Things didn’t look too much better the next morning.
I wasn’t trying to be Larry Letdown, but there was something about a terrible night’s rest in a foreign place after narrowly avoiding death for the tenth time that doesn’t really give you a sun-shiny attitude.
Then there was Asher’s grumbling.
“Like he doesn’t trust me…Did you see that look…What does he think I’m going to do…?”
We reached the end of the gravel road and cut across the paved highway into early morning Oslo. Mia was still snoozing. Colson had already been up when I’d snapped awake. He’d told us he’d stay behind to watch Miranda. Asher had been less than enthused at Colson implying he couldn’t trust him around her.
“I’m not going to kill her!” Asher said gruffly. “That was the plan before, not now.”
“You mentioned it a couple more times last night,” I said, trying to calm him down. “I guess he thought you still hadn’t completely thrown out the idea.”
The venomous look Asher shot me nearly stopped me in my tracks. “Me? The only reason I thought about killing the Cursed One was because you suggested it!”
“It was a good idea at the time, before we knew!”
“Oh, but we’re not going to say where we got the idea, are we?” Asher said. “Colson seems to think I can’t be trusted, but I could almost say the same about you.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. Asher stared right back, as though he expected me to open my mouth and start blabbing everything I’d learned from the Dark Prince right then and there. I thought he’d suspected something, but here it was out in the open.
After an excruciating silence, Asher let out a long sigh. “That came out wrong. I told you before you can tell me anything, and I trust you would. Colson’s not being fair to everyone and right now…Let’s just focus on getting home.”
“Sounds fine to me,” I said frigidly. I couldn’t look at him. I was angry, not just at him, but at myself. At how I couldn’t—wouldn’t— tell him about the Prince. And how what was supposed to be a relatively simple plan to stop the Cursed One had suddenly gotten so much more complicated.
The city of Oslo was spread out like a hook, the main part wrapping around a bay that divided it from lumps of land across the water. Asher and I double-checked there was nobody overtly suspicious (besides us, of course) watching before making our way toward the city proper. We slowed to a walk once we hit a quiet, house-lined lane that would hopefully take us straight into the city center.
“If there’s any sort of organized Supe presence here, we should be able to find it easily,” Asher said. He kept trying to catch my eye, but I fixed my gaze resolutely ahead.
“Okay.”
“Once we find it, I’m sure there’ll be someone who will know how to help us. Or will know someone else who can help us.”
“Okay.”
Asher sighed. “I’m sorry, Skylar.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? Really? Is that all you’re going to give me?”
I smirked. Asher sighed again, but there was a trace of a smile on his lips. I let myself relax a little. I knew the secrets between us weren’t over, but at least we could bring our focus back to the most important thing for the time being.
Ten minutes later and we were nearly in what I guessed was the center of the city. I couldn’t stop looking around. It wasn’t as though I’d never been in Europe before, but everything here looked so…European. Wide streets made for walking, nature encroaching between the man-made structures, as though the hills nearby were folding over into the city. Designs that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern art museum, all sharp shapes and vibrant colors. In the distance was a sloped building that seemed to sprout out of the ground, composed of marble and glass that seemed fused into one entity.
We stopped at the corner of an intersection. The traffic had begun to pick up. More people were out, making my skin crawl with the thought of being recognized. And we still had no clue where to go.
“Give me a sec,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried opening my senses. I doubted I’d feel any pull of magic half as strong as when we’d been near Miranda’s house, but it was worth a shot.
Beside me, I heard Asher let out a deep breath as he did the same. I closed off all distractions, concentrating only on what was outside me. I shoved aside the lure of the Prince that always waited for me just beneath the surface of my consciousness, and tried to pick out the soft ping of magic, foreign or otherwise, in our surroundings.
I felt nothing.
I pushed harder. I probed farther, pushing my senses to the furthest reach they would go, but couldn’t feel even the barest tickle of power. I let out a grunt of annoyance.
“We’re not used to it,” Asher said.
I opened my eyes to find him giving me a sympathetic look.
“Not used to what?” I said. “There’s nothing here. And if there’s nothing here…”
I trailed off, not sure what that’d mean. If there was no Supe presence in Oslo then we’d be left figuring out where there was. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but it sure wouldn’t make life easier.
