The football players reach me, and I duck out of sight as they pass. My blood runs cold when I see their expressions: mouths slack, eyes unfocused. They move as if drugged.
Is that how I’d looked?
A screech splits the air, yanking my attention back to Selwyn and Tor. A hiss. A voice like metal scraping across glass. “Merlin…”
I blink in confusion. Merlin as in King Arthur?
Selwyn advances on the flickering creature twitching from Tor’s arrow. Five needle-thin points of light appear at the fingertips of his extended hand. He snaps his wrist, and the light spears fly into the ground. The creature screams; Selwyn’s pinned it in place like a butterfly to a board. His low chuckle makes me shiver. “Not just any Merlin.”
The creature hisses again in pained rage. “A Kingsmage!”
A feral grin spreads across Selwyn’s face. “That’s better.” My heart skips. Mage. Magic.
“It’s just a small one, Sel.” Tor pouts, another arrow already nocked in her bow.
“Doesn’t matter how small it is,” Selwyn—Sel—objects. “It shouldn’t be here.”
The thing struggles against its restraints. A flapping sound.
Sel clucks his tongue. “Why are you here, little isel?”
He says “isel” with a long “e” on the first syllable—and a derisive sneer.
“Nosy Legendborn!” The isel makes a sniffing sound. “Nosy trai—” Sel stomps down on its wing. Hard. The creature screeches.
“Enough about us. Why are you here?”
“Feeding!”
Sel rolls his eyes. “Yes, we saw that. Found yourself a spark of aggression and blew on it until it became a feast. So intent on gorging yourself you didn’t even see us when we were right beneath you. But so far away from campus? You’re a weak, miserable thing. Barely corporeal. Surely it’d be easier to feed there, closer to your Gate?”
A grating, rhythmic sound comes from the ground where the isel lies trapped. It takes a moment for me to recognize the sound as laughter. Sel hears it too; his lips curl back.
“Something funny?”
“Yesss,” the isel crows. “Very funnnnny…”
“Spit it out. We don’t have all night,” Sel warns. “Or should I say you don’t have all night? You’re going to die here—or did you miss that, too?”
“Not myyyyy Gate,” it rasps.
Sel’s jaw clenches. “What do you mean, not your Gate?”
The creature laughs again, the sound atonal and wrong. Sel’s eyes flick to Tor. Still aiming at the isel, she shakes her head, shrugs. Neither one of them knows what it means. “Not my Gate. Not my Gate—”
Without warning, Sel clenches his hand into a tight fist in one hard motion. The glowing pins draw together. There’s a quick flash of light and a bone-shaking scream, and the creature’s flickering shape explodes into green dust.
My feet are glued to the earth. They’re going to find me, I think, because I’m too terrified to run.
“There could be more.” Tor pulls her bow to rest. Sel’s head lowers in thought. “Sel?” Silence. “Did you hear me?”
His eyes cut to hers. “I heard you.”
“Well, we huntin’ or not, Kingsmage?” she huffs.
He turns to face the woods opposite my hiding place, tension radiating across his back and shoulders. He comes to a decision. “We’re hunting.” He mutters a word I don’t understand, and the silver smoke from before returns, swirling around the campfire until the flames die, sending the clearing into darkness. “Move out.”
I hold my breath, but Tor and Sel don’t turn my way. Instead, they step into the section of the woods he’d been scrutinizing. I wait until I hear their voices recede. Even without the fear of what they’d do if they found me, it takes that long to get my trembling limbs under control. Finally, they’re gone.
A beat of silence, two, and the crickets begin singing again. I hadn’t realized they’d stopped.
From a limb overhead, a bird releases a quiet, uncertain chirp. I exhale in kinship. I’m pretty sure I know how they feel: the isel was an impossible monster that somehow fed off humans, but Selwyn is something else… something worse.
Every living thing in the forest had hidden itself from him.
I stand there one more beat, still frozen, and then I run. I run as fast as I can through the shadows and don’t look back.
3
WHEN I BURST through the trees, I slow down, all thoughts of the impossible disappearing.
Lights flash blue and red against the night sky, and dread, heavy and sour, fills my stomach. A Durham County Sheriff patrol car has pulled into the lot, and my friends are standing beside it talking to a deputy holding a notepad.
Charlotte and the deputy both notice me approach. The deputy, a white man in his forties, flicks his notebook closed and puts a hand on his hip, as if to remind me there’s no use in running away. The holstered gun on his other hip doesn’t go unnoticed.
Alice is tucked behind them, a quiet shadow with her head bowed. Her hair falls forward in a thick black curtain, hiding her face. The sight makes my heart ache.
When I reach the car, the deputy glances at Charlotte. “This your friend?” Charlotte nods, then continues rapidly explaining and apologizing.
I go to Alice and look her over. “You okay?” She doesn’t respond or look me in the eye. I reach for her shoulder, but she twists back, away from my fingers. “Alice—”
“Now that we’re all here…,” the deputy drawls. Aided by a long-suffering sigh, he strides around the driver’s side of his squad car—taking his sweet time on purpose, I’m positive—and leans on the hood. “Ms. Simpson, you’re free to go with a warning. The next time it’ll be a ticket. Ms. Chen and Ms.…?” He tips his head my way expectantly and raises a brow.
I swallow, my heart still racing. “Matthews.”
“Uh-huh.” He nods at the back seat of the squad car. “You’re both with me.”
* * *
Beside me, Alice’s hands shake in her lap. I glance at the squad car’s glowing blue digital clock. 10:32. We’ve been on the dark, empty back road to campus for eleven silent minutes. Neither of us has ever ridden in a police car. It smells like leather and gun oil and something sharp and minty. My eyes land on a round green-and-black tin of Classic Wintergreen–flavored Skoal in the cup holder between the front seats. Ugh. Beyond the metal mesh divider, a dusty laptop sits attached to the center console. Below it, there’s a pile of electrical equipment sprouting coiled wires and covered with dials and switches. The deputy, whose name tag says “Norris,” fiddles with the radio station until it hits the chorus of “Sweet Home Alabama” over the crackling speaker.
I’m sixteen. I pay attention. I listen to the stories from uncles, cousins—hell, my own father—about police run-ins and stops. I see the videos online. Sitting in this car and thinking about those images makes my heart pound. I don’t know if there’s a single Black person in this country who can say with 100 percent confidence that they feel safe with the police. Not after the past few years. Probably not ever. Maybe there are some, somewhere, but I sure as hell don’t know ’em.