The Broken World

by Lindsey Klingele

  Which gave her plenty of time to think of all the ways they were screwed.

  “Did Henry Martin have anything with him? Any papers or books, anything that might help us?” Joe asked. He was sitting in an armchair in the Malibu house. Liv, Cedric, Merek, Shannon, and Peter sat scattered nearby.

  Liv shook her head gently. “We didn’t have time to look.”

  “The car we took was his,” Cedric added. “But there was nothing inside apart from an old bagful of clothes.”

  Joe’s shoulders fell as he leaned back against his chair.

  “Henry Martin talked about a way of bringing magic back to Earth permanently—restoring the balance to stop all this destruction,” Liv said, repeating the information she’d already told them all. “He just didn’t get a chance to tell us how.”

  “The how is kind of important,” Shannon put in from her spot on the floor, where she was eating from a can of cold SpaghettiOs with a spoon.

  “Kind of very important,” Liv said.

  “Did he say anything else? Anything at all?” Joe asked.

  Liv tried to remember. She still wasn’t thinking as clearly as she could; her head felt like it was wrapped in gauze, her thoughts muted. “We need to use the magic to do it, that’s all he said.”

  “He also mentioned that Liv is a scroll,” Cedric said, leaning forward from his spot next to her on the couch. He hadn’t left her side since helping her out of Henry Martin’s house. “He said it as though . . . as though she would be important in fixing things.”

  “Hold on.” Peter said. “Didn’t Malquin tell you before, Liv, that there’s a little bit of magic inside of us? The Knights put it there in our markings to open the first portal. And maybe there’s a way they can use it now, manipulate it somehow . . . ?” Peter’s voice trailed off. He didn’t have the answers they needed—the only person who had those answers was gone.

  “Manipulating magic . . .” Cedric’s voice was low, almost as though he were talking to himself. “Mathilde said something like that to me. She said that when the Knights first created the portal to Caelum all those generations ago, they did it by manipulating magic. It took hundreds of them, she said, and they accidentally created a whole world instead of just opening a portal to one, but they were able to use their belief in magic to get it done.”

  “Well, if Knights hundreds of years ago could use magic to do what they wanted, why can’t they do it now?” Shannon asked. “I’m sure they’d help us if it meant keeping the world from being destroyed.”

  “You mean the Knights who’ve been mysteriously disappearing and showing up dead for the past two months?” Merek asked.

  “Oh . . . yeah.”

  “Malquin is definitely behind that,” Liv said. “Those wraths who showed up were looking for one of the Knights of Valere who lived there, a woman. They’d already . . . turned . . . her husband.”

  She fought back a shudder, thinking of the fair-haired Knight with his black eyes. It was hard to believe he’d been a man just recently.

  “We still do not know how Malquin is managing that. Turning humans into wraths?” Merek asked.

  “I think the how is less important than the why,” Cedric said.

  “He’s right,” Liv added. “It’s not just one lone Knight they’ve turned anymore—Malquin’s up to something. And it can’t be something good.”

  “I can ask him,” Joe said, his voice ringing out clear in the stifling room.

  “Joe, you can’t,” Liv said. “We don’t even know where he is.”

  “He might even be in Caelum,” Cedric put in, his voice still tight.

  “That’s true, I forgot,” Liv added. “The wraths . . . my head was kind of fuzzy at the time, but right after they took me, they said something about going to a castle . . . Malquin might not even be in LA anymore.”

  “He still has wraths here looking for you . . . and he knows I’d stay with you, which means they’ll be looking for me, too,” Joe said. “My old apartment, my work—if they’re tracking me at all, I can find them, and get to John—”

  “Even if you could, Joe, we have no idea how many wraths are working with him,” Liv said. She felt her voice growing louder, more anxious. She just couldn’t risk it, losing Joe to Malquin. “The ones we came across today, they weren’t messing around.”

  “We barely got away,” Cedric replied. “And Henry Martin didn’t.”

