Glimmers of Thorns

by Emma Savant

  And I had to move quickly. We would only have so much time to help before the Oracle wrecked this city so hard that we’d never be able to conceal the Glim world again. Even now, we were pushing our luck. It would take the Council years to repair the damage.

  “I’m going to put an enchantment on the car,” I said. “It will hide you better than just the necklace. Make sure you stay in the car. It’s going to take me a while to find what I’m looking for.”

  Underneath my Multnomah necklace, the mirror ring Amani had given me a long time ago still sat. I pulled it off and over my head.

  “If I’m not back in an hour, use this,” I said. I dropped the ring into Lucas’ palm. The silver chain coiled down onto it like a snake. “Put it on your finger and ask for Queen Amani. Hopefully you’ll be able to reach her.”

  He closed his hand around the ring. “I should come with you,” he said.

  “You have to stay here,” I said. “If something happens to me, you have to get the ring and the goblet to Amani. Promise me.”

  “I will,” he said. “Liv, please be safe.”

  “Everyone keeps asking that,” I said.

  Between us, the goblet sat in the cup holder, looking out of place and overdressed. Mom’s ring rested inside it. I touched its rose quartz surface for luck.

  “What are you looking for?” Lucas said.

  I pulled my wand out of my hair. Clumpy curls fell down onto my shoulders. Normally, having my hair down drove me a little crazy. Right now, it felt like a cloak, something to hide me and keep me safe.

  I pointed my wand up, directing a sharp burst of energy strong enough to suffuse the car ceiling with a rippling flash of white, visible even through my glasses. The flash spread until the entire car glowed with the concealment spell. Over my lenses, the spell continued to shimmer white. Through them, the car faded quickly back to normal.

  I reached for the door handle.

  “I’m going after Kelda’s wand,” I said.

  His eyes widened in his already-worried face. Even as a Humdrum, Lucas had heard enough fairy tales to know that you didn’t touch another faerie’s wand, especially a faerie like Kelda. Not if you wanted to live.

  Saying the plan aloud felt good, though, in a nutty, dangerous, have-you-lost-your-mind kind of way.

  “Why would she leave her wand out here?” he said. “I’ve never seen you without yours, even when I thought it was just a thing you used to keep your hair up.”

  “This is different,” I said.

  Amani had explained this to me. I’d heard of powerful faeries using talismans before, and this was one of them.

  “Amani and Kelda are both really powerful,” I said. “They use a crazy amount of magical energy every day. Normally, it’s impossible for a Glim to summon and channel that much power, but they have to, so they use a kind of… battery, I guess. They each have a second wand hidden somewhere in the city, in a place that’s loaded with magical energy. That wand connects them to everything.”

  “And you’re going to take Kelda’s,” Lucas said.

  I took in an enormous breath and then let it out, trying to release my fear and tension with the air.

  It did exactly nothing to help.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A bird screeched overhead. Above me, eldritch moss-covered branches loomed dark and foreboding.

  I had always taken comfort in the trees that covered Portland. But here, at the bottom of the ravine, their branches were heavy with menace.

  The trail was hidden now, up above me and winding through the lighter part of the forest, where normal birds chirped and Humdrum plants lined the path. I’d known to leave the trail the moment I felt like the absolute last thing I should ever do was wander from its safety. The moment the impulse to cling to the carefully marked dirt path gripped me was the moment I knew exactly where Kelda didn’t want me to go.

  I stumbled down the steep slope. The ground was thick with ferns and saplings that tangled around my ankles. As I descended, the air grew colder and the sky seemed to darken. Around me, the plants became strange and unfamiliar.

  Concealed from Humdrums by the canopy and a repellent glamour, oily black ferns grew underfoot, leaving smears on my jeans as I walked. Prickly bushes scratched my arms; on some, red berries glowed with a light that shouldn’t have been possible on such a gray day. Eerie whispers wove through the branches, words I couldn’t make out and didn’t want to hear. And from everywhere, no matter how quietly I tried to walk, came the sense of being watched.

