by Ashia Monet
Cordelia laughs, a sound born of both surprise and mirth. Blythe smiles a bit too. The mystery boy has a sense of humor.
The conversation becomes almost normal then. Jay asks why they’re at a hotel, if they’re just on vacation or if there’s another reason.
Considering the stress they just put him trough, he deserves the truth. “Um…we’re in a bit of a weird situation,” Blythe stumbles. “Okay, so, um. Y-You know about magic, right? Like, that’s clear to you?”
Jay doesn’t stop eating. “The band?”
“Oop,” Storm mutters.
He knows he can heal but he doesn’t know about magic? “No, like…” Blythe’s voice trails off.
“Just, the concept,” Cordelia interrupts. “We’re operating on a lot of that. We travel together.”
Lying wasn’t Blythe’s first resort. Even Antonio makes a sour face.
Jay is none the wiser. “Oh, dope. Are you travel vloggers or…?”
Storm snorts. She sits on the carpet still, watching Jay with a mix of amusement and distrust.
Cordelia’s the one that actually answers. “No it’s…just for us.”
“Fair, fair. Where are you five stopping next?”
There are six of them. But that’s only including Caspian—can Jay not see him?—who, currently, hovers in the corner of the room, spearing Jay beneath the world’s shadiest glare.
“There’s this city in the desert we want to…find,” Cordelia says. Oh, so they’re telling the truth about that but nothing else?
“Sounds cute,” Jay says. “I’m from Florida. I mean, I stay in California sometimes, but I’m a little far from home at the moment—”
Antonio brightens. “Hey, I’m from Cali!”
“No way. L.A?”
“Nah man, San Diego.”
They’re about to wander down a long conversation path, but there’s something Blythe needs to clear up. “Wait, what did you mean ‘sometimes’?”
“Depends on my mom’s work schedule,” Jay says. “Anyway, I hate to do this after, um, our exciting introduction, but I really need to ask you guys a favor.”
Antonio pops his legs up on the sofa’s armchair. “Sure, dude, what’s up?”
“Look, it’s just…the guys I was with aren’t here. And I don’t have any of my stuff, I don’t even have a phone, and I’ve never been to Vegas before. I hate to ask you guys this, but…”
Jay tilts his head a bit. His hair is too heavy to move much, but it is like a perfectly placed shadow to emphasize the silver of his eyes. The whole room seems to center in on him.
“Could you just take me the airport or something?” The words are gentle and beautiful in his voice. “If you need to stop at your desert city first, I understand. I’m not in a rush, I just need to get home and you’re my only option.”
“Uh—” Blythe begins.
“Sure,” Cordelia says.
“W-We have space,” Daniel agrees.
“Wh—wait—” Blythe stammers.
Antonio jumps up. “Of course, bro! Welcome to the club!”
“Okay, but I never agreed—” Blythe stammers.
“We gotta get you clothes because you can’t keep wearin’ mine,” Storm says.
Cordelia gasps, clasping her hands together as her eyes light up. “We can go shopping!”
“HOLD ON!” Blythe yells. Every face turns to her, especially Jay’s.
Blythe’s heart sinks. She doesn’t want to be the bad guy, but someone has to.
“Sorry,” she apologizes. “Do you mind if we talk about this?”
“Of course, take your time,” he agrees. “Can I just borrow someone’s phone to—”
Cordelia, Antonio, Storm and Daniel instantly hand out their phones.
Jay smiles. And Blythe thought this boy couldn’t be more beautiful. “Thanks.”
He takes Antonio’s and leaves the hotel room, the door shutting softly behind him.
Antonio’s chest puffs with pride. “He took mine.”
Blythe looks over all of them. “Okay, hi, group meeting.” She clears her throat. “What. The. Fuck.”
“He’s hot and I want him here,” Cordelia says. “There’s been a painful lack of attractive men around here.”
“Ouch.”
“Shut up, Antonio.”
“I’m tired of always havin’ to be the one that does all the lifting and fighting,” Storm says. “Y’all can make him do it and I can sleep.”
