by Evelyn Snow
“You said you would recalibrate the sensors.”
“I recalibrated them. Twice. As of five minutes ago, they were performing perfectly. You are the problem, not the equipment. I refuse to be held accountable for … what is that?” His eyes narrowed and his voice trailed off as he raised the spyglass and pointed it my direction for a long minute.
“So?”
“Well, that’s a relief,” he said, lowering the spyglass. “As far as I can tell you are who you say you are.”
“Ballard, seriously, I’m the same person I was yesterday and the day before that and the day before—”
“What’s that thing you’re holding?” He pointed the wand at the dummy in my arms. The tip of the wand glowed red.
“Hey! Watch where you’re pointing!” The last thing I needed was to have the test spell I’d applied to the dummy disabled, which was exactly what the bridge tender would do if he had reason to suspect it represented a threat. If that happened, I’d fail my test before it started.
“I don’t like the readings it’s giving off.”
I shot Holden an exasperated look. “What? Is he worried it will explode?”
“Don’t give him a hard time,” Holden whispered. “He takes bridge security seriously.”
I hated it when Holden was right. All the other bridge tenders of Ballard’s generation had died in the bridge collapse, including members of his immediate family. Ballard survived because he’d been off work that day. As the lone survivor, I’d never been on his good side, assuming he had a good side. The jury was still out on that one.
Holding the dummy up for inspection, I said, “It’s for my test. I made it according to Devi Talbot’s orders.” If it would help, I wasn’t above invoking the name of the director of the MBI.
The tip of Ballard’s wand glowed brighter.
“He’s crazy!” I hissed, feeling the tickle of the bridge tender’s magic against my skin.
“Steady,” Holden whispered.
“This is ridiculous. They don’t put anyone else through this kind of inspection.”
Holden smiled. “You’re special.”
“Not in a good way,” I groused.
Ballard lowered the wand. “The spells are very unstable.” After much mumbling and muttering and chewing on his lower lip, he finally said, “It’s against my better judgment, but go on with you. Don’t make me regret my decision.”
“What about the turnstile?” I pushed on it with my hand. It didn’t budge.
“As if you’ve never climbed over one before?”
Sadly, he had a point. Today was far from the first time the sensors had gone on the fritz at my touch. I’d never let malfunctioning equipment stop me before. If I had, I’d still be cooling my heels in the Greater World and never returned to Serenity Point.
“I’ve turned over a new leaf.” It was true although even I admitted it sounded lame.
Ballard snorted. “Don’t act like you care about the rules on my account.”
“But my backpack is heavy, and the dummy is awkward to carry. Please?” There wasn’t any reason he couldn’t disable the security spells for the thirty seconds it would take for me to pass through except he wanted to be a jerk.
He ducked back inside the window and pulled the shutter closed behind him.
“Thanks!” I shouted.
For nothing.
Chapter 4
Holden leaned and reached his arms over the turnstile. “Hand over Pegleg.”
“Pegleg?” I smiled as I handed him the dummy. Holden always found a way to distract me. It was one of his superpowers.
“Even if he only gets to live for an hour or so, he deserves a name.”
I shrugged out of my heavy backpack, tossed it over the turnstile, and then clambered across. On the other side, I hefted my pack once more and took the dummy back from Holden. “If he’s a pirate, how about calling him Marley?”
“I like it.” He swiped a finger against my cheek. “Spot of dirt.”
“So, what were you saying about my practice session?”
“Oh, that. It’s nothing to worry about.” He turned and started down the incline toward town, hands buried in his pockets, shoulders hunched forward.
“Holden, wait.”
He turned back. “What?”
“Tell me, please. It doesn’t matter what you heard. I don’t care. Whatever you say can’t be worse than what my imagination will cook up if you don’t tell me. Then I’ll be thinking about that instead of focused on my test.”
“All right.” He sighed. “Maybe you should have practiced in private, that’s all.”
“You mean not at the library? You mean locked away in a padded room where there’s no chance I’ll hurt anyone or anything? The library was the only place I could practice and avoid breaking my uncle’s rules.”
“Forget about it. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got this. I know it, and I put my money where my mouth is—” He broke off, frowning. “But not in a gross way, I mean, the money and my mouth part…” His cheeks reddened. “I’m going to shut up now.”
Holden was always so sweet when he worried about my maidenly sensitivities. I was pretty sure he had more of them than I did.
“Besides,” he added, “you practiced in one of the study rooms with a window. It follows that an observer might draw the wrong conclusions from what they saw, depending on how long they watched. If there was such an observer, and if they told everyone you didn’t have a prayer of passing, it would skew the odds.” He spread his hands wide. “If you ask me, what you did was wicked smart. Way to mess with their heads.”
“Thanks … I think.”
“Cassandra Storm will lose it today when she finds out how wrong she was about you!” He turned on his heel and started off again. This time he swung into an easy gait with his hands free and relaxed.
