Transcendent
Page 27
Gosforth Academy had seen a quiet, thorough administrative restructuring, with Daria Aristarchos taking up the position as headmistress—guided by a great deal of student council input—and with Roth Starling as acting chair of the school board. Classes had resumed only a few weeks after the city had been declared safe again by the authorities. In the intervening days, Mason had spent most of her time practicing in the university gym, along with Cal and Heather.
The three of them didn’t talk much—they didn’t seem to need to—but Mason knew that Heather had sent her parents a letter telling them she wasn’t ever coming home again and they could send her stuff to storage. She’d collect it after she graduated, maybe. Cal had offered her a room in his mom’s house for when summer came around again, and Mason was glad to see them growing closer. The fact that Heather hadn’t used the golden bolt on him when she could have seemed to have opened Cal’s eyes, Mason thought, and might just have the same end result, if only it took a little longer.
She was happy for her friends. Happy for herself that night.
The melancholy that she wore like a cloak those days had lifted a little.
Still. When she got back to her room and placed the trophy on her shelf, she felt a twist in her heart. It had been more than six months and nothing. Not a word. She knew it was because wherever they’d taken Fennrys, it wasn’t anywhere with cell phone service. But it was hard. Mason sighed and shrugged out of her coat, catching sight of her reflection in the closed, darkened window of her room. She looked like an elegant phantom, with her hair pulled back from her face and the shimmer of the evening gown she wore lending her an ethereal quality. She went to pull the curtains shut . . .
And something hit her windowpane.
Something small . . . like a pebble.
The breath stopped in Mason’s throat. She was imagining things—
Tink.
In an eye blink she had the window thrown wide. She stuck her head outside, gasping at the rush of cold, but she could see nothing. Everything was dark and still . . . and then he stepped out of the shadows under the trees and smiled up at her. That weird, wonderful smile.
And Fennrys said, “Are you ready for our date?”
Mason’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Fennrys . . .
“I know you don’t graduate until next year so it’s not exactly prom, but that dress would still go awfully nice with this orchid.” He held out a little box wrapped with a ribbon.
“Are . . . you wearing a tux?” Mason managed to ask.
“Not good?”
“No! Good!” Her heart was going to burst with joy. “Fantastic! Don’t move . . .”
She ducked back inside and ran out of her room, not bothering with her coat or purse. She just needed to make sure he didn’t disappear. And he didn’t. He was still waiting there when she ran out the door and into his arms.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he whispered into her hair. “I’ve missed you.”
She reached up and pulled his head down and kissed him.
And the whole world and all the months that had passed just . . . fell away.
Behind them, Mason heard the throaty purr of a car engine and turned to see the dark shape of a Bentley pull to the curb. It looked like the one her dad used to own and she held her breath for a moment. But then the driver’s window slid down and Toby Fortier’s grinning face appeared.
“Where to, kids?” he asked as Fennrys opened the door and Mason climbed into the backseat.
“How about a Safe Harbor,” Fennrys said with a laugh.
Toby raised an eyebrow in the rearview mirror. “Got an address for that?”
Fennrys looked down at Mason, nestled against him. “Take us to the High Line,” he said. “And don’t spare the horses.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ah, Ragnarok . . .
Well, I guess, first and foremost, as this series comes to an end, I should acknowledge the fine and fabulous city of New York—a place I’ve been cheerfully trying to destroy since the early days of the Wondrous Strange books. Er, sorry about that, NYC . . . I really do love and treasure your streets and parks and buildings and bridges and, without you, these stories would have been impossible to write. Thanks for every bit of sparkling inspiration you gave me.
Thank you, once again, to Jessica Regel, my agent, who gleefully encouraged me in my quest to unleash mayhem and monsters on her city. And to Tara Hart, likewise enabler of mystical ka-booming. You two, and the fantastic staffs of JVNLA and Foundry Literary + Media, have a lot to answer for. Thankfully!
Thanks, also, to my editor, Karen Chaplin, and all of the industrious, creative (wrecking) crew at HarperCollins: editorial director Rosemary Brosnan; Maggie Herold and Alexei Esikoff, my production editors; and Cara Petrus and Heather Daugherty, my designers. Thanks, also, to Hadley Dyer and everyone at HarperCollins Canada for cheering on the literary destruction.
My mom and my wonderful family, as always, deserve all of the love, gratitude, and epic battles I can give them—and then some. So does my awesome collection of friends.
And I hope he never gets tired of reading this kind of thing, but I really do owe the biggest mythologically apocalyptic ka-boom of all to my partner in (occasionally fictional) crime, John.
As always, endless thank-yous to my wreckage-craving readers! You guys simply are the best.
Ragnarok-n-roll!
BACK AD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by John Rait
LESLEY LIVINGSTON is a writer and actress living in Toronto. She has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in Arthurian literature and Shakespeare. She is the author of Starling and Descendant, the first two books in a darkly romantic trilogy set against the backdrop of Manhattan and Norse mythology. Lesley has also written Wondrous Strange, which won the Canadian Librarian Association Young Adult Book Award in addition to being a White Pine Honor Book, as well as Darklight and Tempestuous. You can visit her online at www.lesleylivingston.com.
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BOOKS BY LESLEY LIVINGSTON
In this series
Starling
Descendant
The Wondrous Strange trilogy
Darklight
Tempestuous
Wondrous Strange
CREDITS
Cover design by Laura Lyn DiSiena
Cover art © 2015 by Michael Frost
Cover photograph of cherry blossoms © 2015 by Vivienne Gucwa/Getty Images
COPYRIGHT
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
TRANSCENDENT: A STARLING NOVEL. Copyright © 2015 by Lesley Livingston. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Livingston, Lesley.
Transcendent: a Starling novel / Lesley Livingston. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “In this epic conclusion to the Starling trilogy, Mason Starling has taken up the Spear of Odin and has begun the series of events that marks the end of the world”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-206313-7
EPub Edition © October 2014 ISBN 9780062063168
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Mythology, Norse—Fiction. 3. End of the world—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L7613Tr 2015
2014022031<
br />
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
* * *
14 15 16 17 18 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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