“Good afternoon, ladies.”
I slow to a halt as Dash waves and walks toward us. “Ugh, really?” is all I can bring myself to say.
“Interesting to see you back here so soon,” Calla comments. “The Guild definitely isn’t working you hard enough.”
He shrugs. “They tell us to take our first year easy.”
“They do not.” She eyes him suspiciously. “What are you really doing here?”
“I was updating Vi on something earlier and she mentioned that you’re taking Em to see her mom. I thought—”
“You’re not coming with,” I tell him.
“Hey, I just thought you guys could do with some extra protection. You’ll be focused on your mom, and Calla will be focused on whatever illusion she’s using to cover you. Don’t you think you need a third person to keep an eye on things? In case a doctor or another guardian shows up?”
“No.”
“Actually,” Calla says, “that’s a perfectly sensible plan. But I was going to ask Ryn to come with us.”
“Ryn’s out with Vi at the moment. I was just up there looking for them.” He nods toward one of the giant trees. “And everyone else who’s mission-approved is busy.” He grins. “Looks like it’s a good thing I showed up.”
I manage to keep myself from groaning out loud. “Fine. Whatever. Just stay away from my mother. She doesn’t need you ruining her life any further.”
Calla frowns, opens her mouth, then appears to think better of whatever she was going to say. “Okay then. Let’s go.”
Once we’re out in the desert, Calla opens a doorway to the faerie paths and tells me to focus firmly on picturing the outside of the hospital. Though complete darkness surrounds me, I shut my eyes anyway, imagining the high walls, the security gate, the discreetly small sign with the hospital’s name on it, and mountain peaks in the distance.
“Well done,” Calla says.
I open my eyes and look across an empty street at the exact scene I just pictured. “That’s amazing,” I murmur.
Dash raises the hood of his jacket and pulls it over his head. “What?” he asks when I give him an odd look. “I don’t want my face showing up on any Guild surveillance orbs.”
“Surveillance what? And you’re going to be invisible, aren’t you?”
“Invisible to people, yes. Not to bugs. I don’t know if they’re watching, but it’s good to be careful.”
“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?” At that moment, a shiver sends goosebumps racing up my back and into my hair. “Oh—um—you can—” I grab Dash’s arm, in case my ability has any doubt who I’m talking to. “You can open doorways to the faerie paths,” I blurt out.
Dash stares at me with wide eyes. Calla looks equally startled. “Well that came outta nowhere,” she says.
Dash quickly removes a stylus from inside his jacket and crouches down. He writes on the tar, muttering those words I still can’t clearly make out. Darkness appears, spreading rapidly into a large hole leading to the faerie paths. “Yes! Finally! Thanks, Em.” He rises and puts his stylus away. “Now we’ll have to come up with a way for you to fix Jewel as well.”
“That was pretty darn cool,” Calla says.
“Yeah. When I’m saying something useful.”
“True. Okay, let’s focus on the hospital again. Do you remember anything about what the inside looks like?”
“Yes, I remember the waiting area. But I don’t remember where Mom’s room is. It’s been a while since I was here.”
“Not a problem,” she says. “The guy who checked things out for us last night said she’s in room twenty-six. I’m sure we can find it. All you need to do is picture the waiting room so we can safely get inside.” She opens another faerie paths doorway.
“Wait,” I say before we step into the darkness. “Are you absolutely sure we’ll be invisible on the other side?”
“Yes. I’m focusing on invisibility. You’re focusing on the waiting room. Dash, you’re emptying your mind.” She gives him a half-smile. “Should be easy.”
“That’s why I’m here, right?” he says without missing a beat. “Empty-minded muscle.”
I shake my head, link arms with both of them, and walk forward. I squeeze my eyes shut and picture the waiting room. The rows of chairs, the hard-angled reception desk, the confusing abstract paintings, and the tall monochrome flower pots. I smell it before I see it: detergent and something sour. As if someone threw up in here recently.
