It's there! Just ahead!" he barked, holding out a hand to stop everyone's progression.

  "What's on the other side?" Rhea asked. "Water, what?"

  "I don't know, Halsey said woods?" Bryce answered, glancing at me with raised eyebrows for confirmation.

  "If a tear is supposed to feel like the one we went through back there, where all noise is swallowed up, then yes, this will come out in the woods."

  "All right, then look out," Alec said, making his way to the front of the group. "Wait, unless...is it like, a drop out of the sky?"

  Rhea rolled her eyes. "Come on," she said, extending a hand. "We'll go together."

  Alec bounced his nearly white eyebrows at us and took her hand. They started walking slowly, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

  Rhea turned back to us. "So where is it supposed—“ She didn't even have the chance to finish the sentence before they both disappeared into the ground in a swirling cloud of fog, which made the rest of us jump.

  "Oh my god," Alita gasped. "Are they all right?" We all exchanged glances until Rhea's head and shoulders appeared near the ground in exactly the place she'd just fallen through.

  "No wings necessary. It opens about a foot off the ground next to a giant rock wall," she said, then disappeared again.

  "All right," Bryce blew out a breath. "Shall we?" He offered an arm to Alita, who flipped her long, red braid off her shoulder and gave him a huge smile as she crossed to him. She took his arm, and in a few more steps, they, too, disappeared into the ground.

  "Our turn," I said, moving toward the spot where everyone else went through.

  "I'll go first and catch you," he said, smiling.

  "It's just a foot off the ground..." I trailed off, wondering why Leo was already several steps in front of me.

  He turned to look at me. "I'm sorry, Halsey..." he said, his expression falling.

  "For what?"

  He sighed. "We aren't leaving in a week. This is the strike team, here, now. We just needed you to find Eve.“

  I swallowed hard to push down the tightening feeling in my chest as my heart pounded in my ears.

  "What the hell are you saying?"

  "We can't risk warning Eve. You said it yourself, everyone has hurt the earth. They all need to go, Halsey," Leo shook his head. "Humans had their chance."

  The pieces finally started coming together, and panic welled in my chest. "No, Leo, you’re still human. What about your tribe!"

  "My tribe…” He laughed, but without humor. This laugh was full of regret and pain. He scrubbed h
is hands over his face and pushed them back through his loose, dark hair. "Halsey, I already killed most of them…all of the ones I loved. I’m not human anymore. I’m a monster.”

  "What? But the cave?“

  “Oh, I did leave to go there…” he added, his eyes searching the ground before he found mine again. "But then I went back. I tried to stop myself, but it was like I was just watching like a passenger in my own body.” I stared at him as the scene played out in his expression, his eyes distant and vacant. “Sylvie found me back in the cave, covered in their blood. She took me in as I was then, a monster. She saved me. Eden’s Bluff saved me. And now I need to save the others like us."

  "Leo, listen to yourself! You’re just perpetuating more violence, don’t you see that? They'll kill all those people! You heard what Ghob and Uri said. You know what will happen if they lift the veil."

  He shrugged. “Look what they’ve all done with what they’ve been given.” Leo looked hard at me, unblinking and soulless. “Maybe they deserve to die. Goodbye, Halsey."

  "No!" I shouted.

  "Seal it!" Leo took a step backward and dropped through the ground. I rushed into the cloud of swirling fog he left, but nothing happened.

  "Leo!" I dropped to my hands and knees feeling around for an opening, but all I felt was more of the same cool, rocky terrain. "Leo!"

  I walked back and forth over the space where the others had disappeared, half-convinced that any second I would fall through like they did into the eye of the woods. I could almost hear the chirps and rustles all around it, the anticipation I always had that everything would stop suddenly, and I wouldn't be able to pinpoint when.

  Bryce had said there were no other tears between here and the one back at Eden's Bluff, but he didn't say anything about there being more now. I was suddenly careful where I stepped, not wanting to accidentally fall onto the front porch of Hell, or who knows where else.

  Maybe I could make my way back to Eden's Bluff? Take my chances with flying to the coast of Florida? If I crashed through another tear, couldn't I just fly right back through it like Leo and I did in Limbo?