by Kate Hall
When Mark closes the front door, Elizabeth’s head turns to them. At the same time, the whispers that have been taunting Sarah the whole time go silent. The sudden quiet is jarring, and she has to pause to steady herself.
Elizabeth rushes up and hugs her, just like Mark had when he saw her at the museum. Since she moved here, Sarah hasn’t received physical affection from either of them, so both of them hugging her tonight only heightens her fear.
“Sarah Jackson?” the woman asks, her voice serious. It reminds her of the time she was sent to the principal’s office her sophomore year, and, despite knowing she’s done nothing wrong, she cringes.
“Yes?”
The officer looks at Elizabeth and Mark, hesitant.
“I need someone to tell me what’s going on,” Sarah says, her voice firm and louder than usual. Everyone is so careful around her. Her face is heating up, a scream building in her throat, but she keeps her face flat.
“Miss Jackson, I’m Detective Harris. I’m the lead on the case regarding Cynthia Rowell’s death.” She pauses, but her eyes stay on Sarah, evaluating her. “We have reason to believe that your aunt, Helen Jackson, may attempt to cause you harm.”
She waits for a reaction, but Sarah doesn’t know what is expected of her. She found out half an hour ago that her aunt murdered a second person after being missing for six years. Both of the girls who died were St. Merlin’s students. There have been voices telling her all night that she isn’t safe. She’d seen Helen on the street and, possibly, at the faerie party. Is she supposed to be surprised?
“Sarah,” Detective Harris says, pulling out a phone. “Do you recognize this image?”
She isn’t sure what she’s expecting, but it isn’t this. There are the same symbols that she and her friends have been researching for weeks. Except, instead of being drawn in Gabby’s book or in an online article, these are carved into a piece of pearlescent white hide that gleams with the flash of a phone’s camera. The symbols should be difficult to distinguish with all the blood that has soaked into the creature’s fur, but she recognizes them instantly.
Detective Harris doesn’t wait for her to reply. Sarah’s face must say enough. “These images were pulled from Llogan Jackson’s phone shortly after your aunt went missing.”
Dad’s phone. These pictures are from Dad’s phone. The memories begin to pull at her, seeping past the wall in her mind. The photos must have been taken at the gas station, moments before the accident. There’d been no time otherwise. Moments after pulling back onto the road, the truck had been hit by a semi. She shudders.
“I need to lie down,” she whispers, her head suddenly spinning once again. Elizabeth moves her to the couch immediately, where she curls up. The scratchy old throw pillow is cool against her cheek.
Detective Harris talks to Mark and Elizabeth for just a minute or two longer, then the front door clicks shut.
She falls asleep while Elizabeth and Mark are talking behind the couch in hushed tones. She should be more interested in what they’re saying, but she’s just too tired to care.
SHE ISN’T QUITE ASLEEP WHEN SHE HEARS THE unicorn screaming.
She remembers Dad carrying her in so she could sleep on the couch, and she remembers her parents making their way to the guest room for the night. Despite the past few hours of darkness, it isn’t actually that late. The clock on the oven, which she can just see from her makeshift bed, read 9:35. Darkness is early to rise during an Arkansas winter—the sun escaped past the horizon before six was even a consideration.
The house is quiet, the old Victorian creaking occasionally with winter winds, a faucet dripping down the hall. She hears a mouse scurrying away, and then she hears the scream.
Sarah has grown up with horses. Her father taught her how to plant her feet in the stirrups, and her mother taught her how to get back on when she falls. She heard stallions fighting and screeching at each other when they were mistakenly put together in the horrible kill pen at the auction, and she’s heard mares keening across sunny pastures for their foals who were venturing too far.
This is not the same thing.
This is a desperate plea, a fearful cry. It calls to her, begging to be saved, for the pain to stop. Sarah bolts off the couch, slipping on her old, muddy boots before sprinting out the front door.
