Haddie always loved summer. No sums, no figures, just sun rays and ocean waves.
But it seemed some people couldn’t relax, even if their lives depended on it.
A fifty-foot watery monster stood in front of her at the beach. Inside its liquid chest sat a boy, the root of all her problems—
“Again.”
The voice that reached Pulsar along the communications thread was neither impressed nor impatient.
Pulsar pivoted away from the smoldering target at the edge of the training field to face the figure near the far-off arsenal. “But Master U’drec—I executed the maneuver perfectly! Why—”
“Return to start position, Squire.”
Gods, I hate the overworld. It’s bad enough that everyone mistakes me for the goddess of death. I’m only the keeper of souls—and I didn’t even ask for that job.
Also, everything up here makes me sneeze.
I hold in another one as I look around this stupid hippie commune. My sister,
I died at sixteen.
People said I committed suicide, but after my stepfather Manny had too many beers at my funeral and made a toast about how my curvy, young body must be pleasing the angels, murmurs rolled through the room.
The police chief ordered an autopsy. The medical examiner found arsenic
“You are, without doubt, the laziest dragon hunter I have ever encountered,” scoffed Dorvan’s unwelcome visitor, a young knight.
“Oh? What gave it away?” Dorvan sat outside his cottage with his feet propped up on a stool. He did not even look up as he turned a page in his book.
“I once thought
Pounding on the door jolts me out of the haze between sleeping and waking. Remaining alert while resting is one useful trick I still use from my army days. I rise from my chair, brush the wrinkles out of my robes, and grab my lantern. Yawning, I stumble past the carved stone tombs
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“I don’t know what to do.” Margo peeked around the doorframe.
Her son lounged in his hammock, one leg dangling over the edge.
She adjusted the conch shell against her ear. “All Birch does is sit in his room and listen to fairy pop. Neither of his brothers were this—”
“Lazy,”
I collapsed in the shade of an acacia tree, panting. My legs still tingled from the countless scratchy beards that had stampeded our direction.
Beside me, Archibald Waverly, renowned safari guide and wild mustache expert, lay flopped on the ground, pith helmet askew. “That was a close one.”
It was a moment
Yesterday, I declared war.
On a bugle.
0600. Time for “Reveille.” Our base commander, Wizard-General Lytton, won’t waste even the newest recruit mage on that duty. A simple spell makes the bugle perpetually hovering by the flagpole sound any required call at the proper time.
Until yesterday. Ten seconds into the silence
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It’s an honor being a royal hot air balloon maker. But the conversation occurring around me makes me want to float away from my coworkers and hide.
I only have one thing in common with the other three people working in the sunshine outside Princess Amzho’s castle: a love and talent for our craft.
I’ve learned to live with pain.
A copper wilting wasp scuttles up my arm, its stinger poised to strike. I lift my eyes past my rotund master, over the carts of food I’ll never eat, and rest them on distant mountains. I focus on those peaks as the wasp delivers a paralyzing injection. Debilitating
“So, does the bureau know why they sent us here?”
Sal shrugged while cramming fries in his mouth.
Jane waited for him to swallow. “They said a passing centaur reported all the other wilderkind in the area have gone silent.” She slapped his hand before he grabbed another burger. “Aren’t you worried?”
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