Shannon swallowed. “Oh.”
“Which explains what I found on the top of the papers,” Joe said. He moved over to the desk and shuffled the pieces of paper, bringing one forward. At the top of the page, in block handwriting, were two words: “WARN THEM.”
“Warn them?” Shannon asked, her voice shaky.
“The Knight in Pasadena must have known someone was coming for him—coming for them all.”
“But the Knights are the bad guys, right? Aren’t they the ones who go around killing people?”
“Traditionally, yes,” Joe said.
“So if someone’s taking them out . . . who would do that? Who’s bad enough to take on bad guys? Isn’t Malquin back in Caelum?”
Joe shrugged. “As far as I know, he is. I don’t know. But whoever’s doing it, they’re working fast, and they’re being thorough. And if they finish what they started and wipe out the rest of the Knights . . .”
Joe looked out the dingy hotel window to the angry sky that had already become familiar, and shook his head. “Then there won’t be a person left in this world who knows how to fix it.”
GONE GIRL
Cedric couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt nervous to speak with Kat. Even when they’d sometimes fought as children, he at least always knew what to say to make things right again. Now he had no idea.
Now he’d changed everything.
But he couldn’t hide out on the perimeter of the village forever. He took a deep breath and forced himself to push open the door of the pub. Through the dim air inside, he could only make out a few figures. Some men clustered around tables, drinking and eating. Kat was sitting on a stool near the bar, clutching a cup of mead in one hand.
Cedric slowly moved over and took the stool next to Kat without saying a word.
“How did it go, then?” she asked without turning to face him.
“Pretty terrible.”
Cedric signaled to the bartender to pour him a cup of mead as well.
“I cannot say I am surprised,” Kat responded with a sigh.
“No,” Cedric said. “I suppose not.” His mind returned again to the conversation—no, the fight—he’d had with Liv. He felt as though every single thing he’d tried to say had come out wrong, and if he could just have a chance to do it over . . . but no. It was better this way. And it was already done, anyhow.
“And . . . how are you?” Cedric asked.
Kat gave a half smile and lifted her cup. “Believe it or not, this actually helps a bit.”
Cedric’s gut twisted. “I did not mean to—you know I would never have left you there if . . .”
But Kat just snorted. “My God, Cedric, how large is that head of yours? I was talking about this—” She tapped gently against her lower hip. “My stab wound? The village healer said a glass of mead might cut some of the pain while it heals.”
“Oh! Of course, that’s . . . right then.”
Kat laughed—her short, brief laugh that was so familiar to Cedric—and he finally smiled. This was his Kat again, the one he knew inside and out. And if there was maybe a sliver of hardness, of caution, in her eyes that hadn’t been there before, he was going to pretend he didn’t notice.
“So you truly do not want to discuss . . . what happened?” he asked.
Kat tilted her head, as if considering. “Not at the moment, if it is all the same to you. I understand how complicated things are bound to get between us, how everything will change when this”—she lifted the silver betrothal ring from where it hung on a chain around her neck, and spun it on her fingers—“becomes a reality. But there is no need to rush things. There will be time for all of that once Caelum is safe again.”
The relief that flooded through Cedric was instantaneous and all-consuming. He felt his whole posture change, and he knew Kat could sense it.
“I very much agree,” he said.
Kat nodded, then turned her head back toward the bar. She took another sip from her glass. Again, there was just a hint of standoffishness in her movements . . .
But he wouldn’t dwell on it. He chose to listen to her words instead.
“So,” Kat said, a bit louder than necessary. “I think we should go through the men and women in the village, particularly the fighters and scouters. We should assess their strengths and weaknesses—”
A hand clamped down on Cedric’s shoulder, and he turned around. The broad face of Rafe’s right-hand man loomed over him. Cedric remembered his name was Abe.
“Highness, Rafe is missing. He’s left the village.”
