CHAPTER 1

                                                  RED SKIES

 

 

My eyelids sagged as I peered out the window, my head heavy against the soft pillows piled against the headboard. I fought to keep them open, glancing over at the closet door where a long mirror hung.

When would I learn?

Black crafts shaped like scorpions slipped onto the surface from somewhere else.

Where? I didn’t know. I never did.

My heart thumped when the world below them came into view. The black crafts cast shadows that stretched across a land splitting into violent seams.

I bolted forward. Away from the pillows.

A massive river was tearing through the fracture, swallowing houses, livestock, and those too slow to flee.

Then the sky bled red.

The images on the mirror shifted.

This was a war chamber. Strange weapons hung on the walls. Screens against black walls flickered with aerial feeds—continents cracking, resistance collapsing. An important-looking man stood with his hands clasped behind his back. A less important man, dressed in a military uniform, stood at his side. He watched the screens in silence.

“Too much force.” The important man was dressed in a black robe, its edges embroidered in red. His voice was mild as he twisted a pinky ring on his hand. “General, you overshot—again.”

“Lord Noric, only because they resisted,” the general replied.

Noric turned to him.

The general wilted beneath his gaze.

Peaceful artisans and farmers—how much resistance could they offer?

Noric gestured toward a widening fault line. Beneath it, mineral veins pulsed, alive with pale light.

“That,” he said. “That’s why this world mattered.”

Even after atmospheric collapse, the mineral endured.

Good.

It would amplify his mind far beyond its current reach. Soon, fleets would become unnecessary. Earth was already holding. The rest of humanity would never realize they had surrendered.

The beauty of telepathy.

 

 

BUMPS IN THE NIGHT

 

 

My mind lurched.

The vision was gone, the mirror showing only me on my small bed and, beside it, the window overlooking the street outside.

“Weird,” I murmured, rubbing my sleepy eyes and angry with myself. Fatigue and mirrors were the perfect mix for what I needed to avoid.

I punched my pillow and lay back against it again. I was waiting for Echo to get off work across the street.

I glanced down at my AI wristband. Nine o’clock had come and gone, but the lights inside the corner market were still on.

I pushed whatever that was on the mirror out of my mind. Stranger things had happened to me when I slept. I never told anyone, but there was a part of me—at least I thought it was me—that could do things whenever my eyes closed. Things I was certain weren't dreams.

I remembered visiting the outer rings of the Milky Way once. I'd tried to return ever since but hadn't been successful. I needed more control. Maybe one day, when I figured out how I'd done it in the first place.

Of course, it might have been PM—short for Playmate.

Yeah, there were things about me that made me different. But maybe other people had nightly playmates who could do what PM did. I wasn't sure.

I'd never told anyone about her.

Fluorescent lights spilled from the wide store window. Echo was five minutes late. A month ago, five minutes was nothing. Now, five minutes alone gave me the creeps.

I stared at my AI wristband again, thinking of how to distract myself. I looked up, avoiding the mirror, then down again. My finger hovered over Echo's hologram, then drifted toward the internet button instead.

If I popped in on her now, she'd see my face. I knew it was flushed. My heart was only now beginning to beat regularly.

I wanted to project calm.

The project we were working on with my Langdon Silver screen was already getting weird. Echo had an amazing imagination. But my content came from mirrors and dreams that contained details, histories, and rules too specific to feel like spontaneous imaginings.

I needed to watch myself. Rein in that part of me.

So, no. I wouldn't push the hologram button and give her any more reasons to question her best friend since kindergarten.

I chose the internet and searched for Aramis Langdon. Grandson of the man whose technology created my AI wristband and my Silver Screen. He was the first to win the bidding war to work with a race of scientists from the Andromeda Galaxy.  Everything changed after that. And then his grandson Aramis came of age. Despite the rumors about his strange complexion—unmistakable gold beneath his bronze skin. He was handsome, well photographed and from the interviews I’d seen of him, which included every single one. He was brilliant too.

My face swept up when the streetlights flickered on.

Echo would be here soon, and we’d return to the movie we were making.

