by Erin Bowman
Her father was sitting in the kitchen, the Sunday crossword spread across the table. He’d been perpetually sick for most of the summer, and he’d taken up the crossword as a hobby to fill the time he’d otherwise have spent at work, tearing down old apartment complexes across the state and building new ones in their place.
Atticus took a sip from his coffee and set the mug aside. “I was cleaning out your mother’s dresser,” he began, and Piper immediately felt ill. She was nine then. Her mother had been gone for ages, and all that time Atticus had avoided her half of the master bedroom like it was the plague. A thick layer of dust coated the surface of the dresser, and the drawers hadn’t been opened since Sophia last touched them. Piper wasn’t sure if she should be glad her father was finally clearing out the room or concerned for the well-being of his lungs.
He gave a haggard cough, then slid the locket across the table. The silver chain was old and the locket itself was in need of a good buffing. “You should have this. I found it in your mom’s jewelry box.”
“But it’s hers,” Piper said uncertainly.
“Actually, it’s yours. I bought the locket when you were born and put a picture of the three of us inside it. I was going to give it to you on your first birthday, even if you wouldn’t have been ready to wear it for many years still, but by then, your mom was rarely around …” He pressed his lips together and swallowed, eyes glassy. “I could barely look at the locket after that, so I put it with her things, hoping she’d take it when she moved out. I never should have done that. It was a gift. Her picture inside, her leaving—none of that changes that I bought it for you.”
Piper cracked open the locket. A foreign version of her family smiled up at her. Two parents, one baby.
“You can change the picture if you want,” Atticus said.
“I like the picture,” she admitted, and it was true. “Thanks, Dad.”
“You want help putting it on?”
She nodded, and he fastened the clasp behind her neck. The locket hit her breastbone, cool and small.
“Does this mean I can’t wear my Yankees cap anymore?”
Atticus grabbed it by the bill and gave it a playful shake, jiggling Piper’s head. “Why would you ever think that?”
“I’ve seen the photo albums. Mom is so … fancy. She always wears jewelry, but never a baseball cap. I thought that maybe they don’t go together.”
“Eh, who cares? I say cap and locket are a perfect match.” Atticus picked up his pencil and motioned at his puzzle. “Now, how about a little help on this crossword? I’m stuck on—”
“Ugh, Dad! Crosswords are so boring!” Piper sprinted for the tire swing. Atticus laughed behind her, his chuckles turning into a coughing fit before she even left the porch.
The next month the diagnosis came in. Atticus’s years of work tearing down old buildings had exposed him to dangerous asbestos fibers. The cancer was in his lungs.
Piper didn’t take her locket off after that, except for when she showered.
She touched it again now, lying in bed as the morning’s first light began to break over Mallory Estate. She barely remembered the trip back to her room from the turret last night. She’d made it safely, though, then spent the entire evening thinking of the locket. First while staring at the canopy of the four-poster bed, then dreaming of it.
She had a theory now for why she’d been able to see the shimmering portal above the stag when Julius hadn’t. His amplifier showed the true state of the garden—what had been hidden by the High Order of Magi. But maybe only a magi with an affinity for invisibility could see the invisible doorway that accessed it.
Piper squeezed the locket in her fist. She still couldn’t quite believe that she was like the rest of them—like Julius and Camilla and Kenji and Teddy. Like her mother. Piper had an affinity. She could become invisible.
She scrambled from bed and dressed quickly.
It was a Thursday, and the kids would be cleaning the estate all morning. Piper might not have found the key, but Teddy still needed supplies, and she’d have to be quick if she wanted to gather them without running into the others. She had no idea where to find a sleeping bag, but she did find a flashlight in the closet. She tucked it in her backpack and stole to the kitchen, grabbing a bunch of food for Teddy. When her bag was bulging, she paused.
They had folded bedding in the laundry room just the other day. Maybe some sheets or blankets were still down there. It would be the next best thing to a sleeping bag.