When they were loading it into their old stock trailer that morning, Mom told her to stay away from the unicorn. “That horn is sharp.” It has been raised in an expensive stable, fed expensive hay, and worked under the most expensive tack. It only makes sense that the spoiled creature would require expensive training, and Helen is the best in the midwest. Her stables are worth five times as much as her house, the house where she and Sarah’s father were raised. In the daytime, it’s a bustling network of stable hands and trainers and horses, some less magical than others, but all very expensive. In the dark, though, something else creeps in. An energy that raises the hairs on the back of her neck even on normal nights.
Sarah leaps off the porch, skipping the wooden steps. The barn is mostly dark, but the big metal door has been slid open and left that way. This would be a normal sight during the daytime because of all the foot traffic, but at night, when the stable hands and trainers have all gone home and the horses are settling in their stalls, the door should be secured shut. Even if someone is out here, they would usually take the normal door to the side. The only reason to take the main door would be if horses need to be moved.
Sarah makes it halfway to the barn when she sees the unicorn, which is being dragged out of its stall. Although it’s bracing its legs against the ground, Helen is still able to force it out of its stall, across the concrete barn floor, and out the door. It appears to be wearing intricate red tack, but when the redness drips wet and slick across the floor, Sarah gets sick. It’s bleeding. There is so much blood, more than she ever thought she might see.
SHE WAKES UP IN HER OWN ROOM, THE SUN BLARing through the window and her dress bunching uncomfortably beneath her. Her phone is buzzing incessantly, and she looks at it to see Gabby’s photo grinning at her—a selfie Gabby had taken and assigned to her phone during their first slumber party. The memory Sarah dreamt is already ebbing away, although her heart is racing.
“Hello?” she croaks, blinking away as much of the morning as she can, and she sees from the vintage clock on her nightstand that it’s nearly noon.
“Sarah, are you okay?” Gabby asks, her voice hushed.
The previous night snaps to the forefront of her mind like a rubber band. “Oh my god, I didn’t text you.” She stands up to go change out of her dress, which feels ridiculous the morning after. She no longer feels like a princess, just a stupid girl in a dress that she could have died in. “Yes, I’m fine. Everything is fine,” she lies.
She isn’t sure how to tell her best friend that Helen most definitely wants to kill her. She pulls on a pair of forest green leggings and an oversized yellow sweater that Elizabeth had given her, claiming it didn’t look as good on her. It was a lie, of course. Everything looks good on Elizabeth.
“Oh thank god,” Gabby says. A familiar male voice mumbles something in the background, and Gabby takes the phone away from her face to reply, assuring him that everything is fine. “Alex looked everywhere for you before Kelly found him. He had no idea where you went.”
Sarah’s heart drops. With everything that happened last night, she’d forgotten to text him, too. The memories of their time together trickle in—the dancing, the exploring, and finally, the kissing. She puts a hand up to her lips and smiles despite the horrible situation. They’d kissed—for real this time, not just a random kiss at a late-night party. Although they’d made out pretty heavily in the treehouse, the kiss that sticks in her mind is the one under the waterfall, his lips gentle on hers as he wondered if it would be alright.
She freezes. What if he’s mad at her? She should’ve texted him as she was leaving, or on the drive, or as soon as she got home. She’d had so many opportuni
ties.
“Can I talk to him?” she asks, suddenly timid.
There’s a rustling on the other line as Gabby passes the phone over.
“Sarah.” His voice is exhausted and gruff, but not angry. The sound floods through her, warming her cheeks and pushing away some of the darkness. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”
She can practically feel his arms around her, comforting her. She still wishes she had his jacket, just so she could wrap it around herself and get the courage to speak to him, to tell him everything that’s going on over the phone.
