“That’s what I was too, remember? Anyway, these kids let me in on some places I could stay—abandoned houses, foreclosed places. It’s kind of like . . . a network. I just hope this place we’re going is still empty.”
“Why did you never tell me any of this?”
Liv couldn’t meet Shannon’s eye, and was glad that they were having this conversation while Shannon was driving. “I don’t know. It was just . . . easier that way. To keep that part of my life separate from everything else.”
“You know I’m here for you, right? You can tell me anything.” Shannon’s words were comforting, but her voice sounded slightly accusatory. And hurt.
“I know that, Shan. I really do.”
They drove on in silence. Liv gazed out the window at the small, artsy boutiques and coffee shops lined up next to 99-cent stores and fast-food restaurants on Sunset Boulevard. Nearly every corner was populated by a homeless person, a hipster in skinny jeans, or both.
“Here.” Liv nodded to a street on the right. Shannon turned and the van moved slowly uphill, past single-level houses painted orange, purple, and green. Some of the houses had small front lawns covered with furniture, while others were hidden behind fences bearing Beware of Dog signs. Nearly every third house was still decorated with Christmas lights, even though it was August.
The abandoned house sat, dark and empty, at the very top of the hill, all peeling paint and a sagging front porch. A foreclosure sign leaned against the front door. The house had an unusually large lawn in the front and on the sides, almost as if the houses on either side were trying to get their distance from it. It backed up to a grove of trees so thick that Liv couldn’t see through them.
“We’re here.”
The doors opened and Cedric and his friends climbed out of the van. Before he was fully outside, Merek turned to Shannon. “Did you know that your hair looks like it’s bleeding?”
Shannon made a face. “A simple ‘thanks for the ride’ would have been fine.”
Merek shrugged and jumped out of the van.
Shannon whipped her head back to face Liv, who put up a hand, speaking first. “I told you I would explain everything, and I will. But right now, I have to get them set up.”
Shannon bit her lip, then nodded. “I trust you. What should I tell Joe, if he calls back?”
“Don’t tell him anything. Just till I can figure things out.”
“Okay . . . Oh, here’s that shirt you asked for. What happened to yours, anyway?”
Shannon handed a folded-up, long-sleeved T-shirt to Liv. Her eyebrows creased as she looked at the tatters of Liv’s shirt.
“Caught it on a nail. You know me, never met an outfit I couldn’t destroy in less than a day.” Liv let out a shaky laugh and opened the passenger-side door.
Shannon eyed Liv’s bandaged hand, too. “Right,” she said. “Hey, Liv? You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if something was really, really wrong?”
“I’d tell you. Everything’s fine. Weird, but fine,” Liv said, getting out of the van and closing the door quickly before Shannon could figure out she was lying.
The house had four bedrooms in total, but the three located upstairs were deemed unusable because the staircase leading to the second floor was almost entirely rotted through. All of the downstairs rooms were empty except for two tattered couches in the living room. The electricity wasn’t connected, and the water was shut off. Liv searched the kitchen cabinets, just in case whoever had last passed through left some cans of food behind. No luck.
Liv found a bathroom on the first floor and shut herself in. It was getting dark out, but the curtainless window let in a good amount of twilight, enough for Liv to check herself out in the mirror above the sink. Her face looked drained of color, all whiteness and shadows. A tiny bandage was still affixed above her eyebrow, from when she’d first been attacked by a wrath the night before. It already felt like weeks ago.
Liv wished she could splash some cold water on her face to freshen up, but she settled for running her fingers through her hair. Her brush was locked in the backseat of her car, along with the rest of her things. She’d have to figure out a way to get it all back the next morning. And then . . . well, she wasn’t exactly sure what she’d do then. School started in a week, and she was once again homeless. That was enough of a problem without thinking about the fact she’d just been attacked by monsters from another world.