Piper darted for the basement and tiptoed down the stairs. Her shoulder brushed the rack of keys again, making them jingle.
Keys!
Piper inspected them. There were four different sets. She counted quickly, heart racing. Each ring held twelve keys. Except for one, which had thirteen.
Could it really be hiding in plain sight? Piper lifted the set of thirteen keys off the hook. She didn’t have time to compare it to the other rings and figure out which key was different, or to overthink her decision; returning to the garden with these keys was better than returning empty-handed. She raced down the steps and retrieved a few bedsheets that still sat folded atop the dryer. Then, after stuffing everything into her backpack and swinging it onto her shoulders, she darted back upstairs and out to the patio.
When she reached the stag, she glanced back at the house. If someone looked out a window at the same moment she jumped through the portal, the entrance to the garden would be obvious.
Piper grabbed the locket through her shirt and willed herself invisible. Was it working? She had no idea. She didn’t feel any different, and she could still see her hands and feet, but that was all true last night as well. Of course, the idea of being caught by the Persian had terrified her in the attic. Maybe her fear had somehow triggered her affinity.
With a shake of her head, Piper mounted the stag. Everyone would be waking soon, and if she wasn’t invisible, she was going to look very strange standing on a headless statue.
She sized up the invisible portal and jumped through.
* * *
“Finally,” Teddy exclaimed. He was leaning against the first oak in the alley just ahead, ankles crossed.
“It’s barely dawn.”
“I get cranky when I don’t have food. Sorry.”
“I believe that’s called ‘hangry.’ ”
“Hungry and angry. Yeah. Whatever. Did you bring anything?”
Piper handed over her backpack, which she’d stuffed with everything readily available in the kitchen: a box of cereal, a bunch of bananas, several water bottles, a few protein bars, and a container of leftovers from the previous night’s meal: homemade mac and cheese. Camilla’s specialty. Piper had never tasted anything so delicious.
Teddy pulled out the bedsheets she’d packed and practically drooled at the sight of the food. “Holy hallows, I love you. I haven’t had this much to eat in … well, almost two weeks, I guess.” He peeled open a banana and said through a mouthful, “Thanks.”
“Sure, don’t mention it.”
He held the bag out toward her. “You want anything?”
“I had a banana already. Let’s get to work.” Piper fished the keys from the bag and held them up for him to see.
“You found … a key ring,” Teddy said skeptically.
“Well, I tried the attic turret first, but that was a bust.”
Teddy’s eyes bulged. “How’d you get up there?”
She told him about climbing the ivy and using her affinity to hide from the Persian. “Is it weird that I found my affinity on my own?”
Teddy shrugged. “Affinities are easiest to tap into in a moment of need. Adrenaline rush and all that. I’m sure there were already signs. I mean, I once made a twenty-minute quiz last almost an hour because I couldn’t figure out one problem. I was bending time, only I didn’t realize it, and I didn’t even have my amplifier with me then. Adrenaline. Moment of need. Get it?”
Piper nodded. “But what about picking my own amplifie
r? Julius said my grandma helped him pick his.”
“An amplifier can be almost anything, but it can help if the item has sentimental value, if it’s something the magi has a unique bond with. Kenji’s jacket was a gift from his mom before she died.”
“And your pocket watch? Julius’s spyglass?”
“They pair well with our affinities for time and sight. And since a locket has nothing to do with invisibility, I’m guessing that necklace is really special to you.”
Piper touched it through her shirt. “Yeah,” she said, picturing her father, his cough, the crossword. Those final days before everything changed. “It is.”
“Then it’s not strange at all that you picked your own amplifier. Now, what’s with the key ring?”
“I got lucky and brushed up against it this morning. This ring has a thirteenth key. The other sets only had twelve. And that got me thinking; maybe, just maybe, my mom might have hidden the key somewhere we wouldn’t assume to look, where it’s not really hidden.”