“Magic is so thick in New York we’ve gotten used to always being surrounded by it. Our threshold’s higher.” Asher held his hand out, as though using his fingers like miniature antennas would help anything. After a moment he let out an aggravated sigh. “Everything’s going to be subtler here.”
“If it’s here at all.” I tugged his arm to start walking again. A few people had begun to stare.
If my magical spider sense wasn’t going to be any help, then we were going to have to do some legwork. Pretty much every place with supernatural beings hidden within it had some entryway we could go through to reach the magical cordoned off section of the city. That meant we needed to check the most likely places first. So we began walking beneath archways, passing through gateways, ducking into alleyways, seeking out pretty much every ‘way’ we thought might act as an in-between between the Norm world and the Supe one.
By the time we were done an hour had passed and I felt as though we were no closer to finding anything that might help us. Asher and I slumped on a park bench along the waterfront. The water twinkled happily, as though mocking us; ‘Look at me! Look how happy and pretty everything is, suckers!’
Asher nodded to our left, toward what looked to be a train station. “Worse comes to worst we always have that. Paris has an Academy. But the closest would still be…”
I knew what he was about to say. “Denmark is…out of the question.”
He looked sharply at me. “You hesitated.”
“We can’t go there, Asher.”
“There might be others there that could help us. Supes besides those at the Academy.”
“They’d figure out we were there. Headmaster Wendell would come looking.”
“If it’s our only chance, I’d do whatever it took to keep Miranda safe.”
I gave him a hard look. He stared back, unblinking.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” I said. “I know you’d never hurt her—”
“I’m not saying it to prove anything—”
“And I didn’t mean to doubt you earlier. I’m sure Colson doesn’t think you would ever do anything to hurt Miranda, or any of us.”
My breath caught as Asher took my hand. He looked at me so deeply I thought I might catch fire. “I’ll admit, finding out what the Cursed One really was threw me for a loop. And yes, I would do anything to keep my friends and family safe. Anything.”
My stomach clenched.
“But I’d never hurt an innocent. There has to be some way we can negate Miranda’s powers that doesn’t involve hurting her. We’ll find a way to ensure Kasia never gets her hands on her, and she’s never used for somebody else’s purposes.”
“You think we can?”
“I know we can. Don’t ever doubt it.”
Not like I doubted myself for what I had told him. Or rather, what I hadn’t . The secret of the Prince smoldered a hole in my chest. I couldn’t continue to keep my lies so close and call others out for keeping their own secrets. He needed to know. I’d managed to keep the Prince under control for the last month or so, but I knew it was only a matter of time before it came surging back, or I lost control. He would know one way or another, and I wanted him to hear it from me first.
“Asher, I—”
Someone shrieked with laughter. A group of students dressed in robed uniforms were coming down the sidewalk behind us. They couldn’t have been any older than high school. The boys in front were playfully pushing each other while the girls chattered in the back, giggling.
The robes were already enough to clue me in that these weren’t normal Norm students, but the thin sheen of magic surrounding them clinched it.
“Academy students!” I hissed.
“Skylar, what—”
I shoved Asher behind the bench as the students passed. I was sure if they turned even a fraction this way they might have seen our own shimmer of magic. And with the scarcity of Supes we’d run across so far, I was going to bet we’d stand out.
“Skylar…would you just…”
He gently extracted himself from my insistent hand and watched as the students disappeared around the corner. “Obviously not the Denmark Academy. Maybe a local subsect.”
It didn’t matter where they were from: they were our only lead and we couldn’t let them get away.
I vaulted over the bench and took off at a fast walk after them, Asher on my heels. My earlier near-confession still burned on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it, promising myself that I’d tell him when the time was right. I’d tell him before everything went wrong.
It became apparent after two streets that I shouldn’t have been so worried about losing them. If the students were trying to get to school on time then they weren’t trying very hard. More than once Asher and I had to stop and pretend to window shop at stores that weren’t open yet, all while the group continued gabbing, flocking their way to wherever.
“What is education coming to nowadays?” Asher grumbled as one of the girls let out another shrieking laugh high-pitched enough to summon every dog within a five-mile radius. “Please tell me we weren’t ever this dumb.”
“Oh, Asher, you were definitely this dumb. What am I saying? You are—”
He bumped me none-too-gently with his hip. “Watch it. If it’s war you want, it’s war you’ll get. I have more than enough stories to blackmail you for the next ten years—”
“There!”
