by Page Morgan
I’ve been so wrapped up in Rowan’s Volkranian world that I haven’t been able to really think about how the humans are handling everything in this world. Good people will have come together to help others. But bad people? Well, I know there are plenty of them and that they will only be thinking of themselves.
I shrug off the warning and walk faster, turning down Grove Street. Yards are filling with shadows, people staring up at the newly empty sky. The core craft looks little more than a blimp. Weak and ineffectual.
It looks, to humans, like something to cheer about.
The odor of charred wood and burned plastic fills my nose and makes my eyes water. The strange violet light that had come from the cityship is gone, so there is nothing to guide my way. Nothing is familiar, either. A number of houses have been obliterated, so all I can see is rubble.
At least there will be no more attacks. Rowan had seen to that.
My throat closes off, and I grip the handle of the sword tighter. He’s gone. He’d done his duty, stayed true to the Sovereign, and the Sovereign still punished him. It isn’t fair. Then again, looking around at the destruction along my street, I realize the absurdity of that thought. Nothing is fair. Everything is a total crapshoot.
I pass a number of mailboxes, the only familiar things left along the street, and my legs begin to slow. It’s muscle memory, maybe. After seventeen years, I suppose I know when to slow down and turn into my own driveway. But for approximately five seconds, my brain flounders to grasp what my eyes already see.
My house.
Both of my neighbors’ homes stand erect and unblemished, but mine is a scorched pile of wood and plaster and interior decorative guts. The soles of my sneakers drag to a stop along the curb. I stare at the remains of my home. It’s not real. It can’t be. Rowan said they were only hitting houses with heat stamps inside. My house should have been stone cold.
Unless my mom came home.
I stumble forward, tripping on the curb and landing hard on the grass. There’s debris scattered everywhere, and something cuts into my shin.
“Mom!” I scream.
What if she’d been inside when… I can’t breathe. I open my mouth to gasp in air, but it won’t come.
“Pen?”
The voice is so small.
“Is that you, Pen?”
A lump of black moves in the driveway, out from underneath part of the roof that had crashed onto my mom’s car.
I stare, my mouth open wide. “Mom?”
The figure straightens up. Short, thin. Her. I burst into tears as she runs around the splintered hand railing from our staircase and barrels toward me. “Pen! Oh, Pen!”
She’s sobbing like a maniac when she plows into me. So am I. My end of the embrace is just as powerful, and we topple to the grass, laughing and crying. She grabs the sides of my face and tries to look at me in the poor light.
“Are you hurt? Where have you been? Oh God, I’ve been so worried.”
I cover one of her hands with mine, though the other still has the magnetized blade tucked into my palm. I hold that one low at my side. She’s cold, and while she still smells like the lemon shampoo she likes so much, it’s tinged by something smoky and dirty, like car oil.
“I’m not hurt,” I answer, shaking my hand to try and dislodge the blade, but the thing won’t move. “Are you? Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.”
I want to tell Rowan the good news; that I’ve found her. More tears well up knowing that I can’t.
She wipes her eyes and nose with the sleeve of her fleece coat and waves away my concern. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’ve been looking for you! All over. I went to your school, and when they said you were in the city, I tried to walk there through the Lincoln Tunnel, but they were turning us away once we reached the exits in Manhattan, saying they were evacuating the city, and they wouldn’t let me through.”
My mom went on, explaining how on the way back through the tunnel she got caught behind a group of people who were panicking to the point of causing a riot. There was an enormous brawl in the tunnel in front of her, which blocked the way out, and with so many people coming through to evacuate the city she was just getting pushed along.
She saw a teenager and his little sister getting shoved into the tunnel wall, nearly trampled, and could only think to help them. Somehow, she made it through the riots with the brother and sister. On the other side of the tunnel, my mom noticed a deep gash on the brother’s thigh. He was losing a lot of blood, and my mom, being the nurse that she is, couldn’t leave him. She got him and his sister back to their apartment, above the double bays of his father’s garage, and realized the cut was deeper than she first thought, close to the femoral artery.
“I had to stay with him,” she says with a shrug. “His parents were missing, his sister was scared, and he definitely would have bled to death if I hadn’t sewed the wound.”
It makes sense. It all makes sense, and a huge part of me sags with relief that my mom hadn’t been out there all this time searching for me, panicking. She’d been doing something good. Helping someone else. Which had likely taken her mind from worrying about me.
“Is he okay?” I ask, thinking about the little girl and how alone she’d be if her brother weren’t there with her. That same fear had wriggled into my mind over the last two days—of ending up alone, without my mom or dad or anyone else I could trust and count on.
“I stayed to make sure he didn’t come down with an infection,” my mom says. “Though it was killing me, not knowing where you were or if you were even still alive.” Her voice breaks, and I hug her, holding my arm out to the side so the blade won’t connect with her back. I have no idea how I’m going to explain this freaking thing.
“He’s going to be fine,” she says. “But what about you? Where have you been? I haven’t been able to sleep or eat or do anything but worry about you, and when those ships came flying down with their laser rockets…”
They were kind of like laser rockets. I’d never thought to ask Rowan what the Volkranians actually call them.
