“Fine,” I shouted. “You win.”
“Finally. Jesus. You’re a huge pain in the ass, you know that?”
Tara and Emily suddenly released me and stepped back, though they were still glaring. They watched every step I took as I moved around them toward Destiny. She stood just a few feet away, trying to untangle leaves and twigs from her auburn hair. She rolled her eyes when she saw my slow approach and gestured for me to hurry up.
Alright. She could have it her way.
I rushed closer, barely giving her a chance to register what was happening before I was raising both hands and calling on as much poison as I could muster. A surge of black mist poured from my palms, quickly overwhelming her. She fell to her knees, gasping and choking and shuddering. Behind me, the giant wolf creature was recovering without my steady torrent of poison there to keep it at bay. We had to move fast.
“Guys!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Start running!”
Thankfully, neither of them argued, and Emily and Tara disappeared into the cover of the trees. I turned to follow, but hesitated — Destiny was still on her knees, struggling for breath, and I knew if I left her as-is she would soon recover and start chasing us again.
So instead of running I moved closer. Destiny’s eyes were streaming tears as she stared up at me, gasping; the dim light of the moon gleamed off the wet tracks, turning them silver-blue, and simultaneously drawing my attention to the darker glint of something pinned to her shirt.
A snarl and sudden movement to my left. I swung around, turning my poison on the wolf-creature just before it leapt at me. I could feel my magic wavering but, thankfully, it was still enough to keep the beast at bay. With one hand still raised toward the wolf, I knelt by Destiny, tearing the shiny object free from her shirt.
“No!” she croaked, voice wrecked from inhaling so much of my poison. “No, you can’t — I need—”
“So this has your stone?”
Her mouth clamped shut, eyes wide.
“I know you’re with Arman. Who else is?” I thought better of that question. “Do you know the person who can control trees?”
Her gaze darted from my face to the hand still sputtering black mist at the wolf, then back again. In a voice so low and rough I could barely hear it, she said. “Eden.”
“Thank you. Now you and your wolf are gonna stay here — you’re not gonna follow me or my friends anymore. Understood?”
She nodded, whole body trembling.
After snatching the backpack tucked inside the lean-to, I hurried after Tara and Emily. I wasn’t sure how long we ran through the woods in the dark, or how far we went, or whether Destiny had tried to follow. I just knew that we didn’t see her again, and that was all that really mattered for the moment.
Chapter Fourteen
None of us slept particularly well that night. A mixture of pain from our various injuries and paranoia about when we’d get ambushed again made it hard to feel restful. Getting up early the next morning was something of a relief, but also that much more of a headache. I definitely wasn’t the only one feeling the weight of exhaustion now.
“She’s right on track,” Tara said wearily when she came out of her morning scry. She looked unnaturally pale for her normally dark complexion, which was only emphasized by the small scratches and cuts that last night’s scuffle had left on her face. “We should be good to start moving in toward the city soon.”
We were sitting in a circle on the ground, Emily with her back against a birch tree, eyes shut in a stubborn attempt to claim at least a few more seconds of sleep. Her arm was tied up in its dirty, ratty sweater-turned-sling. She insisted it was still in place after last night’s fight, but wouldn’t let Tara or me check it. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal — that even if she had reinjured herself, we would be back with Farida soon enough and she could fix Emily right up. I was trying not to imagine any alternative outcomes for today’s excursion.
“Do we have time to talk first?” I asked.
Tara blinked at me, appearing startled and confused. “Um. Sure?”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Emily open her eyes to study me curiously. No doubt she was hoping I would throw all the blame for last night’s encounter on Tara. Well, she was in for some disappointment.
“You said Patrick was dead,” I started softly. Tara winced a little, gaze dropping to the ground. “But that was his creature attacking us. Right?”
She nodded slightly. “Yeah. That was his Warg.”
“So you lied to us,” Emily said, shifting against her tree to sit up a little straighter, gaze sharpening to a glare. “He’s still alive.”
“He’s not — I’m telling you, I watched Arman kill him. I — I don’t understand what his Warg was doing there.”
“Destiny must be using his stone, too.”
Tara shook her head. “Arman didn’t let any of us have more than one stone. I think it was a kind of safety precaution — he didn’t want anyone getting too strong or thinking they could overpower him or something. Not that anyone would stand a chance against him. Besides, Arman took that stone for himself.”
All too suddenly, my memory flew back to the first and only time I had ever seen Arman. The burn scar across his chest from Masika, the way the earth crumbled and shifted at his slightest command, how he had stridden out of columns of fire unscathed. A shiver of fear ran up my spine as I realized I was going to have to face that again someday.
Masika was dead because of him. Now he wanted to reopen the rifts she and the Ivory Circle had worked so hard to close. And, somehow, we had to find a way to stop him.
“Are you absolutely positive?” I asked, pulling my mind back to the matter at hand. “How else would she have had the Warg with her? Or do you think there was someone else with her?”
“She didn’t have Patrick’s brooch, but—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa — Patrick had a brooch?” I tried to picture Patrick — muscle-bound, raging, mostly wordless Patrick — with a stone-encrusted brooch pinned to his shirt. It was not an image I could manage with any degree of seriousness. Honestly, I couldn’t even see him wearing a necklace.
