by Emma Savant
Lucas’ face was pale. I wrapped one arm around him.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll protect your mom.”
“It’s not just my mom,” he said. His voice was low but steady. “Everyone I know besides you guys are Humdrums. Everyone.”
“She’s not going to kill everyone,” Haidar said. His dark eyes skimmed the skyline that spread out ahead of us. “She’s going to scare as many out of the city as she can. Less messy, and they’ll spread the word to stay away. She’s after a stronghold.”
“But she will kill the people who don’t leave,” Lucas said.
“Or she’ll just try to control them,” Isabelle said. “That’s what I’d do. Create a police state, make the Humdrums keep their heads down, and claim that we’ve created a fully open, integrated society.”
“Doesn’t anyone get it?” Daniel said. “We shouldn’t be integrated.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “If anyone besides the Oracle was leading the charge, I might think it was a good idea.”
“You hate Humdrums,” Daniel said. “You don’t want them to know about us, because then they’d know you’re Glim and it’d be so embarrassing.”
“I don’t hate—”
“We don’t have time to argue the point,” Haidar cut in. He stared out toward the city, and I followed his gaze.
Rising up from the sparkling gray, an undulating silver-blue mist began to rise from between the buildings like water seeping through cracks.
“Is that a spell?” Lucas said, squinting at the mist. His shoulders felt so tight I expected them to snap like a rubber band.
“They’re sprites,” Isabelle said.
We were too far to see details, but she was right. The blue was thickest near fountains. Specks of blue began to fly toward us.
The earth began to shake.
Stay in your homes, Queen Amani’s voice boomed. You will be informed as we have more information. And then, more silence.
Below us in the garden, the Humdrum visitors continued to walk between the bushes like nothing was wrong, like they hadn’t felt the earth shaking and weren’t about to be descended upon by swarms of vengeful, blindly loyal water sprites.
“We have to protect them,” I said.
“They’re safe as long as they stay in the garden,” Isabelle said. “I’ll warn them. Haidar, get these kids to safety.”
“I’ll help you,” I said.
“Go,” she said. She and Haidar looked at one another, and a conversation seemed to pass between them. “We need to make a plan and we’ll need help from all of you, but you need to be safe first.”
Haidar stalked to the bottom of the garden. We followed, walking so quickly the sloping ground jolted my knees with each step. At the bottom of the hill, native plants and trees grew wild and thick outside the landscaped edges of the rose garden. A casual hiking path wound through the trees and further down the hill.
Haidar led us off the path and under the branches of a giant magnolia tree, its branches bare for the winter. We crashed through the underbrush. Further in, under another magnolia tree, Haidar stopped. Around us, the woods seemed to breathe. I could barely see the rose garden through all the entwined branches and clusters of dead leaves that never seemed to fall.
I felt Lucas’ heartbeat racing like a frightened rabbit’s. I reached out and took his hand. He held on so tight it felt like my knuckles were about to crush each other.
Haidar pressed both his palms against the trunk of the magnolia tree. A tiny shadow nestled between ridges of bark grew and shifted. In a moment, it was large enough to put a hand through; in another moment, a child might have fit. Seconds later, it was big enough for even Haidar.
“This leads straight to my house,” Haidar said. He stepped back from the tree. “You all go in first and I’ll close the way behind us.”
“We’re not going home?” Daniel said.
“I can’t get you there fast enough,” he said.
For the first time, Haidar seemed flustered, like he didn’t have everything figured out. His face had an urgent, overwhelmed look to it, and it made me dislike him a little less.
“I’ll go first,” I said.
He nodded at me. I pulled my hand out of Lucas’ grip.
Twigs crunched under my feet as I stepped toward the hole. I couldn’t see more than an inch in. The darkness was absolute and looked ready to swallow me whole.
I took a deep breath and stepped in.
Warmth surrounded me instantly. It was black, but it was the coziest blackness I’d ever experienced. I wanted to sit on the leaf-strewn floor and take a nap. A tiny speck of light shone in the distance. I walked toward it, feeling springy ground beneath my feet. The smells of soil and moss filled the darkness.
Sooner than I expected, I stumbled out of the darkness and into a garden dazzling with light glinting off leaves. Cool air washed over me.
A moment later, Lucas stepped out of the magnolia tree behind me. This tree was a mirror image of the one in the rose garden, but its branches were heavy with enormous pale pink blooms.
Worried as Lucas was, even he was distracted by the archway of wisteria, the elegantly gnarled cherry tree, and the stand of fierce orange tiger lilies. None of these plants should be flowering this time of year, but the garden seemed to be ready to explode with blossoms. Lucas stared around, trying to take everything in.
Daniel came next, and Haidar followed him. The magnolia tree closed up with a crackling rustle.
I heard a distant scream. The blood drained back out of Lucas’ face.
Haidar led us across the garden, down a gravel path laced with what looked like unpolished precious gems. I didn’t have time to stop and check. He flew through the garden like a predator on the scent of prey.
