Storybound

by Emily Mckay

  After all, that’s the whole point anyway.

  Excerpt from

  Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:

  The Traveler Undone

  Importing large items from the Dark World is very hard.

  Smaller items aren’t that big a deal. Once I find a threshold, it’s just a matter of keeping it open long enough to cross over to the Dark World and find what I need.

  Big items—things like cars—that’s where it gets dicey. It’s like threading a hot dog through the eye of a needle.

  Or, to be more precise, it’s like driving a Porsche Panamera through a hula hoop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I’m still working up the courage to climb into the Porsche when the garage door behind us opens and Morgan enters, the cat by his side.

  “So Cupcake, what do you think of my car collection?” He’s practically beaming with pride as he asks the question.

  I force a smile. “Just out of curiosity, is there any car you don’t particularly like?”

  Morgan’s face splits into a grin at my question. “They are all beautiful, aren’t they?”

  I end up asking Morgan to back the car out of the garage for me. Somehow, he buys my explanation that garages are bigger in the Dark World and that I’m worried only about dinging his paint job.

  Ten minutes later, I slide into the driver’s seat, which is like climbing into the pod of some sort of futuristic space shuttle. The cat is on the passenger seat behind me, looking way more comfortable than I feel. The driver-side door is open, and Morgan has braced one arm on it and the other on the roof of the car.

  I carefully check the placement of the rearview mirror and the one side mirror I can see. I place my hands at nine and three. My left foot hangs above the clutch, my right above the gas. I barely set it on the pedal and the engine thrums.

  “You’re good, right?” Morgan asks, panic creeping into his voice.

  I manage to pry my eyes away from the dashboard. “Has it occurred to you that hovering over me is not helping?”

  “It’s just—” He clears his throat, straightens, and takes a microstep away. “Just make sure you come back, okay, Cupcake? We need you.”

  Before I can answer, he shuts the door. I blow out a long breath, and then look over at the cat. “Are you going to put on the seatbelt?”

  She gives me a slow blink of disdain.

  Duh. She doesn’t have opposable thumbs.

  “I mean, I could help. I could…”

  I trail off as her look of disdain morphs into one of withering disgust. Seriously. Flowers have shriveled and died under looks less scornful than this.

  “Okay then. Off we go.”

  I tap my foot on the gas pedal, and the engine roars. I ease up on the clutch. A massive shudder shakes the car, and it dies.

  If cats had eyebrows, hers would be halfway up her forehead.

  I pretend not to notice and say breezily, “I’m just going to try that again.”

  I clear my throat, mentally say a prayer to God, the Thread, and whatever company produced the Driver’s Ed class I took online.

  From the corner of my eye, I can see Morgan gesturing, as if he wants me to roll down the window and talk to him.

  Yeah, like hearing him talk about how much he loves this car is going to help. The Porsche eases forward, and though neither I nor the cat say anything, I hear us both exhale in relief.

  “I’m just going to drive for a while. You can tell me if you sense a location he doesn’t know.”

  “Very well.”

  For several minutes, I merely concentrate on driving. The roads in Morgan’s neighborhood are wide and relatively bare. The few houses that are visible are as large as Morgan’s. There are no other cars on the road. The sun is overhead instead of in my eyes. This is all good, because it allows me to concentrate.

  After several minutes, I glance in the rearview mirror and see Morgan, Kane, and Ro standing in front of his house, still watching me drive away.

  “I believe it would be safe if you wanted to drive faster.”

  “Yeah. Everyone’s a critic,” I mutter. I glance down at the speedometer. I’m going thirteen miles an hour. Okay, maybe I could go a little faster.

  I speed up but stay on Morgan’s street until it T’s into another one.

  Once we’re out of sight of Morgan’s house, I work up the courage to shift into second. I don’t dare go any faster.

  I haven’t yet seen another car on the road, but maybe this is normal, since most magic is done at night. Maybe the Tuatha hunker down at home during the day like vampires.

  Eventually, the silence wears on me. I’ve mentioned I’m not good with awkward silences, right?

  “So,” I say with forced cheer, “You have a name, right?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?” She blinks, obtusely.

  “Well, what is it? What’s your name?”

  “Wouldn’t it be prudent for you to concentrate on the road?”

  Chastised, I focus on driving. For a few minutes. Then I add, “It’s kind of ridiculous that we’re going to be working together and I don’t even know your name.” She makes a grumbling noise, so I prod, “Tell me your name. Or is it that you don’t want to tell me your binding name? If not, that’s totally cool.”

  “Cats of the Kell are creatures of Old Magic. We are bound by honor and duty. Not by mere names, like the Tuatha.”

  “Oh.” Wallace touches only briefly on the distinction between creatures of Old Magic and the Tuatha. Cats of the Kells, hellhounds, Sirens, the Sköllpada, and dragons were all here long before the Tuatha. They draw their magic from Mithres itself, not from the Thread.

  Since I don’t know if Kellas Cats are sensitive about that kind of thing, I let the Old Magic vs. Tuatha issue slide on past and ask, “Then why don’t you want to tell me your name?”

