Lucy stumbled down the road, her face moist with tears. It had been a particularly bad day.
She had known it was a bad idea to take the egg into school in the first place, but it had become harder and harder to pass a full day without it. Even just having it in her bag, knowing there was some piece of her other life present, afforded her some comfort. What she hadn’t banked on was her bag being snatched off her. Some idiot boy had taken the covert jokes about her too far. He had yanked her bag off her arm as she was passing and emptied the contents onto the tarmac in the school yard.
She had not even cared about the exposure of her possessions—phone, notebook, even tampons—except for the egg. She had felt the hawkish eyes of the surrounding girls scanning the inventory for anything out of place, anything to prove her weirdness. It was, of course, the egg they had picked up on.
An impulse had seized her then to activate it, to show them alchemy in action. Then they would understand what she’d been through. But she hadn’t done it. Crimson faced, eyes stinging, she had scooped up as much as possible and hobbled down the road.
She rounded the corner, and the orchard opened out to the left. Though she had been walking only with the aim of getting as far away from school as possible, she realized she couldn’t go home yet.
She crossed the flat section of grass and began clambering up the slope through the trees. She had not returned to Sirona Beacon since Vince had dropped her off. The metal construction screens were still there, erected by the Apollonians while they dealt with the remnants of the Cult’s attack. Anyone who happened to wander up here would be deterred by the yellow-and-black tape and the official-looking sign declaring the area out of bounds. Lucy ducked under the tape and, wrenching one of the metal poles aside, slid into the clearing.
It was exactly as she had left it: the only defining feature was the large mound of earth covering where the Cult had excavated the temple. She settled here cross-legged and immediately reached for the egg from her bag. It hadn’t cracked at all despite the manhandling—of course, it would take much more than tarmac to harm an artifact from The Golden Turtle—but a few granules of grit had lodged in its casing. Lucy brushed them off and turned it over in her hands, following the join that exactly marked its circumference.
She paused, heart hammering. Then, very slowly, fearing what would happen, she twisted it.
The two halves rotated, and there was a clicking within, but nothing happened. She tried the other way. Still nothing. No bubble of alchemy, no explosion of light. She twisted it all the way around several times; it was like trying to undo a child-locked medicine bottle.
With a whimper, she hurled it away and buried her face in her knees.
A few seconds passed. Something shuddered in the air around her. Her head snapped up, and she searched for the egg. It was in the grass, motionless. Something else was happening, over to her right. Tendrils of obsidian and indigo had blossomed out of midair, forming into some sort of portal. There was a figure, swathed in a black cloak, emanating slowly out of the Darkness.
She was on her feet in an instant, fists raised. Despite the lapse in time, she felt the buzz of alchemy across her shoulders and down her arms.
But something was out of place. The figure was not just moving slowly but was also staggering, and its hood was drawn down. A hand, frail and without the trademark glove, reached out as if to grasp a door frame at the portal’s edge. The pale face broke the indigo surface. The young man stared at her, and she back at him, for a single heartbeat of comprehension. Then his knees gave way, and he collapsed onto the grass.
Lucy scrambled over to him, heart pounding, and rolled him onto his back. However changed, it was a face for which she had been searching for months now. It was, unmistakably, Alex.
He looked homeless. He was thinner and sicklier than she had ever seen him, and his face was roughening with the beginnings of a beard. And he was, inexplicably, wrapped in what appeared to be a very tattered Cultist robe. And he stank. It was hard to tell between all the competing odors, but she was fairly sure she could discern hints of seawater and sulphur.
She lowered her head and listened for breathing; it was there but shallow and irregular. Her very basic first aid knowledge told her she shouldn’t move someone in this situation but instead call an ambulance. That was out of the question. She couldn’t possibly explain this situation—she was in a restricted area, next to a suspicious mound of earth, an alien egg-like device, with an unconscious, homeless-looking young man who happened to have just fallen out of an alchemical portal. She would have to handle this one herself.
