My instinct was to find a private place to make the call, but that wasn’t necessary here. I was so used to using my magic in secret, either on Earth or on a covert operation, but this was neither. I had the skills necessary to mask the conversation from anyone who might eavesdrop. If someone did try to breach my defenses, I would notice immediately. There was no reason we couldn’t contact Nicole and Millhook from anywhere.
As I reached into my pocket for the communication orb, my stomach let out a loud growl.
Alex chuckled. “Why don’t we get something to eat first?”
I didn’t want to stop, but we would have to eat some time, and this was one of the few chances I had to see what it was like in an Elustrian city. Up ahead on the right, a sign advertised a little café. The tables outside sat empty, likely due to the heat, but inside it looked packed. An authentic Concordia experience awaited. “Good idea.” I pointed to the café. “Let’s go over there.”
When we entered the one-story stucco building, a purple and blue fluorescent trail lit up on the hardwood floor leading from our feet to a vacant table. I grinned like a little kid going to a theme park for the first time. Orders of food floated above our heads, going from the kitchen in the back out to the tables. Dirty plates passed them on the return trip. The dining halls at the Citadel used teleportation rings in the tables. This was definitely more entertaining. Instrumental music played, but I couldn’t identify any of the instruments. Most the tables were full of chattering patrons, and no one so much as glanced at us as we made our way to our seats.
A crystal ball the size of a large grapefruit rested on one end of the table. As soon as we sat, a woman’s face appeared in it, her curly orange hair held back from her face with a scarf. Her purple eyes looked tired but happy. “Welcome to the Flightless Café, home of the Concordia yellow brew, the drink that’ll make all your troubles go away and give you a kick in the ass that won’t let you sleep ’til tomorrow. My name’s Greta. What can I get for you?”
“This is our first time here, so we don’t really know what you have,” I said.
“No problem, plenty of time to look over the menu.” Two scrolls sitting next to the crystal unfurled in front of us. “Let’s start out with some drinks.”
“What would you recommend?” This place was getting cooler by the second.
“Well, that depends on what you’re wanting. We have quite a few different brews on tap. We have a little something if you want to get amorous later. If you need help lowering your inhibitions, we can help you with that as well. Or if you need to stay sharp and alert, we can handle that too.”
“Something to keep me sharp would be great.”
“Then the firestarter it is. What can I get for you, sir?” Greta looked at Alex.
“I’ll just have a water, thanks.”
Greta pouted. “Way to be a downer. I’ll get the drinks right out to you. As soon as you’re ready to order or if you need anything, just rub the crystal.” She smiled, and her face disappeared.
My grin about split my face. This was the coolest thing ever. “You hear that? If we need anything, just rub the crystal. Can you believe this place?”
“It’s charming.” Alex bristled. This was about as far as you could get from the solitude he was used to on Earth.
“I know it’s not really your kind of place, but thanks for coming here with me.”
Alex relaxed and his eyes warmed. “It’s worth it to see you smile.”
When he said things like that to me, it always felt like it meant more than it would coming from anyone else. “Can you imagine if Nicole saw this place? She would freak.”
“She’ll be able to see some of it through the orb.”
“Good point. Let’s order, and then we’ll give them a call.”
A minute later, our drinks arrived. My firestarter was served in a tall glass. The bubbly red liquid matched the name. I took a sip, and the fruitiness surprised me. I had expected something like a spicy cinnamon flavor. This was more like a sweet soda. “I wonder why they call it a firestarter?”
“Wait for it,” Alex said with a knowing smile. My entire body warmed and my pulse sped up. Everything around me came into sharp focus, and my mind had an abnormal clarity. “Whoa. This is intense.”
“Yeah, it’ll keep you pretty wired for a bit. You have to be careful with them. More than one and you’re looking at having some problems.”
It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that sustained levels of this couldn’t be healthy. But if I took this back to Earth, I could make a fortune selling it to college students cramming for tests.
“What are you going to order?” Alex asked.
He would, of course, get a steak of some sort. I glanced over the menu and settled on winged beastie pastries. It sounded kind of like chicken dumplings, but Alex assured me that they wouldn’t taste like chicken. He reached for the crystal, but I batted his hand away.
“Ooh, let me.” I rubbed the top of the crystal, and our server’s head appeared again. It was ridiculous for this to make me so excited, but it was like eating at a novelty restaurant.
“What can I get you?” Greta asked.
We placed our orders and Greta assured us it would be just a few minutes. Once her face disappeared, I fished the communication orb from my pocket. Deciding that I couldn’t be too cautious, I went ahead and placed a shield around us, preventing anyone from listening in to our conversation. It would let our food pass through but no sound. I also calibrated it to dull the noise around us.
Millhook answered the orb, but Nicole quickly shoved her way in front of him. “Ooh, where are you guys?”
“We’re getting something to eat.” I moved the orb so that she could get a better view of the café.
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
“Yeah, it is. I’ve actually never eaten at a café in Elustria, so we decided to make it a first.”
“Ooh, is that a firestarter?” Millhook asked with longing in his eyes.
