The Emerald Mask

by H. K. Varian

  “Not your fault,” Gabriella said, managing a smile. “I should know better than to play with fire.”

  “Cat’s eyes,” Mack said suddenly, louder than he intended.

  “What?” Gabriella asked, and something like panic flashed in her face. “I don’t—I just looked in the mirror and they were fine.”

  “Maybe the sparks?” Fiona suggested. “I have this theory that Changer powers can feed off one another—”

  The final bell rang then, and as everyone grabbed their backpacks, Mack glanced at Gabriella’s eyes. “They’re still gold,” he whispered. “Maybe you should—”

  “Gabriella,” Ms. Therian interrupted him. “Would you stay after class, please?”

  Gabriella nodded, looking miserable. She didn’t say a word.

  Way to go, Mack thought angrily. You just got her in trouble. Why can’t you learn to keep your mouth shut?

  Though Fiona and Darren headed toward the doors, Mack leaned down, pretending to tie his shoe. If Gabriella was going to be yelled at, he wanted to be there to stick up for her.

  “Gabriella,” Ms. Therian began.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know why this keeps happening,” Gabriella spoke up, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Really, I’m trying my hardest to make sure—”

  “You don’t need to apologize,” Ms. Therian told her, somehow sounding stern and sympathetic at the same time. “Never apologize for who you truly are.”

  A long silence followed.

  “But you do need to be careful,” Ms. Therian finally continued. “If you go out into the world before your transformation is complete, everyone could learn your secret. Our secret. I’d recommend cooling down more before practice ends. . . .”

  Mack couldn’t imagine what it would be like to transform when he least expected it. To have something so important be completely out of his control. He glanced at Gabriella out of the corner of his eye and tried to catch her attention. He wanted to smile, to wave, to do something to make her feel better.

  But Gabriella was staring at the floor . . . and she wouldn’t look up for anything.

  Chapter 4

  The Rare Books Room

  Despite his grumbling about the early start, Darren was ready and waiting for Fiona and her dad when they arrived to pick him up on Saturday. Darren’s best friends, Ethan and Kyle, were always complaining about how late he was. It was a habit he was trying to break. Fiona’s dad honked the horn in greeting as Darren bounded down the front steps two at a time and climbed into the backseat.

  “Breakfast?” Fiona asked as she held out a box of doughnuts.

  “Definitely!” Darren replied as he grabbed a chocolate one with sprinkles on top. “Thanks! And thanks for the ride, Mr. Murphy. Or do you prefer Professor Murphy?”

  “You can call me Mr. Murphy,” Fiona’s dad said with a chuckle. “Only my students have to call me ‘professor.’ And I’m happy to give you two a ride to campus. I’m very impressed by you both—spending a beautiful Saturday in the library, working on your book reports. I can’t say I was that responsible when I was your age.”

  Darren glanced into the side mirror and caught Fiona’s eye. From the way she raised her eyebrow, he could tell that she wanted him to play along.

  “Well, you know. Gotta get it done,” Darren said. “My mom always says— I think you know my mom, Sharon Smith? She’s a professor in the chemistry department?”

  “Yes, Fiona mentioned that,” Mr. Murphy said. “A very impressive scholar. I don’t know her very well, but I heard she won a pretty prestigious research grant last month. . . .”

  For the entire hour-long drive to New Brighton University, Darren kept up a steady stream of chatter with Fiona and her dad. When they arrived on campus, Mr. Murphy rummaged through his wallet and pulled out a plastic card. “This is my faculty key card,” he explained. “Remember, the rare books room is technically closed on weekends, but you should be able to access everything you need through the digitized versions on the computers. If there’s any problem with that, just use my key card to get into the rare books room, where you can find all the original source materials.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Fiona replied as she slipped it into her pocket. “Meet you for lunch?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mr. Murphy said. “I’ll see you in the dining hall at noon. Good luck with your reports!”

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Fiona turned to Darren. “Sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I had to make up an excuse for why we needed to be in the library. Thanks for playing along.”