While most of our classmates disappeared into glowing screens, endlessly scrolling and consuming whatever was placed in front of them, Echo and I stayed rooted in books, stories, and worlds we could build ourselves. We wrote screenplays hoping to break through the iron sky that kept the classes fixed. All it would take were enough clicks to go viral. And if that happened…

A giggled zipped through me when I saw her and her mom closing up and ran down the stairs. I reached the door before she could knock and caught the detachment on her face before she had a chance to mask it with a grin.

She'd been scrolling on her AI during her breaks. I could always tell. She smiled less and looked through people instead of at them. I planned on having a long talk with her about that, but now that she was working late hours, we barely had enough time together as it was.

We hugged. I breathed in the musk oil she used on her braids and smiled. The world felt right again.

"Let's focus on the big news." She said, her voice soft and husky, her eyes a mixture of joy and burning intensity.

I powered up the Silver Screen, her focus bleeding into me and urging my heart to race. The screen appeared in the air above my bed, shimmering like it was alive. Its translucent screen blinked into existence and the room felt like a strike of lightening flashed through it

Echo dragged it closer, her eyes already laser focused.

"The Langdon's announcing the shuttle to the moon?" That was news. Langdon and Aramis were giving interviews, everyone wanted to speak with them.

"Sort of." She lifted a finger to her lips. "Let's give it a twist."

Last week, we outlined a vague plot. Tonight was about putting bones on it. We needed to create something that could become our ticket to freedom. Ten thousand clicks. That’s all we needed to get free.

 

Three hours flew by and Echo was gone. I played with my AI determined to stay present. I wasn’t even looking at the mirror, but that didn’t stop it from playing the sound of people screaming. My heart told me this was just a continuation of what had happened earlier. Noric. He was the first alien that had entered the playlist of my typically fun, otherworldly adventures. I didn’t like the turn of events. And I certainly didn’t like the mirror acting on its own.

Then I remembered what he said about Earth and froze.

“No…” I whispered laying back down. I feel asleep soon after that, still wearing my T-shirt and jeans, the bedspread still perfectly made, apart from the folds and wrinkles from me laying on it.

 

 

CHAPTER 2

THE MOVE TO THE VALLEY

 

I woke up to find my mother had returned from her night out with her boyfriend. She was in the hallway rummaging through the closet that housed our memories. My childhood books and dolls, pictures of Nana and Pop-pop, of me when I was a baby and my mother when she was just a teenager. And surprisingly, her wedding gown.

She hadn’t heard me open my bedroom door. I watched her, my eyes squinting. She jumped when she saw me, her hands hiding something behind her back.

In less than five minutes, she charmed all the suspicions out of my head with just one comment.

“Let’s go to Hathaway’s.”

Those dark eyes that swept up at the corners worked like spells. She was beautiful and exotic-looking, thanks to her Puerto Rican mother marrying the best man in the world—Pop-pop, who hailed from Barbados. Native blood on both sides made her hair pitch-black, and all the rest turned it into a thick mass of ringlets that shone like black gold.

We took the tube to Center City and reached Hathaway’s in no time. Then we ordered my favorite meal of waffles with whipped cream, omelets, thick bacon, and lemonade.

Everything felt picture-perfect until we settled into a silence where the only sounds were soft laughter from nearby diners and our silverware clinking against the edges of the white plates.

My brow was sweaty. “What is it?” I asked, reaching for the lemonade. After several gulps, I wiped a cool, wet mustache from my upper lip.

“Nothing.” Her voice was lyrical as she gazed away, her cheeks flushed.

“Mother, please. I can tell something is wrong. Hiding it is ruining our time together.” My voice cracked. The nights she’d spent with her boyfriend, Rob, were beginning to feel like abandonment. Each breath I took ached with wounds I hadn’t realized were so deep. Today needed to be perfect. I needed something in my life to be an anchor. Things were changing, and I needed her to just be a stable mom for once.

Her eyes flicked up to meet mine and then dropped to the bright colors of the breakfast food, now getting cold. “Well, you know that Rob and I have been dating for nearly a year now, and he’s been asking that we move in with him.”