The students crossed the street and turned left into a simple-looking shop, painted blue with gold trim. Asher and I hurried to follow, peeking through the glass front into—
“A bakery?” I said. I ground my teeth, wanting to smack one of the little dorks if they’d been beside me. “You’re supposed to be going to school, not snacking!”
“Where’d they go?” Asher said. He cupped his hand over his eyes and peered over the baskets of baguettes, custards, and donuts that were making my stomach revolt. We hadn’t had much to eat since…well, I couldn’t remember when. “They’re gone.”
I looked myself. He was right. The interior was both small and vacant. And we surely would have noticed a group of Supe students doing their best impression of a flock of squawking birds.
“Here.”
Before I could do anything, Asher spun me around and placed a couple fingers on my lips. My eyes went wide, my hands coming up in surprise. “Asher…what…?”
He began to mutter under his breath. I felt a tingle move from his skin to mine, and I wasn’t sure if it was the spell he was trying to perform, or the fact that he was touching my lips in a way that I maybe-sorta-might have thought about him doing with increasing frequency lately.
“Lingana. There.” He dropped his fingers. “Translation spell. Colson showed me after our run-in with the Denmark Academy. I think I got it to work.”
I brushed a stray strand of hair out of my face, positive a blush was creeping over my cheeks. My lips were still tingling. “Why’d you have to touch my lips?”
“Makes it easier. Sorry I didn’t warn you.”
Not that I was complaining…
A bell dinged as we walked inside. Sure enough, the students had vanished. Or else they’d somehow managed to squeeze themselves in between the tiny tables and chairs or around the counter, behind which were baskets holding even more pastries. I smelled chocolate and the thick, yeasty aroma of bread just out of the oven. I was pretty sure they’d need a mop to clean up how much I was salivating.
“Can I help you?” A woman with her hair in a tight bun wearing an apron stained with jelly stepped out from the back, brushing her flour-dusted hands together. Her mouth quirked up when she saw us. “Following your friends?”
“Uh…” When it became apparent we didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, the woman cocked her head. Suspicion leaked into her expression.
“We’re new here,” I said, hoping Asher’s translation spell did the trick.
The woman burst out laughing. “I see, I see! You must be foreign exchange students, then.”
“Exactly,” Asher said with a tight grin. “Very foreign.”
“Though it is strange. I haven’t seen you come through here before.”
“We just started classes.”
The woman’s skeptical expression returned. “In the middle of winter break?”
“Told you we were foreign,” I said.
I held my breath as the woman paused again. Then she shrugged, pulled out a rag, and started wiping down the counter. The bell dinged again as a man walked in. He must have been a regular because he and the woman had a rapid-fire exchange in Norwegian, she handed him a package of pastries, and he left, returning us to awkward silence. The woman finished waving out the window, then turned back to us.
“You’re still here? Go on, go on.”
“Uh, where?”
“What is it they teach you where you are from? Don’t you know anything about Oslo’s supernatural community?”
“Er…” Asher said, which was answer enough.
The woman shook her head. “Uff da. A little advice if you wish to continue studying here: do a little homework before. It makes a nice impression with the headmasters. And with the locals.”
She came around the counter and opened the back door, beyond which was a narrow alleyway complete with a dumpster and the growing sounds of the day shifting into full swing.
“Well?” she said when neither of us moved. “Go on.”
“We just came from out there,” I said. “We didn’t see any other…uh, Supes.”
“Just go on through. I suppose you don’t have any school supplies, either? No, don’t tell me, I can guess. Uff da, you are like lost puppies. You want to find Francis. Go out here, take a left, third shop on the right. He has all the supplies the school requires, along with anything else you might have forgotten. Which, from what I’m seeing, might be a lot.”
“Does he sell anything else?” I said.
“What else could you possibly need?”
“If we’re looking for more…hard to find things. For our classes,” Asher added quickly.
The woman nodded. “Francis has pretty much everything. Now go.”
She gestured for us to step through the door once more. Either she was being for real, or this was the oddest way to get a couple of vagrants out of her shop. Either way, it wasn’t like we had any other options. Asher went first, and I stepped out after.