  A creek flowed down the very center of the ravine. Upstream, to my left, the water seemed clear and clean. I heard its cheerful burbling. The plants on either side of the water seemed normal, brown with winter but still healthy and carrying hints of green. Far downstream, the world looked the same—exactly as it ought to be.

  But in front of me, the water grew dark, icy not with the season but with something deep and hidden. It was the kind of darkness that collected in dangerous alleys and the corners of basements, the kind of darkness that fed on imagination until you had nothing left but fear.

  This had to be the place.

  I held my wand out. Of everything in this grim landscape, it was the only thing that hinted at light. It glinted silver amid the shadows.

  I knelt at the edge of the creek and rested my fingertips on the oozing dark brown mud that made up its banks. The water slithered and whispered in front of me, black enough to hide anything. Images of leeches and biting fish and venomous snakes filled my mind, and I shuddered.

  If only it could have been hidden anywhere else. A tree trunk, I could have handled with the help of a good flashlight. The wet dirt that soaked my knees would have been fine. I could dig.

  But water was kind of the Oracle’s thing, and it was the only place she’d hide her wand.

  A cutting breeze whipped through the ravine. The cold rushed through my bones. I flexed my toes inside my shoes, trying to find balance and warmth.

  The tip of my wand glowed star-white as I focused, and I lowered it to the water. The glow reflected on the inky surface, but that was as far as the light would go. Whatever was in there, Kelda didn’t want it to be seen.

  Tree branches littered the ground around me. I leaned back on my heels and reached for one that seemed solid and just long enough. Its damp surface was clammy and left disintegrating bits of bark against my skin. I braced myself and plunged the stick into the shifting black surface.

  It hit the bottom and I scraped it around, tense and listening closely.

  Nothing.

  The stick slid smoothly across the bottom of the creek. There were no rocks, no pebbles, no normal creek debris. Nothing was down there that would create the ripples that disturbed the creek’s surface. And there was definitely no wand.

  But Amani had said it was here. And the creepy-as-hell goth nature show around me was backing her up loud and clear.

  “I am living in a hashtag-Dark-Forest,” I muttered.

  I wished I had Aubrey here. I’d dunk her in the creek without a second thought.

  I was only going to get this one way. I pushed up my sleeves until they caught behind my elbows.

  Goosebumps prickled up my arms and the back of my neck. I tensed, then took a deep breath and tried to let the stiffness of fear go.

  I touched the black water with the tip of my finger. A shock of ice shuddered through me. The freezing water seemed to make my blood crystallize in my veins. I yanked my finger back and shook my hand, trying to force heat back into it.

  But nothing terrible had happened. Doom hadn’t come crashing down on my head.

  The water was frigid, and this place was creepy as creepy could get, but nothing had actually hurt me.

  Before I could think twice, I plunged my hand into the water. I screamed as the cold slammed through me. It was beyond cold; it was ice, it was dry ice, it was the vast reaches of space where nothing could survive, and it was all rushing through my veins so quickly I couldn’t
do anything to stop it.

  Pain shot through my mouth. I became vaguely aware that I was biting my tongue and fought to wrench my frozen jaw apart. My arm thrashed in the water, scraping the slick bottom and desperately searching for the thing that would get me out of here.

  I’d never understood terror. Now, it gripped my body like a vise. I trembled and shook, unable to control my body.

  I didn’t want the wand. I didn’t want anything except to run, to get out of here and never look back, to throw myself into the most brightly-lit room imaginable and never, ever leave it. At any moment, I could fall into the water and never come up, and every second I stayed here was a second closer to death and to what I was suddenly sure was the pointless nothingness that came after it.

  I was going to die, and everyone I loved was going to die, and none of this would matter.

  My stomach heaved and spasmed, and I leaned over the oily water and felt bile rise up in my gut.

  My throat closed. I gasped, and felt my ribcage shake with caged panic.

  “Amani,” I whispered.

