by Cory Barclay
Steve didn’t know what he was talking about, but he didn’t ask for clarification. Ever since Aiden had buried his best friend alive and killed January Amos, Steve had pretty much stopped trusting the leprechaun.
It’s funny how a fake burial and a murder could tarnish a friendship.
Steve also wasn’t sure how to feel about Aiden being stuck on Terrus. On one hand, he was happy he wouldn’t have to run from the murderous leprechaun on Mythicus. On the other, he feared for his friends still on Terrus.
Aiden smiled and must have realized the same thing. “Though we’re worlds apart, at least we have each other here, on Ethereus . . . right, Steve-o?”
The way he referred to Steve by his nickname made Steve’s skin crawl. With sweat dripping from his face, he decided enough was enough.
Though he was in a completely different world than Aiden, Annabel had warned him about dream-leaping. His spirit could get trapped there forever.
And Steve wasn’t ready to be trapped in this mindfucking world.
His eyes flickered one more time.
Then he dashed toward the empty hallway.
His bare feet thudded as he sped down the hall, though he had no idea where he was going. He took a corner at full speed, looked behind him, and saw that Aiden wasn’t pursuing him.
He turned another corner and came to another gold-covered room.
There was a large chest sitting at the back of the room. It was open and spilling with gold coins similar to the one Steve had been given by Geddon.
Aiden was standing behind the chest.
Steve choked on his own spit and backpedaled, stuttering.
“H-How?”
Aiden frowned. “You’re in my house, Steve-o, in my dream-reality. If I want to follow you, I need only bring it to mind. If I wanted, I could make these hallways lead you through a labyrinth that never ended. I control all the power here.”
“But you brought me to this room for a reason?” Steve asked, his eyes flashing to the gold coins again.
“Perhaps we can help each other . . .”
“Why would I help a murderer—”
A loud thud erupted in Steve’s ears. The back of his head exploded in pain. He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, falling forward.
When he opened his eyes, he was on the ground looking up, sweating bullets. His hand went to the back of his head and he hissed when he felt a dull, throbbing pain.
He was next to the hard cot.
He must have fallen off the cot, which had woken him up.
Falling from his bed had saved his life. That had to be a first.
His right hand was clammy and clenched shut at his chest. He uncurled his fingers.
He still held the gold coin from when he’d fallen asleep.
STEVE WAS GROGGY AND tired next morning. His “dream” had been stressful—Understatement of the year, he thought. He hadn’t gotten any peaceful rest. He felt like he was running on fumes when he made it to the basement kitchen to prepare the Reynolds’ breakfast.
Fueda wouldn’t look at him. She was busy pressing coffee and boiling eggs, and she completely ignored him.
Steve figured that was better than having the little monster try to kill him or poison him. He could deal with silence. In fact, he preferred it at the moment.
Unable to stop himself, he said, “I’m sorry, Fueda,” at one point during their breakfast making. He knew full well it would likely have no effect. “I didn’t intend for any of what happened last night to happen,” he added. It occurred to him that he was digging himself into a deeper and deeper grave with every word he spoke.
But he couldn’t help himself. In his fatigued state, the words kept vomiting out of him. “She came on to me, you see? I think it was the wine—”
“Enough, wafer-man,” Fueda spat. “I don’t want to hear your excuses.”
Well at least she’s still using Lig’s nickname for me, he thought hopefully. Maybe that means she won’t try to kill me. Yet.
“You’re right,” Steve said, bowing his head. “It was wrong, and I hope I can make it up to you.”
To his surprise, Fueda was chuckling. It was a dark sound, not light and airy like a chuckle should have sounded. “If Emilene has told her parents you scorned her last night, it doesn’t matter what you do to make amends to me—you’re a dead man. I won’t be able to save you from Jareth and Dosira’s wrath.”
Steve gulped, waiting for more. He hoped if Feuda got this berating out of the way, it would clear the air between them.