Despite the weight he had clearly lost and the strength she had gained since the two of them had last been together on this hilltop, she still struggled to lift him. She ended up supporting him on a shoulder, one hand jammed under his opposite armpit to keep him upright. It was a struggle to get through the trees and even harder once they got back onto the roads. It was lucky she had left school early—the streets around here were yet to be swamped by students—but there was still the odd passerby she had to watch out for. She tried to keep her head down and make it look as though they were just walking arm in arm, as if a schoolgirl and a homeless goth were a natural pairing.
She entered the house by the back door. She knew her dad would still be at work, but she wasn’t sure whether her mom would be in or out. As far as she knew, her mom spent most of her time, when she wasn’t doing housework, shopping and socializing with other nonworking parents at cafés or living room morning coffees, though this seemed to have broken down a bit since Lucy’s disappearance. Praying that this was one of those times, she slid her key into the lock and opened the door as quietly as possible.
There didn’t seem to be anyone around. The stairs were the next challenge. She resorted to pushing and dragging the limp body up, and by the time she shouldered open her bedroom door, she was sweating. With a final, immense effort, she lurched forward and heaved him onto the bed.
Relatively confident that nothing drastic was about to happen, she made for the kitchen. There only seemed to be basic painkillers and vitamin supplements knocking around, none of which could be administered while he was unconscious or be of much use against whatever Dark energy was afflicting him. She certainly didn’t want to try any alchemical healing herself. Until he woke up, there was little she could do other than clean him up a bit. She filled a basin with water, grabbed a sponge, and returned to the bedroom.
He was still there, in exactly the same position, lying across her sheets like some bizarre parody of Sleeping Beauty. He seemed older, a lot older than he had been, and yet there was something about his complete helplessness that was almost childlike.
She perched on the side of the bed and dabbed at his forehead with the sponge.
Alex was walked through Darkness. He felt sluggish, heavy, but also strangely disembodied. Blackness extended around him in all directions. He had no sense of moving forward, just of one footstep overtaking the other again and again and again.
Gradually, as if out of a swampy mist, his surroundings began to emerge. He was on some sort of road, a run-down-looking side street near twilight. The sky was clear, but he perceived it was cold—he couldn’t feel anything himself, but the breaths of the people dotted around were misting in the air.
Two boys moved along the pavement toward him, one much taller than the other. They were both wrapped in warm clothing: the taller one in a thick hoodie and scarf, the shorter one in a conventional school anorak, gloves, and wool hat. There was something familiar about them, though he couldn’t immediately place it.
They halted a few feet away, at the intersection of the road and an alleyway. Alex couldn’t make out what they were saying. The taller one, nodding good-bye, dug his hands into his hoodie pockets and sauntered down the alley. The shorter made to continue onward, but paused. He moved closer to the corner and peered down after the taller boy.
Alex moved closer. He knew he recognized this scene somehow. He shuffled to a halt a few feet away from the boy, with enough space not to draw attention but close enough to sneak a glance down the alleyway. The taller figure was still visible about halfway down. He had stopped to talk to someone.
Caution deserting him, Alex moved closer still. He could just make out the features of the man. He was middle-aged and had a bohemian air: shoulder-length dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a large burgundy coat that gave him the look of something like a debonair pirate. Though he wasn’t particularly offensive, the boy seemed unimpressed. Alex watched as the boy shook his head and marched on, leaving the man standing at the side of the alley.
The shorter boy stood back from the corner, apparently satisfied. Alex didn’t have time to move before he turned. He was blond and looked slightly underfed and was at the age where different paces of development left some looking like young men and others like children. There was definitely something in that face familiar to Alex, something in the way the brow furrowed against the cold. Then he was gone, shuffling up the street with his backpack flapping against his coat.
Alex turned back to the alleyway, but it was no longer there. Darkness had bubbled up from nowhere and was descending again, covering everything in its black veil. He stood and waited.