Liv slowly shrugged out of her jacket and turned around so that her back was to the mirror. She craned her neck, trying to see the area where the wrath had clawed at her. Her T-shirt hung from her shoulders in shreds, but the skin underneath was undamaged. She reached up a hand and pulled the pieces of T-shirt away. She brushed her fingers against the dark, twirling lines of her tattoo.
“You’re fine,” she said to her reflection. “One thing at a time.”
Liv put on Shannon’s shirt, took another deep breath, and opened the bathroom door. In the living room, Cedric was holding Kat’s arm out in a straight line, while Merek gripped her other side.
“Ready?” Cedric asked.
Kat nodded, her face set and pale.
Cedric quickly pushed Kat’s arm, and Liv jumped at the resulting cracking noise. Then Kat let out a long, ragged sigh and sank onto one of the sagging couches.
After a moment, Liv cleared her throat and looked to Cedric, who sat down as well, as close to Kat as he could be without upsetting her shoulder.
“Okay. Now that I know—or at least am pretty sure—that you’re not a crazy person, I’m going to need some more answers.”
Cedric nodded. “I tried to tell you before.”
Liv sighed. “I know. But after seeing you fight . . . and those things, they weren’t just men. I wanted to believe they were, but . . .”
“They most definitely are not,” Cedric finished for her.
“You said you came . . . from another world?” Liv asked.
“Caelum,” Kat said. Her voice was clipped, and she gently rubbed at her shoulder.
“Right. Well I guess that’s the part I’m having a little trouble with. The ‘other world’ part. So does that make you . . . aliens?”
“What’s an alien?” Merek asked. He’d moved to perch at an empty window seat across the room. His fingers worked over a tarnished metal lighter in his palm.
“An alien is like . . . you know, from another planet.” Liv gestured out the window, up toward the moon. “Like E.T.”
Blank looks all around.
“Have you never seen E.T.? It’s one of my favorite movies of all time.” Liv put one finger in the air. “Phoooone hooome.”
“Movie?” Cedric’s lips formed the word awkwardly, as if they’d never spoken it before.
“Wait. Are you telling me you’ve never . . . seen a movie? Ever?” Liv asked, incredulous. “The Avengers, Star Wars . . . Mean Girls? Any combination of moving pictures that tell a story, any one at all?”
Nothing.
Liv shook her head. “That’s just . . . so sad. How can you have an entire planet with no movies? I mean, is Caelum really that different from here? You do seem to speak English pretty well . . . for the most part.”
“We speak the same language because we originated from this realm,” Cedric replied. “Many, many years ago our people lived here as Guardians. They were here for centuries, fighting off the wraths and keeping peace. But it was a hard, bitter place, and our numbers were small. The wraths had the advantage. And that is when the first portal was opened.”
Liv raised her hand. “Um, sorry to interrupt, and I’m not saying that history is my area of expertise or anything, but if wraths came from this world, I think I would know.”
Cedric shrugged. “This is what we have always been told. Our people crossed through a portal to seek a new world, leaving this one behind. But the wraths followed us. And they did the one thing they’re good at doing, aside from causing destruction. They populated.”
Liv pictured the all-black eyes from
the wraths in the alley . . . not to mention the teeth . . . and fought off a shiver.
“I come from a long line of Guardian kings, who have ruled over Caelum for centuries. We keep the wraths from entering our territories and send out hunting parties to destroy those who come too close. That is the way it has always been, until . . .” Cedric’s voice faltered, and he looked out the window.
“Until recently,” Kat finished for him.
“Until Malquin,” Cedric added, his voice hard. Kat reached out and laid her hand on top of his. Liv couldn’t help thinking of how it had felt to hold that same hand of Cedric’s briefly in the tunnels. She pulled her eyes away.
“The only chance we have of getting back and reclaiming the palace is to find those scrolls,” Cedric went on.
“Right, you mentioned them at the diner,” Liv said.
