I glanced around as my mind started to race again. This was not the time to panic (although it seemed like an appealing option given the circumstances). No. This was a time for something quite different: order and action.
“Blue, give me that file,” I commanded. “I want to see who else is in there. The rest of you guys, go through the remaining folders. Find out what the other colored Xs mean.”
Without hesitation they followed my instructions. As Blue, Jason, and Daniel began pawing through the files, I opened the folder my page had come from and began to look through it while SJ hovered nearby.
There were exactly two other pieces of paper in the folder. Both were information sheets like mine. And each was also marked with a black X, which I thought was strange considering there were no other black Xs on the map.
The first profile meant nothing to me initially. It featured a middle-aged woman with a heart-shaped face; navy eyes; five feet tall; 125 pounds; no living relatives.
While the information and picture of the woman did not trigger any familiarity though, her name certainly did. “Paige Tomkins” was printed at the bottom of the form.
The Fairy Godmother friend Emma was telling us about.
A sense of urgency sweeping over me, I quickly went on to the second page in the folder. Unlike the first document, this one definitely registered an immediate reaction from me. I almost dropped the folder from shock when I saw the picture of the girl staring back at me beside her own black X notation.
It was Natalie Poole.
The picture of her in this document was identical to the one I’d gotten from the file at Fairy Godmother HQ. The information about her printed on the page was the same too. All that stuff about her “Key Destiny Interval,” her birthday, that “Eternity Gate” thing, and . . .
Suddenly I became very aware that SJ was peering over my shoulder. I tried to shut the folder before her eyes could get to the bottom and read the name printed there, but I didn’t move fast enough.
“Crisa,” SJ stammered. “Natalie Poole? She exists in—”
“Hey, what’d you find, Blue?” I interrupted as our friend approached us with an odd look on her face.
“Green Xs mean ‘possible ally,’ blue Xs are labeled as ‘compromised,’ yellow Xs say ‘possible threat,’ and um . . .” Blue trailed off. She took a weary glance at Jason and he finished the sentence for her.
“Red Xs mean ‘threat neutralized,’” he said.
The statement was a lot to process, especially since the folder with the red Xs Jason was holding up was relatively thick. The way he’d said it though—with a coarseness in his voice and a shadow in his eyes—gave me a sense that there was something else too.
He pulled a document out of the red X folder and showed it to us. It was a page featuring Mark—Jason’s old roommate and our long absent friend.
There weren’t any appropriate questions to ask at that point because there were no answers that would change what this piece of paper indicated. According to it, Mark wasn’t on a temporary leave of absence from school for personal reasons. In reality his absence may well have been . . . permanent.
Blue put her hand on Jason’s arm with unusual delicacy before continuing. “Jason, Daniel, and I have pages in the yellow folder, the one marked ‘possible threats,’” she said as she held up the papers with each of their own facts and faces imprinted on them.
“What about me?” SJ asked. “Do I have one?”
Blue shook her head. “No. There are a few other kids from school in here, though. Seven in total by the looks of it, which means—”
“Which means we’ve got to warn them,” Daniel said.
“And talk to Mark’s family,” Jason said.
“And inform our headmasters,” added SJ.
They went on like that for a while longer, but I tuned them out. I turned my attention back to the map behind SJ and began studying it and the pages from the folder I still held on to.
“What is all this?” I muttered to myself absentmindedly.
I guess I’d spoken louder than I thought, because when I looked at the others again each of them was staring at me. They all seemed confused and concerned but, more than anything, they looked like they wanted to know the answer to that question just as much as I did.
Sadly, this was not the time to find it. At that moment our tense, reflective silence was replaced by the sound of massive stones grinding against one another. My friends’ faces paled in response and I spun around to discover the source of the noise and their alarm.
The folder dropped from my hands.
There were five people standing in the tunnel that had just revealed itself in the stone wall across the room. The first was a girl dressed like a member of the kitchen staff. Beside her stood three armed Capitol guards like the ones we’d seen outside. And in front of them, was a boy. He was a few years our senior and seemed familiar, though initially I couldn’t work out why.
His build was strong and gallant like the heroes of Lord Channing’s, but the darkness in his eyes suggested he was anything but. Like his wavy hair, those striking eyes were pure black and radiated a sense of malevolence, confidence, and (at this particular moment) also a hint of surprise at having found us here.
For a second, the group stood there as puzzled as we were—the only sound being the steady drip of water coming from the tunnel behind them. The black haired boy swiftly overcame his initial shock though, and smirked in my direction. Unlike Daniel’s smirks however, which just made me annoyed, his made me a very specific kind of nervous.
“Crisanta Knight . . .” he said thoughtfully.
I didn’t bother to ask how he knew my name. I was far more stricken by the vague familiarity of his chilling voice and his appearance.
“Well,” he continued in a bemused tone to no one in particular. “They do say that when you’ve lost something—or in this case, someone—to look in the last place you’d expect to find them.”