A breath dragged down my throat like sandpaper.

No. I wasn't going to let another man like my father come into my life and turn it upside down. I was older now, but foster care would still be where they took me if things went south between the two of them. I could run away first. Or... I didn't know.

But I knew I wasn't going to allow my life to become another hell.

“I’ve said no to him each time he’s asked because I realize you don’t trust me.”

My eyes fell onto the spoon and squinted. Two little dots of light were moving across its surface. I looked up. The umbrella blocked the sun. I searched for another light source, then looked back at the spoon.

The dots were still moving. Slowly. Interacting with each other. Like...

“And if I’d said ‘yes’ right away, you’d tell me I didn’t know him well enough. And you would’ve been right.”

My head snapped up. The tail end of her words triggered something that made my eyes immediately water. My heart joined in—pushing against the stabbing sensation with every pulse.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” she continued. “And I’m beginning to see his point.”

I was looking at the spoon again. Her voice sounded farther and farther away. The café noises dulled as the world snuggled around me like an embrace.

She hears us.

The voice wasn’t inside my head. It came from the indentation of the spoon.

The two dots darted from it to the left of me.

I knew the voice—it was PM.

But what was she doing outside my dreams?

Of course she does, another replied. She always has.

My fingers tightened around the napkin in my lap, but I kept my eyes down and didn’t react.

Well, the mother finally did it. She told her they were moving.

My breath hitched just as I breathed it in.

Who was the other voice with PM?

My mother kept talking, something about Rob, about her Native American roots and the Valley, but her words were only getting tinnier.

The location works, the other voice said. She sounded older and measured. Proximity to the forest will accelerate her development. The kids there don’t use much technology. Another plus.

Good, PM murmured. Less distraction.

“The tube doesn’t even run through the Valley,” I added, repeating PM’s words before I realized it.

The voices started going in and out. I couldn’t make out some of the words.

 

You’ll guide her dreams, the older voice said. Seed coincidences. Small awakenings.

Already done. But I didn’t count on the Coriston reveal.

Yes. How’d that happen?

The books she’s been reading have prepared her far more than I realized.

 

My spine went rigid. Prepared me for what?

 

But Coriston. Noric. That’s beyond what she’s ready to understand, the older voice warned.

I wish I could control where she goes.

Well, you should be able to. That’s your job.

 

I gulped.

My eyes fluttered as my mother’s sniffles distracted me. She reached into her purse.

The voices fell silent, and the world rushed back in.

My mother was trying to hand me something. It looked like an official document. She was shaking it, forcing me to take it.

I read it—a statement from a bank. Her name, Monica Acevedo-Brathwaite, was boldly printed at the top, while my father’s surname was absent.

Just like he was.

Then it clicked.

Rob had given my mother money.

To move in?

What?

“He understands how hesitant you are about all of this.” She lifted the bank statement from the table, folding it like it was a parchment about the Holy Grail. The sound of her purse zipping grated the air. “In case it doesn’t work out... Security for you. For us.”

I heard her. I knew what had just transpired, but I was still listening for PM and the other voice.

Somehow, they thought my mother and I would be moving to the Valley. The Valley! That secluded place where the Cheveyo Tribe lived, and lawyers like Rob fought to keep the government's laws from reaching them.

No!

“What about Echo and school?” My eyes stared, unfocused, half my mind still tuned to that other place. “We love the city,” I said, still thinking about the part about me being prepared.

For what? Prepared for what?

“We’re city dwellers.” I sounded desperate.

The Valley. Why did they want me there?

“Julion.” My mother shook her head, her lips folded inward as she held back emotion.

I frowned. Confused.

“The city. That’s the problem. You’ve been saying it all along. I see it now. People are changing.”

I sat back. Maybe going to the Valley was going to save us? I didn’t know what to think. I only knew I could trust PM. We’d been traveling through dreams for as long as I could remember.

My mother was looking at me as though she expected me to say something about her remark. “Finish your breakfast,” she snapped when I didn’t. “All of it. I don’t have money to throw away.”