  “No worries,” Darren told her. “I don’t think he suspected anything.”

  “You’re really good at that,” Fiona said.

  Darren’s face wrinkled in confusion. “Good at what?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, talking to people,” she said. “It seems so easy for you. Like you always know what to say. I can never think of the right thing to say until, like, five minutes too late.”

  Darren was surprised. Supersmart Fiona had trouble coming up with the right thing to say? That was news to him. “That’s not how you come across,” Darren reassured her.

  “Really?” she asked.

  Darren shrugged. “To me it’s like . . . like you’re only going to speak up if you have something worth saying,” he said. “That’s why when you talk, people listen.”

  Fiona blinked rapidly as she glanced away, but Darren thought he saw the hint of a smile on her face. “We should get to the rare books room,” she said. “I hope we can find what we need quickly, but if not . . .”

  Darren had only been in the rare books room once before, when he and Fiona had accidentally run into each other while their parents were at work. After they had decided to start research for their Changers reports, Fiona had introduced him to the rare books room, her favorite place on campus. What they’d learned there about Auden Ironbound’s Horn of Power had helped them prepare for the battle of their lives.

  Would they be so lucky a second time?

  Fiona seemed to think so. Is she humming? Darren wondered as they walked through the library to the rare books room and the computer bank outside it. Every so often, he swore he could faintly hear a few pretty, high-pitched notes. Bet that’s her selkie side, Darren thought, smiling to himself. He would’ve cracked a joke, but Fiona seemed so happy, he didn’t want to spoil it.

  Maybe the rare books room really is her favorite place, he mused.

  This corner of the library was practically deserted, except for three college guys who were hunched over a computer at the far end of the room.

  “This isn’t right,” one of them was saying. He tugged at the collar on his shirt and then ran his hand across his damp forehead. “It should be here! If—”

  “Jack, would you shut up?” the one sitting at the keyboard hissed. “I’m trying to find it, okay?”

  “Why don’t you shut up, Bram?” Jack shot back. “If this is you trying, I’d hate to see you fail.”

  “Enough,” the third guy, the one in the red New Brighton University hat, said. There was something in his voice that silenced both his friends.

  Man, college must be really rough, Darren thought. He couldn’t imagine ever talking to his friends like that—especially not over some school project. “Let’s use this one,” he murmured to Fiona, gesturing to a computer a few feet away from the guys.

  Fiona immediately sat down at the keyboard and entered her dad’s log-in info. “I can’t wait to go here,” she confided in Darren. “Have my own ID, my own key card—everything.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I haven’t thought about it much. But my brother seems pretty happy.”

  Fiona typed quickly—far quicker than Darren could. “This one,” she said as the cursor of the mouse hovered over a title: Traditions of Otherworldly Beings. “I’m sure that’s the one we looked at before.”

  “So the whole thing’s been scanned?” Darren asked.

  Fiona nodded. “It’
s to protect the rare books,” she explained. “Anytime they’re touched by human hands, they can be damaged. The good news is that since the book has been digitized, we can use the search function now.”

  Fiona’s fingers clicked on the keyboard as she typed the phrase “Circe’s Compass” into the search box.

  Darren and Fiona waited a few seconds. Then a message flashed across the screen: NO RESULTS FOUND.

  “Uh-oh,” Darren said.

  But Fiona shook her head. “Not a problem, I just don’t have the right term yet,” she said. “Sometimes words were spelled differently a long time ago.”

  Darren watched as Fiona typed in “Circe” and then “Cyrce” and then “Kirke,” and several other variations. Finally, she tried simply “compass.”

  But the same message—NO RESULTS FOUND—appeared for every term she searched.

  A puzzled frown crossed Fiona’s face. “I find it very hard to believe that a book with more than a thousand pages from this era doesn’t have a single reference to a compass,” she said.

  “Maybe the spelling’s not quite right,” Darren suggested. “Or it had a completely different name back then.”