“I’m okay,” I tell her again. “Really.”
She straightens up out of the hug. “If I had lost you… Oh, Pen, I don’t know what your dad and I would have done if we lost you, too.”
Her lower lip tugs off to the side whenever she thinks about Ollie. She does it now, and like usual, I grab her hands and squeeze.
“You don’t have to worry about that now,” I say, realizing belatedly that both of my hands are on hers.
She sees the blade and startles, scrambling back on the grass.
“Penelope Flora Simmons, what in the name of Christ are you holding?”
I give my hand a violent shake, but the thing won’t come loose. The magnetic pull is starting to tickle the small bones in my hand.
“It’s, uh…” I scramble to my feet and go over to the mailbox. In Manhattan, once the guard’s staff had come down onto my arm, the blade had dropped. Maybe some other kind of force is needed to interrupt the magnetic bond?
“…hard to explain,” I finish, and then whack my forearm on top of the metal mailbox. The blade falls free, clattering to the pavement.
My mom follows me over and stares at the weapon. “Where did you get that?”
I crouch and, covering my hand with my sleeve, pick it up. The handle doesn’t bond this time.
“That’s going to be hard to explain, too,” I answer.
My mom crosses her arms and lifts her pointy chin, taking on the, Oh, just try me, missy girl stance. “Does it have anything to do with where you’ve been the last two days?”
I glance up at the core craft, and think of Rowan, back on the Band, far away and gone forever, bravely standing with his people.
“It has everything to do with where I’ve been,” I answer. “It’s going to take a while to tell you, and I’ll warn you, it’s kind of unbelievable.”
My mom harrumphs. Then points to the hovering core craft. “And that
isn’t?”
Right. Apocalyptic alien invasion aside, I’m sure she’s nowhere near prepared to hear where I’ve been, or who I’ve been with.
“Tell me everything. Come on,” my mom says, taking my arm and leading me toward the makeshift lean-to she’d crawled out from a few minutes before. “It’s not much, but if those little ships come down again, it’ll be something.”
“They’re not coming,” I tell her. “We’ll be okay tonight.”
She stops and stares at me before crouching to get underneath the lean-to. “You sound like you know this for certain.”
“I’ll try to explain,” I say, gesturing for her to go under the slab of broken roof.
She does. I crouch to follow but take one more look up at the core craft.
This is really happening. I’m not sure how to explain any of it. At least I have my mom, though. I’d finally found her, and I wish I could tell Rowan. He’d be relieved. I have to believe my dad is alive and well somewhere up in Connecticut, too, and that he’ll be able to get back to us soon.
Even though I’ll never see him again, I do have Rowan. I reach inside my pocket and feel the gold disc he gave me. It probably won’t work now that he’s back on the Band, but it’s all I have left of him.
“Pen?” my mom calls.
I let out a breath and look away from the sky.
There’s plenty to do here. Tomorrow, there will still be Volkranians to deal with, people to mourn, a whole city to rebuild. A new world to get used to.
It’s the world we have now.
Acknowledgments
First off, I owe my incredibly vivid and wacky dreams a debt of gratitude. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been inspired to write a story after it was partially formed inside a dream. So, thank you, Imagination! As for actual people to thank, I wouldn’t have attempted publishing this work on my own without the encouragement of my amazing friend and sometimes co-author, Amalie Howard. You’re always there to support me and give me great advice. Love you, my One Brain! To my cherished critique partners and writing friends, including Robin MacCready, Susan Colebank, Patti Murray, Amanda Marrone, Kim Marcus, Maurissa Guibord, and Megan LaCroix, I am so lucky to have you all in my corner, and I will always be in yours! To my husband, Chad, and our three girls...you are my whole heart. And finally, to you, readers, who are giving this wild, dream-inspired alien invasion series a shot—thank you!
About the Author
Page is the author of the young adult gothic thrillers THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CURSED, THE LOVELY AND THE LOST, and THE WONDROUS AND THE WICKED, critically acclaimed by Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal, VOYA, and The Bulletin. Page’s novels have been an IndieNext selection, a Seventeen Magazine Summer Book Club Read, and a #1 Amazon bestseller. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, their three daughters, and more animals than anyone should ever have. You can visit her at www.PageMorganBooks.net
Page also writes adult historical romance under the name Angie Morgan. Find out more at www.AngieMorganBooks.com
Look for Page’s other books
Writing as Page Morgan:
THE LAST HUNTSMAN
The Dispossessed series
THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CURSED
THE LOVELY AND THE LOST
THE WONDROUS AND THE WICKED
Writing as Angie Frazier:
EVERLASTING
THE ETERNAL SEA
Writing as Angie Morgan:
The Lords of Essex series
MY ROGUE, MY RUIN
MY DARLING, MY DISASTER
MY HELLION, MY HEART
MY SCOT, MY SURRENDER
Tartans & Titans series
SWEET HOME HIGHLANDER
A LORD FOR THE LASS
WHAT A SCOT WANTS