I look down, and instead of seeing my body, I see the polished floor. I cling more tightly to Calla and Dash. “Okay,” I whisper. I look around, the memory of my last visit coming back to me. “We need to get through that door on the right. The one that looks like it requires an ID tag.”
“I guess we’ll need to go through the paths again,” Calla says.
One of the women behind the main desk looks up, frowning in our direction. “Move quietly,” Calla instructs, her whisper barely audible now. I feel a tug pulling me to my left. Calla leads us around the corner to an alcove with another few chairs and a window onto the garden. When we’re out of view of the desk, we suddenly become visible again. “Quickly,” she says, opening a doorway. We hurry into it. Moments later, we’re on the other side of the security door.
We head along the corridor, arms still linked so we don’t lose each other. Bright sunlight streams in through the windows, illuminating more canvases of colorful art. The gardens themselves, visible through the windows, are neatly manicured. From here, I can see a group of patients sitting on the lawn in a circle. Tranquil Hills is pretty and serene, but that’s part of what makes my skin crawl whenever I’m here. It’s like icing on a cake that has worms crawling through it. Perfume sprayed over rotting garbage. Nothing can hide the true nature of this place.
We pass silently through an open living area where people sit in twos or threes at small tables playing board games or card games. They’re all watched by nurses around the room. This is where Mom was the first time I came to visit. We sat here together and played Go Fish while Chelsea waited for me in the reception area, refusing to see her ‘crazy sister.’ A shiver races across my skin at the memory. “Okay, Em?” Calla whispers.
“Yeah.”
We enter another corridor on the other side of the room. Fewer windows and less light. Closed doors lining the right hand side. “Okay, here’s a number twenty,” Calla says. “I guess we just keep going and we’ll find twenty-six.”
My heart leaps, pounding faster with every step we take. Nervousness makes me nauseous and light-headed. I still can’t believe I’m about to see her. “There it is,” I whisper as a door with a number twenty-six on it comes into view.
“I haven’t seen anyone suspicious yet,” Dash says. “Anyone I recognize from the Guild, I mean.”
“Can I go in?” I ask, stopping outside the door.
“Yes,” Calla says letting go of me. On my other side, Dash moves away. “We’ll keep watch out here, and I’ll make sure you appear invisible to anyone who walks past.”
I swallow. If I could see my hand, I’d probably find it shaking. I fumble a moment with the door handle—misjudging the distance and bumping the door with my invisible knuckles—before finding it and wrapping my hand around it. I push down, take a deep breath, and slowly open the door. Too scared to take a step forward, I peer inside.
The room is empty.
My head pounds as disappointment and relief collide. “Where is she?”
I sense movement beside me, then hear Dash’s voice: “Perhaps she’s eating a meal. Or having some kind of social time. Or a bathroom break. Is she usually restricted to her room, or does she only come back here to sleep?”
“I don’t know.” My words come out harsher than I intended. “I haven’t been here in a long time.”
“We’ll just have to wait,” Calla says. “It’s okay. I’m only projecting one illusion right now, and it’s a simple one, so it isn’t too tiring.”
<
br /> “Okay. Thank you.” One of them bumps into me as I move to the side, and after a moment of shuffling, we’re all leaning against the wall beside door number twenty-six. There’s no way I’m waiting inside that room on my own. The corridor will do just fine. As the seconds tick by, my anxiety begins to rise again. Up and up, my insides twisting tighter and tighter.
“You aren’t going to say anything to her about magic, are you?” Dash asks eventually, breaking the silence.
“Firstly,” I tell him, “you don’t get to tell me what I should speak to my mother about. And secondly, no. I’m not so stupid that I’m going to tell her I’m a faerie with magic. I don’t even know if I’m going to tell her I know she isn’t my real mother. There are dozens of things I want to say, and I probably won’t end up saying any of them because I don’t want to freak her out.”
Like last time.
We’re quiet for a minute or two as someone in the company of a nurse walks slowly past us and into one of the other bedrooms. The nurse leaves soon afterwards.