She passed the keys to Teddy. He thumbed through them. “Smoking room, billiards room, patio doors, shed—wait! This is new.” He paused on a dull steel key.
“It is?” Piper peered closer.
Something was stamped on the key’s head. A butterfly. Like the knocker on the estate’s front door. Like the design the paths made as they wove through the garden.
A flurry of excitement passed through Piper’s chest.
“I know where this goes,” Teddy said.
“Really?”
“There are a few statues on the outskirts of the garden.” He grabbed a twig and drew the butterfly pathway in the dirt, boxed the insect inside a square, and then divided the entire thing into quadrants. Here and here”—he tapped the two top corners—“and two more down here.” He touched the lower two quadrants.
“Four statues?” Piper said doubtfully.
“Each statue has a keyhole. And the statues share a theme, too. They’re all stags.”
“Like the two kneeling stags that guard the entrance,” Piper murmured.
Teddy nodded. “I’ve had a lot of time to study the garden, and I say this is where we start. Turn the key in each of the statues and see what happens.”
Piper didn’t see any reason to argue. “Lead the way.”
They went to the lower-right quadrant first, where a rearing stag of gleaming white stone stood atop a pedestal just beyond the outermost path. Behind it, Piper could see the rock wall that made up the eastern edge of the garden. Teddy brushed back the flowers at the pedestal’s base, showing her a keyhole in the structure. The key slid into place and clicked audibly as Piper turned it.
The children stepped back, staring up at the stag. Nothing happened.
“Next statue, I guess,” Teddy said, and retreated to the path that made up the butterfly’s outer wing. They walked north.
Soon they were passing one of the rectangular fountain pools—the eastern one. The subjects of the three gold statues looked vaguely familiar, and Piper noticed a detail she hadn’t the other day: one woman was weaving, the second was winding a length of thread, and the third held a pair of large shears.
“Are those supposed to be the Fates?” Piper said, pointing toward the statues.
“Yeah, I think so. They remind me of the Fates from Percy Jackson, just a lot younger.”
“I love that series!” Piper had devoured all five of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books over the course of Christmas vacation two years ago. The Fates in that series had been old and wrinkly, whereas these looked around her mother’s age, but she couldn’t deny that the statues beside her matched the Fates’ roles of creating, measuring, and cutting the threads of life. A reminder of life and death felt fitting in a garden that held the key to immortality.
“The pool on the other side of the garden is exactly the same, butterflies being symmetrical and all,” Teddy added.
“I saw it yesterday,” Piper said.
They’d barely left the pool behind when he asked, “So why do you want it?”
“Huh?”
“The elixir.”
“Well, we’re supposed to find it, right?”
“Sure, but you already have parents, a home. Finding the elixir means getting adopted, and you don’t need that. So why are you looking for it?”
She didn’t like the way Teddy was peering at her. For a boy who trusted Sophia Peavey, it was a very untrusting look.
“I just want to help you all,” she said finally.
“Let me get this straight. You don’t want me to come back to the estate, and you’re not telling the others you found a way into the garden either, but all this sneaking around solo doesn’t mean you’re in this for yourself?”
Piper stopped abruptly. “You know nothing about me, Teddy.”
He eyed her cap. “I know you’re a Yankees fan, and therefore untrustworthy.”
She glowered at his Red Sox shirt. “I could say the same about you being a Sox fan. Also, you’re here with me, aren’t you? Last time I checked, two people can’t do something solo.”
He bit his lip, glanced at a clump of daffodils. “Just … this means a lot to us, Piper. Me and Kenji and the others.”
“I know that.”
“Good. Because there’s a lot at stake.”
“I get it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” Sheesh. He was as bad as Camilla. “Is that the next stag?” She pointed to a statue over his shoulder. This stag stood proudly, head turned to the side as though it had just heard something in the distance. Its white stone body looked as smooth as glass.
