roast beef sandwich, three glasses of peach iced tea, and a side of steaming hot guilt later, I was continuing my solo exploration of the train.
I’d parted ways with Blue and Jason after dinner. They’d gone on to explore other areas of the train while I continued ahead. We were currently at our fifth stop for the day, and Adelaide was only two stops away. I decided to use what was left of my time to go and check out the rest of the locomotive—namely, the non-commercial parts.
Those areas were clearly not intended for passenger access, but I didn’t care. I had a curious instinct about the world, and was drawn toward places I was not supposed to be. It was one of the riskier aspects of my personality, sure. But it was also the part that brought the most color to my day-to-day.
At present, I was skulking through the different refrigeration compartments, having just slipped through the kitchen behind the dining car. The half dozen train employees I passed paid me no mind. Either they didn’t care what I was doing or were too distracted by their upcoming end-of-dinner-service-break to notice.
It wasn’t long before I found my way into the last refrigeration car: the meat locker. The steel door slid closed behind me with a sucking noise that caused me to jump.
Everything in the metallic compartment was characterized by frost. My breath fogged up the sole window as I looked out at the night sky. The only lights illuminating the inside of the car were a pair of electric lanterns—one on the left wall and one on the right. Not much light considering the size of this place.
The meat storage unit was shockingly large, causing me to presume that the train didn’t transport many vegetarians. When I first entered I couldn’t even see the other side. There were dozens upon dozens of giant slabs of meat hanging from the ceiling, impairing my view.
It was like walking through a protein labyrinth. In addition to the slabs, I had to watch my step to avoid being entangled by the pounds of sausage links scattered across the floor like slumbering snakes.
Hmm. Is that even sanitary?
As I wandered through the maze of meat I tried to suppress the voices in my head that nagged me to heed what Blue and Jason had said before dinner. Alas, a good lecturing like that was hard to shake.
They hadn’t been wrong. Logically speaking, Daniel had earned my trust and my friendship over the last couple of months. Plus—as my friends so blatantly pointed out—I had my secrets too. So to an objective observer my behavior could be seen as just as annoyingly cryptic.
Maybe I was no better than he was. Worse, maybe he was right on the carriage ride to Emma’s when he told me we weren’t so different.
I shuddered at the thought. Blue and Jason may not have been wrong, but they also didn’t fully understand. Daniel didn’t treat them the way he treated me. Our whole relationship felt like a magic trick—a construct of misdirection, deception, and uncertain outcomes.
On the ride over to Emma’s he’d reassured me that he didn’t dislike me as a person. Nevertheless, one look into his eyes and I knew he was holding something back. He definitely bore some kind of deeper ill will toward me that extended beyond natural irritation. His claim that I had “ruined his life” confirmed it.
Knowing this, how could I possibly put my faith in him? If I was that positive that someone had ruined my life, then I darn sure wouldn’t be looking out for their best interest. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be so close to them all the time either, unless I had some sort of “keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer” motive going.
I paused for a second as the thought sunk in.
What if Daniel was just biding time keeping an eye on me until he had the right opportunity to get me out of his way?
It was a radical notion, but one that held weight the more I considered it, especially when my thoughts fell on Arian. Was it all just coincidence that the boy whose life I’d supposedly ruined had wormed his way into my world at basically the same time that Arian and his antagonists had set their sights on me?
Arian’s first attack was at the Capitol Building in Century City, where Daniel used to work before coming to Lord Channing’s. Daniel had only appeared at school this past semester, years after common protagonists typically started. And he’d only become Jason’s roommate because Mark (who had a file in Arian’s bunker) was out of the picture. Wasn’t it fair to hold a little doubt about Daniel’s true intentions? I mean, for all I knew, he very well could’ve been working with Arian.
Maybe lumping them together was a step too far, but the idea flitted across my mind nonetheless. Arian did mention to Tara in my recent dream that he had an ally in my inner circle . . .
I exhaled in frustration, which Daniel so often made me do. Of all the people out there who’d tried to bring me down, could this hero be the one I most had to worry about?
My internal monologue came to a halt as I reached the other side of the meat locker. Wanting to get past the foul smells and the equally rotten feelings about myself, I exited the chilly place as fast as possible.
Instead of emerging into another compartment, I now found myself standing on a small platform. This ledge was connected to the next carriage by the same kind of thin, railed bridge I’d come across earlier. The only difference was that here the floor-to-roof railings were much farther apart—about a foot and a half between each one.
It was a windy night, so despite our train being at a standstill the cold air whipped around me with rapid palpitations.
We’d arrived in the kingdom of Dobb a few minutes ago, and I could see people boarding the train from the station we were currently parked at. I carefully made my way across the bridge before any of them could spot me. It was fairly easy. Had we been in motion that would have been a different story.
This bridge did not feel as stable as the others. The metal flooring seemed way less walked on, making it more slippery under my boots. And it seemed less even as well, as if since passengers didn’t typically come this way the train builders had skipped over the final smoothing.
Eventually I reached the other side of the bridge. Beside the door was a ladder that led up to the roof just like I’d seen on the outside of other cars.
I entered the large compartment ahead. It appeared to serve as some kind of employee locker room. Instead of passenger seats, a couple of ruby red couches sat beneath a big window that faced the train station. There were lockers against both walls with name labels framed in silver. A few coat closets lined the wide aisle space. Above them were some high-up bed nooks built into the walls. They were modest, like the holes a gopher might sleep in, but they looked comfortable. Between their seclusion and coverage, I imagined any one of them would be a good place to take a nap or hide in, depending on how your day was going.