I began to slowly move my hand toward my satchel, preparing to grab my wand. SJ (who was standing in front of me and had her hands behind her back) rapidly glanced at me and then subtly pointed her index finger upwards.
She was gesturing to the chandelier above us—the sole source of light in the room. I got what she was saying and continued to sneak my hand into my satchel. Meanwhile, she slipped her right hand into her dress pocket while her left one casually found its way into the small sack hanging at her side.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the guards behind the black haired boy had started to draw their weapons. Jason, Daniel, and Blue had begun to as well.
“And here I was told that you would be a hard one to catch, princess,” the black haired boy went on—reaching for the sheath strapped to his shoulder.
I verified that SJ was ready.
She was, her slingshot hot in her hand waiting for my signal.
I gripped my wand tighter.
“It’s too bad, though—”
My eyes rose to meet the gaze of the black haired boy.
“—I was looking forward to a little bit of challenge,” he said with a disappointed shrug. “Ah well, that’s just how it goes isn’t it?”
Had another second passed, he surely would’ve given the order to attack. But we beat him to the punch.
“Now!” I shouted.
SJ fired a portable potion in the direction of the opposing group. I morphed my wand into a boomerang and hurled it upwards. It cut through the rusty chain holding up the room’s chandelier, causing the whole thing to come crashing down.
A half moment later I caught my wand and reverted it back to normal as the chandelier smashed into the ground—blackening the room.
In that same instant SJ’s potion erupted at the feet of our new enemies. It emitted a great cloud of pink smoke that was barely visible through the darkness, but was clearly spreading our way.
“Hold your breath!” SJ ordered as we dashed for the exit.
We ran ou
t of the room, Daniel slamming the door behind us as we raced up the stairs.
“What was that?” he hollered at SJ.
“Portable potion!” she yelled without looking back.
Jason threw the “Open/Close” lever on the wall in reverse as we passed it. The bookshelf ahead slid open, allowing us to speed back into the cursed room we’d started in.
“That was a highly concentrated sleeping potion,” SJ explained as she drew another portable concoction from her bag. “It should have knocked them out immediately, but will only last for a couple of minutes. We have to close this door and get out of here before they awaken and come after us. Stand back.”
SJ fired a reddish orb down the stairwell straight toward the lever. Unlike the others, this potion did not release gas. Instead, it caused a small explosion.
“What in the—” Jason started to say.
Regrettably, when the smoke cleared a second later we saw that although the lever had been obliterated, the passageway remained unaffected and was still completely open.
“Plan B,” Daniel said as he tried to push the bookshelf back into place. We joined him in the effort, but the shelf would not budge. I looked around desperately and saw that the dragon statue still had the sword in its mouth.
That’s it!
I rushed over to the statue, gripped the sword in my hand, and tried to pull the weapon out of the creature’s stone larynx. But it was no good; it was stuck.
I put my free hand on the head of the dragon to steady myself while I pulled harder. Come on, come on! Let’s go! I thought to myself, pressing so intensely on the statue’s face that my hand started to feel like it was burning, no doubt from the friction.
Thankfully after a few moments the sword gave way and was released from the beast’s mouth—causing the bookshelf to close the passage.
Our group sped out of the room as fast as our legs could carry us. Within minutes we’d raced across the hallway, past the kitchen and its confused attendants, and back into the alley. Then we were in the sewers again, barreling through the tunnel we’d originally come from.
At first the only sound echoing around us was that of our feet stampeding through the dirty water. But then I began hearing voices like I’d heard when we were down here earlier. They were much louder now—taking the form of shouts not whispers, and growing more audible as we proceeded farther into the tunnel.
I suddenly remembered the damp feel of that bunker; the trickles of murky water stretching out from behind its stone walls.
Realization hit me like a hammer.
“Stop!” I yelled as I came to an abrupt halt.
My friends and Daniel skidded to a pause.
“Don’t you see?” I said. “They came through a tunnel into that room; they came through the sewers!”
No sooner did I explain this than our pursuers rounded the corner and came into view. Needless to say we decided to change course.
“Don’t let them get away!” I heard the black haired boy call out.
We ran back down the sewer tunnel, ascended the ladder to the alley once more, and dashed through the kitchen—knocking over several trays of desserts and a few disoriented caterers.
As we rushed through the halls we’d just been in, I held my wand tighter and tighter, understanding that I definitely wasn’t done using it for today.
Daniel led the way again. He was taking us up some stairs, down other stairs, through room after room in an obvious attempt to throw off our followers.
This time I actually was too preoccupied to think to question his guidance. Nor did I think to question the pieces of scorched hallway carpeting we kept coming across that definitely hadn’t been there a couple of minutes ago.
“Our best bet is to go out the front. It’s three floors down,” Daniel said as we kept pace with him. “Those guys won’t expect it, and the guards are concentrating on stopping people from getting into the Capitol, not out.”
Of course the guards that had been with our pursuers were trying to stop us in general. So that did pose a problem when we ran into a couple of them in the adjacent hall. They had their bows drawn and pointed at me.