The instant Cassandra Storm’s name had fallen out of Holden’s mouth; I’d had a brief out-of-body moment. An instant later, I slammed back into reality and shuddered involuntarily. Twenty-to-one odds and so not in my favor thanks to my nemesis. She was only the most esteemed and powerful witch of our generation. In making enemies, I aimed for the top. It was a gift.
I had to jog a few steps to catch up with Holden. “Don’t tell me…is she one of the judges today?”
He frowned. “Didn’t you know?”
I shook my head. “The judges for qualifying exams always include the director of the MBI, someone who represents Rhiannon’s Wheel, and a professor from Battenborne University, usually Ashmore. Cassandra isn’t any of those things. She’s just another MBI agent.”
“What I heard is that Professor Ashmore isn’t judging because he’s too busy with his consulting work in the Greater World. He spends more time over there than at the university these days. That leaves Devi Talbot for the MBI and Sullivan Shield representing the Wheel.” He shrugged. “If it was me, I’d rather have Cassie for the third spot than some old academic with a stick up his butt.”
I’d had a couple of run-ins with Professor Ashmore in the past and couldn’t disagree with Holden’s assessment. Both realms considered Ashmore a genius which did nothing to cool the rage boiling inside me.
“Of course, you’d rather have Cassie. Who wouldn’t want Miss Witch of the Year?” No point in hiding my bitterness. It was clear where Holden’s loyalties lived.
He smiled as if I didn’t look like I wanted to strangle him. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got this.”
We’d reached the bottom of the bridge. He walked away from me backwards, half skipping and wearing a disgustingly cheerful expression. “Good luck!”
I was going to need a lot more than luck.
* * *
While Holden made his way over to The Demon’s Horn, I set off in the other direction, striding fast, as if speed would help me escape the feeling of doom that had descended with Cassandra Storm’s name.
Why her? I tried to convince myself Holden was right. There had to be an upsi
de here somewhere, if only I could find one.
The absence of the professor didn’t qualify. We’d gone a few rounds in the past when he’d volunteered to make me the centerpiece of a research project. Thanks, but no thanks.
Holden was right about one thing. Ashmore’s reputation described him as an old school stickler for strict magical criteria and standards. Since I was about as likely to be named Miss Witch of the Year as I was to be admitted to Battenborne University, I figured his opinion of me didn’t matter.
Even then, the case for Cassandra wilted fast.
We might be peers, but we weren’t friends. I had vague recollections of her from back in the days before my parents died when we’d attended the same school. She’d always been a know-it-all.
The real trouble between us began the day I’d returned to Serenity Point about five years ago. I hadn’t intended to cause a commotion. But I had, and I doubted there were many in town who’d forgotten…
At the time, I had recently graduated from East Central High in Montemar while Holden had been out two years. We were both working part-time jobs and trying to figure out what to do with our lives. He’d been digging around in the old barn behind his house. It was where his father stored goods purchased at auction in the Greater World for resale in the Nightingale Lands. His dad had closed the business recently and taken a conventional job in the Greater World. Despite no longer making trading trips across the bridge, his dad hadn’t stopped collecting. As a result, the barn held a treasure trove of everything from antiques to outright junk.
Holden had come across an old journal. It turned out to be a detailed record of bridge access to Serenity Point, complete with notes about the phase of the moon and other assorted details related to the phenomenon. If the dates inside were to be believed, they went back over a hundred years.
“We can use this,” Holden had said, offering me the journal.
I’d taken it from him and leafed through a few pages. The script was spidery and hard to read and could have been written in code for all I understood of it. “What for?”
“So, you can go home again.”
“My home is here.”
“I’m not trying to say you don’t love your aunt and uncle or anything, but don’t you want to go back? Find out what really happened to your parents?”
The question lingered in the air between us. It was the thing that had eaten away at me every day since the bridge collapse when I was seven. When I was little, I would wake in the middle of the night, my cheeks wet with tears. One night, Aunt Phoebe found me sitting on the bench with my fingers on Wolfgang’s keys, playing without making a sound.
While Wolfgang looked like a player piano, he was really a communication device for sending messages to and from Serenity Point. He hadn’t worked since the bridge collapse.
My aunt asked me what I was doing. I couldn’t bring myself to voice my fears, so I’d told her I was bored. She hadn’t believed me, but we’d never talked about it again. I’d left Wolfgang alone after that and avoided the living room altogether.
What if my parents had survived?
What if someone or something was preventing them from searching for me? What if someone told them I was dead the way Uncle Delano had told me they were dead? What if everything I believed about the bridge collapse was all a terrible lie? Lies of omission were still lies.
“You’re seriously considering this?” I asked.
“Everything we need to make a crossing is right here in this book,” Holden said. “All we have to do is figure out what the entries mean.”
“You think I haven’t asked my uncle if we can go back to Serenity Point about a million times? He says it’s impossible.”
“What does he know? He’s never been there,” Holden scoffed. “When his business was still up and running, my dad used to drive his truck across that bridge every month without fail. There’s no reason we can’t do it, too.”