“Yep. We only have a few minutes until our food arrives. We didn’t have much luck here. Penelope couldn’t tell us what the potion does. There are too many variables. She wants us to get some golden monkey hairs for her to test.”
“That sucks,” Nicole said. “But we had a bit more success on our end than you did.”
“Yes, Nicole successfully used the interwebs to find the information we need.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think I found the location of the key to Meglana’s knowledge. It’s a place called Borgtinderne in Greenland.” Nicole stumbled with the pronunciation. “It turns out the name means ‘castle pinnacles.’ It’s the only place on Earth I could find that has any correlation with the clue. Also, it’s basically an icy wasteland, so it fits with the melting part of the riddle.”
“Great work. We should go check it out before doing anything else. We might be able to bypass the potion altogether.” It was a long shot given the text of the clue, but if there was any way to solve this without having to make the potion, we had to try. “Alex and I will finish up here, and then we can meet outside of town, Millhook.”
Two plates of food floated above our heads and then lowered in front of us until they were about an inch above the table. The spell holding them aloft broke, and they fell the last little distance.
“Ooh, are those winged beastie pastries?” Millhook asked while licking his lips.
“Yep. They smell divine.”
Inside the orb, Nicole’s mouth was open in amazement. “Your food flies to you? I wish I had been the daughter of an evil mage.”
“I wish you could be here too, Nicole.”
“You know,” Millhook said, “I’m not getting paid for any of this work. So an extra order of winged beastie pastries wouldn’t go amiss. We can bring them through the portal, you know.” Nicole elbowed him. “Make that two orders.”
I laughed. “Sure. It’s the least we can do, especially since, technically, you’re
the one paying for this, Millhook.”
“Oh, right.” He’d given us some Elustrian money before we left Earth in case we needed anything. When Millhook had handed the sack of coins to me, its lightness shocked me. As he explained, money purses are often charmed to make them feel lighter than they actually are, answering my age-old question of how people in fantasy cultures carried around so many coins.
“We’ll see you in a few. We’ll meet at the same place we ported in at.” The smell of the food was driving me crazy, and I wanted to dig in.
Millhook nodded. “Roger that. Ten four. Millhook out.”
Alex was already halfway done with his steak. “You better get started on your food. I’ll put in the two extra orders.”
One bite into a winged beastie pastry and I could understand Millhook’s excitement. They were wonderful. If only my family would stop trying to destroy the world for five minutes, it’d be great to explore more of Elustrian cuisine.
Thirteen
Snow whipped across my face. I pulled up the scarf that covered my mouth and nose, scant protection from the storm. So far, everything I’d seen of Greenland had been pure white.
“How much farther?” I yelled to Millhook.
“It’s just ahead.” Millhook had scouted out the area before us. Borgtinderne meant castle pinnacle, but that didn’t give us an exact location. Millhook had narrowed it down, and we’d all agreed to port a little ways away and approach the place together to avoid porting into a dangerous situation. Hiking our way up the mountain, I regretted turning down Alex’s offer of a ride. The rest of us had to buy snow gear to bundle up, but he had simply shifted into his panther form, insisting that he’d be warm enough. It wouldn’t have been fair for me to ride and leave Nicole walking, and it wouldn’t be fair for Alex to take both of us on his back. So instead, I had to learn to live with the blisters forming on my feet. The one upside was that I got to admire him this way. His black fur made a striking image against untouched snow. Once the storm had started, snow dusted his fur, making him an interesting gray color.
The storm made it slow going, but we didn’t have much choice. We had to beat Marguerite to the next clue.
“Are you doing okay?” I reached out and touched Nicole’s shoulder.
“Me? Yeah, I’m fine. Just out for a stroll,” Nicole said through chattering teeth. Once we were done, I could use my magic to warm us, but we’d all agreed that the safer, smarter move was to not use magic until we knew what we were dealing with. If we ran into Marguerite or a fight started, I would need all my magical energy, and I didn’t want to alert any nearby magical creatures to our presence any sooner than we had to.
Millhook lead us to the base of a cliff that was covered in snow and stopped.
“Well, this is it.” He gestured with his arm as if this were a big reveal.
“Are you sure?” I asked. This didn’t seem like the hiding place for a magical clue. It didn’t seem like much of anything at all.
“Of course I am. Go ahead and reach out with your magic. You’ll feel it.”
Tentatively, I searched the area. As soon as I focused and blocked out the snowstorm, I sensed it: a low hum of magic. “It’s almost like it’s coming from within the mountain. Is that right?”
“I think so. I didn’t get this close to it when I was scouting. I figured if we just kept walking this way, we’d run into whatever it is. But I’m betting it’s behind this wall.”
Alex approached the wall of ice and snow and touched it first with his paw and then with his nose. He licked the snow from his nose, presumably tasting for anything unusual. He backed up until he stood next to me and shook his head. What on earth did my mother intend for us to do?
The clue had said, “Dragons melt castle pinnacles.” In my mother’s house in Elustria, I had found a clue hidden behind a rock in a pool of water in her office. What if this was something similar? There could be a cave or compartment of some kind in the cliff that was frozen over. Inside, I felt sure we would find her clue. We didn’t have any dragons, but I could work fire well enough.
