He winced at the shifting shadows on the staircase. Corentin came into view, running his hands through his hair. He squinted against the light of the TV, and Taylor mouthed that he was sorry. He watched Corentin halt at the TV like a zombie attracted by the glow.
“Hello?” the woman said over the phone. “Mr. Hatfield? Are you there?”
Taylor sputtered. “Oh, yes. Sorry. Early morning chaos. You know how it is.”
The woman let loose an awkward laugh that made the hair on the back of his neck tingle. “I’m calling from Andersen’s Institute. You’re on the emergency contacts list of Mr. Atticus Hatfield.”
“At-Atticus…,” Taylor whimpered as his world fell away. Corentin was saying something to him and pointing at the TV, but it was all muffled tones. Ringo and Honeysuckle fluttered around Corentin and were calling to Taylor as well. Taylor’s mind drowned as it latched on to the heartache of a brother’s love.
His father had made it clear Taylor would never be a part of Atticus’s life ever again. But the woman on the end of the line called him as an emergency contact. He only heard one choice word and focused on that to the exclusion of all else.
“Is he okay? My father said he was no longer there. Is he okay?” Taylor asked, and Corentin turned to him with a bewildered expression. He trembled, and Corentin slipped to Taylor’s side.
“As far as I’m aware, Atticus is fine,” the woman said, and Taylor’s knees buckled as he fell against Corentin.
“Thank Storyteller,” Taylor said in a breathless gasp.
“Or we think he is,” she said, and Taylor clawed into Corentin’s arm for stability.
“What are you talking about? Is he or isn’t he?”
Ringo turned from the TV to look over his shoulder at Taylor. “Um. You want to see this.”
Taylor gnashed his teeth at Ringo. If it was another damn
Shark Tank
thing, Ringo would live to regret it.
Corentin likewise stepped toward the TV. “You want to see this….”
Taylor put his hand over the speaker on his phone. “If this is
Shark Tank
, I am going to fucking kill all of you.”
“It’s not
Shark Tank
,” Corentin, Ringo, and Honeysuckle said in unison.
Taylor blinked and stepped forward for a better view. The national news cut in with a breaking announcement.
ABC anchorman David Muir calmly explained the footage flashing across the screen. “You are not dreaming. None of us are. As of 3:30 a.m. Central Time, a Category 4 nor’easter made landfall directly on top of New Orleans, Louisiana. With hurricane-force winds on top of a blizzard of snow and ice. Not only are nor’easters unheard of in the Southern US, but the storm seemed to have appeared in minutes. There was no warning.”
“No warning…,” Corentin whispered, shaking his head.
“The President is suspecting a new type of terrorist weapon,” David continued.
“Not the terrorist they’re thinking,” Ringo said and scratched his chin.
Too much information ran through Taylor’s mind all at once. He forced himself to swallow the need to vomit. He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hatfield,” the woman said over the phone. “In transferring your brother to the new facility, it seems Atticus never made it there.”
Taylor gritted his teeth. “I know.”
May 5
Ground Zero, New Orleans, Louisiana
TAYLOR DIDN’T
know what he would have done without Ringo and Honeysuckle. Once the roads just outside Baton Rouge proved impassable, they lent their aid with a clever teleportation ward via a fairy ring of tall mushrooms. Corentin didn’t want to abandon the truck, especially in the complete darkness of the interstate, but Honeysuckle insisted she had it all in hand.
“Come on,” Taylor said and reached for Corentin’s hand. “It’ll be faster this way. We’ve already been on the road for eighteen hours, and we can’t waste any more time.”
“How can you keep going?” Corentin asked as they linked hands.
“I just do,” Taylor said.
Together, with only their winter clothing and their survival packs, they entered the ring….
Taylor’s lashes fluttered as he kept his hold on Corentin’s gloved hand. They stood amid the frozen devastation of what remained of the French Quarter. Rows of nightclubs and bars, torn apart by the wind, had collapsed from the snow. They jutted up from the dirty snowbanks like jagged macabre memorials, glittering against the shimmering moonlight of the clear skies.
Ringo fluttered next to them, the beating of his wings the only sound through the groan of the wind. “Whoa,” he whispered. “It didn’t look like this before, did it?”
Taylor shivered, and he pressed his mouth shut to keep his teeth from chattering. He turned in a slow circle in the middle of the towering banks of snow. The rubble splayed out at their feet like scattered blood splatter of a livelihood lost to a senseless act of violence.
