Storybound

by Emily Mckay

  Excerpt from

  Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:

  The Traveler Undone

  “What do you want?” I asked. I’d be tempted to spit on those fancy shoes of his, but I didn’t have time for formalities.

  “I want what anyone who contacts you wants. I want to hire you to do a job.” Smyth smiles and the already cold room drops another thousand degrees.

  “Too bad,” I snarled. “I’m not a Vargon Ice Demon. I won’t work for just anyone.”

  The demon behind me scuttled closer. Smyth waved him off.

  “Oh, I think you’ll work for me.”

  “Don’t you have enough lackeys on the Council of Sleekers to run errands for you?”

  “Oh, this isn’t a job just anyone can do.” Smyth attempted to smile again and I prayed the hypothermia would get me before he bored me to death. “I need someone with your unique talents and your particular opportunities.”

  “Maybe you should hire the Curati to breed you an underling. Someone who can stomach being in your presence.”

  Smyth ignored my quip and kept pacing. I used the moments he wasn’t facing me to slide my blasting rod down the length of my sleeve. Between Smyth and the Ice Demons, there was no way I could blast my way out of this, but this is why I had a blade on the end of my blasting rod. At the very least, I could cut through the leather and free my hands.

  I knew one thing. Whatever Smyth had planned for me, I didn’t want to face it with my hands tied.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I get off the bus at 6th and Lamar in front of the biggest Whole Foods I’ve ever seen. It’s a sprawling metal and glass temple to Austin’s hippy roots. I cross 6th Street and head for the three-story building that—according to Maps—houses Book People.

  I have to walk around to the other side of the building to reach the entrance. As I approach the door, anxiety tunnels my vision. The burst of excitement I felt when I decided to come here has given way to stomach-churning nausea. Somewhere, just beyond those doors, are the answers I need.

  I can feel it in my gut with a clarity that stuns me. Every step in my life has led me here. Mom’s career choices, my love of The Traveler Chronicles, even my acceptance into AIBS.

  At some point in the past three months, I stepped off a cliff and the gravitational pull of destiny has been hurtling me toward this moment ever since.

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and shake off that bullshit.

  I don’t believe in destiny. Or prophecies. Or fate. I never have.

  That’s the stuff of fantasy novels and fairy tales.

  Despite my love of both, I know exactly where all that airy-fairy crap belongs. In my imagination.

  Still, I feel compelled to keep moving. I step forward, only to be hit by a wave of dizziness. Like someone painlessly punctured my eardrums and siphoned out the inner ear fluid that keeps me upright. Instinctively, I squeeze my eyes closed and stumble forward until I reach the counter by the door.

  “Need something, pet?” says a gravelly voice.

  The guy behind the counter has a greasy Duck Dynasty beard. The visible parts of his face are the color and texture of shoe leather. His smile reveals teeth only a shade lighter. He reeks of dust and sour socks. Or maybe it’s the store that smells like that. Honestly, I can’t tell.

  Everything is wrong.

  I’m not in the store I glimpsed through the doors. I’m…somewhere else. But where?

  I push away from the counter. “I’m good. Thanks.”

  I scan the room. Book People is one of the largest independent bookstores in the country. I have seen pictures of it online. There should be tables of the latest best sellers and hardcover cookbooks. Dump displays of paperbacks. Cute gadgets, tchotchkes, and toys. I see none of that.

  Instead, this place is a dump.

  To the left of Creepy Guy’s counter, there is a bookshelf of tattered books. Beside that, there’s a bookshelf with glass doors which are padlocked, bearing a sign that reads: Rare and extremely dangerous. Do not open. Ever.

  What the…?

  What kind of books are extremely dangerous?

  I squint at the bookshelf, trying to make out the titles through glass that’s foggy with age. As I turn away, I swear something scuttles inside the cabinet. I look back; everything is still.

  The rest of the room is small and cramped. There’s a rack of dingy clothing. Beside it, there’s a table loaded with junk. Over it hangs a sign that reads: Dangerous artifacts. Touch at your own risk. Absolutely no returns.

  Dangerous? It’s a decrepit stereo, a toaster, and a bin of old flip phones. Between the Goodwill rejects and the creepy locked bookshelf, puce velvet curtains hang in front of a door. I swear, the weight of my glance alone causes dust to rise up off the curtains, as if the dust mites don’t even like being looked at.

  This cannot be the right place.

  Shuddering with disgust, I turned to leave—and bathe in hand sanitizer.

  But the second I touch the door, I am hit with another wave of nausea. I brace my hand against the grimy glass and wait for it to pass. Before it does, the door beside it opens and a small figure scurries through. It’s my teacher, Master Flores.

  Stifling my nausea, I call out, “Master Flores?”

  The woman’s steps falter, but she doesn’t turn around. Instead she glances at Creepy Guy.

  She doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, and he asks, “You know your way in?”

  “Of course,” she snaps in her familiar voice.

  Acting on instinct, I follow her. I catch up to her just as she walks through the puce velvet curtains.

  Hard to believe, but this part of the store is even creepier. It’s a maze of towering shelves.