If the garden had been impressive, it was only a prelude to the house. I’d thought the homes in my neighborhood were pretentious. This cluster of stone towers was only one step below a castle, and then only if I turned my head and squinted. Haidar threw open an arched wooden door with a heavy brass latch and slammed it shut behind us.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The musty smell of abandoned space flooded my senses. We stood in a sparse stone room heavy with dust and filled with shelves of old pots and bags of soil. It clearly wasn’t a part of the house that got much use. Haidar led us out, into a wallpapered hallway that led straight up a flight of stone stairs.
“Don’t touch anything,” Haidar warned.
Chapter Sixteen
We followed him up the steps. I shoved my hands in my pockets to resist the urge to touch the tapestries and wallpaper we walked by.
Haidar’s home was absurd. I hadn’t thought people lived in houses like this anymore. It had the quiet feel of a museum, paired with the opulence of a palace and the heady smell of a garden.
“My family had some influence a long time ago,” Haidar said. He waved a hand around, gesturing at and dismissing his enormous manor in the same movement.
After a few turns, we reached a large, spacious hall glittering with gold and crimson wallpaper. The deep red carpets beneath our feet muffled our footsteps to near-silence, and underneath them, peeking out at the edges, I saw a polished floor of dark, warm mahogany. Through doorways, I glimpsed majestic rooms: a dark blue parlor, a study with an enormous glistening desk, a library with bookshelves stretching to the ceiling. Between each door, a small table stood, and on each table was an enormous bouquet of roses.
Haidar strode forward as though he was going to take us through the giant front door, which was inlaid with a stained glass rose. But then he turned off to his left and led us into a parlor at the very front of the house.
“Sit,” he ordered.
I made sure Lucas took the spot next to me. The floral brocade sofas felt stiff and unused. A bronze statue of a lion glared at us from the mantelpiece.
Haidar went to the bay window at the front of the room and tugged up one of the sashes. From outside, a
series of voices and cries floated over his immaculate lawn. Haidar scowled and leaned against the window, muttering. Beyond the lawn, a sturdy brick wall circled his property. I didn’t need to look over my glasses to know the thing would be thick with charms.
“She’ll be okay,” Daniel said.
Haidar grunted.
I put an arm around Lucas’ shoulders and pulled him close. Normally, this kind of touch would have freaked me out and made me start overthinking everything.
Right now, though, my friend needed a hug.
A moment later, he shifted away from me and stood. “I’m going to call my mom,” he said.
I nodded. Haidar ignored him, which was as close to permission as we’d get.
Lucas went into the hallway. I watched him pace back and forth on the carpet in front of the door with his phone pressed to his ear. I tried not to listen to his conversation, but he was close, and the house was silent, and I could feel the way his heart skittered like a hummingbird’s.
“Mom?” he said, after waiting too long for her to pick up. “Mom, I need you to call me as soon as you get this. It’s important. I love you. Just call me, okay?”
He came back into the room, face still white, and continued to pace.
After what felt like hours—hours pierced by the occasional scream from somewhere far away—I heard steps in the hall. Haidar jerked away from the window as Isabelle appeared in the doorway.
“They’re all safe,” she said.
He didn’t care. He crossed the room in two strides and wrapped her in his arms.
The room warmed with the electricity of the touch. I felt myself flush with the intensity of it, and Daniel rolled his eyes. Lucas, who didn’t have faerie sensitivity and was busy wearing a hole in the carpet, didn’t notice.
“The Humdrums agreed to stay in the garden,” Isabelle said, pulling away from Haidar. He looked down at her with single-minded intensity. “I made sure they had enough food to get through the day and conjured up a few tents, but we’ll need to go back tomorrow and check on them.”
“Will that keep them safe?” Lucas asked. He forced himself to look up at her.
“They’ll be okay,” she said. “The garden is one of the safest places they can be. But your mom’s going to be okay, too. I have a friend who works at the hospital. She’s another witch, and she agreed to find your mom and keep an eye on her. That’s what took me so long. I was talking to her to make sure your mom had protection.”
Lucas swallowed. “Thanks,” he said. A muscle in his jaw twitched. I held out a hand, and he sat back down next to me. His shoulders hunched and he twisted his hands together between his knees. His face was like milk beneath his dark hair.
“You said tomorrow,” I said. “Do you think this is going to go on all night?”
Isabelle and Haidar exchanged glances.
“I think it’s going to go longer than tonight,” Isabelle said. “It’s a mess out there. The scariest part is, the Humdrums still don’t know what’s going on. Humdrums can’t see sprites in their water form,” she added, for Lucas’ benefit.
“When a sprite knocks them down, they’ll think they’ve tripped on a crack in the pavement,” I said.
“When their car turns into oncoming traffic, everyone will blame it on texting while driving,” Haidar said. His mouth hardened into a grim line.
“That’s the worst,” Daniel said. “It’s one thing to have someone attacking you. But the Oracle’s trying to make everyone think they’ve gone crazy. That’s brutal.”
“She’s gaslighting the whole city,” Lucas said softly.
“What’s that?” I said.
He frowned. “It’s a kind of mental abuse,” he said. “It’s when someone insists that something didn’t happen, even though you know it did, until you start to doubt your own memory. Or like when someone treats you horribly and then blames you for being ‘too sensitive.’”