He hissed through the cold. Questions rose from the ruin. “Why here?” he asked, taking stock of the destruction. “Why not attack Maine? Why not try to kill us?” He looked skyward, and failed to make sense of anything. He didn’t know what he was looking for—maybe some answer spelled out in black and white.
“Maybe that wasn’t the point,” Corentin said, likewise scanning the surroundings. Looking for signs of life, Taylor assumed. “This wasn’t an act of pinpoint focus to take one person out of the equation. This came from a place of brutality to hurt the most people possible.”
“But the question remains, why here?” Taylor asked, confused by Corentin’s theory. “Is it because you’re native?”
Corentin shrugged. “I strongly doubt anyone targeted us.”
Taylor knitted his brows. He and Ringo exchanged questioning glances, and Ringo shook his head.
Ringo pointed upward at the gathering clouds. “I’ll take a look overhead. Get a better sense of the land and how to navigate. Maybe find some assistance.”
“Good idea,” Taylor said, and Ringo flittered into the dreary skies.
“Hey,” Corentin said softly, as if in distressed disbelief. “Happy Birthday.”
Taylor shivered in his coat and tucked his chin into his fuzzy scarf. “You remembered.” Corentin was trying to diffuse Taylor’s apprehension, and Taylor was letting it work. No, Taylor
needed
it to work.
“Was there a doubt?” Corentin asked, but he didn’t smile as they navigated through the slush.
Instead of responding, they fell into silence. The wind sang a shrill note, using the rubble and ruin as its instrument. In the distance, mundanes wailed with bloodcurdling howls, afflicted with pandemonium. The local authorities, or the ones who were likely Enchants and unaffected, shouted messages not to panic and corralled the mundanes together for their safety.
Taylor’s snow boots crunched over the ice and broken glass as they wandered down what had once been Royal Street. The iron-lace balconies had collapsed under the weight of the heavy snow and lay shattered like cracked sugar.
“Corentin,” Taylor whispered, and his eyes welled with icy tears. He pointed to the battered-in doors of a bar and the patrons inside. All of them were frozen at the moment of death. Their faces remained contorted with screams of their last words. It was like an eerie reprise of historical Pompeii. Taylor shook his head, backing into Corentin for protection. Zee perked, and Taylor sensed her confusion.
Corentin pulled him close, and Taylor trembled. “We’re going to see a lot of that. I’m with you,” Corentin said.
Taylor nodded at the encouragement. “Why would he do this?” he asked as he stepped away. He folded his hands to his chest, searching for the magic inside his heart. Taylor clenched his hands tighter and pressed his lips together, trying to hide his sadness. “Why would he hurt these people?”
“We don’t know that he did,” Corentin said, remaining behind Taylor. “It could have been any number of Enchants. Atticus isn’t the only one with control of ice and snow.”
Taylor looked up to the gray skies. The clouds wrapped New Orleans in a blanket of dread. The storm had passed, but the skies warned them it could come again. Corentin didn’t convince him.
“This isn’t the Tranquil Frost,” Corentin called as Taylor walked on. “Everyone would be dead. New Orleans would be buried. Someone wanted to terrorize the place, control it, for… something….” Corentin left it at that.
The wind scraped at Taylor’s face, rubbing his cheeks with stinging ice crystals and dirt. “What would someone take control of New Orleans for?” Taylor asked, turning slowly to face him.
Corentin cleared his throat with a ragged cough. He puffed into his gloved hands, trying to warm them.
Taylor furrowed his brows as Corentin avoided answering. “Do you know?”
“I’m not sure,” Corentin said, and his breath frosted in the air. “So, can you do it?”
Their eyes met, and Taylor noticed Corentin’s expectant expression. Corentin had dodged the question, but Taylor decided to leave it for now. Corentin was right—dealing with the mundanes was the pressing issue.
Taylor curled his hands to his chest, pressing his sternum through this coat. “I’ve only done the Blooming Lullaby once,” he said as he flexed his fingers. “I’m sure I can go for round two.”
The Blooming Lullaby was Taylor’s gift as Sleeping Dragon to grant restful healing slumber upon those wounded in battle. He could heal anyone who had fallen victim to Atticus’s Tranquil Frost.