I walked across the thin peach carpet until I reached the door on the other side. I pressed my face against its glass porthole like a child looking into a candy shop window. The adjacent car was something magnificent.
The engine room.
It was huge and constructed from a mix of bronze and iron. From the station platform, workers were hoisting sacks of magic dust inside. They were emptied onto the floor surrounding the firebox at the head of the train. The resulting piles looked like sparkling sand dunes.
Most of the workers wore pressed crimson uniforms. A couple of them monitored the dying blaze up front, which produced a strange orangey-purple smoke as a result of its magical fuel source.
Neat.
I pulled out a roll from my satchel and began to munch on it while I watched them work.
After a few minutes I decided to make my way back to our passenger box. I’d been gone a while and garnered that it was time I returned to my friends. I rotated away from the engine room and began the reverse journey.
As I strode back through the locker room car, my eyes drifted toward the window that faced the station platform. I’d been to Dobb a couple of times since meeting SJ (this was her home kingdom), and I’d always found their people’s style of dress to be beautiful. They wore outfits comprised of a lot of silver silk and shimmering gold undertones, making the crowds look unceasingly elegant and enchanting, like walking embodiments of starlight.
People were still bustling in and out and gathering around the locomotive. I watched them hustle along. There were adults, children, nobility, commons, seniors, and . . .
A half-chewed bite of roll dropped from my mouth.
Arian and a group of about ten men were on the platform. I scurried to the window just in time to see them board one of the passenger cars somewhere down the line.
It seemed Arian hadn’t been kidding when he said he’d found a way to track me. In spite of this, I still couldn’t believe how fast he’d managed to do it.
I had to get back to the others quickly. We needed to get off this train.
With haste I hustled across the train’s various bridges and compartments. Every so often I ducked inside an empty passenger box if I saw the compartment door ahead start to open. I didn’t want to risk the chance that the passengers about to enter were Arian and his men.
Finally, I reached the car I’d seen my enemy enter into from the platform. Before proceeding inside, I surveyed it through the door’s porthole.
He didn’t appear to be there anymore, but the magic hunters still were, so I moved as speedily as I could without drawing attention to myself.
A couple minutes later I burst into our passenger box.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
SJ looked up from the Maidens’ Home Journal magazine she was reading. “Sorry?”
“Arian’s here, and he brought friends,” I explained to her, Daniel, and Jason. Then I glanced around. “Where’s Blue?”
“She went to explore the rest of the train. She said one of the conductors was going to show her the engine room.”
“We must’ve just missed each other,” I thought aloud, figuring she’d passed me when I was hiding out in one of the passenger boxes. “But we need to find her before—”
I staggered forward as the train jolted into motion and we rolled away from the station. It was too late. We were on the move again.
“New plan,” I announced. “We find our way to the luggage cars, grab the Pegasi, and escape on their backs. Adelaide’s not that far now, and they should be rested enough to take us the remainder of the way.”
“What about Blue?” Jason asked.
“I’ll go find her while you guys get ahead.”
“No way,” Daniel said, grabbing my arm as I headed for the door. “They’re after you. We can’t have you wandering all over the train.”
“He’s right, Crisa,” Jason agreed. “I’ll go get Blue. You go with them.”
“Fine,” I said. I shook Daniel’s hand off me in disgust. “But be careful.”
I turned to the door again, but this time SJ grabbed hold of my elbow before I could exit the compartment. “Crisa, wait,” she said.
I swear, if one more person grabs me today . . .
I spun around. “Now what?”
“The stop the train just made, it was in Dobb—my kingdom. My parents and I take the train from here to Lady Agnue’s every year,” SJ explained.
“And?” Daniel interjected.
“And I know the route that is coming like the back of my hand. In about fifteen minutes we will begin to pass through a series of mountain tunnels. When we go through them the conductor will turn off the lights throughout the train so we do not attract the vampire bats that dwell there. Between that and the fact that it is already night, all the train’s cars will go black and no one will be able to see a thing.”
“So since we don’t know where Arian and his troops are,” I said, finishing her train of thought (no pun intended), “we should make our move then. When the darkness can conceal us.”
“Exactly,” SJ affirmed.
Jason blinked in surprise. “That’s brilliant.”
SJ smirked. “Hey, not just a pretty face.”
“All right, first things first,” I said to Jason and Daniel. “I’ve been on this route a couple of times myself, and while we won’t be able to see a thing when the lights are out, if we just keep going straight we’ll be fine. If I remember correctly, pretty much everyone stays seated during the dark intervals. But for passenger safety the train conductors always make sure the aisles are completely clear before we approach the tunnels so no one will trip over anything. SJ,” I turned to my friend, “you know the route best. You wanna walk us through it?”
SJ nodded and snatched a piece of parchment and a quill from one of the passenger box cubbies. She swiftly began to draw our trajectory as she spoke.
“Okay, there are a total of six mountain tunnels that the train will pass through, resulting in six episodes of darkness that vary in length. In between the tunnels the intervals of light will become longer. When the train enters the first tunnel, Jason will head for the engine room to find Blue while the three of us go toward the luggage cars.”
I looked to Jason. “Once we reach the luggage cars we’ll wait there for you and Blue to catch up. You guys should use the remaining tunnels to conceal your journey back to us. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good,” I said. “Now all we have to do is wait.”