“But I wouldn’t count on that happening,” Fueda continued. “If she admits to her family she tried to sleep with you, she’d only get in trouble, too. So, your life should be safe only on account of Emilene’s embarrassment and bashfulness.”
“She didn’t seem very bashful last night . . .” Steve muttered, drawing an evil look from Fueda. It was the first time she’d looked at him since the incident. He was happy for that, even if the expression on her face was one of murderous rage.
“I don’t want to hear your sick thoughts on the matter, boy,” she said, waving him off. “Make yourself useful.”
“What should I do?”
“Peel those eggs, halve them, plate them. Start bringing up the food trays.”
Steve nodded. He got to work.
Fueda said, “This afternoon you will go foraging in the woods for mushrooms. Lady Dosira has informed me our dinner guests enjoy fungal confections.”
Steve didn’t argue. He remembered he was supposed to give Tiberius a guitar lesson today, but he wasn’t sure that would ever happen. People often said things one day and forgot about them the next. Especially while drinking. He didn’t bother bringing up to Fueda he had prior plans, for fear he might ignite her ire again.
They worked in silence. Steve drained the eggs over a sink and started to peel the shells. He cut them in half, dashed them with a little salt and pepper, and put them on plates. By the time he was finished, Fueda had done three times as much work in the same time. With the rest of breakfast ready, Steve downed two cups of coffee to get his fuddled mind working again.
They brought the plates up the basement stairs and emerged outside the dining room.
Steve glanced at Emilene first, who was sitting at the table with her slender arms crossed over her chest.
She gave Steve a death glare as he laid out the plates. He made sure to avoid her intense gaze.
He took his position behind the table, out of sight and hopefully out of mind.
But his hopes were soon dashed.
“You’re going to teach me guitar after breakfast,” Tiberius said through a mouthful of bacon and eggs. He didn’t ask, he ordered, and Steve felt a twinge of anger overcome him as he nodded to the young man.
He’s probably never asked for a thing in his life, Steve ventured. Always taking whatever he wants.
“Of course, sir,” he said to the entitled brat.
Breakfast went smoothly, without many words spoken between family members and servants.
After he and Fueda cleared the dishes, Steve met Tiberius in the foyer. The handsome young man already had the guitar on his lap, ready to play. The only problem being, of course, that he didn’t have a clue how.
Steve attempted to show him. First, he took the guitar, much to Tiberius’ chagrin, and put his fingers on the strings in the shape of a chord.
“This is a G chord,” he said, showing how his fingers rested on the uppermost and lowermost strings. “It’s one of the most common chords you’ll find—one of the four main chords you hear in practically every song with a guitar.”
“And the other three?” Tiberius asked impatiently.
Steve said, “Do you want to try to play the G first?”
Tiberius shook his head. “I’m not dense, boy, I see what you’re doing.”
Steve wasn’t sure what Tiberius meant by that—Does he think I have some ulterior motive here?—so he just shrugged.
He proceeded to show th
e C, F, and A-minor chords, which rounded out the four. He strummed a progression a couple times, then stopped.
He said, “Almost every pop song you hear uses those four chords in some variation or other. ‘Africa’ by Toto, ‘Let It be’ by the Beatles, ‘With or Without You’ by U2, ‘Today’ by the Smashing Pumpkins, ‘Zombie’ by the Cranberries . . . the list goes on and on. It’s a good place to start.”
“What the hell is a Toto?” Tiberius asked.
Steve frowned. It dawned on him that this wasn’t going to be easy. Teaching a kid to play a song he’s heard on the radio a thousand times is one thing. Teaching someone who isn’t from the same plane of existence and most likely hasn’t even heard a radio was completely different.
But he remembered Jareth had identified the writer of “Asturias” almost immediately. That definitely wasn’t a popular radio song. So, where was the disconnect coming from?
“Has your father never offered to teach you guitar before?” Steve asked.
“No,” Tiberius said. “He calls music frivolous.”
“Then why does he keep a guitar lying around?”