“Also, we speak English here,” the woman said, grinning. “But keep trying that translation spell. You sound like a dog who’s learning Norwegian.”
She howled with laughter as the door shut. Asher scowled. “Skylar, come here.”
He quickly applied another layer of the translation spell to my lips (again, not that I had an issue with that…) before we took a look around, Asher still muttering darkly under his breath.
I’d honestly expected us to be stuck in the alleyway we’d seen from inside. Instead, I found myself on a narrow street, clean and uncluttered. Here was the hum of magical energy we’d been searching for. I felt it buzz across my skin. The ambient sound of traffic and daily life from the outside world was still there, but subdued, like we’d been enclosed behind a thin, invisible dome.
We emerged at another street I hadn’t seen during our searching. Apartments and small shops rose high on either side, closing in on us like a maze. The shimmer of magic was thicker here, coating the people who passed. Colored awnings cast a walkway of shadows. There were no cars.
“Guess she was telling the truth,” Asher said begrudgingly.
“Aw, did someone get his feelings hurt?”
“Next time, you do the translation spell.”
We had no better lead than this Francis guy, so after looking around for a few more minutes we found a store called Forsyninger og nysgjerrigheter, which looked a lot like something a writer would come up with if he’d fallen asleep with his head on the keyboard. I felt my eyes itch. Asher must have applied a visual translation spell as well, because after a moment of trying to decipher the words they swam in my vision, then settled: Supplies and Curiosities.
“Hello, hello, hello!” The moment we entered the shop, a crackling voice called out to us from somewhere in the back. I was momentarily struck by the dichotomy of where we’d just walked into. The front half held school supplies, stacks of notebooks and semi-organized lines of glitter pens and unsharpened pencils. The back was a different story, as though the contents of a macabre-loving teenager’s closet had been casually dumped onto shelves, filling them with half-burned blood-red candles, wreaths of herbs and incense hanging from string, and metal heads fashioned into expressions of gaping screams or intense winces.
Curiosities indeed.
“Welcome, welcome, welc—”
The owner of the shop emerged. We both froze when we caught sight of one another. He, probably because, I was beginning to realize, something about our magic must have screamed “not from around here!”. Me, because Francis happened to be a goblin.
We had plenty of goblins in New York, I just hadn’t seen a lot of them. They tended to mix with their own tight-knit groups, and the few who did hang out among the rest of the Supes didn’t like running stores, or pretty much anything else that involved interacting with others.
This goblin came up to about my waist, green skin cratered like the surface of the moon, nose drooping like a carrot on the head of a melting snowman. His ears were like a bat’s, splayed wide from his domed head and filled with tufts of fine white hair.
The goblin cracked a wide smile, showing lots of teeth. “Guestssss! Yessss, yessss!
“Are you Francis?” I said, quickly regaining my bearings. “We’re looking for something and were told you could help.”
“Of courssse I can help. Are you exchange students? Sightseers? I see you brought a handsome friend? Perhaps visiting our lovely city on a honeymoon?”
“We’re actually trying to leave your lovely city, unfortunately,” Asher said for me. Which was good, because my brain had temporarily stopped working at honeymoon.
“Too bad, too bad,” Francis lamented. “The Supe community is strong here. Small, but strong. We’d love to welcome you.”
“I think we got a little welcome earlier,” I mumbled. Then louder, “We were actually looking for a Farcast portal.”
Francis’ ears swiveled toward me. The effect was like a crowd of people turning as one to hear what you had to say. “Isss that so? That’ssss a rather extreme way to travel. Not the most comfortable. Not the easssiest to conjure.”
“That’s why we need you,” I said. “Can you do it?”
“Me?” Francis splayed his long, nailed fingers to his chest. “I cannot! My kind’sss magic is for illusions and, yes tricksss. I could not, not even with charmssss.” He scooped up a handful of brightly colored rocks I assumed were charged full with minor charms and let them fall through his fingers. “Or even assistance.”
His words hung in the air. He adjusted a wood carving of a half-naked man with a beard full of leaves dripping from his chin. “May I ask, what is ssso important that you need to get home ssso badly?”
I tensed. Francis seemed like the savvy type. Could probably smell an outright lie a mile away. Our story would need to be full of half-truths if we were going to convince him of anything.
