Apparently a blonde kid who should be dead and a blue-haired, barefoot merman aren’t very discreet, because we’d only made it a few steps out of the trees and down one of the winding paths before we found our way blocked. And this time it wasn’t just one harbinger; three strangers stood in front of us, all ungloved, forming a pale, deadly wall.
Oh, and did I mention that the one in the middle was the same angry guy who’d tried to strangle me? I knew he recognized me, too—his stormy eyes kept alternating between scowling at my face and staring at the handprints he’d left on my neck.
I swear they ached more when he looked at them. Not a fan.
I gave him a little wave. “Thanks for these, by the way,” I said, gesturing to my throat. “Fancy another hug? Maybe this time I could leave you with a mark.” I let my hand fall to my belt and rest on Sgrios’ handle. Of course, we both knew it wouldn’t kill him. But it would still be extremely satisfying to make him wince in pain.
“Shut up,” Asher hissed with a side glare. He held out an arm in front of me, blocking the way between us. To the harbingers, he said, “We wouldn’t bring them here if it wasn’t important. We’ll take them straight to our place. No trouble.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” said the woman to my attacker’s right. She took a step forward, flexing her fingers.
The bearded man who rounded out the trio also stepped forward, scowling menacingly. “You missed your chance for ‘no trouble’ when you tied Orion to a tree and left him there.”
“After he tried to kill Ian for no reason,” argued Asher. “He’s lucky it didn’t work, or I’d have done worse than just tie him to a tree.”
I looked sideways at Asher; he was every bit as threatening as the harbingers facing us. I found myself grateful that he was on my team, and also oddly flattered that he’d defend me like that. What he’d said in the forest earlier—about it being weird but nice to have someone on your side when you usually didn’t—was definitely true. I mean, I had Henri and Milo. But it was comforting to know that they weren’t the only two beings in the world who were in my corner.
My attacker—Orion—was still glaring at me like I’d murdered his family. “I’d like to know why it didn’t work. Otherwise, I think I’ll try again, see if his luck holds.”
“None of your business,” said Acacia firmly. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have much more important things to do than participate in this dick-measuring contest.”
“Damn,” Milo whispered beside me. I couldn’t help it; I cracked a grin.
Which was apparently a mistake. You’d have thought I’d flipped Orion the bird instead; he went wild. “You think this is funny, vermin?” he snarled. He was marching towards us now, and Asher sidestepped so that he stood between me and Orion, saying nothing but watching him approach with squinted eyes. “I don’t know what you are, but it sure as hell isn’t anything natural, and I rather think I’d be doing everyone a favor if I were to wipe you off the face of this earth.” Spit flew from the corners of his mouth at every word. He was fuming.
All this over a smile? A bit of an overreaction in my humble opinion. But hey, I grew up in a bar. I’ve seen plenty of overreactions lead to fights, especially after a few drinks. This wasn’t my first rodeo when it comes to crazy types.
Sighing, I gently pushed past Asher, who looked at me in surprise. “I can handle him,” I murmured. Based on his face, Asher clearly did not like this idea, but he didn’t stop me. He just nodded and let me go.
“Ian, be careful,” whispered Milo from behind me. “This isn’t the same as a custody dispute between drunken dwarves.”
You’d be amazed how common those are. I’m pretty sure I broke up my first such dispute when I was nine.
But I digress. I nodded in response, continuing forward until Orion and I stood face-to-face, mere inches apart, in the middle of our two groups. He was still breathing heavily, looking like he might snap at any second, and I couldn’t help but notice that his breath smelled awful. Like rotting meat. Nasty.
I made a conscious effort to breathe through my mouth, since I figured gagging right now wouldn’t exactly diffuse the situation. It didn’t help much. *In, out, in, out…*I was so focused on ignoring the smell that I almost missed it when Orion finally spoke again.
“What business do you have here?” he snarled, his voice low enough that only I would hear. “I meant what I said. Our touch is meant to kill any living creature, except another of our kind. And you sure as hell aren’t one of us.”
“It doesn’t matter what I am,” I said just as quietly. Deep breaths. Calm voice. “I’m here to help, and you’re gonna have to trust me on that. You really think I’d come back after this” —I pointed to my throat— “if I didn’t have a good reason?”
“You shouldn’t be alive after that,” he growled.