  To my left, there’s a shelf of rusty car parts labeled, A Toe Mobile Parts. In the far corner, I glimpse a staircase leading up to the next floor. To the right, there’s another glass-fronted, padlocked bookshelf, except, instead of books, this one contains row upon row of human skulls.

  Statistically speaking, the leading cause of death for people my age is car accidents. If I had to guess, wandering into places like this would be number two.

  Master Flores veers to the left toward the staircase and I follow her.

  “Wait, Master Flores.” I sprint to catch up with her. “I have to talk to you.”

  She whirls on me and I’m surprised by the annoyance in her eyes. Gone is the stoic, Yoda-like martial arts instructor from school. “You,” she says in disgust. “Go back. You don’t even want to be here.”

  No one would want to be here without a hazmat suit. Instead of pointing this out, I say, “I have to know what really happened yesterday, in class.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I grab her arm. “Yes! I do.”

  Master Flores gives me a hard, assessing look, one that I feel deep in my bones, along with the unease that comes when a stranger stares too deeply into your eyes. But I don’t flinch. I don’t move away, not even when she reaches up and presses the first three fingers of one tiny hand along my temple and the fingers of her other hand on my neck right at my carotid artery. After a second, her eyes drift closed.

  “I know what you are,” I whisper. “You are one of the Curati.”

  It’s a ridiculous thing to say. The Curati aren’t real. They’re part of a fictional universe. And yet…somehow it feels like the truth. And somehow, instead of scoffing or shaking me off, her eyes flicker open. “Yes.”

  She breathes out the word, but I get the feeling that she is not answering my question, so much as confirming something for herself.

  Which makes sense, I suppose. The Curati are part of a special race in the Kingdoms of Mithres. An ancient people who can read someone’s bloodlines through their pulse. They can feel a person’s genetic makeup through their skin. Pred
ict how the thread of magic will weave through a person’s life.

  I think of the moment back in the gym that first day, when Master Flores grabbed my wrist before handing me the bō staff. Whatever she was searching for then, she has clearly confirmed now.

  “Yes,” she says again. “You are Sleeker bred. The Dark World is the world of your birth, yet you are meant for more.” She gives me a piercing look that I feel all the way to my soul. “You know the truth of this.”

  She is right. I do know the truth of this.

  I have always believed that I didn’t belong in the world I’d been born to. I have always believed I was different. And not just because my father is certifiably crazy. Like, legally, certifiably crazy.

  Even before my father’s mental illness carved away pieces of my life and my soul, I was different. Even before it sliced my family to shreds and marred my body, I was different. I am different.

  And she is right about something else as well. I have always believed in the Kingdoms of Mithres. From the first page of the very first Traveler Chronicle, I have believed. I believe in the mighty and awesome power of the High King. In the feckless whimsy of the Red Court. In the wealth and ambition of the Han Court. In the guarded fortress of the Court Arcadia, high in the Eastern mountains. I believe in the great thread of power that connects all living and nonliving things and in the woven magic of time and space.

  Most of all, I believe in Kane himself. From the moment I first met him on the page, I believed he was real. Just around the corner, just out of my sight, waiting for me to meet him.

  If, on some level, I’ve always believed in this world, then why is it so hard to imagine that someday I would make it here?

  Excerpt from

  Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:

  The Traveler Undone

  “This afternoon, you have a meeting with the Red Court,” Smyth said, as he paced in front of me.

  I was only mildly surprised he knew about the meeting. The guy had spies everywhere.

  “Now that you mention it, I did have somewhere to be today. Maybe you should check with my secretary the next time you plan to abduct me.”

  “You will take the job the Red Court offers you. However, instead of escorting the princess to Saint Lew, you will deliver her to me, at the Council of Sleekers’ detention center on Gull Veston Island.”

  “Funny, I don’t remember taking orders from you.”

  Smyth whirled around, his expression suddenly furious. “Your insolence grows tiring, boy.” Then his lips curved into another one of those creepy smiles. “Your mother should have taught you better manners.”

  Rage flooded me, and I bucked against the leather straps holding me down.

  This asshole dared to even mention my mother? Five years ago, he murdered her in front of me and called it justice.

  “Manners,” Smyth snapped.

  As he said the word, his extra pair of Sleeker arms materialized. They were long and thin and sprouted from his shoulder blades.

  This was the magic that made Sleekers unique among Tuatha. His Sleeker arms were the physical manifestation of his will.

  One of those long, slimy things wrapped around my chest, holding me to the chair, pinning me more tightly than the leather straps ever could.

  “You will work for me,” he snarled. “Because I have something you want.”

  Before I could ask what that was, his second Sleeker arm unfurled from behind his back to dangle something before my face.

  A flash of gold hanging from a thin silver chain. My mother’s medallion.

  “Now,” Smyth says, “unless I’m very much mistaken, this medallion is your most prized possession. Bring me the princess and I’ll return it to you.”

  He was right. That medallion was the most important thing I owned. But I still wasn’t going to trade the princess for it. There was nothing in the world that would make me work for Smyth.