I stared, angling my head.

“Edgar Allan Poe.” I leaned over the table as if to say, take that!

“I know what you’re thinking.” She was shaking her head again. “It’s about that whole dead poet thing.” Her lips pursed, her dark, alluring eyes staring at me. I saw pity inside them. “Julion...”

She paused as the waitress refilled our water glasses.

“Julion,” her voice was low. “We didn’t see anything. It was just... just a long day. The summer heat.”

“Then why did your eyes go big?”

My mother rummaged through her purse before placing her credit card on the edge of the table. “Julion, magic isn’t real. It’s not. Magic isn’t real.”

“What?” I gasped, the air rushing out so fast my lungs felt deflated.

“Julion, magic isn’t real. But whatever is going on out there—is!”

Her gaze dismissed me, and her words cut the parts of me that housed what was special between me and my mother. The one connection that belonged only to us.

“I’ll be eighteen soon enough.” My voice sounded tougher than I felt.

“What does that mean?”

My lips parted, but the shards tearing at my heart stole the words.

 

CHAPTER 3

SAYING GOODBYE TO ECHO

 

I woke up to the sound of rain. Everything looked blurry, and my eyes were puffy from crying all night.

I couldn't stop thinking about what my mother had said about the first time magic entered our lives.

Maybe she was right. Maybe we—I—didn’t see Edgar Allan Poe in a dark coat with a high collar, his dark hair curling around the edges of it. Maybe he hadn't looked me dead in the eyes before phasing into the small colonial house where he'd once lived.

It was the heat. Right?

And all the magical things that happened to me after that. And even now. The thoughts hollowed me out. Magic had always made the world feel bigger. It made me believe that just beyond what we could see and feel were things more powerful than either.

Magic was what kept me going when my mother was hospitalized. My father jailed. And me, placed in that awful foster home. I used magic and mirrors, and I willed my mother to get better. Or at least, until now, I thought I had.

When I told Echo that Sunday was going to be our last day in West Oak Lane, her mother gave her the day off so we could spend it together.

An entire day.

A few months ago, that was normal. Now it was going to be the last special thing that happened to me before I left the city for what everyone called the “mysterious woodlands.” A five-mile plot of hills, a stream, and green land right in the middle of the metropolitan sector.

It felt more like a death than a new beginning.

“I can still come and visit you,” I said, believing the words were true. Of course I'd visit Echo. We'd continue being friends and making movies. No one knew me the way she did, and the same went for me knowing her.

“I'd rather visit you.” She smiled. “The mysterious Valley? Have you ever read about it?”

I hadn't. I didn't want to, especially now.

“They don’t use technology,” she said, adding that she'd chosen the Valley and the tribe for a history project.

I nodded. But I already knew they didn't use much technology.

Everyone did, I thought, opening the laptop.

“And Cheveyo means Land of Spirit Warriors.”

I sighed loudly, rolling my eyes while hiding the small part of me that perked up at the mention of warriors. I loved fantasy novels about warriors, especially when the protagonists were female and good with swords.

“I'm sure you aced it,” I said, punching the keyboard.

Echo shook her head, her hand going to her eyes. “Got a C-minus.”

My face swept up, my fingers pausing over the keys. “No. Why? How?”

We were both honor students, rarely getting anything lower than a B-plus.

“I think it was the title.” She chuckled. “The Magical Land of Warriors.”

I laughed. “Not bad. But maybe a tad subjective.”

An expression flashed across her face. “What? Magic subjective?”

I looked down, absently turning my thumb ring.

“You were the one who made the bathroom mirror churn. You slowed down the clock that time.”

My smile tightened. I kept my eyes on the ring. “Maybe I’m just a good magician. But not magical. Besides, that was a long time ago.”

Her head tilted.

“Come on, let's focus.”

“Julion?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Yes, there is. We’ll still be friends.” She reached out and touched my hand.