As Abe’s words sunk in, Cedric sighed in mild irritation. He wondered how this development would impact his plan. Rafe’s help would certainly be valuable, but they would be able to carry out the strategy without him if necessary.
“Well, if he does not return soon—”
“There is more,” Abe said, then cleared his throat. “The otherworld girl, she is missing as well.”
“What?”
Cedric stood quickly from his stool, regretting sipping on the cup of mead. It churned in his stomach now, forcing an acidic taste up his throat.
“And there is this.” Abe thrust his arm out toward Cedric, who saw a small piece of rough parchment in his slab-like hands. Cedric took it and opened it. Inside was a messy scrawl, smudged in several places.
Cedric,
I’m sorry we fought, but I think it was for the best. We have different missions now. You need to win a war, but I need to make sure Peter survives it. Rafe is going to help me with that. I hope everything works out for you. I also hope you can read this, since I’ve never used a quill before. I—
But there the words were smudged so badly Cedric could no longer make them out. Though the signature at the bottom was clear.
Liv.
Cedric stared at the parchment, unable to move, unwilling even to blink. He barely noticed when Kat dismissed Abe and stood up, taking him by the shoulders.
“Please, Cedric, do not do this.”
For a moment, Cedric was confused by her words. But when he looked into Kat’s concerned eyes, he knew she understood everything, even the things he hadn’t yet voiced. Because his first thought, his only thought, was to go after Liv and bring her back. Just as Kat knew it would be.
“I have to,” he said. “There are wraths out there, and she is alone—”
“She is not alone,” Kat said, her voice taking on a fierce edge.
Cedric scoffed. “You think Rafe can be trusted?”
Kat released her grip on Cedric’s shoulders, and exhaled gently. “Liv obviously trusts him enough to leave with him. And that is her choice to make.”
“You cannot be serious,” Cedric said. “They will never succeed. If I go after them now, I can catch them—”
“And then what? Throw them both over your shoulders and bring them home? You cannot control what happens to them now. You can only control what we do here.”
Cedric shook his head and started pacing in front of the bar. Every part of his body wanted to turn and run out the door of the inn, just run and keep running until he found Liv and apologized and kept her safe, with him.
“Cedric,” Kat started again. “We have had this conversation before. I know you care for her, but your people need you right now.”
Cedric whirled on her. “What if it were me?”
Kat blinked, taken aback.
“What if it were me who was out there, possibly in mortal danger? If you had to choose, between saving Caelum and saving me, what would you choose?”
For a moment, Kat’s mouth parted slightly, and she shook her head as if she couldn’t even conceive of the question. But then her eyes focused, and Cedric knew she had an answer. Suddenly, he didn’t want to hear it.
“Forget it,” he said brusquely. “It does not matter. But I know I can stop them and still launch the attack successfully—”
“Cedric . . .”
“But I cannot do it alone. Will you help me?”
&
nbsp; Kat stared him down angrily for a few more moments, then reached over and picked up her cup of mead. She tipped its remains back into her mouth, then slammed it back on the counter. When she looked back at Cedric, her eyes were clear.
“Of course I will help.”
“Good, because I am leaving within the hour.”
Kat shook her head, but said nothing. Cedric realized that he had never gone against her advice before, not about something this big. It made him doubt that he was doing the right thing. But then he looked down again at the parchment in his hands, at Liv’s messy scrawl. He pictured her writing it, hunched awkwardly over a quill . . . and then he pictured her deep in the darkness of the forest, surrounded by the shadows of horns and claws and teeth. . . .
Right or wrong didn’t matter, not now. Nothing would stop him from reaching her—before the monsters did first.
Liv hummed as she set her pack down in the dirt. She’d been marching through the forest for hours, and now that night was falling, it was getting harder to keep images of ink-black eyes and pointed teeth from her mind. It was even harder to keep the Jaws theme song from running through her head every time she heard a twig snap or branches rustle. Humming it out was the only thing that helped.
