by Rena Barron
“Oh, baby girl,” Papa said, kneeling in front of me. He took my hands into his own and squeezed. His eyes twinkled with pride. “You’re already doing such a wonderful job.”
“Go home and rest, little brother.” Obatala waved a hand, and the air shifted around him. Papa climbed to his feet. “Let your daughter continue to help with the veil. Tell the council what has happened. If they agree to go into the Dark before the other celestials arrive, I will stand with them.”
I cocked an eyebrow, wondering why he couldn’t make them agree to go now. He was the oldest of the orishas and the most powerful. He shouldn’t have to wait for them to make a decision, especially after what happened last time. They’d decided against going into the Dark to save Papa. They were too afraid of the Lord of Shadows. The cranky twins said that the councils called the shots on earth, but they’d listen to Obatala. Wouldn’t they?
“You can take this path back home,” Obatala said. His magic felt heavy in the air again. It made it harder to breathe. The room started to shake, and I almost lost my footing.
“Azur is tethered to earth’s atmosphere,” Obatala explained. “When there is a significant tear in the veil, we can feel it here. Eventually, if the veil falls, the Lord of Shadows will come for us too.”
My cheeks warmed at the news. I’d thought the Azurians were safe from the Lord of Shadows and his darkbringers for now. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions without having all the facts. It won’t fall if I have anything to do with it.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful, Elegguá,” Obatala said as he clasped a hand on my father’s shoulder. “Talk to the council and convince them to strike now.”
Papa shook his head. “It’s best if we wait until the others have arrived. We stand a better chance that way.”
“I will, of course, respect their wishes,” Obatala said.
“Let’s go home,” Papa said, gesturing to Eli, Frankie, and me.
We’d gotten the answer we came for, but it wasn’t the answer we wanted to hear. It wasn’t an answer that I could stand by and accept. I had to do something. I wasn’t going to let the veil fail or let Papa die.
We stepped into a gateway of spinning god symbols. Like before, when I entered the crossroads of the gods’ realm, I got the sense of endless doors to endless worlds. The Lord of Shadows could destroy them one by one. The fact that he’d stolen my father’s soul made my skin burn with anger.
“A word, young guardian,” Obatala said, appearing as shifting white smoke in the gateway. Papa and the others were up ahead and didn’t seem to notice him. “You’re planning to steal back your father’s soul with or without the council’s blessing, yes?”
I nodded without putting a voice to my answer. He sure was good at guessing for a god who claimed that he couldn’t see the future. “Keep in mind that their magic binds everyone who swears an oath to the council. You cannot go against their wishes, even if you want to. Do you understand what I’m saying?” His ice-white eyes, the only solid thing about him, narrowed. The rest of him was white smoke spiraling in circles.
“Yes, I think so,” I whispered back. When Papa was missing, no one went against the council to try to rescue him—maybe they couldn’t. The cranky twins had been sworn to protect our family, and even they hadn’t dared to defy the council.
“Keep that in mind when dealing with the council in the future,” he said before his smoke began to melt away.
I squinted at the fading smoke until it was gone, and I jogged to catch up with Papa and my friends. Obatala had given me a valuable piece of advice, and I wouldn’t forget what it meant.
The gateway put us smack in front of our house. Papa stared into the living room window, where we could see Mama pacing back and forth on the phone.
“Time for school.” Papa inhaled a shaky breath, and something rattled in his chest. It was an emptiness that wasn’t there before. “Be careful, Maya, and don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
“Wait a minute,” Eli said, checking his phone. “Wait a dang minute.”
“It’s still morning here,” Frankie said as two kids ran past us with their backpacks bouncing up and down.
“We’ve only been gone for five minutes,” Eli confirmed. “Unbelievable.”
“Time works a little differently on Azur,” Papa said, shrugging. “Can’t have you kids missing school.”