  Besides, he was wrong about my meeting with the Red Court. They hired me weeks ago, and the princess was already safely stashed away where Smyth would never find her.

  So now all I had to do was figure out how to get my medallion back.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Wait, the Kingdoms of Mithres are real?” I ask.

  “Yes.” She gives a curt nod.

  “Like, real real?”

  At her look of frustration, I make a give-me-a-second gesture.

  This can’t be right. It just can’t be.

  I squeeze my eyes closed and suck in a few deep breaths.

  I must be dreaming. Or hallucinating or something. Because this cannot be real.

  Except…

  Except why couldn’t it be?

  The idea of parallel universes is pretty much accepted scientific doctrine. And it’s also true that one of the things most scientists agree on is that there is so much about the world and the universe that we don’t know yet. So who’s to say you can’t walk through the doors of a bookstore in Austin and end up in another world?

  “I’m not imagining this? I’m not crazy? I’m really here?”

  “Yes. I have said that.”

  “Oh my God, I have so many questions.” Excitement races through me, but it’s still not fast enough to keep up with my racing thoughts. “If the Kingdoms of Mithres are real, does that mean other story worlds are real? If I’d opened a wardrobe in England, would I have ended up in Narnia?”

  She gives an impatient wave of her hand. “This is all very complicated. Yes. Your world—the Dark World—and this one, are deeply connected.”

  “Connected by what?” I interrupt her.

  “By the thread of energy that stretches between all living things.” She isn’t the kind of person who would say, “Well, duh,” but it’s there in her expression. “The Thread connects all worlds. Stories are magic. Every time one person shares a story with another, that energy grows. It is that power the Tuatha pull from when they do magic.”

  I take a step back, my mind reeling. “The energy of stories is the magic that connects all the worlds,” I say aloud, rolling the idea over in my mind.

  When I was ten, when we lived briefly in L.A., Dad took me to Disneyland. Neither of us liked roller coasters, but we loved sitting outside the ice cream shop, watching the constant stream of tiny princesses, couples in matching Minnie and Mickey ears, burly middle-aged men in Star Wars shirts. Total strangers, made friends by their shared love of a story.

  Of course the magic of stories is real. Of course it connects all of us.

  “But, wait. Is it just my world and this world? Or are there others?”

  The Curator gives me an appraising look. Like she’s trying to decide if it’s worth her time to even answer. “The Thread flows through many worlds.”

  “Star Wars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Harry Potter?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Game of Thrones? Star Trek?” She keeps nodding. “The Walking Dead?” I ask, my voice rising. She nods. “Oh my God. Those poor people.”

  “You are missing the point.”

  “What point?”

  “This is the story you have a connection to. This is the story you were meant for.”

  Anticipation skitters up my spine and out along my nerves. “I knew it.”

  This is why those books spoke to me, why I felt them in my soul. Why reading them was like coming home. Because they were mine in a way no other books were. Are.

  They are mine.

  Haven’t I always known that, on some level? That I had some deep, gut-level connection to the Kingdoms of Mithres, to Kane’s world?

  But Kane is dead. Whatever connection I have to this world, it can’t involve him. He died at the end of the fifth book.

  “Back in class, you said I need to find the lost Oidrhe.” Now that I know
how it sounds, I pronounce it Iv-fah, the way she did. “With Kane dead, the lost—”

  “Kane is not dead.”

  “What?”

  “Kane is not yet dead.”

  “What?” I repeat stupidly, as shock tilts the world beneath my feet. It’s stupid, I know, that entering another universe didn’t surprise me…but this does. “How can Kane still be alive? He was shot at the end of the fifth book. He bled out on the floor of the cathedral. Wallace even said—”

  Even as the words are tumbling out of my mouth, I realize how idiotic I sound. It doesn’t matter what Wallace—the “writer” of The Traveler Chronicles—has said in interviews. Not if the Kingdoms of Mithres are real. Not if Kane is a real person.

  I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Wallace is merely the conduit for Kane’s story. He is not its creator.”

  “What do you mean, he’s the conduit?”

  “The story threads of the universe exist independent of the one who tells them. They are all there. Written in the tapestry of the universe. Storytellers from your world weave those threads into your books, your movies, your video games. Without the thread of magic woven between the many worlds, stories would not exist in the Dark World, and magic would not exist here.”

  “Wait. Video games? Please don’t tell me Grand Theft Auto is real.”

  “I do not know this tale. But have faith. Many storytellers see only the story they want to see. Or they see an incomplete story. A fraction of the whole. Some even glimpse stories that are not meant for them at all. Those stories are told very badly. I do not know why Wallace ended his book the way he did. The story Wallace told is incomplete.”

  “So Kane’s alive? He won’t be assassinated at the cathedral in Saint Lew?”

  “That I do not know. The thread of Kane’s life is woven deeply into the fabric of this world.”

  “Cut the crap. Is Kane alive? Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then if someone warns him about the assassin, he can protect himself. He’ll live.”

  Master Flores doesn’t immediately agree. “Perhaps. But if he is to be warned, it must be by me and at the correct time. Twisting the threads of time is treacherous work. If it is not done with care, an entire life can be unspun.”