“Yeah, I know, we covered that,” I said, an edge of annoyance creeping into my voice. “But I am. And believe it or not, I come in peace. Asher and Acacia are giving us a chance. Why can’t you?”
A long pause as we stared at each other. In, out…ignore the smell. Oh God, my eyes are watering! He squinted at me and the world seemed to stand still; for a moment, I almost thought I’d convinced him, and that while he wouldn’t like it, he’d let us go.
Unfortunately, nothing ever seems to work out that well for me.
Instead, he leaned in even closer and whispered directly into my ear. “The two of them have been a plague on this town ever since their father died. Them giving you a chance means nothing to those of us with a shred of pride. You don’t keep good company, boy.”
Now, like I said, I’ve dealt with a lot of drunks. I’ve dealt with my fair share of mean drunks, even. I’ve had to throw more than a few centaurs and humans out of Griffin’s Edge for breaking the rules after getting sloshed. And I like to think I’m a pretty reasonable person. I give them a couple of warnings if they’re getting rowdy. I ask them to leave politely. And it’s only if they give me trouble after that point that I call Henri over.
But I’ve beaten up one visitor myself. Only one, when I was fifteen. It was an elf, some great-great-grandnephew of Lucille’s, and once he’d been drinking for a few hours, he started to say some real unkind things about my uncle. Stuff about how he’d stolen Lucille away from her people, had probably held her captive and used her like a slave, probably had an elf fetish, maybe had killed her himself and made up some story about her murder to cover his tracks. Let’s just say it got ugly fast.
Henri didn’t hear it. I made sure of that. I saw red; after several attempts to get him to shut up—which only made him more persistent—I dragged him to the storage room and punched him until my knuckles bled. He was drunk enough that it wasn’t much of a fight, though I did end up with a black eye that Em helped me cover with makeup for the next week.
I never told Henri about it. I didn’t want to dredge up his past.
The reason I’m telling you is that I’m trying to make a point: I’m not a violent person. Most of my fights are in self-defense, not started by me. But when someone talks horribly about those I care about? Well, that’s my line.
And Orion had just crossed it.
I didn’t even think. You don’t keep good company, boy. The words had barely left his mouth when I drew back my arm and punched him square in the face. I’d caught him off guard, and the force sent him stumbling backwards, moaning.
Asher gasped behind me. Milo mumbled something that sounded like, “This is that elf all over again.”
Then I didn’t have time to pay attention to their reactions anymore, because Orion regained his balance just as his two buddies also decided they didn’t like me punching him. And suddenly dark blurs shot past me as Acacia and Asher raced forward to meet them.
I honestly didn’t see much of their attacks except flashes of shadow and bursts of flame. I was occupied with Orion, who had a sword glinting on his belt but left it untouched, instead rushing at me in another attempt at physical contact.
It felt almost like a game of sorts, as if we were playing freeze tag and he was It. He lunged forward; I danced away and swung Sgrios in his direction for good measure; he steadied himself and tried again. After the second time, I gestured at the sword. “Come on, man, just draw the weapon you have right there.”
He grunted and lunged again. To be fair, I barely escaped his outstretched fingertips on that attempt. He was getting closer. “I feel like you’re trying to prove something,” I said, sidestepping and slashing at his back with my knife. Sgrios sliced through his jacket and black blood dripped from the cut, but even as he turned to face me, I glimpsed the beginnings of the wound knitting itself back together. “But your track record isn’t so great with me and the handprints. Personally, I think you should give it up and fight blade-to-blade. Thoughts?”
“I think you should shut your mouth,” he growled.
“Well, I would’ve,” I retorted, “if you hadn’t insulted my friends.”
He yelled wordlessly and charged at me again. This time, I stood motionless and let his hand close around my wrist.
This might have been a bold move on my part, considering that I’d passed out last time. But I was done with this pointless dance. Besides, him being that close gave me the perfect opportunity to place my own hand on his chest—and flick open the phoenix lighter I held in my palm.
I’d felt a weird sort of tingling in my wrist when he’d touched it, and my vision seemed to blacken around the edges for a moment, as if walls were closing in around my eyes. But thankfully I stayed conscious, and as soon as I opened the lighter, a massive ball of flames blossomed, engulfing Orion’s entire body.
I felt its heat, felt the embers singe my fingers, winced against the wave of hot air while his angry yell changed to a panicked, painful scream. His hand fell from my wrist as he waved his arms, trying to extinguish the fire, then dropped to the ground, rolling on the dark dirt.