When we were a block away from Jackson Middle, Eli looked to Frankie, who gave him a single nod. “Just so you know, Maya,” he blurted out. “We’re coming with you to rescue your father’s soul.”
I glanced between my friends, happy that they had my back. They hadn’t even bothered talking it over. “It’s going to be dangerous.”
“It was dangerous the first time,” Frankie remarked like that was old news. “Now we’re stronger, and we know what we’re up against.”
I told them what Obatala said about the orisha council. How if we pledged our loyalty to them, we couldn’t go against their orders.
“Then we don’t pledge,” Eli said. “I get the feeling that they like to play by the rules, but we don’t have to.”
I pushed down a nervous grin as we bumped fists. I couldn’t do this without them. “We’re not the League of Godlings for nothing.”
Eli winked at me. “The name is catching on.”
I got that tingling feeling across my forearms again like a thousand ants marching on my skin. I had almost forgotten about the tear in the veil that had shaken the clouds in Azur. “Ugh, duty calls,” I said. No way was I letting Papa take any unnecessary risks. “I have to go fix a tear in the veil. I’ll be back before first period.”
“We’re coming with you,” Frankie said. “Can’t let you do this alone.”
We stepped into an alley, and I drew the staff in a circle. Sparks crackled in the air, and a black hole rearranged garbage cans to make space for my gateway. “Let’s get in and get out fast.”
NINE
Rules are meant to be broken
After repairing the veil in California, I opened a gateway two blocks from school. We popped out behind the broken-down van in the vacant lot between two old buildings. The gateway closed within moments. At least I had gotten better at that over this summer. The trick was to start collapsing the other side as soon as we’d passed through it. I only wished that I could close a tear in the veil that fast. My staff shrank into a silver ring covered in god symbols, and I slipped it on my finger.
“Do you know what the staff will become before it changes?” Frankie asked.
“Not really.” I shrugged. “It’s a bit like the ice cream on Azur. I let my magic shape it.”
“That’s cool,” Eli said, as we crossed the lot. “Check this out.” He held up his hand in front of his face. His fingers shimmered until his whole arm disappeared. “I’ve mastered making only parts of me invisible.”
Frankie laughed. “Who knows when we’ll need a disembodied body part to scare away our enemies.”
The smile faded from Eli’s face, and his arm turned solid again. “Not all of us can open doors into other dimensions or make force fields. It doesn’t mean my powers aren’t important.”
Frankie nudged his shoulder. “I was joking.”
“Sure,” Eli groaned.
“You saved our butts twice in the Dark,” I said to make him feel better. “If you hadn’t stopped that helicopter—” I remembered the way the darkbringer helicopter, shaped like a giant bug, had burst into flames.
Eli’s face had gone ghastly pale. “You think I wanted to bring that bugacopter down?” He glanced away. “I’m pretty sure the pilot didn’t survive the fire.”
“Sorry, I know . . . That’s not what I meant.” I swallowed hard, lost for words. We had to fight a lot of darkbringers to rescue my father, but the crash had been devastating. Papa said that sometimes we had to do things we weren’t proud of. And even though I knew we had to stop the pilot to save ourselves, I still felt some kind of way over what happen
ed. “Have you talked to Nana about it?”
Eli cleared his throat, making it a point to be extra loud. “So, anyway, when are we going to save your father’s soul so we can keep the veil from falling?” His eyes were shiny like wet marbles as he forced back tears. I wished that he would talk to Nana, but I understood why he wasn’t ready. “I have to keep my little sister safe.”
“We go today during gym,” I said, biting my lip. “I don’t want to wait.”
Frankie gasped. “Without supplies? That’s a terrible idea.”
“We’ll grab some stuff from the corner store,” I said. “I have an emergency credit card.”
Eli winked at me. “Commence Operation Go Dark.”
“Excuse me?” I frowned as we detoured from our route to make a stop at the store.
“Operation Go Dark,” he repeated as if it made more sense the second time. “That’s going to be our code for getting into the Dark.”