“Is your plan to lure the wraths to us?” Rafe whispered roughly as he sat down on the ground and pulled a piece of bread from his pack.
Liv stopped humming.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“The point is to be as stealthy as possible,” Rafe said, ripping off a piece of bread and tossing it in his mouth. “Hence, no fire, no beaten paths, and absolutely no loud humming.”
“Got it. Honest.”
Liv opened up her own pack and pulled out her own piece of bread. The bag also had some granola bar wrappers, some refilled bottles of water, and a flashlight. She’d left the walkies behind for Cedric to use in his grand battle plan. She might have been angry with him, but she didn’t want him to fail.
It still hurt to think about Cedric. Liv kept turning around, half expecting to see him next to her, and finding a blank space instead. It was like reaching for some valuable, familiar thing—a favorite DVD or T-shirt—and finding it gone. Then remembering she was the one who had thrown it away. She’d cooled off since their fight, but the damage was done.
“How long do you think it will take us to get there now?” she asked Rafe.
“Two more days, if we are lucky.”
“Hmm,” Liv said, thinking it over. “That’d probably be just a few hours if we had a car. Really should have brought one of those through the portal instead of an earthquake kit. Still, Kat said her ‘northern people’ were just a few days away, too. Caelum must not be that big, huh?”
Rafe shot her a look as though she’d just said something completely dumb. “You have only seen a portion of Caelum. We have villages on the outskirts of our lands, bordering the mountains and the wrath hunting grounds, that are a two-week journey by foot. Three in bad weather.”
“Oh. Um . . .”
“Is your world bigger than that?”
Liv wondered how far she’d get from Los Angeles if she walked for three straight weeks. Sacramento?
“Just a bit.” She decided to change the subject. “You said it would take two days to reach the castle if we were lucky. What if we run into some wraths?”
He smiled. “Do not worry. I am more familiar with these woods than any man in Caelum. If wraths are approaching, I will hear them.”
“And then we’ll . . .”
“Fight them, if there are few. Outrun them if there are many.”
“Oh, cool. As long as there’s a solid plan, then.”
Rafe laughed. “Our plan is to make it to the city in good time, without running into wraths on the way. What we should be determining is how to sneak into the castle without alerting anyone and free the royal prisoners.”
“Plus my brother.”
“Of course.”
“Well, my experience with breaking into castles is pretty much limited to Final Fantasy games, and even those I was never very good at.”
Liv sighed, leaning back on her pack and stretching out her legs, which were sore from walking more in the past few days than she usually did in a few weeks in LA. When she looked over at Rafe, his eyes were following the lines of her legs as well. She cleared her throat and raised an eyebrow, but when he looked up at her, he didn’t seem embarrassed to be caught at all. Instead, he grinned. Liv could just see the outline of his face and his white teeth in the dark.
“There are also other ways to pass the time,” he said.
Liv folded her legs back up. “What happened to focusing on the castle problem?”
Rafe just shrugged. “Sometimes I do my best strategizing when my hands are . . . otherwise engaged.”
Liv made a face. “How about you keep those hands where I can see them—”
Rafe suddenly went rigid, his mocking grin sliding from his face.
“What—”
Rafe held a hand out, silencing Liv. He looked toward the tree line on his right. Liv’s heart thudded, and she tried to still the shaking in her limbs as she rose. She peered into the shadows all around her, but saw only the dark outlines of trees and leaves. She heard only the sound of her own breath catching in her throat.
Next to her, Rafe slowly slid his sword from its sheath. He did it so quietly that Liv could barely hear it brushing against the leather.
Then she did hear something.
A crunch. And another. Rhythmic, like footsteps.
Rafe’s entire body was taut, ready to move. Liv still didn’t know if she’d be fighting or running.
Then something pushed through the brush directly in front of them, and Rafe sprung forward, sword out.