His friends had stopped fighting, too, and stood in horror as the flames only grew. I honestly didn’t know whether it would kill him—harbingers seemed able to heal from most injuries. I didn’t want to kill him. Not really. But I hadn’t known any other way to get him to stop attacking. And now I stood transfixed, entirely forgetting to shut the lighter.
Luckily, Milo had apparently spent the last few minutes finding a water source and is used to my logic failing me in climactic situations. Suddenly, a wave of churning, black water arched through the air and collapsed on top of Orion. The phoenix flames extinguished with a hiss—which jolted me out of my stupor enough to remember to click the lighter shut. Any lingering sparks vanished immediately.
I looked up at Milo in shock as the water pooled next to Orion and then arched back through the air, towards a well at the distant end of the path. I hadn’t noticed it earlier. As the black water retreated back into the well, the glow of Milo’s blue eyes faded. “Got a little carried away there, did we?”
“Sorry,” I said quietly.
Milo came to stand beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “What’d he say?”
“Some crap about Asher and Acacia.”
Milo chuckled. “I figured it was something like that. Like we’re fifteen all over again. At least we won’t have to hide a black eye this time—poorly, might I add.”
Asher and Acacia had joined us now, too. I was still motionless, staring at Orion on the ground. Most of his body was a charred mess, though his face was relatively intact. Soot covered his skin and made it difficult to tell just what was ash and what was burnt flesh. “Is he dead?” my words were barely a whisper. The longer I stared, the more guilty I felt. Sure, he’d wanted to kill me. But I probably wasn’t really in danger. Not from his hands, at least. I should have had more patience with the guy.
Except that he’d also insulted my friends. So maybe I’d had just the right amount of patience.
His two companions, the man and woman, were inching closer. The woman knelt by his body. “Orion?” she murmured.
He groaned. Asher nudged my shoulder. “He’s alive,” he said quietly. “Look.” I followed his gaze to Orion’s arm, where the black ash was slowly giving way to shining pale skin, so white against the dark that it seemed nearly luminescent. The growth was much slower than for the small knife wounds, but it was there nonetheless.
Orion groaned again. Though his eyes were open, I don’t think he was fully conscious; they were glassy, staring far into the distance. His friends crouched on either side, murmuring quiet words to him.
Acacia wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “He’ll be fine,” she reassured me. “Like a lot of creatures in the dark forest, we’re sensitive to fire. But he wasn’t burning long enough to kill him. Give it a few hours. He’ll heal.”
“More than he deserves, honestly,” muttered Asher. “Stunts like that. Turning on us. Would serve him right if he had died.”
“Asher, don’t talk like that,” said Acacia sternly. “We don’t kill unless we have to.” She looked at me sympathetically. “Not that you did anything wrong,” she added. “It was self-defense.”
“Uh…guys?” Milo asked, his voice nervous. “Not to ruin the moment of staring at charcoal slowly turn to skin, but it seems we’ve made a scene.”
Suddenly I noticed the whispers all around us—how long had they been in the background? For the first time in minutes, I raised my head from Orion’s slowly-repairing body.
Milo was right: we had made a scene. Several harbingers had emerged from nearby houses and were clustered together, watching us with apprehension in their dark eyes. One little girl pressed her face against her mother’s leg, looking terrified.
Acacia stepped forward, discretely trying to block their view of Orion. “So sorry for anything you witnessed,” she called out, sounding much more confident than I felt. “Orion here started a fight with our guests, and not for the first time.” She gestured to me, and I felt multiple pairs of eyes flick to the handprints on my neck. “He will be fine, and I promise these two have good reason for being here. If you wouldn’t mind not spreading this around Oasis until we get things sorted, that would be much appreciated.” She turned back to me and lowered her voice. “Come on, we’re going home.”
With a last glance at Orion, Milo scurried after her. He smiled and waved at the harbingers he passed. Asher knelt down and whispered something to Orion and his companions, then grabbed me by the arm and began to pull me away. I still felt kind of dazed, myself.
“They won’t listen,” he muttered as we passed the first few harbingers. “It’ll spread like wildfire around Oasis—sorry, poor choice of words,” he corrected when I flinched. “Don’t feel guilty, Ian. He deserved it.”
“I know,” I said.