“Yeah. He thought it was too girly, though, so he always kept it in his pocket.”
Ah, now that fit my (admittedly limited) understanding of his personality. It also fit what Destiny had been carrying on her.
I pulled out the pin that I had tucked into the backpack after ditching Destiny that night and showed it to Tara. “Did it look like this?”
She frowned as she studied it, then shook her head. “No. It was a different design, and the stone was a completely different colour. Vibrant green — almost yellow. Not blue.”
“So who else was with her, then?” Emily asked. She looked like she wanted to cross her arms, but instead grabbed a thick branch that had fallen off her birch tree and started aggressively peeling the paper-y white bark from it.
“I don’t know. I mean, I thought it was weird that she was travelling alone, but we’ve never seen anyone else with her. Same with that person at the waterfall.”
“Eden.”
Tara cocked her head. “Pardon?”
“After I took this”—I held up the brooch again—“I asked her about the other person following us. She said their name is Eden.”
“That sounds… vaguely familiar. I can try scrying later to see if it’s correct.”
“Okay,” Emily said with a sigh, “that’s helpful, I guess. Did you ask how any of these people have been following us.”
“Oh. Uh… No. I didn’t think of that.” My cheeks reddened. Stupid. I shouldn’t have been in such a rush to get out of there. It wasn’t like she could have done anything against me once I had her stone. But, well, I guess there had been that problem of the wolf…
“I also don’t know why the… Warg?” At Tara’s confirming nod, I continued, “It wasn’t disappearing when I poisoned it, and I put a lot into it. That’s really weird.”
Tara sighed, pushing
some greasy black hair out of her face. “I’m sorry. I wish I knew more about what’s going on, but I — I just don’t.”
“Sure,” Emily said skeptically. She was skewering Tara with her gaze while she tore the bark from the branch.
“Well,” I said, after a pause, trying to break some of the tension, “thanks, anyway. Last night would have gotten a lot uglier if we didn’t have your help.”
Her cheeks reddened and she couldn’t meet my eyes. “I hurt you more than I hurt her.”
“That wasn’t you’re fault, though.” I absent-mindedly rubbed at the spot where she had scratched me. There were deep cuts in my forearm, deeper than I would have expected from fingernails, and it had taken an unusually long time to clot. The cuts still burned like crazy.
Now her flustered expression shifted into what I could only call a cringe. “Yeah, everyone gets all the awesome magic like fire and earthquakes and controlling trees. I’m stuck with venom.”
“Venom?” Emily repeated, eyebrow lifting dubiously.
“Yeah. Like Dracaena’s stinger. I’ve never used it much, so I’m not sure what all it does to a person.” She offered a shrug, clearly embarrassed. She looked like she wanted to be talking about literally anything else.
“That’s… comforting,” I said awkwardly. Then, because I sensed Emily was about to jump on the opportunity to verbally tear Tara a new one over hurting me, I started to get to my feet. Gesturing for them to follow suit, I said, “Come on. We better get going.”
Chapter Fifteen
Walking into Fredericton was strange.
I hadn’t walked through the uptown area much because I’d only lived in the city for a couple weeks before my life turned upside down. Besides, uptown was uptown and rested at the top of a very large hill, while my apartment was closer to downtown; the few times I had gone to the mall or uptown center, I’d always taken buses. So even though I was walking into a city I technically knew and dreaded revisiting, I still felt like I was walking into completely foreign territory as we navigated our way along the sidewalks.
It was just past noon and traffic was busy with people on lunch breaks. We made our way down the steep, steep hill that divided uptown from downtown, the sun high in the sky but hidden behind clouds, filling the air with the chill of early October. Though we were several blocks over and I couldn’t actually see it, I knew we passed my campus. It was like a magnetic pull on me, knowing it was so close by. I wanted to go there, to walk into the buildings like I still belonged and rejoin the classes I’d barely had a chance to start.
But we continued down the hill, my legs and heart aching with every step.
During my brief stint living in the city, I had always thought of the distance between downtown and uptown as enormous, certainly too far to walk. But now, after days of travelling on foot through seemingly endless woods, it felt too short, like we had somehow sidestepped several blocks and cut our travel time in half.
We reached the end of Regent Street, bringing us to the heart of downtown. The block was lined with restaurants, all wafting out delicious scents that made my dormant hunger pangs spike into full force. We needed to turn left at the corner, but I found myself looking right — it was hard not to. There, just few short yards away, was the Friedman Museum.
I hadn’t seen it in person since that first time I’d summoned Ddraig, so I had only ever looked at the damage in photos. They didn’t do it justice. A strange, dusty smell hung in the air, the kind that always pervades any kind of construction site dealing with brick and stone. I couldn’t see the hole very well from my vantage point — it was by one of the back corners of the museum — but even still it was obvious that something huge was missing from the building. Much of the debris had been cleaned off the road, some of the dust washed away by recent rainfall. The street had been reopened to traffic, but the museum was still roped off with police tape. I wondered how long they would keep it shut down for. I wondered how many people were out of work because of me.