“Your dad will stop us,” I persisted. “He says the bridge is dangerous. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have closed the business.”
“My dad doesn’t have to know. He’s never around, anyway.”
“But my uncle said—”
“Forget him,” Holden insisted. “We can do this.”
And we did.
Holden’s dad still owned the big box truck he’d used for his trading trips. After repairs and a tune-up, Holden said it was good as new. Then we’d loaded it with an assortment of stuff from the barn. In case we were stopped and inspected, we planned to say we were traders and wanted to look convincing.
Once the truck was ready to roll, the only thing left to do was watch the bridge and figure out what the entries in the journal meant and how to interpret them. Asking Mr. Blackwood was out of the question. Holden admitted the only time he’d tentatively brought up the subject lately, his dad had threatened to send him to live with his uncle in Alaska.
We were on our own.
Studying the patterns took longer than we’d planned. We discovered (the hard way) that turning sideways to find a dimensional door wouldn’t work if the bridge was in the wrong phase. Have I mentioned the Pacific Ocean is really cold? Luckily, the fall wasn’t too far, and the currents weren’t dangerous where we were testing.
Also, for the crossing we wouldn’t be on foot, and a truck couldn’t very well step sideways or could it? So, there was that problem to solve.
We figured it out, and by that, I mean Holden deciphered the journal. Our sessions went something like this: He yammered on and on about stuff I barely understood. I nodded and tried to look as if it all made perfect sense because who wants to look dumb in front of your best friend?
The day of the trip, I climbed into the back of the truck and situated myself amidst stacked cartons and barrels. Then Holden closed and locked the doors.
After much discussion, I’d chosen to ride in the back. To get past bridge security, Holden would impersonate his father. Except for a quarter of a century difference in age, the two looked enough alike for the ruse to work. His father had always traveled alone. If I rode up front, it might raise suspicions.
Behind the fake calm I painted on my face, I was terrified. Somehow, I’d convinced myself the collapse of the bridge had been my fault. Throw physics (ordinary, quantum or wyrd) through the window. Toss out logic and common sense at the same time. History was about to repeat only this time I’d be locked in the dark. No one would find me washed ashore on the beach. Like my parents, I would disappear into the Pale, never to be seen or heard from again, assuming that was what happened to them, because what if…
Oh, my God. I was so screwed.
Before I had a chance to yell and pound on the walls—and scream, “I changed my mind!”—the big diesel roared to life.
Then we were rolling, and it was too late.
Even if I hadn’t been able to feel the vibrations from the wheels as the bridge carried us out of one world, I would have known we were entering another. In the darkness of the back of the truck, I noticed a shimmer of light. It glimmered like a million microscopic fireflies dancing in the air. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. Panic threatened to close my throat. My hands flew into the air, seeking a handhold, anything, grabbing at nothing. Then something pressed against my fingers, soft and warm and oddly welcoming.
My fear receded. The softness pushed against me again. I pushed back and then all at once, I could breathe again, and we were clear.
We’d survived. Relief flooded through me. Could it really have been that easy?
Holden and I had agreed ahead of time that once we were safely on the other side, he’d find a side street where we could stash the truck. He’d never been in Serenity Point before. All I had to go by were my memories, so it wasn’t like we could plan a route in advance. As long as things hadn’t changed drastically, I figured I had a shot at finding my old house. After all these years, someone else probably lived there. I didn’t care. Finding a connection to the past would be a start.
After parking, our plan called for me to head out on my search while Holden waited with the truck. We’d agreed on a time limit of two hours. If I hadn’t come back by then, I told him he should leave. He said he’d do nothing of the kind; no way was he leaving me behind. At that point, our planning disintegrated into a shouting argument.
By the day of the actual crossing, we’d never come up with any possible Plan B or Plan C to deal with the unexpected. It turned out to be something we should have paid attention to except we were too busy arguing.
That day, I was wondering what I’d do if I got lost or couldn’t find the house when the truck rolled to a stop. The driver’s door creaked open and then slammed hard. I heard loud voices and thumps along the side of the truck that made me jump.
Lightning—or what looked like lightning—flashed in the darkness surrounding me. Luckily, it arced over my head. If I’d been an inch taller, it would have sliced through my body. As it was, it singed the corner of a carton and a puff of scorched cardboard filled my nose. I dropped into a crouch between two large boxes, my hands gripping them.
There was another flash, shades of blue and green this time, then the rear doors of the truck flew open. Brilliance flooded my eyes, temporarily blinding me.
Time seemed to still.
At some point, I’d raised my arms to protect my face. As I lowered them, a man jumped into the back of the truck, landing with a thud that made the vehicle shake.
He was tall, well over six feet of pure terror with the wide shoulders and build of an athlete. His hair was long and black and streamed back from his forehead. He wore a black leather jacket and wielded a magic wand. It glowed with an eerie light that matched the green of his eyes. From my hiding place, I shivered.