“It’s okay. It’s not that. It’s the magic part. I’m just realizing I need to grow up... I mean, if you think about Langdon Technologies and the things they’ve created, that’s not magic, Echo. That’s them merging science with extraterrestrials who evolved thousands of years ago. Evolution. Not magic.”

“But we all saw the mirror. All of us. And what do you mean, you need to grow up? You're the most magical person I know, other than your grandmother!”

“Trick of the eye. Maybe that’s what she’s good at too.” I stared at the keyboard, hoping she’d let the conversation die.

“She touched my kitty and made her well again.”

I sighed as she grabbed the keyboard away from me.

“So, what other things were in your article?” I leaned back on the bed, giving up on changing the subject. “How the entire tribe pitches in during the fall harvest?”

She grinned. “Look.”

Words and images loomed on an invisible screen suspended a few feet from our faces. The picture showed a teacher pointing across a stream toward a wall of black cliffs. Students stood gathered around him, their eyes fixed on the cliffs.

“Look at the girl facing the camera.”

I sat forward.

“You look just like her.”

I kept staring. The girl and I had the same eyes, swept up at the corners—hers dark, mine green like my Irish father’s. Even our light-brown complexions were the same.

“You’re going to fit right in.”

I scrolled down, my heart pounding as I read the account of a duke from England who'd visited the area decades earlier.

He drowned in the Valley's waters. The Cheveyans rescued the group and carried his lifeless body to waters near some kind of sacred cave.

“He came back... to life,” I whispered. “No... I don’t believe that.”

My eyes narrowed on the screen. I read the words again.

Then again.

“Even his friends corroborated the story,” she said, her voice filled with certainty.

“No...” I looked over at her. “That can’t be.”

“Your Nana healed my cat.”

“She just needed love...” I whispered.

The room fell silent for a moment before Echo powered up the Animate Program.

“Let's spice up the story.”

My mind was still on the duke, his companions who believed he'd died, and the resemblance between me and the girl.

“Langdon's grandson, Aramis...”

“Yeah,” I said, not sure if I really wanted to stop thinking about what was inside my mind.

Her fingers were typing, fast clicks filling the silence.

I shook the cobwebs from my head. “Uh... he... He secretly modifies one of the shuttles so it can travel to the Andromeda Galaxy. He'd fallen in love with a brilliant, sexy scientist who was furloughed there.”

The air inside the room thinned, our excitement cooking and raising the temperature. The Silver Screen hummed. I kept my eyes from the mirror as my awareness stretched outward.

I blinked, trying to slow it down.

My mind snapped back into place.

The bed. The screen. Echo's knee pressed against mine.

Good. Solid. Real.

“I like it,” Echo said. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just thinking about the plot.”

We leaned back into the project, shaping a world from our imagination. But as the minutes passed, from the corner of my eye, other realities moved across the mirror.

I forced my eyes to stay on Echo and the screen.

 

 

CHAPTER 4

A GODDESS’ IMAGE

 

Nothing happened. Thank God, and the plot unfolded effortlessly. This was why Echo and I got along so well. I stayed quiet, my imagination stirring in the center of my skull. While images dancing at the edges of my being stayed put like the door to another world remained closed because something or something other than me had decided now wasn’t the right time. 

The thought made my lips quiver. I folded them inward, pressing hard enough for it to hurt as I watched Echo setting up the programs we needed.

I forced myself to behave normally. I set my AI alarm to go off in an hour. Echo grinned at me, confidence inside her dark steely eyes. And I smiled back, a soft convincing curve of my lip.

The pressure was on; four hours was all the time we had before she had to leave.

The sharp staccato of our fingers flying over the keyboards filled the room, broken only by the occasional giggle or gasp as our imaginations produced another thrilling scene. Images churned at the edge of my awareness. Faces. Places I'd only ever seen at night. They spun faster and faster until I braced myself, certain something was on the verge of coming undone.

“Shall I count down by minutes, seconds, or… ”

My AI alarm chimed. The voice was human, a woman with a crisp British accent I'd named Diana. Somehow, hearing her steadied me. The pressure that had been building eased just enough that I almost mumbled a thank you.