“Vi told me it’s been a long time since you saw her,” Calla says once we’re alone again. “You can probably talk to her about whatever’s happened in your normal life up until a few days ago. Stuff you did at school. Updates on your friends.”
“All the parkour skills you and Val have learned,” Dash adds.
Val. Val who’s probably confused and angry that I ran away and left her behind.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. “But also … well, I like to chat to her about the good old days.” I stare past the blank wall ahead of me and picture Mom as she used to be, smiling and happy. “I think she likes remembering our pretty garden, and the little house we lived in, and the ornaments she collected. I’ve often imagined taking her back there one day. Returning to the simple, happy life we used to have. It always seemed impossible, but now with magic …” I trail off, coming back to the present with a jolt and remembering who I’m with: Dash, who doesn’t deserve to know my private thoughts and wishes, and Calla, who probably wouldn’t approve of any of the things I plan to do with my magic once I know how to use it.
“With magic?” she prompts.
“Nothing. Wait, is that … Oh, heck, I think that’s her.” Two people are walking toward us. A nurse and a woman with dark messy hair, not quite as tall as I remember, and dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie. My heart rate rockets upward and my conflicting emotions reach a peak. I think I might throw up right here. But I manage to breathe through it as Mom walks closer. It’s her! my mind shrieks as she passes me and goes into her room. It’s really, really her! She’s right here, after so many months. I’ll finally be able to speak to her, hug her, let her know I think of her every single day and that she won’t have to be here for much longer.
The nurse stops in the doorway. “Just lie down and I’m sure it’ll pass soon,” she says to Mom. Her voice lacks feeling, as if the words mean nothing to her. Or, I wonder briefly, as if she’s spoken those same words a hundred times before. “You know you can call one of us if you start feeling any worse.”
Mom gives her a distant smile and a nod.
The nurse closes the door and walks away.
I take another dizzying few breaths before moving forward and grasping the handle. As I push the door open, I suddenly become visible again. Mom looks up. She blinks and frowns. A smile spreads rapidly across my face, turning into a laugh. “Mom.” I walk into the room—
—and an alarm begins blaring.
Eighteen
Mom screams and scrambles backward across her bed. Calla and Dash, visible now, rush into the room. Calla goes immediately to the wall and scribbles across it. “We have to go,” she calls to me.
“What? I don’t under—”
“It’s a Guild alarm. It was set for you.”
“But I only just … Mom, it’s okay, it’s me.” I ignore Calla and Dash and approach Mom cautiously. “Everything’s fine, Mom. Don’t worry about the alarm.” I reach for her, but she shrinks back, slapping wildly at my hands. “It’s okay, it’s just me,” I say desperately. “It’s Emmy. Your daughter. I came to—”
“Em, we gotta go.” Dash takes my arm and pulls me toward the faerie paths.
“No!” I wrench my arm free. “I need to get her!”
“What? No, we can’t take her with us.”
“I won’t leave without her!”
“You can’t take her through the paths, Em!” Calla shouts above the alarm.
“Then we go out the front door with her!” I shout back.
“And then what? We’d have to find somewhere safe for her in this world. Someone who knows how to care for her. And what about her medication, her treatment?”
“The medication makes her worse!” I gesture to Mom, now hiding under her blankets, curled up and wailing, rocking back and forth.
Movement in the corridor draws my gaze away. Dash throws his hand out, and the door slams itself shut. He runs to it and begins drawing big glowing patterns across it. “This won’t hold them for long,” he says as the door shudders beneath an assault from the other side.
“Em, we will come back for her,” Calla says firmly. “I promise. But we’re not taking her anywhere until we have a solid plan.” She reaches for my hand. “Dash, stay here and keep watch. Make sure no one does anything to—Actually, no. You go with Em. I’ll stay. You can’t risk your cover, and I can more easily hide myself.”
“Got it.” Dash grabs my arm as Calla pushes us both toward the gaping hole leading to the faerie paths.