“Sounds like our dad,” Daniel said.
“That sucks, man,” Lucas said. He kept fiddling with his hands. “My mom used to talk about it all the time. She had this friend, and this woman was always criticizing my mom. Lots of passive-aggressive crap, like, ‘Should you really be eating that, with your figure?’ And then when my mom asked her to stop making personal comments, she somehow turned it around and made it look like my mom was the one being critical. Mom said it was a ‘toxic friendship’ and that if I was in a situation that made me doubt my own sanity, I should get out.” He laughed. There was no warmth behind it. “Guess I should have listened before all this happened.”
I put my arm back around him. This time, he leaned in.
Isabelle sat across from us on the other sofa. Haidar remained standing where he could see out the window. A long driveway led from the brick wall to the house. On either side of the gate, two enormous marble lions stood guard. As I watched, one of them tensed its stone haunches and pulled back its ears.
Isabelle tugged at the ribbon that held her disheveled braid together. She ran her fingers through her hair and massaged her scalp. From behind her, Haidar watched, a glint of something in his eye that had nothing to do with the day’s chaos.
“You guys are stuck here until the lockdown’s lifted,” Isabelle said. “We should all get comfortable.”
I glanced around the ornate room. This was not the kind of place where people got comfortable.
“I thought we were going to expose the Oracle,” I said.
“That was before Queen Amani ordered everyone to stay in their homes,” Haidar said.
“Odd, that Queen Amani and the Oracle are asking for the same thing,” Isabelle said.
I tensed. But I didn’t have to say anything.
“We will obey the queen,” Haidar growled.
Isabelle pursed her lips. She didn’t like it one bit, but she didn’t argue.
“You guys should call your mom,” she said. “There’s a magic mirror in the study if you want some privacy. She’d probably like to see that you’re okay.”
Haidar’s eyes jumped to me immediately, but he didn’t order me to stay out of his office. I nodded and stood.
“You can take this one,” Daniel said, before I’d even asked. “Mom’s going to be freaking out.”
“With good reason,” Isabelle said. But Daniel didn’t seem inclined to chat. He leaned back in his chair and pulled out his phone.
The study felt even more private than the rest of the house. Papers sat on the heavy wooden desk. I wanted to know everything about Haidar and this house, but I resisted the urge to peek. I had a feeling he watched everything that went on in this building, and I had enough to worry about without him freaking out that I’d looked at his stuff.
An oval mirror in an elaborate gold frame hung on the wall behind the desk. I stood in front of it. A stray leaf fragment was tangled in my messy hair, and I had dirt on my nose that hadn’t been there this morning. I combed my hair with my fingers and tried to clean up my face, then tapped the tip of my wand to the edge of the frame.
The image of my own face shimmered. Colors swirled on its surface as I waited for someone to answer. If no one answered at the house, the reflection would shift to the pocket mirror Mom kept in her purse. When the image resolved, though, Mom stood in our living room.
“Olivia!” Her face was as pale as Lucas’, and her auburn ponytail was a disheveled mess. Her roots showed through dark at her scalp, just enough that I could tell she hadn’t done her weekly touch-up charm. “Where are you?” she demanded. “Are you okay? Why haven’t you been answering my calls?”
“I’m fine,” I said, loudly enough to cut over her frantic voice.
I pulled out my phone and checked the notifications.
“No missed calls,” I said.
“They’ve probably jammed the cell towers,” Mom said. “Why did it take you so long to mirror?”
“We were busy finding a safe place,” I said. I took a deep breath and ordered myself to not get irritated. She was just sc
ared, like everyone else in the entire city. “We’re with my friend Isabelle. You know, the one who’s been teaching me about gardening?”
I could see her fighting to regain composure. She pressed her lips together. “Is Daniel with you?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s fine. We’re at Isabelle’s boss’s house. He’s Glim, too, and we’re really well protected here. It was safer than trying to come home.”
“Okay,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair, tugging even more of it loose from the ponytail. “Your dad is downtown. He’s trying to deal with… all this.”
“I figured,” I said.
She closed her eyes and rubbed the spot between her eyebrows. It was harder to get empathetic impressions through a mirror than with a live person, but I still felt the tension radiating from her.
“Are you safe?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. She pursed her lips. “Your father won’t be home for a few days, but I’ll be all right alone. I always am.”
“There’s probably a lot of work to do,” I said.
“Isn’t there always?” she said.
She let out another long sigh. It didn’t sound like it helped.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Your father and I just had another enormous fight, just when we should have been coming together. But I suppose we should all be used to that by now.”
I studied her face. There were fine lines there I’d never noticed before. And under them, she didn’t look like my mom. She looked like a person.
“He’s not going to change,” I said. “You know that, right?”
She touched her fingertip between her eyebrows again.
“I can’t get my divination to work,” she said. “I’ve been trying all afternoon, looking for the two of you and trying to get a sense for what’s going to happen next. I’m not getting anything.”
“You’re probably overwhelmed,” I said. “Try to relax. We’re all stuck where we are for a few days, so make some popcorn and put on a movie.”