Tiberius snatched the guitar from Steve’s hands, catching him off-guard. Looking down, he tried to put his fingers on the correct strings. “He used to be a classical virtuoso, my mother tells me. But he doesn’t talk about it anymore.”
“The guitar is more sentimental than anything . . .” Steve guessed, trailing off.
Tiberius shrugged. “Come on,” he spat, trying to play a chord and sending out a screeching wavelength that genuinely hurt Steve’s ears. “Show me how to do this shit.”
Steve stood up, walked behind Tiberius, and leaned over his shoulder. He put his fingers on Tiberius’ and manually moved them to the correct places. “Try that,” he said.
Tiberius strummed a G chord and it rang out nicely. He smiled excitedly—the first time Steve had seen such a thing from him. When Steve returned the smile and patted him on the back, Tiberius’ smile vanished in an instant. His dour expression returned. “Can you play that Spanish song using these chords?” he asked.
Steve shook his head. “Um, no, it’s a bit more complex than that,” he said. “Asturias” was one of the hardest songs he knew how to play and he couldn’t even play the whole thing very well. He had no hope for Tiberius ever learning it . . . but he’d gotten a smile out of the guy, so that was enough to keep him encouraged.
“Let’s work our way up to it, yeah?”
Tiberius frowned.
For the next two hours, Steve pointed and showed Tiberius how to move his hands on the fretboard. Despite Tiberius getting more and more frustrated, before long he felt he was ready to learn fingerpicking.
That switch from playing chords to fingerpicking proved to be the fatal flaw.
Tiberius was discouraged when his clunky fingers wouldn’t move correctly. No matter how many times Steve tried to show him, he couldn’t get any kind of rhythm going. More often than not, Tiberius would accidentally mash two strings together at the same time.
His progress became impeded and before long, he started to regress.
Steve could practically see the steam coming from Tiberius’ ears, his face growing red with anger.
“Should we go back to chords?” Steve asked hopefully. He’d spent thirty minutes showing him the same thing a thousand different times, a thousand different ways.
Tiberius took it as an insult. “What, you don’t think I’m good enough?”
Steve put his hands up in surrender. Of course I don’t think you’re fucking good enough. “No, no, it just seems like you’ve stopped having fun—”
“Because it’s not fun, dammit! This is bullshit!” Tiberius whined one last time as he rang a wrong chord, then growled and stood from his chair. He took the guitar by the neck with both hands, like a Louisville Slugger. In a terrible flash of the future, Steve saw what was coming.
“Tiberius, no!”
But it was too late. The angry young man backed away, then swung the guitar as hard as he could against the back of his chair.
The chair toppled over with a loud crash. The guitar splintered at the base and wood chips cascaded into the air like a tornado touching down.
Steve’s mouth fell open. Frozen like a gargoyle, his hand was still outstretched, as if to stop Tiberius from what he’d just done.
Tiberius stood with his hands on the guitar, his teeth showing like a rabid dog, his body heaving.
A moment later, a voice screamed from the second level of the house:
“Amethyst Tiberius Reynolds, what have you done to your father’s guitar?!”
Lady Dosira stood at the top of the stairs with her hands on her head. For a moment, her eyes shined a furious, icy blue.
Tiberius spun on Steve and pointed a finger at him. “It was his fault! This was his plan all along!”
Steve stuttered and his mind reeled to defend himself.
Then Fueda was in the room, appearing like magic through one of the house’s hidden doorways. “Steven, let us go foraging now, shall we?” Her voice was desperate and high-pitched.
She’s trying to save me, Steve thought. Maybe she doesn’t hate me after all!
“Good idea,” he said.
He turned to face Tiberius one last time, as if to ask a question. The young man was already storming away up the stairs.
But Dosira had said something that stuck in Steve’s mind.
As he watched the young man march up the stairs, he thought, This is Amethyst? This is the man who is supposed to marry my Annabel?!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STEVE SAUNTERED THROUGH the woods with a basket in his hands. Fueda was somewhere nearby, rummaging around and looking for mushrooms. She had explained to Steve what the good ones looked like as opposed to the poisonous ones.