  Joe sucked in a breath, but pushed on. “I hear what you’re saying, but . . . I might be able to reach him. I’m his brother.”

  “And he’s a killer.”

  “So was Henry Martin, and we were going to trust him,” Joe said.

  “It’s not the same, Joe,” she said gently. “What Henry did was a horrible thing, but Malquin . . . he has no remorse for anything. He’ll never help us, and he’ll kill again; I know he will. He could kill you.”

  For a moment, Joe looked like he was going to continue arguing. But finally, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You’re right. It’s not worth it.”

  A tense silence fell over the room.

  “Okay,” Liv said slowly, trying to get the conversation back on track. “So Malquin is turning the Knights into wraths. And we need the Knights—maybe hundreds of them—in order to manipulate magic. In order to, somehow, create a spell or something that will stop the Quelling, turning off the planet’s giant immune system and saving both worlds.”

  Liv paused to look at the others.

  “I’m following you,” Peter said, nodding.

  “Okay, so . . . let’s say we somehow manage to find that many . . . we track down those who haven’t been killed or kidnapped or turned, and we get them to help us.”

  “Right,” Shannon said.

  “Then what?” Liv asked. “How would we actually do this?”

  Once again, silence fell over the room. No one had an answer.

  As they sat in the darkness, the heat seemed to press down on them more with every passing second. The orange sky turned darker and more sickly-looking outside. They’d already run out of answers.

  And soon, they would run out of time.

  LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

  The mood in the house was still pretty low when everyone decided to call it a night a few hours later. Shannon had volunteered to stay up with Liv and keep her from nodding off. The only problem with that plan was that Shannon kept dozing off herself.

  Liv sat on the twin bed across from her as light filtered in from the window, casting the room in a burnt-looking glow. Both girls had flashlights in their hands, but Shannon’s light kept drooping lower and lower as the muscles in the hand went limp—

  “Shannon!” Liv called out.

  Shannon’s head snapped up, the flashlight beam flicking wildly around the walls. “I’m up, I’m up.”

  But almost immediately, her eyelids started droop again.

  “You don’t have to stay up with me all night,” Liv said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, no, no, I’m up,” Shannon said, her words slightly slurring. “I’m a good friend.”

  “You definitely are. But I’ll really be okay. Just lie down for a bit.”

  “No, I’m good,” Shannon said, even though her body was already leaning nearer and nearer to the pillow. “If I can fight off monsters, then I can certainly . . . keep my eyes . . . open . . .”

  Liv smiled and shook her head as Shannon slumped over on the bed.

  Honestly, she didn’t mind having a few minutes alone to think about things. Now that her mind felt clearer, it whirled around the million problems and questions that had been stacking up in it. For so long, she’d had a single mission to focus on. In Caelum, it was to find Peter and get home. Then back in LA, it was to find Henry Martin. But now—now she’d hit a dead end. Literally.

  And then there was the hazy memory of what she’d said to Cedric while hiding from the wraths. She’d almost be able to write it off as something she’d dreamed, or maybe even hallucinated in her half-conc
ussed state, but . . .

  She knew better. She cringed as she remembered some of the things she’d said, the naked, unfiltered truth of them, and she tried hard to remember how Cedric had reacted to her spilling her guts. She pictured his face, hovering above hers . . . had he been happy to hear how much she’d missed him? In her memory of that moment, his face was a frustrating blank. Like her brain was missing that piece.

  He’d asked her to be quiet more than once, she remembered. She’d brought up the portals, and not wanting to say good-bye when they closed them forever . . . except . . . Henry Martin had said closing the portals couldn’t fix things. Which meant . . .

  Stop. Liv told herself, leaning up against the wall. She couldn’t think about what would happen after they fixed things. First, she had to figure out how to fix them at all. Which meant running up against that dead end again and again until something started to give.