He shook his head. He just wanted Atticus to be the culprit. He longed for the closure.
Taylor closed his eyes and retreated into a state between being awake and asleep. He fanned his fingers, and the pink sparks drifted from his chest into his palms. His magic coalesced into a twinkling magenta ball, and Taylor cradled it like a delicate baby bird. With a nod, he tossed out his arms in a wide arc, and his magic burst from his fingertips in a scattering shot.
His magic fizzled like an insignificant firecracker at his feet.
Taylor buckled at the middle as if hit with a baseball bat to the gut. He dropped to his knees in the slush, and Corentin was at his side in seconds. Taylor coughed for breath as Corentin scooped him up from the ground.
“You okay?” Corentin asked and smoothed away Taylor’s hair. “Hey. Talk to me.”
Taylor’s teeth chattered, and he fought for air. His lungs moved, but no breath came in, nor did he exhale any of it.
“Taylor?” Corentin asked. Panic rose in his tone, and he shook Taylor. “Talk to me. Hey. Hey. Stay with me. I’m here. Stay here.”
“I… c-c-can’t…,” Taylor whispered in a choking gurgle. His world blurred from black to white to green to red to gray.
“Shh, shh, shh,” Corentin said as he hurried down the street with Taylor in his arms. “We’ll get back to Ringo, yeah? We’ll figure it out from there.”
Corentin muttered to him, but Taylor’s consciousness hazed at the edges. He was awake, but not quite aware. The cold scraped at his nose and cheeks as Corentin ran with him, his heavy footfalls crunching with the fury of a wolf chasing prey. The rhythmic pounding made Taylor come back to the present. He blinked blearily as Corentin turned a corner of what had once been the green lushness of Pirate Alley. The trees and bushes had been flash-frozen, still brilliant and bright from their summer days, now encased in thick ice, turning them into art.
The green steeples of St. Louis Cathedral came into view. Taylor’s breath returned to him, and he wrapped his arms around Corentin’s neck.
“You okay?” Corentin asked breathlessly as he jogged onward.
“Yeah, I’m okay now, just didn’t expect that,” Taylor said, then yawned wide.
“Was it Zee?” Corentin set Taylor on his feet.
Taylor wobbled, and Corentin reached out to steady him. But Taylor waved him off as he found his footing. He blinked again, trying to get his bearings. “I don’t think so. Zee is for defense. I don’t think she’d interfere with the Blooming Lullaby.”
He pointed ahead, and Corentin followed his gesture. They both nodded at the sight of a FEMA station in Jackson Square. The snow had been pushed away to form a perimeter, and a line of storm victims wound through the maze of snow.
Corentin and Taylor hung back, observing as volunteers led survivors inside the cathedral and others to tables filled with hot soups and coffee. Drum fires crackled throughout the encampment, and volunteers as well as survivors warmed their hands.
Corentin squinted and tapped Taylor’s forearm. “Hey,” he muttered, then swept a finger indicating the volunteers. “What do you see?”
Taylor startled. “Huh?”
“Their eyes. All of them.”
Violet, gold, ruby, cerulean, jade, black. Taylor recognized the peculiar eye colors of their people. It was an Enchant’s telling trait, and with a subtle power of suggestion, easily overlooked by mundanes. But once mundanes had been exposed to their magic, they saw them for what they were. Only instead of considering them kind princesses and brave princes, they saw all of them as monsters. Taylor could never shake the vision of the man he’d seen in Margate City, of his contorted, terrified expression when he recognized Taylor for what he was, and how the last fibers of his human sanity snapped.
As the storm victims wound through the line and the volunteers carried out their assigned tasks, something else caught Taylor’s attention.
“Not all of them are Enchants,” Taylor said. “And the ones who aren’t haven’t lost their sanity.”
“Curious.” Corentin nodded in agreement.
“Psst! Guys!”
Taylor turned at the familiar sound of Ringo’s voice.
“Up here,” Ringo said as he waved from the top of a snowbank.
As Taylor looked up, the world went off-kilter for him. He staggered, and his lashes fluttered as the cold sweat of nausea broke out on his forehead.
“Taylor?” Corentin asked in a cautious tone. “Taylor!”
His eyes rolled into the back of his head and his world went dark.
“HEY….” CORENTIN’S
voice called to Taylor, pulling him from the darkness. “Hey…. Come on, baby. Come back.”