Alice sits stiff as a board, gaze locked outside the window onto the endless wall of passing shadowed woods. In the front seat, Norris taps his thumbs on the wheel and mouths, “Lord, I’m coming home to you.”
“Alice,” I whisper. “Something happened—”
“Not talking to you.”
“Come on,” I hiss. “Back at the campfire, there was a—” God, I don’t know where to start. “It was the fight, I think—”
“Quit the chatter,” Deputy Norris orders. I catch his eyes in the mirror. He raises a brow as if to say, Say something. I dare you. I shutter my gaze and look away.
After a few minutes, Norris speaks up. “So, Carolina. My kid applied couple a years ago—he didn’t get in. Tough school to crack. Pricey, too.”
Neither one of us knows what to say to that.
“How’d y’all swing it?”
We both hesitate. Swing what? Getting accepted, or the cost? Alice answers first. “Scholarship.”
“How ’bout you, girlfriend?” Norris’s eyes find me in the mirror. “I’m guessin’ need-based?”
Alice stiffens, and my hackles raise. I’m not his girlfriend, and I’m not ashamed to have financial aid, but that’s not what he’s asking—“Affirmative action?” is written all over his knowing sneer.
“Merit,” I bite out through gritted teeth, even though it’s none of his business either way.
He chuckles. “Sure.”
I breathe through a surge of impotent rage. My fingers curl into my thighs, tensing with all of the things I can’t afford to say right now.
After a few minutes, the car slows. We’re still miles from campus and there’s no intersection or car in sight, just a straight two-lane road illuminated by the squad car’s headlights. Then I see why Norris is stopping. Two figures have emerged from the tree line on the other side of the road. As the squad car pulls closer, lights on full, the figures cover their eyes with raised hands. Norris rolls to a stop beside them, turns the volume down, and lowers his window. “Late to be out for a stroll.”
“Norris, is it?” The blood drains from my face at the sound of that voice.
Deputy Norris’s shoulders tense. “Kane.” His eyes slide to the left. “Morgan. Sorry about that. Didn’t recognize y’all.”
Alice leans against her own window to get a better look at who I know to be Selwyn and Tor. Nosy Legendborn.
“I noticed,” Sel says smoothly. He bends at the waist, and I direct my eyes straight ahead, face blank. In my peripheral vision I see his gaze linger on me for a moment, then move to Alice. His attention sets my nerves on fire. “Stragglers from the Quarry?”
“Yep,” Norris confirms. He hesitates, then clears his throat. “Anything to be concerned about there?”
Selwyn stands. “Not anymore.”
“Glad to hear it.” Norris’s chuckle is tight. Nervous.
Norris knows. He knows.
“Is that all?” Sel asks dryly. If Norris is offended that he, a Durham County Sheriff’s deputy and full-grown man, is being as good as dismissed by a teenage boy, he doesn’t show it.
“Just taking these two back to campus.”
Sel is already walking down the road, his attention withdrawn. “On your way.”
On your way. Not a request. Not a suggestion. An order.
Any ounce of security I could have felt in this car is erased in three words. Whatever higher power Deputy Norris answers to, these two teenagers outrank him.
Norris salutes Tor before she follows Sel; then he shifts the car into drive to continue down the road toward UNC. After a minute, he turns the radio back up and hums under his breath. I gather my courage and twist, as subtly as possible, to peer out the rear windshield.
Tor and Sel are gone.
Beside me, Alice slumps back against the seat. I don’t attempt to talk to her again. If I didn’t know what to say before, then I definitely don’t now that I’ve seen the way law enforcement interacts with these so-called Legendborn. I spend the rest of the drive reviewing my earlier words to Alice and end up both relieved and terrified. Relieved, because I said nothing in Norris’s presence to indicate that I knew what really happened at the Quarry. Terrified, because I witnessed something that I was not meant to see, and if Selwyn Kane had wanted to do something about that, Deputy Norris would not have stopped him.
* * *
Three thoughts chase one another the entire ride to campus until they bleed into a single stream of words: Magic. Real. Here.
Norris drops us off in front of Old East, the historic building that houses Early College students. We take the stairs up to our dorm on the third floor in silence. Once inside, Alice changes into her pajamas and climbs into bed without saying good night. I find myself standing adrift in the middle of our floor.
On her side of the room, Alice has a row of framed photos of her brother and sisters and parents on vacation in Taiwan on the shelf above her desk. Her parents declared early on that they would pick her up from the dorms every Friday so that she could spend the weekend at home in Bentonville, but that didn’t stop her from decorating like she’d live here full-time. Earlier today, she’d hung a few rom-com movie posters on the wall and draped a six-foot string of Christmas lights over her bed.
On my side, there are no pictures. No posters. Nothing decorative at all, really. Back home, it hurt beyond tolerance to walk the halls of my childhood home and see photos of my mother alive and smiling. I even hid her knickknacks. Any sign of her existence cut into my heart, so when it came time to move to Chapel Hill, I packed light. All I have here are a few plastic bins of books and stationery, a suitcase of clothes, my favorite sneakers, my laptop and phone, and a small box of toiletries.
After tonight, everything looks like an artifact from another world where magic doesn’t exist.
Real. Here.
Three other words join the thread: Merlin. Kingsmage. Legendborn.
I don’t expect to find sleep, but I climb into bed anyway, childhood imaginings colliding with the hellish reality I’d witnessed tonight. When I was little, I loved the idea of magic, the kind that lives in Percy Jackson and Charmed. Sometimes magic seemed like a tool that could make life easier. Something that could make the impossible possible.
But real magic includes creatures that feed on humans. A small voice inside me thinks that, if they hunt those creatures, the Legendborn must be good. They must be. But when the night slips into early morning, that voice grows quiet. By the time I fall asleep, my ears ring with echoes: that boy’s sharp cry of pain when Sel forced him to his knees; Dustin’s slurred mumble as he marched to the parking lot; and the isel’s scream when Sel destroyed it.
4
ALICE’S VOICE PULLS me awake.
“What is it?” I groan. Sleep threatens to drag me under, and I don’t want to fight it.
“Get up!” Alice stands fully dressed with her arms crossed and hip popped. “The dean of students’s office called. The dean wants to see us in fifteen minutes!”
My heart seizes in my chest and my thoughts fly. Selwyn. The creature. The ride home with Norris. Magic. It was all real. Wait—does the dean know too? Is he in cahoots with Selwyn and Tor, like the police? I swallow against a rush of panic. “Why?”