by Sadie Moss
The dark-haired girl looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. “You just want to hear about how I’m doing,” she repeats slowly. “Um, sure? I guess?” She pauses, looks out across the grass as we start to walk across campus, and then looks back at me. “You know, you’re acting really weird today, Rox. Are you sure that concussion was all taken care of? Did they scan you properly?”
That takes me aback. I want to ask what kind of person Roxie is that just asking after the welfare of her friend is weird behavior.
“I’m fine. But who really cares if someone’s sleeping with someone else, right? I mean, it doesn’t affect us.”
“Okay, now you’re just talking nonsense.” Bianca puts the back of her hand to my forehead. “You don’t have a fever. Huh.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m serious. What is up with you? Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Never felt better!”
“And now you’re a shitty liar too.” The corners of her mouth turn down. “Something’s definitely up.”
I have no idea what to say to this, or how to get out of it, or…
Cross!
He’s walking down another sidewalk that intersects with ours. I practically sprint toward him, grabbing his arm.
“Thank God,” I mutter. “I could really use your help.”
“Um, what are you doing?” Bianca asks. She’s eyeing where my hand is gripping Cross’s arm as if I’m holding onto a python. “With him?”
The “him” makes it sound like Cross has some kind of incurable and easily transmitted disease like Ebola or the Black Plague.
“We got assigned a last-minute project together,” I say desperately. “Barnhouse and her changing schedules, huh?”
I am literally just going off a hunch here, but after listening to Professor Barnhouse talk this morning, I got the impression that despite her rigid appearance, she isn’t the most “stick to the schedule” kind of person.
And, thank fuck, my hunch pays off.
“Again? Ugh. Will she ever learn?” Bianca looks pissed on my behalf.
“I know, right?”
I force myself to let go of Cross’s arm, even though it feels like letting go of a life raft in the middle of shark-infested waters. He just watches me, looking highly amused.
“I’m not going to let a last-minute assignment make my grades slip though,” I tell Bianca. “And you gotta admit, asshole or not, he’s a good partner to have if I want to stay top of the class.”
“Excuse you,” Cross drawls, draping his arm around my shoulders, “I’m top of the class.”
I immediately go stiff, while Bianca looks scandalized, as if she walked in on me making out with a bog monster.
Do bog monsters exist here?
“Sure. Whatever you say,” I shoot back, trying very hard not to think about the fact that… well, it’s been a long time since a guy touched me like this.
I mean, the guys in my hip hop crew touch me all the time when we’re dancing, but that’s different. They’re all like brothers to me, so that doesn’t count.
But this? Cross, with his arm around my shoulders, a heavy and warm weight, his side pressed up against mine, the smell of his woodsy, pine tree cologne filling my nostrils…
Ugh. Why does he have to be hot? So not fucking fair.
“It’s super important,” Cross says, drawing out the “u” in “super” and giving Bianca an absolutely shit-eating grin. “So if you don’t mind running along…”
He waggles his fingers in a “skeedaddle” motion, and Bianca looks like she’s weighing the pros and cons of setting him on fire in a public place.
“Really?” she asks me, a bite of anger in her voice. “You can’t do this later?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, but Cross is already pulling me away.
“She’s got priorities, Bianca. Guess you just aren’t one of them right now!” he calls over his shoulder.
“Fuck you too, Cross!”
I elbow him. “Did you really have to do that?”
“Oh, fake-Roxie, my adorable little cupcake, you have no idea.”
Great. Fantastic. The only person who can help me out here is a total dick.
I hate my life.
Chapter 7
Cross leads me across the lush, manicured lawns, and then out through a different gate than the one Bianca and I entered from this morning.
“Um…” I hesitate, looking around as we step off campus. Suddenly, we’re no longer surrounded by bright, airy, old-fashioned beauty, but back on the grungy streets of Baltimore. Or whatever the city is called in this world.
I swear, even the weather changed a bit as we stepped off the curb, becoming less sunny, more overcast.