  Liv started tallying up the list of possible actions to take. That usually helped her figure out how to make a decision, even when the world continued to take her choices away one by one. As a foster kid, she’d always had little say over what happened in her own life, but making a list of those things she could control had always seemed to help, even if just a little.

  So, number one: gather an army of magic-believing Knights to help bring balance back to the world(s) . . . somehow. This would involve not only finding all the Knights left in existence, but getting to them.

  And number two—there was no number two. If they just did nothing, or ran away, Liv would be giving up Los Angeles as a loss. And what would happen to Caelum if they didn’t bring some sort of balance back to the two worlds, allowing magic to flow freely between them? Would Cedric’s home just wither up and die? So no—there was no second option. Liv’s headache was coming back with a vengeance. Her brain was running in circles. She needed to get out of this bed, she needed to talk this all through with someone . . .

  No, not just someone.

  Liv crept out of bed, careful not to wake Shannon. She walked quietly down the hall to the farthest room on the right. She smoothed down her sweat-dampened hair and opened the bedroom door.

  Cedric was awake.

  He sat up in bed the moment Liv stepped into the room, his shoulders, head, and stomach a dark outline in the gloom. His posture was tense and alert, until he saw it was Liv who moved quietly into his room and shut the door behind her.

  “Hi,” Liv whispered.

  A pause stretched across the small room.

  “Hi,” Cedric responded.

  Liv knew he was looking at her, though it was difficult to make out his face. It was less difficult to make out the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Shadows played over his muscles as he moved, and Liv could alternately make out bits of his shoulders, his stomach, the taut area of skin right where he held a single sheet bunched up near his hips.

  Liv cleared her throat.

  “Did you . . . need something?” Cedric asked.

  “Shannon fell asleep.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I figured if you were up, maybe you could help to, uh . . .”

  “Keep you awake?”

  “Um, yeah . . . ,” Liv replied, at the same moment Cedric said, “With talking. Keep you awake with talking.”

  “Yes, talking is definitely what I meant,” Liv said, giving a little laugh.

  “Did . . . you want to sit?” Cedric asked, gesturing to the edge of the bed.

  Seeing Cedric half naked and tangled up in bedsheets had the effect of scrambling Liv’s thoughts even more.

  “Uh,” Liv started, her train of thought completely pulling out of the station and leaving her behind on a platform of hormones. Cedric stared at her, expectant. He moved slightly over on the bed, making space for her. He didn’t pull the sheet up, though, damn him.

  Liv hesitated—for about a half second.

  “Okay.”

  She moved to sit next to him, her head against the backboard. She was wearing only a tank top and sleep shorts. And who knew what Cedric had on under that sheet. This close, she could feel the heat coming off of him, the slight dampness of his skin.

  “What did you want to talk about?” Cedric asked.

  Liv swallowed. Just that morning, she’d wanted to avoid having a real conversation with Cedric at all costs, afraid of where that conversation would lead. But now, all she wanted to do was talk to him—not just about everything they were facing, or what would happen in the future, but everything in the world. Whether he’d go with her to Six Flags. His opinions on thin versus thick pizza crust. His favorite color. What he’d really been thinking when she spilled her guts out to him behind that bush . . .

  Focus, Liv, she commanded herself.

  “Remember in Caelum, when we got into that fight and I took off into the woods with Rafe?”

  Cedric gave a small laugh. “That is not the type of thing one forgets.”

  “Right. Well, I think my mistake . . . I mean, one of my mistakes, was in thinking my own plan was better than anyone else’s. I should have just been honest with you, talked it out—”

  “I was not exactly ready to listen,” Cedric admitted.

  “Sure, but still. I’ve had enough of keeping things to myself. We’re better when we work together, right?”

  “I believe so,” Cedric said. When he exhaled, his breath hit Liv’s arm.

  “Okay, good,” Liv said. She struggled to keep her breathing steady. Could Cedric hear her heart pounding from where he sat? “So . . . let’s talk it out. This whole mess. Maybe we’ll come up with an idea if we just keep working on it. We’ll stay up all night if we have to, which, technically, I do.”