All through the walk to the store and on the way to school, Eli talked about the code names the Davis brothers used on Ghost Sightings, so I zoned out.
When we got to Jackson Middle, the street was busy with kids. Ogun, the god of war, was back in his usual disguise as our school crossing guard, Zane. He stood nearly seven feet tall, with a clean-shaven head and a neatly-trimmed goatee. He wore all green and combat boots. Even his dog, General, looked like a normal bloodhound, which meant that he was still twice my size.
“Oh, if it isn’t Maya and her band of fools.” Winston elbowed me in the side on the steps outside of the main building. “You’re lucky that old lady saved you at the park.”
Blood rushed to my head, and I leaped at him, but a hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Get to homeroom, Miss Abeola,” Principal Ollie said, then they lowered their voice. “You need to set an example for the new godlings.”
“He started it,” I said, but Winston had slipped back into the crowd.
A couple of kids pushing each other caught Principal Ollie’s attention. “I see you two are itching for a week of detention.”
“Remember the plan,” I told Frankie and Eli as the first bell rang.
I jetted off to my class down the hall and ran straight into a girl juggling a stack of books. She stumbled forward and tripped over her own feet. I tried to help her, but an identical girl stepped up and caught her arm. Twins. They had to be transfer students, since I’d never seen them before. “Sorry,” I said as one of the twins glared at me. The girls were tall, with golden eyes and brown skin. They both wore their hair in braids pulled back into a ponytail.
“Nice move, Abeola,” Gail Galanis said, flashing a temporary tattoo of a bear that covered her forearm. It would be my luck to have several classes with her.
“I see you’re breaking dress code,” I said, staring at her tattoo.
“Rules are meant to be broken,” she said in a singsong voice.
Gail was trying too hard to act cool, and it showed. I was not looking forward to spending the whole year in after-school tutoring with her.
Aside from the incident with the twins, first and second periods flew by fast. I hurried back into the hall at the bell to catch up with Frankie and Eli. People leaned against lockers and chatted with their friends. Most of the new incoming sixth graders looked lost and confused. I was pushing my way through the crowd when I noticed several things at once. Eve Greyson, one of the popular kids, was crying next to the water fountain. “They grew on her face in first period,” someone exclaimed. When I looked closer, I saw the problem. Eve had red, blistering pimples all over her cheeks and forehead.
Farther down the hallway, a boy I’d seen only a few days ago at the park stood two feet taller. Some mean kids were calling him the Green Giant. His arms and legs had ripped his clothes. Another girl was floating a few inches above the floor, screaming for someone to help her. The whole hallway was in an uproar. The teachers—the ones who weren’t in shock—tried to get things under control.
Tisha Thomas stepped in my path. “What is the Dark?” She hadn’t talked to me since last year, when she made fun of my stories about Papa. Now her eyes were glowing and glazed over as she stared at me. “What’s the Dark?” she asked again, her voice like a robot. “You keep thinking about it.”
I gasped, recognizing what was happening. More godlings were coming into their powers. A lot more. This was very bad.
“What are godlings?” Tisha asked as I pushed past her. I had to find Eli and Frankie.
I took off my ring, channeling my magic to reach out to my friends. Heat shot down my fingers, and static crackled in my ears.
“Hello?” Eli answered, his voice faded and distant.
“It’s me,” I said.
“How are you calling my phone?” he asked. “Instead of a number, I got a weird symbol.”
“I can hear both of you through my earbuds,” Frankie chimed in.
Instead of answering, I said, “This is our chance. Meet me in the Time Out room. This early in the day, it should still be empty.”
“On it,” they said.
A cloud of blue magic weaved through the hallway, and people screamed and started to panic even more. I pushed and shoved my way through the crowd until I reached the south stairs. I took them two at a time to the second floor. I was half out of breath when I entered the Time Out room.