“Radcliffe Academy is in a dimension bubble,” Cross says.
“A what?”
“Don’t worry that pretty head of yours about it. Wouldn’t want to curdle the icing in your brain.”
Irritation spikes. God, this guy is the fucking worst.
“Okay, the cupcake thing was slightly funny the first time you said it, but it’s going stale faster than a damn cupcake left out on the counter.”
“Ooh, she’s got some claws after all.” He chuckles. “Tiny widdle claws, but still. Keep those sharp, cupcake. You’ll need ’em.”
“My. Name. Is. Gabbi.”
Cross surprises me by stopping in the middle of the street, causing a passing centaur to nearly plow into us. He mutters something about “kids these days” as he walks around us.
“No,” Cross says, his voice going suddenly hard and serious, his hands gripping my shoulders. “You are not Gabbi. You’re Roxie. Understand? That’s the only way you’re getting through this. You have to start thinking about it that way.”
My throat goes dry in fear, and I nod, struggling to swallow.
Cross releases my shoulders, sighing. “You’re gonna drown here if you’re not careful. Like a newborn baby deer trying to walk, and then plop! Right into the pond.”
“Why are you such a dick?!”
“Because it’s hilarious.” Cross winks at me. “Now c’mon, we’ve got to hurry.”
I scurry to follow him—and as I catch up to him, falling into step with his long gait, it suddenly hits me that, hey, we’re off campus. Going somewhere else also presumably off campus.
Cross is ditching his classes to help me. It’s barely noon; he can’t be done with classes for the day. And he must have homework. But instead of doing any of the things he probably should be, he’s here.
Helping me.
Okay. So that is kind of nice of him. I just wish he’d stop giving me such a hard time about it. It’s like he’s still treating me like I’m Roxie, even though he knows I’m not her, and I hate it, because I’ve done nothing to earn his sarcasm and sass.
Then again, maybe he’s this way with everyone. I certainly can’t think of myself as an exception just because I’m from another universe.
A parallel universe.
I dodge some kids trying to fly on little brooms as their mom yells at them, then trot for a few steps to catch up with Cross.
“So, Professor Angelique said that this place is the Hidden World. And my world is the Dull World.”
“Oh, yeah, you got that whole lecture?” Cross shrugs. “The government tries not to really talk about it. It’s like an open secret. Mostly, everyone just pretends it doesn’t exist.”
He leads me down some steps to the subway, where we wait in line and then step on. I can’t help but notice this subway car doesn’t seem to be running on electricity. Or, well, on anything. It’s hovering in midair.
Whoa.
“But if our two worlds never interact,” I point, lowering my voice to a whisper as Cross finds us a spot away from other people, “then how come I was able to get here?”
“Well, how did you get here?”
Deciding it’s not worth trying to preserve my dignity, I explain about the manhole cover and falling
in, the hospital, all of it.
When I finish, Cross shakes his head. “That wasn’t a manhole, cupcake. It sounds like some kind of portal, but why it was there and who made it and how and why? That, I don’t know. It might not even have been meant for you. It could’ve been someone else trying to get through and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“But if so, where’s Roxie?”
“Fuck if I know.” He shrugs. “I’m a bit of a genius, if I do say so myself, but I’m not an expert in inter-dimensional travel.”
Ugh. A genius? More like completely full of himself.
Every time I start thinking he’s a decent guy, he says or does something like that, and it drives me nuts. If he was one hundred percent a jerk, that would be one thing, but instead, he’s this weird mix of dickish and sweet, and it’s beyond frustrating.
“Well, do you know how I can find out?” I press.
Cross sighs. “Nope. But since you’re stuck here, you have plenty of time to figure all this out.”
Oh, joy.
We get off the subway, and Cross leads me through some more city streets. I catch sight of a bronze plaque on the side of a large stone building that reads City of Valencia Municipal Center.
Valencia. I guess that’s what this place is called.