Blythe claps her hands, bringing all attention back to her. These kids have the attention spans of goldfish. “Okay, alright, but we can’t take someone who doesn’t even know about magic with us! That’s a major liability!”
“I wouldn’t call somebody who beat the shit out of us a liability,” Storm retorts.
“We’re only taking him to the airport,” Cordelia adds. “If we go there first, we won’t have to bring him to Electric City. We can have a nice drive, I can bond with him, get his number, and then we’ll all move on.”
“Aw, but I wanna hang out with him,” Antonio pouts. “He seems cool.”
Cordelia swats a hand at him without looking away from Blythe. “It’s just to the airport, Blythe. Maybe we could use that time to flesh out a better plan for Electric City.”
Being a liability aside, if they don’t help Jay, he will have no means of getting home. And he is a Pandora’s Box that they opened. If they could pick him up from the street, they can drop him off at the airport.
Blythe groans, stomping her feet until the frustration dissipates from her body. “Fine. We’ll take him to the stupid airport,” she grumbles. “But I’m never helping another person ever again.”
Cordelia beams. “I’ll look up directions for the farthest one.”
“Cordelia.”
“What? It’ll give us time to chat.”
Blythe makes a face, sinking further into the carpet. The Guardians disperse to pack their things and prepare to go, but Blythe simply relocates to the couch, where she crosses her arms and pouts.
Fucking Antonio and his huge, dumb heart.
The door eases open. Jay slips back in.
“We’ll take you to the airport,” Blythe says, catching him slightly off guard. “But we’re going there first.”
His eyes land on her. “Thanks,” he says, and then scans the empty seats. “They clear out fast, huh?”
“We’re checking out today. They’re packing.”
“And you don’t have to?
“I’m efficient.”
Jay chuckles. “What’s your name again?”
Blythe feels her face heat. “Blythe.”
“Blythe,” Her name sounds priceless in his voice. “I know you don’t have to do this. You probably have hundreds of other places to be. But I want you to know I’m grateful, and if you ever need anything, you just let me know, okay? I got you.”
Blythe’s not sure how to respond to this. She can’t look him in the eye. “…okay,” she says, trying to keep the attitude in her voice, but it’s already seeming forced.
Jay smiles. “I’m gonna go give this back to Antonio.”
Blythe is silent in his wake, replaying the whole exchange in her head.
She repeats it to the others when they come back out.
“Did he sound vaguely…” Blythe hesitates to say the word. “Flirty?”
Cordelia nods. “That was very flirty and I’m painfully jealous.”
Blythe’s curls must be holding up better than she assumed.
“He flirted with me before he put me in a chokehold,” Antonio says.
Storm throws up the hood of her jacket. “Nah, that nigga gay.”
“Really?” Blythe asks. “I was getting fuckboy vibes.”
Storm eyes her. “Fine line between fuckboy and boy fucker.”
“Actually, I’m bisexual,” comes a smooth voice.
Blythe’s heart stops. Because, shit, Jay is coming down the hall. “And, being me and knowing me, I’d have to say…I am both.” His gaze settles
on them. “Very, very much both.”
He grins, bright and smoldering and perfect. “We ready to go?”
Jay has pulled his locs into a long ponytail at the base of his neck. He frowns as they enter the parking lot, eying the Continental sideways.
“…This is the car?” he asks.
Blythe walks past without breaking her stride. “Beggars can’t be choosy.”
Cordelia beams at him. “We switch vehicles.”
Jay is unimpressed. Blythe couldn’t care less. He makes her uncomfortable, this blindingly perfect godling who is too beautiful to stare at directly, humming with too much magic that he doesn’t even know about. And his confidence is choking. Everything about him is overwhelming.
He must be a Leo.
“Can we all even fit?” Jay asks.
“We’ll make it work,” Blythe says. “Antonio, sit on the floor!”
“Aw, what?!” Antonio yells.
Daniel sighs. “Thank goodness it wasn’t me.”
“That’s the white man’s manifesto,” Storm replies.