A scream broke through the night. It belonged to a man—his voice cut out just as Rafe’s sword reached the skin of his throat. But the metal edge stopped just in time, and instead of slicing through skin, it rested firmly against the man’s neck. The man looked just a little taller than Liv, and his face was hidden in shadows.
“Who are you?” Rafe barked.
“I—I am unarmed,” the man replied. “Harmless.”
A tingle ran down Liv’s spine. She recognized the voice.
Liv stepped forward, ignoring the hand Rafe thrust out to keep her back. As she came closer, the man’s features grew sharper in the moonlight. His round, brown eyes were open wide. His beard, though dirt-streaked and home to a few leaves, was a shocking white, contrasting sharply against his brown skin.
Liv stopped walking forward, suddenly paralyzed. She swallowed hard.
“Professor?”
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Professor Leonard Billings stood before Liv, looking worse for wear in the middle of the unfamiliar woods.
“You,” he choked out. His voice sounded rough, as though he hadn’t used it in a while. Or maybe that was a side effect of having a sword pointed at his throat. “How are you here?”
Rafe shot Liv a confused look. “You know this man?”
Liv stared at the professor. The person in front of her looked tired, dirty, broken. His shoulders slumped, and he seemed years older than the first time she’d seen him, sitting behind his desk in a cozy university office filled with books. But no matter the change in his appearance, this was the same Leonard Billings, the one who’d tried to knife her down in a motel room. The one who’d shot at her in a warehouse full of monsters, just before he’d fallen through a portal to another world. This world.
“He tried to kill me,” she finally said. “Twice.”
Rafe tightened the grip on his sword, taking one small step forward. The professor lifted his hands in surrender.
“I am unarmed,” he said again.
“Who is he?” Rafe still addressed Liv, ignoring the professor’s words entirely.
“He’s one of the Knights. Of Valere.”
“Valere?” Rafe shook his head slightly. “I have never heard of suc
h a knight. No knight of any worth in Caelum would attempt to kill a young woman.”
“He’s not from Caelum. He’s from my world.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” the professor said, his voice raspy, but calm. “And again, I’m unarmed. So I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
“That’s not super reassuring,” she said back.
The professor kept his hands up in surrender while Rafe checked him for weapons. Billings’s eyes stayed focused on Liv, and she shifted under his gaze. He’d tricked her so completely in San Diego, never letting her see his true self. For someone to lie so easily and so well . . .
“He is unarmed,” Rafe replied.
Liv shook her head. “He’s still dangerous.”
“I understand why you’d think that,” the professor replied. His voice was still rough, and he cleared his throat. “But I was only trying to do my duty as a Knight. Though I failed, and it is probably too late to undo the destruction you’ve caused—”
The professor broke into a fit of coughs, and Liv let his words sink in. Destruction? But before she could ask what he meant, he took a deep breath and continued, “Still I was sworn to try, to protect the Earth—”
“By killing me,” Liv interrupted, heat rising in her throat. “And my brother and sister. And Joe’s brother, and countless children before that?”
The professor gave a small yelp, and Liv realized that Rafe had pushed the knife blade farther into the skin of his throat.
“You kill children?” Rafe asked, his voice suddenly low and threatening.
The sword blade pushed in deeper and the professor made a gurgling noise.
“Wait!” Liv heard herself yelling.
Rafe stopped. He held the blade carefully still. He spoke without turning around, and his voice was strained. “You claim this man murders the young. If that is true, he is no better than a wrath. He deserves to die.”
“Maybe,” Liv said, taking a cautious step forward. Part of her couldn’t believe she was doing this—defending the man who’d tried to kill her and Daisy. But her mind caught on the professor’s words—too late to undo the destruction you caused. And an image sprang forward, the last glimpse she’d seen of LA before she’d gone through the portal. Daisy and Joe staring up at the sky, a sky gone orange in the middle of the day . . . She’d convinced herself that it was her own eyesight playing tricks on her, a side effect of going through the portal. But what if . . . ?
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