I can’t stop staring, my neck craning back and forth as I take in my surroundings. I know these streets. They look so much like the Baltimore I grew up in that I could almost swear I’m home—except they’re populated by people and shops and creatures that I’ve never seen before.
“Hey, Cross?”
“Yeah?” He drapes an arm around my shoulders again, this time to guide me around two tall, pale people arguing on a street corner. They’re holding umbrellas over their heads and have sunglasses on, even though it’s just a bit cloudy out.
I catch a flash of fangs in their mouths, and a chill runs through me. I think those are vampires.
“Um, all these magical creatures, are they—safe?”
He glances down at me, his face is so close to mine that I can see the flecks of green in his blue eyes, like sunlight glinting on the ocean. I hurriedly pull my gaze away, focusing on the sidewalk in front of us.
“Some non-human magical beings live with us just fine,” Cross says. “Centaurs need special housing, but that’s easy enough to manage. Vampires usually work as doctors of some kind since they can detect blood diseases, and they make for wicked good nightclub owners. Werewolves tend to need a lot of space to roam, so you won’t find them as much in cities, but they’re okay. Other creatures though…” He shakes his head. “Rakshasas, for example. They keep to the outskirts, and you better hope you don’t meet any of them in a dark alley.”
Speaking of dark alleys, the area we’re getting into now is… well, I haven’t been here often in my own world’s version of Baltimore, even though I know of it. It’s what you could call seedy.
I hate to say this, but I’m suspicious.
Cross may be a dick, but I’ve never gotten a creepy or dangerous vibe from him. He wouldn’t play this whole “helpful asshole” routine just to get me somewhere he could use me somehow, would he? Shit. What if Dull Worlder bones are a hot-ticket black market item in this world?
“Are you sure we should be here?” I ask, lowering my voice and looking around without trying to look too much like a skittish rabbit. “This seems kind of… you know… sketchy.”
Cross chuckles. “You can stick close to me if it makes you feel better, cupcake, but the sketchy part of town is what’s going to save your ass, so you’d better get used to it. Besides, you might not be Roxie the Big Bad Magic Bitch, but you’ve got me, and I’m even scarier than she is.”
“So, slightly scarier than a kitten.”
He drops his arm from around my shoulders to open the door to a shop. Holding it with one hand, he ushers me inside with the other.
“Listen,” he murmurs as I pass by him, “you might be a helpless little kitten left out in the rain like a Victorian orphan, but Roxie’s got claws, and they’re permanently extended. Don’t underestimate what a bitch you’ll have to pretend to be.”
Then he lets the door close, leaving us in only dim lighting, and takes a step closer so that we’re nearly nose-to-nose.
“And don’t underestimate me,” he adds, his voice soft and a little dangerous.
Holy fuck. That should not be making me feel so hot and wet between my legs.
Startled by my body’s intense reaction to Cross’s proximity and words, I clear my throat and step away, putting distance between us while I gather all the composure I seem to have lost.
I glance at the space we’ve stepped into, taking in our surroundings. It does not look like this place has been cleaned in at least a decade, and I don’t like to think of myself as a snob or a neat freak but… ew.
Cross watches me look around for a second, his gaze a mixture of amusement and something else I can’t quite identify. Then he steps forward, leading me farther into the shop.
“Yo, Bartholomew, you here?”
Jesus Christ, he’s on a first-name basis with this guy? How often does Cross come into this place? Is any of this even legal? Are we in some kind of black market shop right now?
If the cops come—or whatever magical law enforcement is called here—and I get arrested for trying to buy some kind of contraband, and then they find out I’m not really Roxie…
“Relax for two seconds, cupcake,” Cross murmurs to me, and then a small, wizened man emerges from behind a curtain and stands behind the counter with a scowl on his face.
“What do you want, you little gnat?” he asks Cross, sounding amused, tired, and irritated all at once.