“Besides, I’d have done worse if I’d had the chance. Don’t think I missed that.” He pointed to my wrist. “He tried to kill you again.”
I looked down at the ashen handprint around my wrist; it almost glimmered in the dim light. It still kind of tingled, like I’d sat on my hand for too long. “Didn’t work, though.”
“Obviously,” said Asher, rolling his eyes.
We’d made it to their house by then; I followed him inside quickly. It looked just the same as it had before, though I suppose I really hadn’t been gone long. Milo spun slowly in a circle, mouth hanging open, as he took in the staircase winding up the tree trunk, dark furniture, and altar. Just as Acacia shut and locked the door behind me, he said, “Wow. It’s…nicer than I expected.”
Acacia laughed. “I swear, all of you think we should live in a cave.”
Milo looked embarrassed. “I hadn’t really given it much thought. But I could totally see Asher living in a cave.”
Asher smirked. “I’d live in a cave. Too bad Acacia vetoed that idea years ago.”
Some of the tension eased as we all laughed. Acacia set down a plate of cookies on the coffee table, then settled into one of the chairs. Milo and I took the couch, while Asher perched—where else?— on its arm.
A pause. Then Acacia said, “Sorry about that. I’m sure it’ll be blown out of proportion by tomorrow. It’s the most exciting piece of gossip they’ve had in ages.”
“You’re not worried about more of them responding to me like Orion did?” I asked. “Or turning against you for helping us?”
She shrugged. “Even if they do, they won’t follow you out of the dark forests. So they can only do so much. As for turning against us, well…Asher and I weren’t winning any popularity contests around here to begin with.”
“More important things at hand, though,” Asher cut in, as if he knew I’d been about to ask why. “Like how we find the Ancient One.”
“Henri said he some ideas before Sky barged in,” I said. “I wish I could ask him what they were.”
A slow, wicked grin spread over Milo’s face. I squinted at him suspiciously. “Hey, I know that look. That’s your I taped all the bar’s wine glasses to the roof look. Don’t ask,” I added to a confused Asher and Acacia. “It took me three hours to get them all down unbroken and clean. What are you up to?”
Milo reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, still grinning so mischievously I was worried his face might break. “I ran back inside from the pool to get Henri once Ian was through the fire,” he said. “Henri wrote something down really fast and handed it to me before he raced outside and attacked Sky. He said it would help us find the Ancient One. Would’ve mentioned it earlier, if we hadn’t spent the last few hours fighting off monsters and crazy people.”
My heart beat faster as Milo handed the slip to me. I was almost scared to open it, though I can’t say why. Scared that it wouldn’t help and we’d be back at square one with no leads, or scared that it would help, because we might have to confront an ancient being and learn the truth about me?
No idea. Let’s go with the first option, since it makes me sound less insane.
“Open it,” urged Asher.
Acacia leaned in towards her brother. “Later, I’m gonna need an explanation of everything he just said,” she whispered. “You’re not getting away with keeping secrets that easily.”
Asher rolled his eyes.
I turned back to the paper. My palms felt clammy, and the tingling left by the handprint wasn’t helping. Still, taking a deep breath, I unfolded it.
It was a very hastily-drawn depiction of the area in front of the bar. Henri had drawn a box and labeled it Griffin’s Edge, plus drawn the forked path leading out into the fog, with each side labeled as Human and Inhuman. The two paths leading out into the dimensions.
But the part that made me pause was drawn between the two branches of the path. There, Henri had drawn an arrow, pointing away from Griffin’s Edge, out into where the nothingness of endless silver fog would be. Towards the area where there were no gaps in reality, where there was nothing but fog and a practical guarantee that you would get lost and wander aimlessly forever. You had to take one of the forks to leave Griffin’s Edge.
At least, that’s what I’d always thought.
Asher and Milo were both leaning over my shoulder to see the drawing. “That’s your uncle’s bar, isn’t it?” said Asher. “What’s in the direction of the arrow?”
“Nothing,” said Milo. “Just fog.”
The gears were spinning rapidly in my head as thoughts whirled and fell into place. For once, the puzzle seemed to come together on time. “Or maybe that’s where we go to lead us to the Ancient One,” I said slowly, connecting the dots as I spoke. “I mean, think about it! Supposedly it exists at the point where all planes intersect. Where do the two dimensions meet?”