“Can you come over?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sarah
IT’S WEIRD TO HAVE ALEX IN HER HOME. SHE’D never been allowed to have boys over whilst living with Uncle John, and here Alex is, standing in the doorway to her room. Gabby and Kelly stayed home, Elizabeth has a shift at the zoo all day, and Mark is doing some grading in his home office, so they’re alone. She wants to go to him, to wrap herself in his arms and kiss him until she forgets about the death and danger.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks. She’d been worried the whole time he was driving over that he’d be mad at her, that his tone over the phone had merely sounded okay. Instead, he looks like he wants to come to her as much as she wants to go to him. Still, they’re so far apart while she sits on the floor by the fireplace.
“I…” She doesn’t want to lie to him. She takes a deep breath. “I’m terrified, honestly. There’s so much happening.”
He nods, then finally walks over, sitting next to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulder. She leans her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes, pretending for just a moment that this is a normal day, that they’re a normal couple that does normal things like sitting by the fire on a chilly Sunday afternoon.
“Sarah,” he says, his voice slow, careful.
She doesn’t open her eyes, but she twists her head just enough to kiss his neck softly. “Mmm?”
“Why is there a dragon egg in your fireplace?” She freezes.
He reaches into the fireplace, and Sarah tries to warn him not to touch it. The fire doesn’t hurt him, though. He lays his hand on the egg, his thumb rubbing gently against it, the same way he rubs her hand when their fingers are intertwined. A small smile falls across his face, his eyes glistening with the light of the fire.
“I can feel it moving,” he says, looking up at Sarah, his face now a picture of childlike joy. During their study sessions, whenever he talks about his dog back home, he gets excited, his hands animated as he tells story after story about it. Now, he has the same expression across his face, and it causes Sarah to grin.
“What’s it feel like?” she asks, standing away from the open fireplace. Her voice is meek—she’s still afraid that he’ll be mad at her. Instead of answering, he takes the egg in both hands and takes it out of the fireplace. After giving it a moment to cool, he holds it out to her. She’s nervous about touching it—she hasn’t tried since the first day she had it. After that, she’s kept it at a distance, only using the tongs or the fire poker to adjust it.
The moment she takes it into her arms, energy thrums just below the surface. It’s the same energy as when it was given to her, but now, she feels movement, too, like the creature inside is twisting beneath her hands. She holds it to her, embracing the egg, and it moves even more, excited by her body heat. A humming noise purrs gently in her head. The energy is the same as the mother dragon, the same as Hawthorne.
As much as she doesn’t want to, she says, “We need to take it to the zoo.”
IT TAKES A LOT OF CONVINCING FOR MARK TO ALLOW them to leave the house—it’s still under a heavy protection spell, and it’s the only place they know is safe from Helen. They don’t tell him about the egg.
After a lot of begging, he looks Alex up and down. “You’re a pyromancer? A good one?”
Alex nods.
“Fine. But I’m putting a spell on your car, too. Don’t get out anywhere without a lot of people within eyesight.”
After taking another twenty minutes to put a protection spell on the car, Mark lets them go. He doesn’t even ask why Sarah needs to bring a backpack to the zoo, or why it looks so full.
She texts Elizabeth on the way to let her know they’re coming.
I want to see Hawthorne. I think it would make me feel better.
Elizabeth doesn’t argue, only responding with a thumbs-up. Since it’s two in the afternoon, she must be getting ready to feed the zoo’s baby dragons, which have all hatched since the last time Sarah saw the eggs in the incubator.
Instead of using the free street parking and walking a mile, Alex pays the fifteen dollars to use the nearly empty lot. Sarah tries to argue that she isn’t going to get attacked in broad daylight, but he still pays his hard-earned money for the spot. They have to walk through half the zoo to get to the aviary, and Sarah freezes before they get to the employee door.
“I’m probably going to be grounded for the rest of my life,” she says, her eyes darting to Alex. This shouldn’t be a concern. Someone is literally trying to kill her, but she’s worried about getting grounded.
He wraps an arm around her shoulder and squeezes. “Legally, they can’t ground you past your eighteenth birthday.”