I forced myself to look away and keep moving forward, even as my thoughts dragged me backward with dread and regret.
We headed down Queen Street toward the Owl’s Nest. People in suits carried coffees back to work; kids from the nearby schools travelled in large, loud, energetic packs; a few people who looked about university age were lounging on the grass by the art college, smoking and chatting. Despite hanging out by a completely different school, one of them was sporting a hoodie from my university.
My heart leapt, pace accelerating. What if I ran into one of my classmates? I had only attended university for a few weeks, but my classes had been small. Wouldn’t they recognize me? Especially since I had been on the news so much?
I ducked my head, trying to brush some hair in front of my face. I wondered if it would be too conspicuous to pull up the hood of my sweatshirt.
A block away, a clock tower chimed a single, ringing peel of its bell, signalling it was one o’clock. The short, metallic sound was strangely foreboding, like a timer I didn’t know had been set was going off and I was too late for some mystery of importance.
The Owl’s Nest was just up the street. We pressed forward.
I soon saw where the clock tower was: City Hall. A fountain rested in the middle of the square in front of the old government building, whose proud tower overlooked the rest of the downtown core. The hands on the clock were surprisingly understated compared to some other historic buildings. They were pinched close together on twelve and one, like someone measuring out how little time I had, or how little patience was left, or something else little and dwindling and vital.
I felt like I had swallowed my own heart. It was pounding erratically, my palms were sweating, and every breath was too tight, like a giant was sitting on my chest.
As soon as we reached the front door to the Owl’s Nest, I knew something was wrong. Newspapers covered the display windows. When Emily checked the door, it was locked. What little we could see of the inside was dark.
“It’s closed,” I said faintly. “But…”
“Maybe they’re just meeting in front of the store,” Emily said, already stepping down from the little stoop and looking around for a vantage point. I should have been comforted by her comparatively rational thinking, but the vice grip on my chest just got tighter the longer I stared at those papered up windows. “We should find somewhere we can sit and watch. Then, when they show up, we can follow them. How about over there?” She gestured to a café across the street.
“I don’t like the idea of being in a crowded shop,’ Tara said. “It’ll be suspicious if we don’t buy anything and a lot of the businesses here probably have missing person’s posters of Amber. It’s more likely to get us caught than just walking around. Plus, most of them don’t have a good view of the street.”
While she spoke, I moved onto the step leading up to Owl’s Nest’s door and pressed my face to its window, cupping my hands against the dark glass so I could block out the afternoon sun as I peered inside. The space had been cleared out, but it looked like someone was in the early stages of remodeling, maybe to open up a new business there. The silhouette of a ladder loomed in the middle of the main room. Further in along a corridor, a dim patch of light spilled out from another room.
The patch dimmed and reappeared — moving shadows.
“Guys,” I hissed, cutting into the argument that had broken out between Emily and Tara. They abruptly stopped arguing about whether or not it was safe to wait on the benches by City Hall. “Someone’s in there.”
“What? How do you know? Are you sure?” Emily asked, rushing over to try peering into the window too.
Quickly and quietly, I told them what I’d seen.
“Knock,” Tara said.
“I — I dunno if that’s—”
“What’s the worst that happens? If Emily and I knock while you stand aside, they might tell us to go away. Big deal.” Then, before I could second-guess anymore, Tara stepped up, reached past me, and rapped
sharply on the glass.
A shadowed figure moved out into the patch of light. I ducked out of sight from the door, heart hammering as I searched for somewhere to hide. There were no little alleys to duck in. I darted over to the music store next door, tucking into the little alcove framing the entry. Thankfully, I had still had a decent sightline to Tara and Emily through the big glass display windows, and their voices carried to my not-so-great hiding spot.
Who was Farida meeting here? Was the person in there just overseeing the remodeling, or had they reached the rendezvous point early?
The door opened. A round-faced, fair-skinned woman with a blond pixie cut frowned at Tara and Emily in confusion, nudging wire rim glasses up her nose with one hand. “Hello? Er, I’m sorry — this store is closed.”
“We know,” Emily said, falling into her role with ease, as she always managed to in these situations. “We actually just had a question. We’re looking for a woman named Farida.”
Immediate recognition flashed across the woman’s face, but she tried stilling it into a neutral expression. “I-it’s not a name I recognize.”
Tara snorted. “Nice try. You’re an open book.”
The woman rushed to close the door, but Tara was faster, shoving her foot in between the door and the jamb.
“Guys,” I hissed. “Don’t make a scene.”
I wasn’t sure if they didn’t hear me or were choosing to ignore me, but Emily said, “We’re not here for trouble. Farida said to meet her here and you obviously know her. So can we come inside please?”
There was a long pause. I held my breath, waiting for her response, imagining all the possible ways this could go wrong.
“She… she didn’t mention anyone else being involved,” the woman said hesitantly.
“Things are a bit topsy-turvy right now.”
Even from my hiding place, I could see the uncertainty still warring on her face. Then, with a shake of her head, she said, “I’ll have to call her and verify. Wait out—”
Those Who Fall Page 12