“Griffin’s Edge!” said Milo triumphantly, sounding like he’d had an epiphany. “The boundaries are weakest there! So if anywhere were to get us closer to the Ancient One…”
“It’d be there,” finished Asher. Excitement made his dark eyes sparkle, but a second later his face fell. “One problem: I’ll probably be killed on sight if I go back.”
“We don’t have to go in the bar,” argued Milo, rolling his eyes. “We just turn and head straight into the fog. Ian’s an expert at those paths. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve laid out there after nearly dying on a ‘routine errand.’” He sighed nostalgically, winking at me. “Ah, good memories.”
My excitement was beginning to build, too. Sure, I was still nervous—and okay, yes, scared—but the anticipation of finally getting answers, of stopping brutal deaths, of finding out what I was…well, that was pretty cool. And it kind of overpowered the fear.
“I think it’s our best shot,” I said eagerly.
Asher grinned. “Then I’m in.”
“Me too,” said Acacia. “I’m not letting Asher go alone after the number of times he’s nearly died just in the last day. Someone needs to provide common sense.”
“That someone is me,” insisted Milo. “Which means I’m coming too.”
Maybe this should have been a moment where I was all heroic and declared that No, I’m going alone, I can’t risk all of your lives. But let’s be real: I’m eighteen, with unstable atoms and questionable fighting skills. Asher, Milo, and Acacia had all already saved my life at least once each. I was about to try to find an ancient being and stop a serial killer.
I could use all the help I could get.
Which means I didn’t insist on going alone. I smiled and said, “Good. I’d die on my own. I do think we should—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish my thought, because suddenly someone screamed outside, not far from the house. It sounded terrified. Milo looked at Asher in horror. “Is that normal here?”
“Absolutely not,” said Acacia. Asher had already sprung off the arm of the couch and was sprinting for the door; we all followed half a step behind.
We ran down the path towards the place we’d fought Orion; up ahead there was a small cluster of harbingers, gathered around something on the ground. My heart sank. Maybe Orion wasn’t recovering after all?
We joined the group and I looked down. This time, my heart didn’t just sink; it stopped. Near where Orion had laid, there was now nothing but a pile of ash and bone, still smoldering.
I glanced at Asher in a panic. “I thought you said he’d be fine!”
Asher was also looking horrified; he nodded his head across the pile of ash. “He is. It’s not him.”
I followed his gaze to see Orion, now upright, leaning on his companions from earlier. About half of his skin had grown back, and while he still seemed somewhat dazed, he was okay. Definitely alive.
Which meant this was someone else. “Then who…?” My voice trailed off as I noticed a scrunched-up ball of purple paper by the ashes. I think I knew what it was before I even reached down to grab and open it.
But I did it anyway, and found myself proved right: a Griffin’s Edge napkin.
The same kind that had been left with the murdered human priest.
Suddenly a familiar woman pushed through the knot of observers, screaming at the top of her lungs. She saw the pile of ash and dissolved into tears, throwing herself down onto her knees beside it.
“MY BABY!” she screamed. “I let her play outside for twenty minutes, and someone murdered her!” She whipped her head around the crowd frantically, and then her gaze locked on me. Shit.
“YOU!” she screamed, jumping to her feet and marching towards me. “I saw what you did to Orion earlier! What, you thought you didn’t do enough with him and wanted to finish the job with a poor, innocent little girl?” I backed up, hands held high in surrender, as she continued to advance. And as I stared at her furious, twisted face, I put it together: this was the mother, the one I’d seen a little girl shoving her face against earlier to hide from the fight scene horrors. And someone—no, not just someone, the same murderer who’d been killing across dimensions—had killed her daughter.
And, because I’d just torched Orion, I was the obvious suspect.
“It wasn’t me!” I insisted, waving the napkin like a surrender flag. “Look, this napkin, it proves that the murderer is the same one that’s been killing both inhumans and humans for weeks! Somehow they knew I was here, or that we’re onto them, and they killed her! I’m so sorry for your loss, by the way,” I added in a low voice.
This did not help the situation. The mother shrieked and lunged for me; Asher pulled me out of the way at the last second. “I think we need to go,” he said. “Buckle up.”
Based on his little smirk, I knew he meant shadow travel, but before I could protest and insist that I’d literally rather let this woman do her worst, the world faded into darkness, air began to rush past us, and my stomach rolled with nausea as shadows shifted and raced—and as we moved with them, off into the dark forests.