“Stand back.” I gestured for Nicole and Millhook to move. I didn’t want the heat to hurt them, and there was no telling what would happen once I melted the snow.
I raised my hand out in front of me, but before I could conjure the fire, Nicole grabbed my arm. “Wait, what are you doing? If you melt it, it could start an avalanche.”
She had a point. I should’ve thought of that. Glancing up, it looked like the snow rested on the top of a rocky cliff. “I think we’ll be fine. I’m guessing there’s a cave here that’s frozen over. This cliff face should be rock. I won’t be able to melt through that, so it should keep supporting the snow above. Just in case, Millhook, be ready to port us out. Everyone keep touching so we can make a quick getaway.” We all huddled together, forming a chain.
With snow still falling, and the freezing air around us, any fire I made would quickly cool. That meant I’d have to start out hotter than I ever had before. Building up energy into my hand, I waited until I knew I could produce the intense stream of fire I would need. When it became too much of a struggle to contain the fire, I pushed out my hand, and as the fire hit the wall of the cliff, water rained down as if the mountain itself were crying.
After only a second or two, Marguerite’s face appeared, illuminating the area of the cliff I was melting.
“Ah, you think you’re so clever, don’t you?” Marguerite’s face sneered.
Nicole jumped beside me. “Holy shit!”
“Don’t worry, it’s not real,” I said. “It’s just a recording.” I felt Nicole fidgeting behind me, but I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off of Marguerite. I needed all the information I could get in this little recording she’d left us.
“You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that, a quality that’s been passed down through our family. But you also inherited other traits. You’re stupid and confident, like your mother. Did you really think you’d get the clue by yourself? I’ve tolerated you up until now because you’re family, but if you insist on interfering, I’m afraid I’ll have to get quite nasty. For too long I stood first in my mother’s shadow and then Meglana’s, watching them run around in circles with their research, but not anymore. The time for waiting is over, and I won’t have you ruining that for me. Since it appears you’re as dense as your mother, I expect that you’re not listening to any of this, so heed me now. This trap I’ve set has triggered a fun little curse that I’ve put on Mikael. I don’t know why, but it seems you care when your actions hurt others more than when they hurt you. So know this: he’s just been cursed. Quite frankly, I doubt he’ll ever be the same. If you continue following me, the next curse you trip will be worse.”
Marguerite’s face disappeared, and in its place I saw Mikael, his usual affable demeanor twisted into an ugly grimace of pain. Then I saw it: his right hand—his wand hand—twisted and deformed, completely black, as if it had been charred. In his eyes, I saw more than pain, more than horror; I saw despair. It traveled right through me down to my gut, twisting it until it took all my self-control not to puke all over the place.
The image disappeared. Before us stood the cliff wall, the portion I had melted already frozen again.
Alex roared. I blinked, and we were back in the hotel room in Hawaii.
Fourteen
In the hotel room, I collapsed on the bed, shocked by what I’d just witnessed.
“Thought it best we get out of there. Never know if she was on her way,” Millhook said.
Alex sat beside me and placed his arm around my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
No, I wasn’t okay. All I could see was that mangled hand and that look of despair. I had known him. He’d been kind to me. He’d taught me and taken me under his wing. I couldn’t hold Casper’s actions against him, especially since I didn’t know the role Mikael had played. When my parents died, I immersed myself in a fantasy world, lost myself to magic played out through pixels on a screen.
It wasn’t much different than what Mikael had done except that he had done it for real. Even if he had been my enemy, he didn’t deserve that. No one did. And I had caused it. But what good would saying any of that do? Would it make it better? Would it fix Mikael’s hand? No. I didn’t have time for a breakdown. I didn’t have time to unload all the feelings swirling inside me onto Alex and have him make it better, if he even could. So instead, I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
I forced myself to bring my vision back to the present, and I looked into Alex’s eyes. We both knew I was lying, but thankfully, he understood. “Okay then.”
I turned to see how Nicole was. She had never seen anything like that. Instead of shock or surprise, I found her looking at her cell phone. “Nicole, are you all right?”
She looked up from her phone, and anger blazed from her eyes. “I can’t believe that was real. We have to stop her. There has to be some way for us to find her. I mean, Millhook, you said she might be on her way. Why don’t we go back and fight her?”
“You saw what she did to Mikael,” I said. “We can’t fight her head-on. She’d have the advantage over us there. I don’t doubt she had some other nasty surprises planned for us had we stayed.”
Nicole looked back at her phone. “I recorded the whole thing. There might be something here that can help.”
That must’ve been the fidgeting I’d felt her doing behind me. I moved so I could look over her shoulder and see the footage. There it was, Marguerite’s face sneering at me all over again. “Why don’t you bring it up on your computer?”
Nicole went to the desk and waited for her phone to finish uploading the video to the cloud. “She can’t get away with this.”
“That’s been the plan, Nicole. There’s more at stake here than just Mikael. There’s an entire world at risk if she’s not stopped.”
[The Elustria Chronicles: Magic Born 04.0] Magic Hunted Page 7