“Yep. Stag number two.” Teddy led the way off the path, then stooped beside the pedestal to pull back the flowers and show Piper the next keyhole. After fitting and turning the key, they carried on in silence. Teddy seemed to sense she had no desire to talk anymore.
The third stag—head lowered while it grazed—was across the garden, in the third quadrant. And the fourth lay crumpled on its pedestal in the final quadrant of the garden, an arrow in its side. An archer stood over the dead animal, one boot resting on the prone stag’s torso. Perhaps this was the noise the stag had heard two statues earlier: a hunter.
“Is every statue in here a reminder of death?” Piper asked.
Teddy shrugged. “Pretty much. The place looks nice when you first walk into it, but it’s actually kinda creepy. I’m ready to leave.” He gave her a long look. As much as Piper wanted to, she couldn’t bring him out yet. At least not until she figured out what had happened to her grandmother and why Sophia had been keeping the other kids from Teddy.
Piper fitted the key in place and gave it a turn.
The archer moved, turning to face them. Piper yelped in surprise, toppling into Teddy, who promptly fell into the flower bed. Certain she’d imagined the archer’s movements, Piper looked up.
He was most definitely moving. Piper and Teddy froze in the flowers, limbs tangled, as the archer opened his mouth and recited:
“To live forever is quite a feat;
A fate that only the worthy may greet.
One of courage and strength unmatched,
Who can face the worst and emerge unscratched.
So through the oaks to face your fears
Travel to unlock your limitless years.
Darkness is trivial for those with guile.
The fearless alone will unlock the next trial.”
The hunter turned, putting his boot back on the stag.
“I’m sorry, what?” Piper said. But the archer had already gone stiff, his body returning to stone.
“Get off me,” Teddy huffed, pushing Piper. She tumbled aside and he scrambled to his feet, waving his arms at the archer. “Hello? Come back! What does that mean?”
“That we have to face our fears to unlock the next trial?” Piper offered, fiddling with her locket. “But face them … how?”
“The oaks,” Teddy murmured. “Didn’t he say something about the oaks?�
�
They looked at each other, then broke into a run, sprinting for the path. Teddy took the lead, and when they hit the center path of the butterfly, he stopped abruptly. Piper barreled into him and he gripped her wrist, pulling her nearer.
“What is that?” he whispered, pointing ahead.
Several inches above the ground, a portal hovered in the middle of the oak alley.
It was nothing like the entrance Piper had used to access the garden. This portal was inky black. Its edges oozed and dripped, like oil overflowing a can.
“It’s another portal,” she said, peering into the darkness. There was nothing to see.
“It looks like a black hole.”
“I think we have to go through it,” Piper said.
“Be my guest.” Teddy waved a hand at the pulsing portal.
Piper walked briskly forward. A coldness emanated from within, like a kiss of icy air.
“Wait, Piper. I was just kidding. I think we should talk about this first. I think—”
Chapter Thirteen A Date with Fear
Everything was black.
Looking down, Piper couldn’t even see her own feet. She waited for her surroundings to materialize—for something, anything, to appear—but the world remained colorless. Had the portal not worked? Was she stuck in some sort of limbo? If she was, how would she get out? What if she was forced to float in this pocket of darkness for all eternity?
Her heart beat wildly between her ribs.
She turned in circles, searching, squinting.
Once, when she’d been about six, she’d wandered into the basement of the bungalow, looking for a plastic sled that Atticus had stored away for the season. Sure, it was spring, and winter was behind them, but Piper had wanted to sled down the stairs. It was pouring rain, and stair sledding sounded like an excellent break from her boredom.
While she was searching for the sled, the house shook with a loud clap of thunder and then plunged into darkness. Piper couldn’t see anything, not even her hands in front of her face. She staggered, bumping into a wall, cobwebs brushing her cheek. Something fell on her head, cool and slick, and that was when she started screaming.