Upon learning that there were poisonous mushrooms in these woods, the first thought that went through Steve’s head was not a pleasant one.
Can vampires be killed by poisonous mushrooms? How about angry, spoiled man-children?
He smiled to himself, knowing he wasn’t going to take the chance. He didn’t actually want to kill Constantin and Mariana Lee, Annabel’s parents. He just wanted them to see the light—that Tiberius Reynolds was not a good fit for their daughter, no matter how much political standing he brought their family.
Also, if Steve did pick fungi of the venomous sort, Fueda would surely notice when she cooked the food. They were already on shaky terms. He didn’t want to jeopardize losing her friendship—or whatever they had going—forever. And if someone did end up dying at the dinner table from a toxic pie, Steve would be killed. And probably Fueda, too, for bringing an assassin into the household.
But he could still dream . . .
He came to a wide-trunked tree, pushed a few low-hanging branches out of the way, and went to his knees. He dug the underbrush away from the roots of the trunk, as Fueda had shown him. He found a patch of baby ‘shrooms sprouting from a pile of animal shit.
With a grimace, he picked them by the stem, then checked for gills on the sides. He saw none and dropped them into his basket.
He and Fueda had already been at it for an hour and he wondered how much longer they would search. The sun was blazing overhead. His shirt stuck to his skin from the humidity. The weather was different in Soreltris than in San Diego, despite occupying the same location. It felt more like the Deep South on a hot day here, and Steve didn’t take too kindly to sweltering heat. His excuse was he was dehydrated, but the sun was giving him another headache.
He stood up and pushed himself away from the tree, stalking and inspecting the ground for more signs of caps.
Then he heard a low whining sound—a mix between a growl and a cry for help.
Steve’s eyes moved up from the ground.
The bushes ahead of him moved. They were about ten feet away. He froze, trying to be a statue as his eyes zeroed in on the bush.
A moment later, a wolf’s head poked throu
gh the green. The wolf was sniffing, its purple tongue lolling out the side of its mouth.
Shit, Steve thought, remaining still. It didn’t seem like the wolf had seen him. His eyes darted from left to right without moving his head. If there was one wolf here, surely there were others nearby . . .
The wolf sniffed again, as if trying to smell him.
Then he realized it wasn’t sniffing, it was sniffling. Like it was sick or . . . sad.
Steve cocked his head to the side and stared at the animal, perplexed by its odd behavior.
The wolf looked right at him with its fierce, yellow eyes.
Steve’s heart nearly stopped in his chest. His entire body was telling him to flee, but he refused to budge.
The wolf took a slow, plodding step toward him. It jutted its nose in the air.
It was less than five feet from him. This is either the most daring, stupid, or friendliest wolf in the world, Steve thought. Perhaps he’d had it all wrong and wolves on Mythicus didn’t run in packs. Maybe they were solitary creatures, like the werewolf Tiberius had killed.
The werewolf, Steve thought. There was no doubting the wolf in front of him was in distress. Could it . . . know that I had something to do with the werewolf’s death? Could this . . . be another one?
If anything, these werewolves were the inverse of what he’d been taught as a boy on Terrus. He’d learned werewolves were humans by day and turned into bloodthirsty beasts by the full moon. The werewolf Tiberius killed had started as a wolf during the day, and had transformed at night.
The wolf got so close Steve could see the little hairs on its wet, black nose. He took a chance and reached out to pet it.
To his amazement, the wolf didn’t flinch or fuss, but seemed to enjoy Steve’s touch. Despite seeming crestfallen, it curled its head around his hand, closing its eyes. Steve was pretty sure that, whatever else she was, this wolf was a female. Steve’s touch brought her a little respite—a small dose of joy.
That man-wolf, wolf-were must have been her friend, Steve thought, continuing to run his hand through her fur.
Steve was suddenly filled with sorrow, like the wolf had transferred it over to him through touch. Poor girl just wants to see her buddy again, and we’ve killed him . . .