  “Maybe,” Fiona replied, but her voice was doubtful. “Still, there should be . . . something . . .”

  Suddenly, Fiona sat up straighter. As her fingers flew across the keys, Darren realized that she’d had an idea.

  That’s also when he realized that the guys across the room had gotten very quiet.

  And they were watching them.

  Darren turned back to the computer just in time to see that same, frustrating message flashing again.

  NO RESULTS FOUND

  “I was right!” Fiona cried. “See, I searched for ‘Horne of Power’—weird spelling and all—because we know for a fact that it has a listing in this book, right, and I remember exactly how it’s spelled, and get this! The computer still says no results were found!”

  “Shhh,” Darren said with a nervous glance to the guys. To his relief, though, they were engrossed in their own computer again. “So . . . what exactly does that mean?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” Fiona replied. “There might be a problem with the search function. I don’t know. But I do know what we can do about it.”

  “What?” asked Darren.

  Fiona stood up abruptly. “Examine the source!”

  With her dad’s key card in hand, Fiona strode toward the locked room that held all the ancient, irreplaceable volumes. The moment she swiped the card, Darren could hear the whir of the lock opening.

  “Come on,” Fiona said, pushing open the door. She pulled out a drawer that was near the entrance and withdrew two pairs of pristine white cotton gloves. “Safety first . . . Well, the books’ safety, that is.”

  Darren laughed as he pulled on the silly gloves.

  In seconds, Fiona was halfway across the rare books room, reaching for Traditions of Otherworldly Beings. With extreme care, Fiona gingerly laid the book on the table and flipped it open to page 258. Her eyes darted back and forth as she scanned the page.

  Then she shook her head.

  “It’s . . . Something . . . Something’s wrong,” she said. “I know this is the right book, but there’s no mention of the Horn of Power—and there should be.”

  “Maybe it was on another page,” Darren offered.

  Fiona shook her head again. “I distinctly remember the page number,” she insisted. “I’m sure of it.”

  Darren was about to ask if Fiona had a photographic memory when she suddenly sucked in her breath sharply.

  “What? What is it?” Darren asked, immediately on edge.

  “Look,” Fiona breathed. “Look at the words!”

  If Darren hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he never would have believed it: The letters shivered, trembled, and then began to shift and swirl across the page like a swarm of snakes. His mouth fell open from shock.

  “It—did—” Darren stammered, at a loss for words. “Why didn’t it do this before? The last time we looked at it?”

  “I don’t know—it must be a magical defense mechanism!” Fiona glanced up at him, her face shining with joy. “It’s the right page,” she whispered. Her gloved finger hovered above the heading, which now clearly read “HORNE OF POWER.” “It’s the right text!”

  “How?” Darren asked in amazement.

  “Some sort of enchantment, I assume,” Fiona said, a note of awe in her voice. “There’s information here that is so sacred—so powerful—that only certain eyes can see it. And the book somehow knows—”

  “Check the index!” Darren exclaimed. “Look for Circe’s Compass!”

  He eagerly reached for the book, but Fiona stopped him. “It’s so fragile,” she said. “We still need to be careful.”

  “Hey,” a new voice said.

  Darren and Fiona looked up to see the three guys from the computer station.

  They were blocking the door.

  Almost by instinct, Fiona closed the book and held it against her chest, as if she could protect it.

  “Can we take a look?” the guy in the red hat said. His smile was bright, but his eyes . . . There was something wrong with them, a flat emptiness that gave Darren a sudden chill.

  We have to get out of here.

  Just as Darren thought those words, they seemed to echo in his head—but in Fiona’s voice, the same way they communicated in their Changer forms.

  So she felt it too—magic.

  “A quick look,” the guy continued, still pretending to be friendly. He took a step forward. His friends moved forward too. But the solid bookshelf against Darren’s back told him there was nowhere to run.

  “Give me the book,” the guy in the red hat continued. His smile faded until his face was as malevolent as his eyes.