“I need to look at some of the stuff you’ve got in storage,” Cross replies, grinning and leaning against the counter like he’s asking where the really good fireworks are kept, the ones he knows are illegal but wants anyway.
The man grumbles something, but ushers the two of us into the back. “Who’s the girlfriend?” he asks, glancing at me.
“Hey!”
Cross chuckles. “Don’t worry, she’s not going to report us. She’s the reason we’re here.”
“Very well.”
In the back of the shop, things are set up even more haphazardly than in the front. There are charms spilling out of boxes, things hanging from the ceiling that look kind of similar to dreamcatchers, and bottles stacked in precarious piles on the shelves.
“What do you need?” the shopkeeper asks, scrunching up his face. “More tricks for your pranks?”
Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear that Cross is the kind of guy who frequents a specialty magic shop to get supplies for the pranks he pulls. I guess this is his go-to spot.
“Something like that. I need a generator.”
Bartholomew inhales sharply, puffing out his cheeks, then blows out a long, slow breath. “Ah. Those do not come cheap.”
“I’m not surprised. She’s got it.” Cross gestures to me.
What? Oh.
I fumble through the purse and grab out one of Roxie’s credit cards. I don’t know much about this world, but I can still spot a rich person’s credit card when I see one, and this girl’s got three of them.
The shopkeeper’s eyebrows shoot up when he sees it. He nods, then shuffles over to a shelf, rifling around for a moment before pulling out a necklace.
A small glowing blue gemstone inside of what looks like a silver miniature gyroscope hangs on the necklace. Runes are carved into the metal. Well, symbols anyway. I don’t actually know if they’re runes or not.
“The chain is adjustable,” Bartholomew tells me in his creaky voice, handing it over. “You can wear it as a bracelet or as a necklace.”
“Thank you.”
I don’t want to look like an idiot, so I just keep my mouth shut as I pay and act like I know exactly what this thing is for, but the moment we’re outside, I hold it up so it catches the light and ask, “Ok
ay. Exactly what in the hell is this?”
Cross laughs a little, amused as ever by my panic. “That’s a generator.”
“I know what it’s called, super-genius, I’m not deaf.” My patience is wearing thin.
“Put it on.”
Still glaring at him, I do so—and immediately I feel something strange settle over my skin. It feels warm, like I’m standing close to a fire. Comforting. But also… somehow, I feel stronger. More powerful. Like there’s an electric energy humming around me that I can feel but can’t see or hear.
“Oh, good, it’s working,” Cross says, evidently reading the expression on my face. “You see, cupcake, here in our world, magic isn’t something that some people have and some people don’t. It’s everywhere. Magic’s in the air, in everything.”
He reaches out and brushes his fingers over the generator, which hangs just below the base of my throat, and goose bumps break out over my skin.
“What a generator does is suck in magic that’s in the air around you and feed that power into a kind of aura or skin. It’s invisible, nobody can see it or feel it except for you, and you can use it to channel magic.”
Wow. “So I’m literally covered in magic?”
One side of Cross’s mouth tilts upward.
“Yeah, that’s one way to look at it.” He gestures to himself and then to our surroundings, seeming to indicate the entire Hidden World. “Any of us? We just channel the magic inside of us, or use our own magic to draw more magic from the air around us if we need an extra boost for a powerful spell. But you don’t have your own magic, so this will be a… substitute. A stopgap.”
The relief that was finally starting to unclench my muscles drains out of me as I process his words.
“Wait. A stopgap is temporary.”
“Yeah, and so’s this. But it’ll help you get by for a while. You just need to do the hand movements to activate a spell like the rest of us, and the generator’s magic will make it happen. Now you can create your own cute widdle dragons.” Cross winks at me.
I barely resist the urge to flip him off. “Why is it temporary?”
“It runs like a battery. Once you’re out, you’re out. And it’s not exactly the most powerful battery in the world. You can do most spells that they’ll ask of you in class, but like, final exams where you have to do really big ones? Good luck. And for group projects… just try to have me as your partner, okay?”