Echo responded to Diana with a snappy, “no”. “Just tell us when we have two minutes left.”

Diana only recognizing me asked, “Do you concur?”

“Yes… I concur. Yes.” I answered.

 

Once the two minutes were up, we proceeded to the next step: Echo would use online photographs to create the image of Aramis Langdon and another character. For my task there were photographs. I had to make up what I thought Aramis’s love interest would look like.

My imagination felt like it jumped for joy and the sensation of a motor revved fast like a jet about to take off. I kept flexing my fingers to slow down whatever it was that wanted to burst through and take over.

Beyond where Echo and I were creating the characters' physical features, something hummed through my bones and teeth.

I swallowed. This hadn't happened before. Not like this. Not with the other side slipping through while my eyes were open. I forced my fingers to still above the keys. I blinked. I thought of calling out to PM for help, but it was too late.

When my eyes parted, I was no longer looking at my bedroom.

A stone wall replaced the darkening sky behind the window, cool and worn smooth by centuries of passage. I was standing, pressed against the wall like some part of me knew to hide. Farther away I could see a long courtyard.

My heart quietly raced. The sunlight falling between vines that wrapped around the pergola, looked real. Even made me squint. I knew this place. I’d been here before.

How did I get here—to the Realm of Divinity?

The scent of morning-blooming flowers wafted by. The pollen in the air tickled my nose. I almost sneezed.

Stay hidden, a voice said in my head. Oh right—the last time I was  here with PM, we were warned never to return. This was the realm of the gods. Their punishments were nothing to joke with.

I needed to leave! I thought, my eyes darting around for a way out.

Then I heard voices traveling from the other side of the wall.

Gods and goddesses. More than one this time. The air tightened. As terrified as I was, curiosity tugged harder. I found myself edging a toe into the crack between the stones, tempted to peek around the wall.

“Julion!”

Echo’s voice cut through time and space. The world lurched, pulling me backward. Light flashed as it fractured at a mercurial speed.

My stomach dropped just as my awareness slammed back into my body.

 

“Who… who is that?” Echo’s voice was full of wonder. “Is that Aramis’s love interest?”

My chest lifted with air as I followed her gaze to the image on my template. How did I finish creating the character? Then: Oh my, she's way too alive.

The woman on the screen pulsed with life. The tips of my fingers tingled, each heartbeat sending another wave through them.

Raven hair spilled down her back in heavy waves, catching light that hadn't existed a second before. Her white gown blew in a wind that wasn't programmed into the scene.

Her eyes opened. They were big, dark and endless. Power flooded the room. The screen suspended in the air flickered, the luminous frame distorting under the strain. The air crackled, sharp and electric, raising the fine hairs along my arms, my blood roared in my ears like the ocean.

I remembered that face. She was the one who’d warned me not to visit the Realm of Divinity. Had she followed me back?

I bit my lip, worried that something bad might happen.

“Oh my God,” Echo laughed nervously. “I love the ears. They’re kind of elfin.” She leaned closer.

“No,” I whispered, too late.

Echo jerked back with a yelp, clutching her nose. A thin line of blood streaked across her fingers.

“I, Julion, did you see that?” she said, her eyes wide and unfocused, staring at the blood on her fingers. “The screen. Something flashed from it… Light… but how…?”

Yes, I'd seen it. I'd anticipated it. But Echo was right. How?

The goddess’s eyes landed on mine. She angled her head, but not with curiosity. In recognition.

The room shuddered, her gaze piercing mine through the screen, through layers of realities that had always stayed in their place during the day.

I pressed the off switch.

“Opps!” I said, as though it had been a mistake.

Echo didn’t notice. She was still gazing at the blood on her fingers.

Something was wrong. That wasn’t a computer image. That was another world breaching this one.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 5

THE WRATH OF A GODDESS

The voice was angry, ranting and complaining about someone refusing to follow the rules.

I'd asked PM to take me somewhere tranquil before I fell asleep. No splitting worlds, and definitely not nightmares from years ago.

“No!” The ranting voice screamed when a deep, easy voice tried to calm her. My eyes popped open.