Shield.
My wand spiraled out just in time to stop two arrows from piecing my sternum.
Blue ripped two throwing knives from her belt and hurled them at the guards. Each knife hit one of the guards directly in the hand—piercing them a bit too graphically to describe.
Their maimed palms dropped the bows they’d been wielding and prevented them from reacting in time to Jason when he came at them in the next instant.
Our friend whipped his axe from its sheath and swung the flat side at the first guard’s head like a steel bat, taking him out. He ducked a blow from the second guard before blocking and countering with several vicious strikes, swinging his axe around, and buckling the knee of his opponent. With formidable force Jason proceeded to punch the man in the gut, elbow him in the jaw, then finally send him toppling over like the first guard, throwing in an extra blow to the ribcage for good measure.
Jason flipped the axe back into his grip as we joined his side.
Blue retrieved her bloodied knives and reattached them to her belt, which I thought was a bit gross, but didn’t comment on.
“There’s a shortcut through the main library,” Daniel said as our group hurried past the now unconscious guards. “Through there.”
He pointed at a brown door on the other side of the room. When we reached it we plowed through and found ourselves in a seven-story, cylindrical library—three floors beneath us, three above.
The bookshelves wrapped around the room in an ascending spiral, mirroring the design of the glass ceiling above, which cast a shadow that reminded me all too well of the spiral marks we received when our prologue pangs hit.
Every level of the library had two sides to it—one that ran against the bookshelves and one that faced the wide open space in the center of the room, which separated staggering floors by at least thirty feet of distance.
Given that falling off one of these floors could’ve gotten you killed, every level of the library walkway was lined with a smooth silver railing designed to keep visitors from going over the edge. Which—at the speed we barged in at—I might have just done.
Jason promptly spotted our exit on the ground level. He had just begun to lead the charge for it when suddenly an arrow came out of nowhere.
My heart stopped for a moment. Time slowed.
The shot was close, and it almost seemed to move in slow motion as we watched it barely miss Jason’s body. Had he been another inch forward it surely would have killed him. Luckily, he wasn’t, so it didn’t. The arrow plunged into one of the bookshelves behind him and we in turn whipped our heads in the direction the shot had come from.
The person who’d fired the arrow was the third guard from the group that’d been chasing us. He was on the opposite side of the room, about one and a half levels beneath us on the spiral walkway. He started to run up and ascend to our level.
We readied to attack and raced to meet him, but Blue did not follow. Instead she dove underneath the railing.
Blue grabbed the edge of the floor with her hands, dropped over its rim, then released her grip—causing her to plunge through the air ten feet until her hands grasped onto the railing of the level directly below.
Immediately she hoisted herself up and used her body’s momentum to swing under the new railing. She landed with a gymnast’s grace on the library floor a mere six paces before the guard reached that portion of the spiral.
From across the library the four of us watched her finish the fight.
I had to say, for a girl who often embodied the head-on force of a runaway freight train, Blue’s combat movements could be as fluid as a ballerina’s. From the moment her boots touched the ground, her next three moves were already in motion.
As Blue spun up from her knees, her right leg thrust upwards and she kicked the guard squarely in the chest. Her right foot
was still in mid air at that point, but she twisted her body around so quickly and strongly that she was able to throw a spinning back kick with the other foot sans the support.
This second kick buckled the guard’s knees. And in the instant it took for the pain to register across his expression, Blue whirled back toward him and drove her fist straight into his head—sending him slamming against the bookshelf behind.
Evidently her summer break village fight club stories had been accurate. Because she continued to attack the guard so powerfully then, that professional boxers would have winced. Even from the other side of the library her searing aggression was noticeable, making me wonder if during all those times in the practice fields we’d fought each other she secretly had been holding back.
With a final head-butt, Blue’s opponent collapsed. Despite the fact that he was already down and out, she kicked him purposefully in the gut one last time before letting out a grunt of satisfaction and turning back around to face us.
“Dang,” Jason said, his eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, well, I do a lot of cardio,” Blue said with a shrug.
Our group began to make its way to meet her on the lower level. I brought up the rear. However, unbeknownst to the others, I came to a stop a moment later. A book on one of the shelves had unexpectedly captured my attention—causing me to hang back.
I took a quick step toward it to read the title printed on the spine:
“Shadow Guardians—Origins, Dangers, & Weaknesses.”
I didn’t quite know why that particular book caught my interest. Maybe I’d seen those words in a textbook at school, or in one of SJ’s piles of periodicals; or maybe it was just the fact that the title was written in really shiny print. Whatever the reason, something inside of me was definitely drawn to the book in the same way it had been to that bunker.
Although since not even my dreams could rationalize this feeling, I forced myself to shrug it off and continue on my way. As it stood, inexplicable instinct had gotten me into enough trouble today. And my friends and Daniel were already a whole floor beneath me and I needed to catch up with them.
“Seriously though, you really laid into that guy,” I heard Jason say as he and the others reached Blue.
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