  She stares out the window. “You are a human and a Dark Worlder. Why do you wish to know my name?”

  “We’re part of a team,” I say. “I can’t just keep calling you Cat. It would be rude.”

  “You humans are strange. You killed my dowt-mate. Was that not rude?”

  “Your dowt-mate attacked me. Unprovoked. I killed her in self-defense.”

  Well, this is going great.

  After several moments, she speaks, her voice so low I almost can’t hear it.

  “I do have a name.”

  I twist to face her, but she’s still gazing out the window. “What is it?”

  “It would be unpronounceable to humans.”

  “Can you tell me anyway?”

  She makes a noise then. It’s not a growl, because there’s no anger in it, but it’s low and guttural. Sort of a mreeewreeek sound.

  I try to repeat it. “Mreeeweeek.”

  She looks at me with disdain. “No.”

  I try again. “Mreaaweeehk.”

  “That is not it either.”

  “Mree—”

  “Your attempts are obviously futile.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right. It is not pronounceable by humans.”

  “Indeed.” There is another long stretch of silence and then she adds softly, “No Tuatha has ever even attempted it.”

  “Not even the Tuatha who mastered you?”

  “Certainly not.”

  If the cat has treated me with disdain, she has outright hatred in her voice now. The books don’t really go into the whole Kellas cat-Master dynamic, but I’m guessing it isn’t pleasant.

  We reach the boundary of Morgan’s neighborhood. Ahead is a wide road with businesses on either side. The street sign reads Le Mare.

  The equivalent of Austin’s Lamar, maybe?

  Lamar is busy any time of day. Le Mare is almost as empty as the
residential streets. I take a right onto Le Mare.

  “Then can I call you something else? Something I can pronounce?”

  “If you wish to do so.”

  I think for a minute before saying, “How about Kendal?”

  “Ken Dall?”

  “Kendal,” I correct her. “It’s a name. In my world. I used to know a girl named Kendal. You remind me of her.”

  “Very well,” she says disinterestedly.

  To try to sell her on the name, I add, “The Kendal I knew, she was tough. Like you.”

  Kendal had been tough. She’d been mean and bitchy.

  She’d also been scared. Alone. Fighting a battle she couldn’t possibly win. She’d faced her fate the only way she’d known how.

  “Kendal was brave. And a fighter. She was the kind of person who never gave up,” I say quietly. “I think the name suits you.”

  “Very well,” the cat says again, but this time, I sense that she is pleased with the name.

  Ahead, Le Mare crosses over the river. My gut says it’s better to stay on this side of it, so I steer into the parking lot of what looks like an abandoned warehouse. I slide the Porsche into neutral and set the hand brake. “How does this look?”

  Kendal looks out the window, studying the parking lot and the building. “It will do.”

  “Okay,” I say, turning the car off. “Let’s do this.”

  But before I can climb out of the car, Kendal says, softly, “I am sorry my Master ordered my dowt to attack you.”

  I pause and without looking at her, without thinking about how hard this must be for her or how much she must despise me, I say, “I’m sorry, too.”

  Excerpt from

  Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:

  The Traveler Undone

  I may be cynical. I may be a criminal. And it’s entirely possible that I’ve never been in a situation that I didn’t make worse.

  But when she looks at me like that, I feel like I could be king.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The parking lot is shaded by the sprawling oak trees that line the street. In Houston, where the soil is deeper, the oaks tower. Here in the shallow dirt of the Balcones Escarpment, the trees are stocky and stunted. They have to work harder to be who they really are. Knowing the physical landscape of the Kingdoms of Mithres was sculpted to mimic my world by practitioners with an affinity like Ro’s, I’m impressed that they exerted the energy to keep even the plant life consistent.

  Despite the weeds peeking up through the cracks in the pavement, it’s cozy…in a creepy Southern Gothic kind of way. The cat, Kendal, paces around the empty lot in absolute silence.

  I don’t say anything either, because I don’t want to distract her.

  Finally, she picks a spot and sits upright, her paws in front of her, her tail snaked around her legs. She closes her eyes. All I can do is stand watch and hope that this will work.

  Minutes pass. Five. And then ten. Every once in a while, a car drives past, and I can’t help but wonder if they notice me out here. If they do, are they curious what a Dark Worlder is doing out here with a Kellas cat? Of course, they can’t tell I’m a Dark Worlder just by looking at me. It’s not like there’s a neon sign hanging over me, blinking “Dark Worlder, here!” It’s not like…

  That’s when it hits me.

  Nobody driving by can see that I’m a Dark Worlder. But a passing hellhound could sure as hell smell it.

  Here I am, out in the middle of the day. Completely unprotected.

  Yeah, I put on that blue lotion, but I’ve showered since then.

  Why didn’t I think of this earlier?

  Why didn’t anyone else think of it earlier, either?

  I glance nervously up and down the street. I don’t see anything suspicious, but I remember all too well how quickly those hellhounds can run.

  “Um, Kendal?”

  She doesn’t respond, but her whiskers twitch.