“We do not know much about this world, Earth, or what life was like here before our people left it,” Cedric continued. “But it is rumored the first portal was opened by a series of scrolls—”
“Rumored being the operative word,” Merek cut in. “There is always a chance the scrolls are imaginary, and we do not actually have a way home—”
“But we choose to believe they are real,” Kat said, glaring at Merek. She turned to Liv. “According to legend, there were three scrolls originally used to open the portal to Caelum. And those scrolls were left behind on Earth when our people crossed through. We need them to open a portal again.”
Liv’s mind raced, trying to keep up. She struggled to fit the details into a larger picture, the way she would when trying to piece together a movie. “Okay, so . . . the scrolls are the MacGuffin.”
Cedric’s face was blank. “Mac . . . what?”
Liv sat up straighter. “Oh, it’s a filmmaking device. A thing that everyone wants to get, like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction or the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones.”
“You are speaking nonsense again.” Cedric shook his head, but inched forward on the couch, his attention only on Liv. She leaned forward, too.
“I’m speaking nonsense? Portals and monsters and scrolls—that’s nonsense. Movies have internal logic at least. They have rules so you know what’s going on. Like, imagine your life is a story—”
“Now that would be good,” he said, and grinned.
“I can see it now. The waffle-eating prince who loved his sword too much.”
“Said the girl who spoke gibberish and drove much too fast—”
Kat cleared her throat loudly, and Cedric and Liv both shut up and sat up straight, as though they’d been caught at something.
“Anyway,” Liv continued, “if your life were a movie, the MacGuffin would be the thing you really, really want.”
“Fascinating. But I believe we have things of actual import to discuss,” Kat said, her voice cold.
From the other side of the room, Merek scoffed. “Like jealous fiancées.”
There was an awkward silence, and Liv took a deep breath, choosing to pretend she hadn’t heard Merek. “So I get you’re looking for scrolls, but . . . why didn’t your people just come back here years ago, once they realized the, um, wraths followed them to Caelum?”
Merek snorted and gestured outside. “Why do you think?”
Cedric shifted uncomfortably. “We were taught that our people left this place when it had grown uninhabitable. Though the wraths followed us, returning here was never even an option.”
“You do not escape hell only to return,” Merek said, his voice low.
“Well, I think that’s a little harsh. I mean, yeah, we may have a lot of wars and a disturbing amount of reality TV shows based on botched plastic surgeries, but . . . hell?” Liv laughed. “I mean, Earth is where you all came from. It’s your home.”
“It is not our home,” Kat said.
“Okay, but . . . it’s not hell.” Liv turned to Cedric. “Is that really what you think?”
Cedric sighed. “What I think is we have to get back, at any cost. It is not only our own lives in the balance. All of Caelum is at risk.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Another thought occurred to Liv. “Wait, you said these wraths followed your people into Caelum. But if that’s true, how did they end up in that alley? And why are they after you now?”
Cedric’s eyebrows furrowed. “I do not know the answer to that.”
“Or to anything else, really,” Merek muttered, looking out of the window.
“Yes, Merek, I think you have made your opinion on the matter quite clear. You continue to be extremely helpful by repeating it.”
“Well,” Liv said, with a forced laugh, “at least when your people went through that portal the first time, they remembered to take sarcasm with them.”
To Liv’s—and everyone’s—surprise, Kat was the one who laughed at that. She quickly squelched it, forcing her expression back to a more grim one.
“It has been a long night,” Kat said. “And we are all a little tense. Maybe we should get some rest.”
Liv still had so many questions to ask, but more than that, she wanted a few quiet moments to think, and to wrap her head around everything that had happened. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “This place is relatively safe . . . I mean, from cops, anyway. As for the wraths . . .”
“They cannot have followed us,” Cedric said. “We moved too quickly on the way here.”
“Yeah, well, Shannon believes that speed limits are more of a suggestion than a rule.” Liv laughed, but it was hollow. She tried to ignore the way her stomach flipped around uncomfortably at just the thought of those creatures with the pitch-black eyes, and the way that black-haired one had stared at her hungrily as it pinned her down to the ground . . . she shook her head to rid herself of the image.