“No…” I whispered, seeing images on my ceiling like a transparent movie screen perched in the middle of the room.

"No," I said again, sliding beneath the sheets pulled just below my eyes.

Something else was wrong.

Very wrong.

I could see the courtyard again.

This time, PM was there too.

This was the first time I'd seen her face. She looked just like me. Only she was transparent, dressed in a pale-blue bodysuit with silver around the shoulders and waist.

“Oh no…” My voice quivered at seeing her, and at what she was doing.

She was hiding behind a tall-leafed column watching the gods and goddesses who were staring with amused smiles at the one pacing furiously along a promenade shaded by a leafy pergola.

"How dare she use my likeness!" the deity roared. Her eyes narrowed, dark lashes crushing into a line of black silk. "I am a goddess, the overseer of knowledge and prophecy, not some silly mortal to distract humans' puny intellects!"

One of the goddesses laughed. A male god with a bored expression shattered a branch with a lightning rod.

The god of war was there too. His bronze skin catching the sun, arrows slung across his back as he popped a dark heart-shaped fruit into his mouth.

The deity stopped pacing and glared at him.

Anyehi.

Somehow, I knew his name.

He smiled, the curve of his lips revealing she amused him.

"It's all your fault!" she said, chastising him through gritted teeth. "Allowing her to slip into our realm. She's out of control!"

His reply was to toss the fruit into the air and catch it with an open mouth.

"Spoiling her will do nothing but cause trouble!" She stomped away, her voice resonating with danger as sharp as a blade. "Mark my words. She won't stop until she sneaks into other realms and ends up face to face with Lord Noric. And then you’ll see your darling favorite’s head on a platter served to him by his general.”

The god of war and the bored god exchanged dark looks that didn't need words.

PM pressed both hands over her mouth.

Her shoulders shook.

One tiny laugh escaped.

Every god turned.

I pulled the sheet over my face and only peaked above it when I heard a tiny swirling sound. The realm shattered like pieces of a kaleidoscope before a distinct popping sound devoured it into a point on the ceiling.

With my heart still racing, I disappeared beneath the sheet again.

A crash downstairs made me jump.

"It's alright!" my mother called from the first floor. "Just the movers."

 

 

Rob lived on Navajo Road, a fifteen-minute walk from Silver Rain Lane, which ran through a quaint, three-square-mile Town Square. Storefronts were decorated with fancy neon signs, and the streets were lined with trees wrapped in tiny lights that flicked on at dusk.

He gave us a tour of the Valley a few days later, driving down a maze of winding roads inside the residential area before cruising through the Town Square. I paid attention. I had no intention of staying here. I just didn't have a plan yet. But knowing how to get out of the Valley was an important first step.

Rob drove a Langdon bullet, the luxury edition. It was shaped like a bullet and cruised soundlessly through the air and only lowered when he parked it.

We'd been living with Rob for three days, and since arriving in the Valley, the bleed-throughs into other realms had stopped. That part of my life was a welcome change. Honestly, it was the only thing that sometimes made me think about staying.

"I'd like to visit one of the cafes," my mother said.

We were passing through the Town Square, where greystone storefronts were lined with trees and large stone vases overflowing with trailing greenery and tiny flower buds.

“Anytime," Rob replied, pointing toward the approaching corner. "Those shops are owned by Cheveyan families. Only a small portion mingle outside the tribe, but that's where the housekeeper buys flowers and candles."

"The candles that smell like lavender?" my mother checked.

Echo and I talked about the Valley. She told me to brace myself for a boring existence, but the Town Square was surprisingly exciting. We passed a cafe where the window booths were filled with kids my age who looked no different from the schoolmates I'd just left behind.

My favorite establishment was the Silver Rain Library. It was huge and wrapped around the corner onto Shawnee Lane. I could read books there, lose myself for hours, I thought, before I remembered my tentative plan of running away.

I craned my neck when I saw a spa. We were moving slowly enough for me to read the gold plaque bearing a dedication to the founding Chief Starman Silver Rain. It was situated on Shawnee, separated from the library by a small well-manicured garden.