  “Just grab it, Evan!” Bram snapped, agitated.

  Fiona shoved the massive book into her backpack, just as Evan’s fist erupted with glowing magic.

  What choice did Darren have?

  The thunderbolt was forming at his fingertips before he had figured out a plan, but the moment he felt that fiery crackling—the very second it started—Darren realized what he had to do.

  It was blisteringly hot. . . .

  And blindingly bright . . .

  But he flung it at them, anyway.

  “Come on!” Darren shouted over their howls as he grabbed Fiona’s hand.

  Darren and Fiona ran—leaping over the three guys and darting through the doorway. Were those guys wounded—or worse? Darren swallowed hard. He couldn’t bear to find out.

  “Where are we going?” Fiona gasped as Darren dragged her down the stairs.

  “Somewhere safe,” he replied shortly, pushing himself to run faster. If only he could transform, could fly away on his strong impundulu wings and take Fiona with him . . .

  “Darren!” she exclaimed. “They’re following us!”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not possible. I saw the lightning hit them. . . .”

  But one glance over his shoulder confirmed Fiona’s claim.

  And perhaps even harder to believe, there wasn’t a single sign they’d been hit by lightning. No scars, no singed clothes. The guys looked perfectly normal as they scanned the crowd.

  They’re looking for us, Darren thought, panicked, as a feeling of dread settled in the pit of his stomach.

  Darren pulled Fiona into a crowd of students who were listening to a drum circle in the quad. They wove through the crowd while Darren frantically tried to come up with a plan. Even if we lose them out here, he thought, we’re still exposed. And they likely know this campus better than we do.

  There was only one thing to do: hide.

  Fortunately, Darren knew just where to go.

  There were plenty of buildings on campus that Darren had never visited before, but his big brother’s dorm was unmistakable. It was a sleek, shiny building covered in glass panels; the newest dorm stood out from all the other ivy-covered brick halls—wh
ich meant Darren could find it in an instant.

  Darren and Fiona never stopped running as Darren dug around in his pocket, found his cell phone, and desperately dialed Ray’s number. Please answer, Darren thought anxiously as he and Fiona reached the locked dorm. Please, Ray. Answer your phone!

  Darren glanced anxiously over his shoulder. There, not far away, a flash of red—a baseball cap . . .

  They’ve found us, he thought.

  “Hey, bro! What’s up?”

  The sound of Ray’s voice almost made Darren cry with relief.

  “Ray! I’m downstairs!” Darren babbled into his phone. “Can you—can you—the door—”

  “Sure, let me buzz you in,” Ray said.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Darren yanked on the door so hard that it shuddered. “Hurry!” he yelled as he and Fiona dashed into the building.

  The door shut behind them with a reassuring click. That, Darren knew, was the automatic lock resetting—but he wouldn’t feel at ease until they were safe in Ray’s dorm room.

  “This way,” he told Fiona as he led her up a flight of stairs, which seemed safer than waiting around in the glass-paneled lobby for the elevator. Luckily, Ray’s room was on the third floor. He was waiting for them in the doorway when they arrived. But one look at their faces made his smile fade.

  “Darren, what’s wrong?” Ray asked.

  “I . . . ,” Darren began, panting. He bent over with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Hi, I’m Ray,” Ray introduced himself to Fiona. His forehead was creased with worry. “Are you two okay?”

  Fiona swallowed hard. “Yeah. We were working on our book reports and we—we kind of got lost,” she said, thinking fast. “But Darren recognized your dorm, so, uh, it’s all good now. I’m Fiona, by the way.”

  Ray’s face relaxed. “Oh, good. You had me worried for a minute,” he replied. “Are you seriously winded from the stairs?”

  “Yeah,” Darren said, laughing nervously. “Sorry—I was completely turned around. I couldn’t even find the cafeteria.”

  Ray laughed loudly. “Now that’s hard to believe,” he joked. “I have to go meet my study group. Want me to show you where to get some lunch?”