“Mom.” The word is a half-whisper, half-sob as I throw one last look over my shoulder before the darkness consumes us. I stumble through it, Dash pulling me along, until soft orange light appears ahead of us. I breathe in the rapidly cooling evening air of the desert as sand shifts beneath my feet. I pull away from Dash.
“Em …” He reaches for me, but I smack his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.” His hands fall to his sides while I wrap mine tightly around my body. I need to hold myself together.
Quietly, Dash says, “She didn’t recognize you, did she.”
Thanks, Dash, I want to yell. THANK YOU FOR POINTING THAT OUT! Instead I bite my lip until the tears recede. There’s no point in screaming at him. He doesn’t know about the nerve he’s struck. He doesn’t know that the last time I visited Mom, she ended up cowering in the corner of her room and screaming about the stranger—me. He doesn’t know that several nurses had to hold her down while I left the room in tears, and he doesn’t know how desperately I hoped this time would be different.
“Emerson—”
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry I did this to you.” His tone is pleading, and his hands are clasped tightly together beneath his chin.
“What?”
“I’m sorry! She’s in that hospital because of me. I’ve always denied it, and some logical, defensive part of my brain still argues that she would have been institutionalized at some point anyway, and that you can’t really blame me, but … you can. It was my fault. On that day, in that moment, she went completely over the edge because of me. And … I’m sorry.”
I blink, look down at the sand, then back up at him. “What do you expect me to say to that?”
“I … I don’t know. I just needed you to know how sorry I am.”
“Why? It doesn’t change anything.”
“It might change how much you hate me.”
I shake my head. “Get over yourself, Dash. This isn’t about you.” I turn away, looking for the faint outline of the dome. It’s almost invisible, but I manage to spot it. I start trudging across the sand, picturing the hidden world within the dome. Lush vegetation, twinkling bugs, and the gentle scent of flowers. A peaceful scene contrasting starkly with the repeating memory of a bare white room and Mom screaming while scrambling away from me.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I frown and blink and look away, desperate to push the imag
e from my mind. The tension in my chest eases the moment I pass through the magic layer and into the oasis. I hate that I’m glad to be back here. It feels like a betrayal to Mom. I shouldn’t enjoy a single moment of this sanctuary while she’s trapped between four blank walls. Trapped inside her own mind.
“Em, wait,” Dash calls as I stride away from him. I swing around, still walking backward, wanting nothing more than to be alone right now.
“We’re going to get her out,” he says. “We couldn’t do it today, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. We’ll give her a better life somehow, I promise.”
“Thanks,” I say, “but you shouldn’t make promises you don’t know how to keep.”
I don’t come out of my room that evening to join anyone for dinner, but I hear Violet and Ryn outside my door, speaking quietly to one another. Calla joins them at some point. I press my ear against the door long enough to hear her say that Mom is okay and the guardians who were waiting for me didn’t do anything to her after I left. Then I move back to the bed.
The Guild knows I was there. They’ll probably increase the number of guardians hanging around, and if I try to visit again, it’ll be even more likely that I’ll be caught. Not that I have much hope of convincing Calla to take me back. She and her companions are probably regretting offering to help me. I could have got her caught. Ruined Dash’s cover. Maybe the three of them are standing out there trying to come up with a kind way of telling me they can’t do anything more for Mom. And it’s not like I’d blame them. They don’t owe me anything. They’ll probably forget about me as soon as the next desperate person arrives at the oasis.
Which suits me just fine, since I’m used to taking care of things on my own.
Nineteen
That image of Mom screaming, wild terror in her eyes, floods my mind first thing the next morning. I make a conscious effort to focus on something else: My Griffin Ability. I need to learn how to use it. Last night could have turned out so differently if I’d been able to calm Mom down with just a few words. If I’d been able to tell that magical alarm to turn itself off. I need to get past my fear of all things medical and hand over a sample of my magic. I need that elixir.
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