Blythe wants to get straight to the airport, but the Continental is down on gas, which means they’ll have to stop at a station first. Amazing.
“So, Jay!” Antonio shouts up from his place on the floor. “Tell us about yourself!”
Jay smiles down at him. “Me?”
“Yeah dude, like, what are your hobbies, what’s your family like, who do you main in Mario Kart…”
“This is a very crowded first date, Antonio, but I’ll bite,” Jay teases. “I dunno, I’m not that interesting. I swim, I guess. And I’ve always been more of a Zelda guy—”
“Dude, wait, for real? I surf and I love Zelda. If you say you can cook, we’ll be the same person.”
“Oh no, if I tried to cook, everyone involved would die. I’d only attempt it in a life or death situation.”
“Life or death like…the end of the world?”
“Yes,” Jay agrees, emphatic. “You’re gonna think I’m high as fuck but just follow me here—say aliens invaded or some shit—”
“I think about alien invasions ALL THE TIME!” Antonio shrieks.
Blythe can’t believe this is happening. She has to listen to them go back and forth all the way to the gas station. When she finally parks beside a pump, she is all too ready to interrupt them.
“This is going to be the first stop for a while,” she says. “So get out, go pee, get some snacks—”
“I want snacks!” Antonio rockets out the car.
Cordelia, who hasn’t been able to say a word to Jay the whole ride thanks to Antonio, finally turns to him.
“Don’t mind him,” she says. “He’s constantly overexcited.”
“I noticed,” Jay’s getting out of the car too. “I like it though. You coming?”
Cordelia flips her hair as she bounces out of her seat. “Right behind you!”
“Cordelia, right?” Jay asks as they walk.
Storm and Daniel are content to wait in the backseat, like the anti-social introverts they are, so Blythe leaves them to it while she leans against the trunk, watching the numbers rise on the pump.
She feels Caspian’s presence at her side before she sees him.
“I don’t like him,” he says.
Blythe sighs. Those words sound really harsh out loud. “I mean, I’m not his biggest fan either, but we’re just taking him to the airport.” Even if Jay is the final Guardian, it’s far too late for him to join them.
Caspian’s unkempt dark hair blows into his face, but cannot hide the intensity of his eyes. “He’s only being nice because you’re doing him a favor. You saw what he was like before. He choked Antonio.”
“To be fair, it did seem like we kidnapped him. But thanks for worrying about us. For a while, I thought you didn’t really give a shit about us.”
Caspian is quiet. His hand drifts to the golden chain circling his wrist before he dissipates.
Blythe wonders where he goes when he leaves. Limbo? Hades? The world between worlds?
With the tank filled and Cordelia, Jay, and Antonio back in the car, they speed off for the airport.
Cordelia wasn’t kidding when she said she’d find the farthest one. They end up driving down an isolated road, nothing but desert and dried ground on either side for miles.
“We’re supposed to be going to the airport, not hell,” Blythe grumbles, but Antonio, Cordelia and Jay’s conversation is so loud, no one hears her, and she rolls her eyes.
A black car inches up behind them. Blythe’s noticed it earlier. It’s been traveling with them for a few minutes.
Cordelia pulls her bag onto her lap and sifts through it. Her face goes pale.
“I don’t have the shard,” she whispers.
Her words send a pang of fear through Blythe so intensely that her vision spots. “What do you mean?” Blythe asks without thinking. “What happened, where’d it go?”
“I had the shard when we left the petrol station and now I don’t.”
Blythe wants to rip the steering wheel straight off. “You lost it?!”
Something hums outside. The black car is no longer behind them. Its dark tinted windows are right beside Blythe, growing larger as it edges close. Too close.
The car smacks into them, jerking them in their seats.
Blythe’s heart leaps into her throat. “What the fuck?!” she grips the wheel as hard as she can—all of the Guardians are in this car. Antonio is on the floor. She can’t lose control of the Continental, she can’t.
The black car pushes harder against their doors, metal screaming as it scrapes against metal. It’s trying to edge them off the road.
