And stepped into the movie set world of Glass Town.
Or, more accurately, into the scaffolding and bare boards behind the set itself, where all of the magic was made incredibly mundane. The others were waiting for him. “This is it?” Alex asked, ducking beneath a two-by-four as Josh led them out into the actual lot, which had served as Eleanor Raines’s prison for a year of her life—one hundred years of theirs.
“This is it,” Josh said, turning around and spreading his arms wide as though offering it up. “Not much, is it?”
“Not much?” Alex objected. “It’s a piece of London that was lifted out of time for a century and hidden in limbo. I’d say it’s more than much.”
“What is this place?” Ellie asked. She, of course, was the only one who hadn’t at least heard of the mythical Glass Town that had haunted the Lockwood and Raines families since the fall of Ruben Glass’s cinematic empire and the disappearance of a young actress that led to an obsession that refused to die.
“It was going to be London’s version of Hollywood, once upon a time,” Josh told her. “Things didn’t work out the way the owner wanted,” Josh explained. “Now, it’s the way home.”
He led them through the streets, past the rows of parked cars and painted façades, the whitewashed steps and neatly trimmed hedgerows that never grew because they were as fake as everything else in this place. He led them to where the fissure had opened out into the street where, for him and Julie at least, it had all begun.
Now, rather than a tear in the illusion, there was a street corner. There was nothing magical about that. They emerged amid a blare of horns. It wasn’t cars this time. The horns belonged to rioters. It was impossible to tell how many there were, because what should have been a busy high street in the heart of London looked more like the depths of Coldfall Wood.
An entire forest had grown in the time they had been gone.
The street was still there, and the shops—but the windows were gone, smashed, and vegetation grew everywhere, climbing up the walls and in through the empty windows, weeds, vines, and moss. Infinite shades of green and brown, all so filled with life.
The magic is returning, the voice of the sword told Julie. Can’t you feel it?
He could.
It was in the air. The tingle prickled his skin. The thrill stirred the fine hairs all along his forearms.
It was here, and not just in the presence of the Hunt, either. This went deeper than the chalk brothers and their kin. This was rooted all the way down in the land herself.
And that couldn’t be good.
Julie saw the fallen sign of a coffee shop farther up the street, and between them and it, the surface of the road had been torn up by the sudden profusion of roots that had forced their way up through the surface. Through the trees he saw the dirt-smeared faces of the kids, armed with sticks and stones. They looked feral, the grime of the streets like war paint smeared across their cheeks.
“How long were we away?” Alex asked her brother. She turned from the feral children to look behind them, not that there was much difference in the view: more trees, thick boles of oak and sycamore and a carpet of acorn caps and winged seeds.
“I don’t know,” Josh said. “But by the looks of it, a long time.”
“I can’t even…” Ellie said.
“No,” Julie disagreed. “Not long. Days. Maybe weeks. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not about how long we’ve been gone; it’s about it being long enough. Can’t you feel it? This place is different now. It’s changed. Or changing.”
“I can feel it,” Ellie said. “But I don’t know what it is that I’m feeling.”
“The magic is returning,” he said, echoing the sword. “And it’s happening fast. It started with us, with you being able to speak with the dead,” he told Ellie. “And with you trapping Seth in the mirror world,” he told Josh. “But it’s moved beyond that now. It’s reaching out like the roots of the trees there, working its way into every aspect of the city, and this,” he swept his hand out to encompass the forest that had spilled out into the city overnight, “is the result of Arawn’s presence here. It’s only going to get worse the longer he’s allowed to walk these streets. He doesn’t belong here. We’ve got to find him, and end this.”
Josh nodded, and rather than say anything else, turned and walked toward the ruin of the coffee shop and the kids hidden within the trees. As he approached them, he called out, “I want you to take me to him.” When they didn’t immediately answer, he named the Horned God. That was enough to draw one of the boys out of hiding. He wore the remnants of a prep school uniform, his faded red-and-blue-striped tie around his scalp like a bandanna, chest bare, skinny arms covered in cuts and scratches from the new undergrowth. “And who the fuck are you when you’re at home?”
Josh said, “I am his new host. Without me he dies.”