A small stone structure that stood in the center of the two-way lane caught my eye immediately. And then Rob’s warning made what was a minor interest turn into something much bigger.

"You can't go past there," he said quietly, pointing to it.

The bullet hovered in place as we all stared at the stone gatehouse. It had a moss-covered roof and warped seventeenth-century glass. Something about it felt as though it hid more than just a dimly lit interior.

A Cheveyan guard poked his head out as he glanced in our direction.

This was the first time I’d seen someone from the tribe. He was tall and broad shouldered. His long gray hair worn in a single braid that fell down his back.

 

I was lost in my thoughts about the guard when my mother asked Rob a question. I didn’t hear her. Only his reply.

"As long as you don't break the rules, things will be fine," he’d said.

I craned my neck to trying to see the forbidden road beyond the gatehouse. The trees stood thick and shadowed, hiding whatever lay past their reach.

Part of me was afraid of the shadowed lane that led to the Cheveyan territory. Another part of me couldn’t live with not knowing.

On the way back, the quiet of the cul-de-sac settled around us. The Valley was different than the rest of Philadelphia. Something about it felt awake.

Back home people rushed from one thing to the next, but here the air felt lighter, like whatever had everyone else in its grip had no sway here. Or not yet, at least.

Time stretched differently too, not slower exactly, just wider, like a relaxed yawn where each moment melted into the next.

When we got inside the house, I went straight to my bedroom. It was almost six o’clock. The bell tower would ring soon, and like clockwork, the fog would start its descent down the lush hills toward the house.

The first time I saw the mist, its eeriness frightened me. Magic wasn’t an option anymore. I couldn’t even convince myself that maybe I could come up with a protection spell. Not that I knew about that stuff. I didn’t. But I got over my fear, anyway. And now the mist fascinated me.

 

 

 

I'd fallen asleep without the promise of PM's adventures to look forward to. When I woke in the middle of the night, a quiet warmth lingered with me. I reached for the bottle of water beside my bed, smiling to myself as fragments of my favorite dream drifted gently behind my eyes.

The boy with the long hair and the single braid at the crown of his head.

He was chasing me as usual, but this time screaming ‘no’ as I raced toward a strange tree with lime green showing between the cracks in the bark and leaves that reminded me of emerald gems fluttering in the wind.

I set the water down, turning onto my side and drawing the soft white comforter to my ears. Then I heard PM’s voice.

 

“No… Julion doesn’t believe in magic anymore.” Her voice sounded sullen.

The older being I heard from the last time, lamented, “No!” she sighed and then growled out a complaint: “No. No. Nooo!”

"Leave me alone." I mumbled, sleep a few breaths away.

"All those years we spent fashioning her dreams and arranging synchronicities..."

Still snuggled beneath the comforter, I opened my eyes.

"Ensuring the magical moments would pay off."

"You're saying they're gone? All of them? Gone?"

"All of them," PM answered.

The voices had my attention now.

"That's the last thing I needed," the older voice muttered. "This impacts more than Julion's fate."

I rolled onto my back, suddenly wide awake.

"Queen of Glitch," PM sighed. “We can always count on her to run amuck.”

My stomach tightened.

Fate?

Who was the Queen of Glitch? Me?

"What are we going to do?"

The voices fractured, drifting farther away, like a conversation drifting from an open window of a car as it drove into the distance.

I stared at the ceiling, trying to piece together what I'd just heard. I wished I'd caught the rest of the conversation.

And why did it sound like they were in a spaceship that had just taken off?

Sleep was just beginning to pull me under again when—

"I'll never let you plug in the coordinates again."

"Damn it! We're back where we started?"

"We'll give her another day or two to settle in," the older voice said. "Then we move."

"I don't think accelerating is wise," PM said after a beat of silence. She sounded worried. "Her mother broke the magic. And the gods. You'd need their permission to override the timeline."

"Earth can't wait for permission," the older voice replied. "When Julion asks you to take her through the universe, take her to Coriston."