The Guardians are all talking at once. Blythe can’t listen. She barely knows how to drive. No one ever taught her how to deal with this.
Blythe revs the gas. They pull away, the needle climbing as their engine sings. The black car gains speed behind them.
“Who the fuck is that?!” Jay yells.
“I don’t know!” Blythe screams. Her hands are starting to go numb. Half of them aren’t wearing seatbelts. The Continental is too old for airbags. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK—somebody grab Antonio, get him off the floor!”
Headlights spear through the back window. The black car crashes into their fender, and the Continental spins. But this time, Blythe cannot gain control.
The world moves very, very slowly. The tires squeal as they careen in a half-circle, stretched, vertically, across the road.
The black car is still coming. Blythe watches it approach from her window, its crumbled hood speeding forward.
Blythe doesn’t think to shut her eyes—they simply close. And then there is pain, and she is weightless, shaking and tossing like a ragdoll, the entire world tumbling off its axis.
A lifetime passes before the car falls still.
The car is filled with sounds—crying and screaming and voices and shouting names—all of them muffled.
Blythe is hanging onto consciousness by a thin, weak thread. It is fraying by the second.
Smoke billows outside the windows. Through it, the black car faces them like an emotionless face, the headlights staring like empty eyes.
The doors swing open. A horde of suited men emerge. From the driver’s seat comes a pale, blue eyed man.
A bulb of black smoke appears beside him. It blooms into a boy.
Oblivion consumes Blythe’s mind, but not before she watches the ghost raise his hand and present the man with a bronze shard.
Twenty
Blythe aches.
Her entire body is only a dull throb, pulsing with every beat of her heart. Her head hangs heavy against her chest.
But her shirt is not torn. Her jeans are untouched. She does not look like she has survived a car accident.
Her feet are bound to the legs of a metal chair, rope digging into her skin. A similar one holds her wrists behind her back.
Her hockey stick is gone.
She looks up, only to have a white,
fluorescent light pierce her eyes. She squints, scoping out the room, which is made entirely of mirrors, from the floor to the ceiling. An infinite number of Blythes surround her, all with ragged curls, tied to their chairs.
The blue-eyed man sits in front of her.
He is the shadowy figure Blythe has seen since she was young enough to know something was not quite right about him, but not old enough to know what that “something” was. His was the face that terrified her in her childhood dreams. He was her Boogeyman.
His hands move carefully, meticulously loading bullets into a semi-automatic gun.
Blythe’s blood runs cold.
The Man raises his head, meeting her gaze. Most people hold emotion in their eyes, even if not purposefully: happiness, anger, boredom. There is nothing in this man’s blue eyes. Nothing at all.
He does not speak. He is waiting for her.
Blythe’s mouth feels like dry cotton. “Where…where am I?”
“That is classified.”
Blythe’s chest heaves. “Did you…w-what happened to the car? Why am I not hurt, I was in an accident—you crashed into us—”
“It was necessary for you to stop. It was not necessary for you to remain injured.”
The words are hauntingly ominous, his soulless dedication to an unknown strict code. Was else was necessary, then? What did they do after she blacked out?
Why is Blythe alone?
Blythe tries to catch her breath. She can’t stop looking at the gun. “Where are the Guardians?”
“They are not relevant to our business,” The Man says.
No. No, no, no. They are fine. They have to be. Nothing could have happened to them. Like Daniel, sweet Daniel. Or Cordelia, who has, somehow, become Blythe’s closest ally. Or Antonio or Storm or Caspian—or even Jay, God, he doesn’t even know what’s going on right now.
Pain and rage and fear boil hot in Blythe’s chest. “Where. Are. The Guardians.”
“The Guardians are not dead,” The Man says. It is the closest she will get to an answer.
Blythe tries to move, but the ropes twist and burn. A choked cry bursts out of her. She is not going anywhere. The Man’s gaze is just another restraint pinning her in place.
Blythe almost does not want to ask her next question. But it is the final, most frightening question she has.