  “Remember, you said I could call you Kendal?” Okay, genius, that’s not really the point. “Is there any chance you have an ETA on Kane’s arrival?”

  Still no response.

  “Because it occurred to me that this isn’t really the best place to just hang out. Since, you know, I’m a fugitive Dark Worlder, and very likely to attract the attention of some rather nasty hellhounds.”

  She opens only one eye and blinks at me.

  “It’s just…if you could give me an update on how it’s going, that would be awesome.”

  Finally, she says, “I have maintained the mental connection with Kane.”

  “That’s great news. So what’s the holdup?”

  Her tail flicks in annoyance. “He is being…difficult.”

  “Difficult?” Yeah, tell me something I didn’t know. When isn’t Kane being difficult? “But what does that mean? Can he use the link to transfer here or not?”

  “Perhaps. But he will need to allow me more freedom in his thoughts. He’s blocking me.”

  Until now, I wouldn’t have thought cats could frown, but clearly Kendal is frowning.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “There are things he does not want me to know. Something about a girl.”

  “A girl? Is it the princess?”

  “No. Not the princess. Someone else.”

  Not the princess? Who then?

  “Ro?”

  “No. Not Ro. Someone else. A girl who is trapped here. A girl from—” Kendal’s eyes pop open, and she stares at me in surprise for several seconds, making a distinctly inhuman sound, something between a growl and a purr.

  An instant later, she closes her eyes and shifts her body as if she’s settling back down. “I will explain the urgency of our situation. I believe that will persuade him that he does not need these barriers between us.”

  And just like that, Kendal is once again in the world of her own mind.

  Me? I’m deeply rattled.

  Kane is trying to hide his thoughts from Kendal. Thoughts about the girl from the Dark World who is trapped here.

  That has to be me, right? True, Kendal didn’t say the Dark World. But how many girls could there be that are trapped here? Which means he’s thinking about me, but he doesn’t want anyone else to know. What am I supposed to do with that?

  How am I supposed to feel about it?

  Back in the garage, the faintest touch of his hand sent a flurry of feelings through me.

  And, obviously, I have been half in love with him most of my life.

  But we are—literally—from different worlds.

  There is no way this could end well.

  He doesn’t belong to me. He falls in love with the princess. He is supposed to be with her.

  No matter how I feel. Even, no matter how he feels.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  It’s not supposed to be like this.

  Before I can finish the thought, I hear a noise in the distance that turns my blood cold. A howl.

  I whirl back to face Kendal, only to see that something has already started to happen.

  The air above the ground has started to shimmer, like heat rising off blacktop. Then, slowly, the movement shifts. No longer rising vertically, the air beings to swirl and darken, until one spot—no bigger than a dime—is absolute pitch-black. Then, like a hole tearing in a pair of tights, it spreads, expanding to the size of a dinner plate. The hole seems to wobble in midair.

  It’s not working. In theory, yes. It is a loop-hole. But it’s not big enough or stable enough.

  Somewhere in the distance, the hellhound howls again.

  Kendal and I are going to die.

  Unless we climb back in the car and make a run for it.

  I take a step closer to Kendal and whisper, “Look, I don’t want to distract you, but we need
to leave.”

  Her tail flicks.

  “Don’t flick your tail at me.” There’s another howl. Closer this time. “Call this off. It’s not going to work. We need to get in the car. And drive like the hounds of hell are chasing us. Which they will be.”

  And given that I can’t drive faster than thirty miles per hour, they will probably catch us. Which I decide not to mention.

  Kendal opens one eye and glares at me. “Your lack of faith is not helping.”

  “Oh, you think my faith would help right now?”

  “Indeed, child. I do.”

  Well, that’s just great. We are all about to die, and Kendal wants me to use the power of positive thinking to save us.

  You know, for a vicious killer, she’s surprisingly touchy-feely.

  If I pick her up in my arms and carry her to the car myself, what are the chances that she’ll hurt me?

  Pretty high. That’s my guess anyway.

  Since I can’t leave her and I can’t force her to come with me, I have only one option. To wait it out with her.

  I take a step closer to her and the wobbling hole in the universe.

  Then, abruptly, as if two huge hands reach through the hole and rip it apart, the hole expands into a swirling elliptic the size of a hula hoop, and Kane comes crashing through.

  The second he lands in a heap on the ground, the loop vanishes. I rush to him.

  His skin is damp with sweat, his face lined with strain. He is weak and trembling. But he did it. He actually did it.

  Which won’t matter at all, if we’re all killed by hellhounds in the next five minutes.

  He opens his eyes and flashes me a tremulous smile. “Look at that, Cupcake. Turns out you’re pretty smart after all.”

  His compliment hits me square in the chest, making me feel all squishy and delicious inside, like someone replaced my organs with homemade chocolate pudding. But he shouldn’t be complimenting me, I shouldn’t be enjoying it, and we shouldn’t be waiting around.

  “Great. You can tell me more about how fantastic I am when we’re not about to be torn to shreds by hellhounds.”

  A frown replaces the triumph in his expression, as another howl rends the air.