Instead of regular time out, the school had replaced all the desks with yoga mats and medicine balls. Kids could try breathing exercises instead of going to detention. Eli and Frankie stood in the middle of the room, facing down one of the twins from earlier.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, annoyed.
The twin crossed her arms. “I could ask you three the same, but I already know the answer.”
As soon as I heard her husky voice, I cringed in horror. To everyone else’s ears, she might have sounded like a normal twelve-year-old. But I knew that bossy tone.
“Miss Ida?” I shouted, my heart thundering against my chest.
“Yes, Maya,” she shot back, turning her glare on me. “The council asked us to keep an eye on you at school.”
“So, you turned yourselves into seventh graders?” Eli asked, quirking an eyebrow. “That’s just wrong on so many levels.”
“Ugh, that wasn’t my idea!” she said, stomping her feet.
This was going to be much harder than I thought with the cranky twins at school now. “You’re wasting your time, because we’re here for meditation.” I gestured at the yoga mats.
“Then I’ll join you,” Miss Ida said. It was weird looking at a girl my age and calling her Miss anything.
“Never mind,” I groaned, turning to leave as Frankie and Eli sidestepped her. “I don’t feel like meditating anymore.”
“Do you want some advice, Maya?” Miss Ida said.
“No, thank you.” I rolled my eyes, although I didn’t let her see me. Even if she looked like a kid right now, I still would get in trouble for back-talking my elders.
“Remember when my sister said that a godling let the Lord of Shadows into the human world the last time?” she said, ignoring me. “That godling used to disobey her parents too. She didn’t follow the rules, and she thought she knew better than the adults around her. It got her killed.”
I stopped cold and spun around. Miss Lucille had said that a godling opened a gateway into the Dark. That was how the Lord of Shadows attacked the human world. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. How did I let that bit of information slide without questioning her further? A godling would need a key to open a gateway or would have to be a guardian in training.
“What are you saying?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.
“Your half sister Eleni opened the gateway and freed the Lord of Shadows,” Miss Ida answered. Her every word was a knife with a sharp edge that cut deep. “It was an accident that got her, and so many others, killed. Don’t make the same mistake.”
TEN
The orisha council calls for a vote
&
nbsp; For the second day in a row, I skipped after-school tutoring with Ms. Vanderbilt. I had one thing on my mind: the orisha council. My stomach balled up in a knot as I worried about how Mama had taken the news. If I knew Papa, he went straight to the council after talking to her—and I bet she’d gone with him. They should have taken me, too. It was time for everyone to start treating me like a guardian in training. How could I help protect our world from the Dark, when nobody trusted me to take risks and make hard decisions?
People swarmed the community center, enjoying the last days of summer. They crowded on the basketball courts and the playground. Kids lined up to check in for the pool, and a group of adults headed for the main hall, where Nana hosted bingo night.
Standing in the black-and-white-checkered lobby, I remembered the last time I was here. Papa was missing. Now things were much worse. The sense of uncertainty I had before was gone. I knew who I was up against this time, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared.
Carla, the godling receptionist, popped her head up from the video playing on her phone. She looked sixteen but was older than the cranky Johnston twins at two thousand and seventy-three. “I take it that you’re not here for the pool party.”
“We’re here to see the council,” I said, looking around to make sure that no one could overhear our conversation. The orisha council’s headquarters was top secret. Only a third of the parents and children in our neighborhood were godlings—and most of them didn’t know it. I still didn’t agree that the gods should hide who they were from their human families. Well, scratch that. Many of them were about to find out after today’s disaster at school.
Carla flipped through sheets of paper on a clipboard, scanning line by line. “I don’t see your names on the guest list.”
“Um, we must’ve been left off by accident,” I said.
She glanced at her vibrating phone. “I’m not supposed to let kids up there without an adult accompanying them.” She picked up the phone and frowned. “Ewww, who is this little twit commenting on all my old Instagram posts?”