That doesn’t help, but the door opens, and Elizabeth is standing right in front of them.
A smile breaks on her face, although her eyes are concerned. “How are you feeling today?” she asks, resting a hand on Sarah’s shoulder.
Sarah opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it again. She pulls her backpack off and wraps it in her arms, the need to protect it suddenly immense.
“Did you bring the egg with you?” Elizabeth asks, her eyes sparkling and eager.
The egg.
Like she knows already.
Sarah is frozen with surprise, and she can’t form a coherent sentence. “You...I...No! I mean, yes, but...”
Elizabeth tugs them both into the employee area.
“Sarah,” she says, placing her hands on Sarah’s shoulders to ground her. “I am a psychic. I knew about the egg three days before you found it. The only thing I don’t know is how.”
Sarah doesn’t know how to respond to that. Elizabeth isn’t angry, or even mildly upset. What is going on?
“I need to see Hawthorne. It’s really important,” Sarah pleads. Elizabeth nods and leads the way.
They go through the lab and into the cage area before Elizabeth lets them through the gate. Alex hesitates. “Are you sure this is safe?”
Sarah shrugs. “If not, you’re fireproof anyway.”
He blanches, so she leaves him behind, pulling the egg out of her backpack. “You aren’t, though!” he calls. She tries to feel for Hawthorne using a mental technique from her Spiritual Magic class, but she gets absolutely nothing. Elizabeth calls for him, the same call she used before.
Within moments, a rush of wind assaults them. Now that it’s truly autumn, Hawthorne’s feathers have all but lost their greenness, replaced by bright reds and golds and oranges with just a few brown ones interspersed.
His presence is back in her mind, and her heart races with excitement as he immediately catches the scent of the egg.
“Hey, boy,” she whispers, holding the egg out so that he can see it.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth calls frantically. “He could destroy it! Male dragons will kill eggs that don’t belong to them!”
Sarah ignores her, moving closer to Hawthorne.
“Sarah, stop!” Alex calls, presumably following Elizabeth’s lead. Still, he doesn’t approach the huge dragon. “He could kill you!” Surely, after telling him about her last experience, he doesn’t believe that.
“I should’ve brought this to you a long time ago,” she tells the dragon.
He doesn’t move, eyeing the egg with care.
Relief floods through her, and she can smell the egg from his point of view. This connection is far more powerful than anything else sh
e’s had, and it makes her dizzy as she tries to distinguish where she is, watching herself walk toward Hawthorne through his eyes. Elizabeth and Alex are still standing by the gate, eyes wide with terror.
She sits on the ground cross-legged and sets the egg in her lap.
“It’s okay,” she whispers to it. “You’re home now.” The surface is hot, the baby dragon rolling around with excitement just below the surface.
Hawthorne does something completely unexpected. She thought he’d take the egg in his maw and carry it with him to raise it properly, but he lays on the ground, all fifteen feet of him. His head is giant, and he rests it gently next to Sarah’s body. She forgets how big he is every time she comes here, at least until she’s up close with him.
She strokes his forehead and lays the egg on the ground closer to him. At that point, Alex speaks, much closer this time. “What is going on?” She turns to him, and he’s only a few feet away, although he’s still clearly terrified of the dragon on the ground.
She buries her fingers in Hawthorne’s feathers and uses her other hand to grip his horn. The rough texture is starting to give way to autumn fuzz, which will soon disappear completely as his horns shed for the winter.
Alex and Elizabeth join Sarah on the ground as she tells the entire story, starting with the trap, with Helen collecting the fang and blood and feathers, and then the part about finding the den, the dying female giving her the egg. She will never get the dragon’s death out of her head, the feeling of the connection splitting the moment she died. A tear falls slowly down her cheek.
When she’s done, Elizabeth sighs and runs her fingers through her hair, which came loose from the ponytail that a fairy dragon is now chewing on.