They ended up spreading out around the couches or on the torn carpet in the living room. Liv lay down against the cushions in the darkness, her eyes barely making out the sloping shapes lying around her. As the minutes stretched on, she could tell that the others were falling asleep, one by one. She wanted to stay awake and sort through all of the images of the day, get them into some kind of recognizable order, but instead, she slipped into half-dreams full of black-eyed monsters and dark holes that tore open the sky before waking up each time with a gasp.
After a few hours, Liv gave up trying to think or even trying to get a good night’s rest. None of the sleeping forms so much as twitched as she got up and crept out of the room and through the kitchen.
Through a window in the kitchen door, Liv could clearly see the backyard area, dim and tranquil in the moonlight. She opened the door and walked out onto the back patio. A few plastic lawn chairs surrounded a glass-topped table with an old, dirty ashtray sitting on top of it.
Liv took a seat and shut her eyes. She suddenly longed to go down to her spot by the river, which she knew would be isolated and calm at this time of night. It was her go-to place whenever life was feeling a bit . . . much. But even if she had her car with her, it wouldn’t have felt right to leave Cedric and the others behind on their own.
A small scraping sound made Liv jump. She whirled around and saw Cedric coming through the back door, which he closed behind him.
“Cannot sleep?” he asked.
“Nope. Lots going on up here,” Liv replied, pointing to her head. She tried to let out a small laugh, but it got caught at a lump in her throat and came out sounding strangled.
“Do you mind?” Cedric pointed to the chair next to hers.
Liv shook her head.
“I find it can be hard to sleep through the night in this world. We usually rotate in shifts.” Cedric leaned back in his chair, tipping his head toward the sky. Liv followed his gaze. She’d always loved how the night sky in Los Angeles could look different depending on where you were. By the beach, it was a deep blue. In the center of Hollywood, with its roaming searchlights and congestion, the sky turned purple-gray, almost the color of slate. Here, in Echo Park, it reflected the orangy glow of the st
reetlights.
“Do you believe what Merek said in there?” Liv asked, her eyes still on the sky. “About thinking this place is hell?”
Cedric waited a moment before responding. “I did at first, but not anymore. There are some things here that seem far too lovely to exist in any type of hell . . .”
“Like syrup?”
“Among other things.” Cedric flushed and looked away. “I suppose this realm is not like any kind of hell I have ever heard of. Then again, how would one really know? Maybe hell is just a myth we ascribe to worlds we cannot imagine.”
“Whoa. Deep.”
“I am more than just a pretty face.”
Liv snorted, and Cedric gave her that half-smile she was coming to recognize. His eyes looked dark blue in the moonlight, half covered in shadow. She remembered how fast he had run in the alley, and nodded toward his outstretched leg.
“I guess that’s true. Does everyone have superpowers where you’re from?”
“Superpowers?” Cedric chuckled in the darkness. “I like that. All Guardians are fast and strong, to better fight the wraths. Several generations ago, the fastest and strongest of us joined forces to rule over the others and ensure peace in the kingdom.”
Liv was about to interject with a snarky comment about fascism, but decided against it.
“For years, the royals would intermarry to ensure that the next generation would be just as capable of leading,” Cedric continued.
“Thus . . . arranged marriage.”
“It is of the utmost importance. The wraths grow in number every year, and we have to maintain the power to fight them.”
“So, you were all trained to fight? The way you all moved in that alley . . . I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We were all trained, yes. Kat and I had royal training for years. Merek trained as well, although he never showed the same aptitude as his older brother. I think it bothered him more than a little.”
Liv choked down a laugh. “Well, that explains the majorly chipped shoulder, I guess.”
“The what?”
Liv waved her hand. “He just seems to go out of his way to be kind of a dick. You know, rude for no reason? So remind me to keep him away from Shannon. That’s exactly her type.”
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