  A pause, then Cedric’s breath again on her arm. “I would like that.”

  Liv looked away, glad the darkness between them could hide the color she knew was rising to her face.

  “It just feels like there’s a piece of the puzzle still missing,” Liv said slowly, refusing to be distracted again. “So we know how the portals were first created. That old lady in Caelum knew that if we opened too many of them, bad things would happen to both of our worlds. And Henry Martin believed—maybe—that there was a way everything could be fixed with magic. But what we’re still missing—”

  “Is how,” Cedric filled in. “How to find enough people who believe in magic like the Knights did centuries ago.”

  Liv sighed and looked out the window. “You’d think that if there were a time to believe in magic, it would be now.”

  “Is it possible,” Cedric asked, “to convince people that magic is responsible for what is happening outside?”

  Liv thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, climate change has been affecting our world for years, and lots of the people in this country don’t believe in it. And that’s science. Trying to get enough people to believe in magic so we can do . . . whatever it is we have to do? Even if it was possible, even if I knew how, there’s no way they’d listen to me. I’m just some nobody teenage girl. I mean, I barely even have fifty Twitter followers—”

  “You’re wrong,” Cedric whispered, cutting Liv off.

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “No, seriously, last I checked it was, like, forty-seven—”

  “I mean, you are wrong when you say you’re nobody. You are several hundred things, Liv, but you could never be nobody.”

  Liv’s breath caught in her throat. When she looked over at Cedric, he seemed even closer than he had been before.

  “You must know that,” Cedric said.

  Liv smiled. “I guess. But it’s still nice to hear it.” She took a shaky breath. Why be shy now? “And it’s nice to sit here with you, like this, even if it’s a million degrees in this room.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We should . . . do this more often. While we can, I mean.”

  His face was closer now, close enough to blur around the edges. She could still see the brightness of his eyes, and how his pupils dilated as
he moved closer.

  “Talk?” he asked.

  She inched nearer to him, so her arm pressed against his. She could feel his legs through the sheet.

  “Right. Talk . . .” Her voice grew faint. “Or . . .”

  His skin was so hot that she wondered briefly if he had a fever. But no, she was just as warm as they moved closer together, eliminating the space between them. As her mouth found his. As his fingers curled around the back of her neck and held tight there. As all of the problems she’d been worried about slipped away one by one.

  Liv barely had time to notice that not only was Cedric’s chest bare; his neck was, too. His golden betrothal ring no longer hung there from a chain. Then even that observation flitted out of her mind.

  And once again, they were done with talking.

  NIGHTCRAWLER

  Deep into the early hours of morning, Liv was having trouble keeping herself awake. The temperature in the small bedroom seemed to only be going up, and even though she’d kicked the sheets off long ago, her tank top and shorts were stuck to her body. Part of her longed to get up, but a bigger part wanted to stay exactly where she was—curled up on her side with Cedric lying at her back. One of his long arms stretched over the space between her ribs and her hips. The weight of it was immensely comforting, like hot cocoa on a rainy day, but times a thousand.

  Even though he’d tried—pretty valiantly—to stay awake, Cedric had eventually faded. Liv had meant to wake him, but she didn’t want to move, didn’t want to stop feeling his long, even breaths hit her skin at the exact place where her hair met her neck. She wanted to just lie here like this, safe, until the sky turned back to blue and the world turned back to normal.

  And then maybe a few days more.

  A bead of sweat dripped down her forehead, and Liv very gently moved her arm to wipe it away. That’s when she saw a flash of yellow light come through the window and scan across the wall. It almost looked like—headlights?

  Joe.

  The thought came to her instantly, and she knew it was true before she sat up carefully to look out the window to see the familiar Jeep in the driveway, lights on. Liv couldn’t see through the darkened windshield, but she knew it was Joe in there. And, in a flash, she knew where he was going.