  Her name was all I remembered. It was a talisman, a glow against this relentless darkness. For a moment, I couldn’t remember what it meant, only that it was a word that might protect me—the only word that might mean something out here where every second meant terror and pain.

  And then her face formed in my mind, and the mission she’d given me, and what it meant for my family, for Lucas, for Isabelle and Haidar, for Elle and Kyle and maybe even Imogen.

  A shudder stormed through me. How did Imogen live with this kind of cold?

  “Amani chose me,” I whispered, to the water and to myself and to the horror pressing in against my skin from every side.

  My stiff fingers brushed against a smooth, long surface. I begged my hand to close around it, but my fingers wouldn’t listen. They wanted warmth.

  “Amani chose me,” I whispered. The words rose to a stream of chants as relentless as the ice in my veins. “Lucas is waiting for me,” I muttered. “Haidar gave us his car. Mom gave me her ring. Amani chose me. Amani is waiting.”

  As I tried to lift the wand, wind whipped around my head. An inhuman, unearthly shriek swept down with it, piercing my eardrums and echoing the cold in my veins.

  I screamed back.

  Screaming meant I was alive; screaming meant I was still here. Suddenly furious, I forced my hand shut and felt the wand press against my stiff skin.

  I wrenched the wand up out of the water. Black droplets sprayed everywhere, landing on my face and soaking my jacket.

  It didn’t matter.

  I had the wand.

  The moment it was in the air, the shrieking intensified. Wails and whistles filled the air around me. The wind whipped at me from every side, and an eerie, ghostly blue light filled the menacing darkness.

  Dozens of sprites swooped down toward my head. They seemed to pour from the sky, and their insubstantial, watery hands slapped against my face.

  But my face was warm again—or at least it felt warm in comparison to the numbing frost of the Oracle’s water. I could feel their slaps, and I could move my fingers and my toes.

  And that meant I could move my legs.

  I gripped Kelda’s wand so tightly that nothing could have pried my fingers apart, gripped my own wand with the other hand, and ran. I crashed through the underbrush and up the steep side of the ravine, tripping and stumbling but miraculously staying upright.

  And still the sprites came at me, screaming like banshees and trying to make me fall.

  But while their hands could touch me, while I felt their stinging slaps and heavy blows, they weren’t enough to knock me down. They were like ghosts or memories, enough to scare me and hurt me but not enough to change my course. I threw a spell over my shoulder and kept running.

  Amani’s gold charm pressed hot against my skin, protecting me and shielding me from the worst of it.

  The vicious thorns of overgrown blackberry bushes scratched my arms and tore at my legs, but then I was through them, and through the ferns that lined the trail, and back onto the trail where a Humdrum could have walked every day for decades without ever learning what waited below.

  The moment my feet touched the steady surface of the path, I broke into a dead run. The sprites flooded after me. I heard their voices calling my name and ordering me to stop, to return what I’d stolen. I didn’t turn. I didn’t reply. I didn’t even listen, beyond what I could help.

  And there, at the top of the path, Haidar’s car sat waiting. Above my glasses, it pulsed white and bright against the shadow of the trees and overcast sky.

  My lungs screamed for rest and air.

  I fought them, too.

  Then I was at the gravel parking lot, level with the car. I dashed around to the passenger’s side, threw the door open with my wand, and hurled myself into the front seat. I slammed the door and clenched my hand around the wand so tightly my skin tingled.

  “Drive!” I screamed. “Go!”

  Lucas was one step ahead of me, and the engine had already roared to life. He threw the car backward and peeled out of the parking lot, kicking up gravel behind us. The sprites were caught in a swirling fog of dirt and exhaust, and I watched in the rearview mirror until their choking blue forms were far behind us.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Haidar’s gates slid open, a thousand times too slow. The tires squealed as Lucas pressed the gas pedal to the floor. We shot up his driveway and screeched into the garage.

  The car stopped with a jolt. We sat in stunned silence for a few seconds while the engine hummed beneath us.