“Family emergency,” Asher said. He flashed Francis his trademark Asher smile. The one that usually had young and old, man or woman, instantly take to him. “Wouldn’t you know it, we spend all this time planning to come here, and once we arrive we have to go back. And it’s such a lovely country, too. So much snow. And the wildlife! Did you know you had dragons here?”
Francis fingered one of the charms, then his face split into another wide grin. “Yesss, we have our share of unique Fauna. Though sssome of them are very dangerous! It’d be a shame to get on their bad side.”
“So we’ve heard,” Asher said. “But unfortunately family comes first so we have to get back.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. “And just when we were getting comfortable.”
I tried to pretend like my body wasn’t rigid as a bronze statue and gave Francis my biggest smile.
“Shame, such a ssshame. I wish I could help you.”
My stomach dropped. “You can’t do anything?”
“I cannot. But I have a friend. He is good with magic, yesss, very strong. He often helps me with bigger requests like thisss. Come back tomorrow and I’ll see to it that he getsss you where you need to go.”
“Great!” I said, actually meaning it. For once since we’d started this entire little escapade, it seemed things might actually be taking the path of least resistance instead of chucking curveballs at us.
“He seemed nice,” Asher said when we were back on the street.
I snorted. “Everybody seems nice once you smile at them.”
“Then maybe you should try it more. You have a nice smile.” He smirked at me. “When you’re not grimacing or glowering.”
I was about to give him a playful punch in the arm when I stopped, fist half-cocked, mouth agape. Someone had caught my eye just up the street. Someone I thought we wouldn’t be seeing for at least another couple days. Hopefully never.
It seemed the universe had other ideas.
I yanked Asher into the shadow of the nearest storefront, pressing tightly against him as I waited for my breathing to settle.
“Kasia,” I whispered. “Don’t look!” I pulled him back as he tried to peek. “I know it was her. Give it a sec then let me check if we’re clear.”
I squeezed my eyes, willing my magic to shrink down, down, down into a little ball, praying she wouldn’t notice us.
“How did she get here?” Asher said, voice low. “Even she can’t have enough power to conjure that many Farcast portals.”
I didn’t want to tell him that yes, Kasia was probably one of the few people who did have that kind of power. There had to be another explanation.
“They had a dragon on the ground when we escaped,” I said. “She might have ridden it here. Maybe left her acolytes behind to follow us alone.”
The thought of Kasia managing to subdue a wild, raging dragon was almost worse than the thought of her having the power to travel anywhere almost instantaneously.
“A tracking spell,” Asher muttered in realization. “That’s what must have hit Dragon. Undetectable. Takes a while to wear off.”
I cursed myself for thinking we’d managed to get away. I should have known by now that if there was something Kasia wanted, there was nothing that would stop her from getting it.
“Hold on.” Gripping the front of Asher’s jacket tight to anchor me, I slowly leaned until I was able to peer down the street. Kasia hadn’t moved. She was looking around as though she was just another tourist here to sightsee. Among the crowd of passersby, she might have been anybody’s mom out to pick up groceries were it not for the invisible aura emanating from her, the one that seemed to be making everyone who walked past subconsciously give her a wide berth. It was almost strange seeing her in full sunlight and not cloaked in shadows or shrouded unground. It was like witnessing a cave-dwelling creature stepping into the light. Part of me expected her to wither and drift away like vapor. If only we were that lucky.
“Still there,” I said, pulling back. A few people walked by, but if they thought we were up to something they didn’t say anything. Probably thought we were just a young couple sneaking in a bit of quality time. In public.
A few more moments of tense silence passed. Once the tidal wave of fear eased just a bit, I was aware of Asher’s calming breaths, the steady beat of his heart through the warm folds of his coat. His silent strength calmed me. He knew how dangerous Kasia was, but he didn’t have the same reaction to her as I did. To him, she was simply another enemy, while to me, she was so much more. Still an enemy, sure, but one who fought with her own type of darkness; one with a connection to my family I still hadn’t asked about, and still wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I squeezed the zippers of Asher’s jacket tighter. I felt him close his hands around mine. “Check again.”
I gathered my nerves and did so. Kasia was gone, and with her went a large breath of anxiety…and a resurgence of fear.
“She’s not there.”
“Good,” Asher said darkly. “We have to leave here. Tomorrow. If we stay any longer, we might not get out at all.”