  My heart still felt like it was trying to slow down. My chest ached with the pounding. I let out a long, controlled breath and willed my body to be calm. We’re at Haidar’s, I thought, soothing myself like a child. It’s okay, we’re safe.

  But I wasn’t a child, no matter what Imogen said, and I wasn’t about to believe my own lies. We weren’t safe. I had the Oracle’s wand on my lap. No one would be safe in our position, no matter how strong the enchantments were that guarded Haidar’s grounds.

  I reached out to open the car door, but Lucas stopped me. He grabbed my other wrist and held on until I looked at him.

  “You’re okay,” he said.

  I nodded and tried to let the words sink in.

  He was right. At least in this moment, I was okay. If that was all I had to hold onto, I’d do my best to cling to it.

  “I can’t believe we made it out of there,” I said.

  I leaned back into the seat and pressed my head against the solid plush of the headrest.

  “What happened down there?”

  He had the biggest eyes sometimes. They were a dark hazel-green, the kind of eyes that changed color with different light, and there was so much buried behind them. He thought more deeply than most people, and he felt more deeply than he let on.

  “I’ll tell you about it someday,” I said. “I don’t want to think about it right now. The Oracle is nasty. That’s all anyone needs to know for now.”

  He leaned his head into his seat, too, and stared across the space between us. I began to hear the silence behind our breathing and the noise of the car. My heartbeat shuddered in my chest and slowed, finally realizing it was protected here.

  “I’m sorry you got pulled into this, but I’m glad we’re friends,” I said.

  “I am too,” Lucas said.

  He rubbed his thumb across my wrist.

  “I feel alone a lot of the time,” he said. “But not with you.”

  The first real smile I’d felt in days crossed my face.

  “Let’s go in,” I said. “When all this is over, can we just, I don’t know, spend an entire weekend watching cartoons and eating cereal?”

  “We can do anything you want,” Lucas said. “We’ll have earned it.”

  He gave me a smile that made a tingle rush up my spine. It was exactly the kind of tingle I didn’t have time for right now, and exactly the
kind of tingle I wasn’t planning on having when it came to Lucas. Even so, I welcomed it. The sensation was a reminder that good things existed beyond all this chaos. Maybe we’d get back to them someday.

  Lucas carried the goblet and ring inside; I held the Oracle’s wand carefully away from mine.

  The door from the garage led to a hallway, which eventually opened onto the entrance hall. Something felt different in here; it was as if the lighting had been altered, or a new scent had been introduced, though I couldn’t put a finger on what had changed.

  I took a careful step forward, listening for the sound of sprites.

  “We’re back,” I called.

  Isabelle’s voice responded, and though I couldn’t make out the words, her tone was casual enough that I could relax. A moment later, she stepped out of the front parlor.

  She reached us in three big strides. Her dark eyes glinted at the sight of the Oracle’s wand, and her lip curled in disgust. A second later, though, her whole face was transformed by concern as she looked down at me.

  “You look awful,” she said. “Did anything happen?”

  “Stuff happened,” I said wryly. “But I’m okay. Where’s Haidar? I need to get this stuff back to the Waterfall Palace.”

  She snorted, and I felt a tiny flare of annoyance come off of her.

  “No need,” she said.

  I exchanged looks with Lucas, but I wasn’t as puzzled as I probably looked. The irked expression on Isabelle’s face made the strange sensation in the mansion instantly clear.

  In the parlor, Amani’s swirling gold energy was too pronounced to miss. She’d been scanning the skies through the big bay window, but turned as soon as she heard us enter. She was wearing brown leggings and a long, cream cable-knit sweater. Wrapped in the sweater, she looked protected and safe. I wished I had one.

  “You’re here,” I said.

  Haidar snorted from his place by the window.

  “We got everything you need,” I said.

  She waved a hand. Instantly, a small table shimmered into being. I set the wand down and nodded at Lucas. He put the goblet and ring carefully beside it.