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He narrowed his eyes and then looked away.

“Margot?”

I shook my head.

He nodded a couple of times and clenched the side of his torso again. I shifted my body under his weight and helped him back to his bed.

“I’m no good like this Chas. Elliot wasn’t done healing me properly,” he said.

“Well, then we need to find another healer and fast. We’re inside the Outer, I’m sure there is a healer somewhere that can help you.”

He laughed. “You make it sound as if they are around every corner.” Another couple of cuss words worked themselves into that sentence and I rolled my eyes.

“Do you have to cuss so much?” I asked.

“We are living in the Outer, not your ideal world to grow old in Chas. Oh, wait, I forgot, there aren’t a lot of us here that grow old period.”

“I see sarcasm was bestowed on you as well. Now lie down.” I helped him onto the bed and he winced some more as I sort of dropped him.

This seemed like a hopeless case.

“So what do we do?” I asked after a while as I couldn’t come up with any sort of plan. To think I wanted to run away. I wasn’t going to make it very far.

No reply came from Max, and I found him sleeping again.

“Max,” I whispered and he opened his eyes. “What do we do?”

“We wait, Chas. There isn’t much we can do now if the door or windows don’t show themselves.”

“Are they here?” I asked again.

“Stop with the gazillion questions please, you are giving me a headache.”

“Fine, so we wait.”

Hollow footsteps walked up the stairs and Max’s eyes flew open once again. He switched off his night light and the room was pitch dark. The beat of my heart, I was sure Max could hear, was loud.

He got up real quick, that must have hurt, but he didn’t make any sound of pain. I could hear his breathing around the room, but what he was doing I had no idea.

The Shadow Caster’s footsteps creacked loud in the hallway. They were parading, speaking in a tone of voice that made my insides crawl. I didn’t like the pitch of their voices.

What they were saying sounded foreign and I’d never been so scared in my entire life. This topped my number one spot, whatever it was.

I closed my eyes and pulled my legs to my chest, rocking on one spot, trying to take deep breaths and calm myself down.

Then something neither of us expected happened.

The windows and door appeared while their voices were still speaking. I got up, and looked at Max.

A bright light filled the room and I had to shut my eyes for a second. It came from a Celestial that was attached to the wall.

The words coming from Max’s mouth were more or less the ones that left my mom’s mouth that day in the attic.

The only part I understand was North Dakota before he grabbed my arm and pushed me through the Celestial just as the door to Max’s bedroom opened.

A STRONG WIND PULLED BOTH OF US INTO THE
Celestial. I felt the same force from the first time I’d taken one with Mom. It was a feeling of turmoil, like I’d gotten thrown into a blender on high speed, and then we landed with a thud. My chin ached and I spat out fine red sand.

The world still spun heavily around me and I would give anything for one of those dark brown chocolates just to feel normal again.

When the carousel spinning finally stopped, I picked my head up and saw Max’s body a couple of feet away from mine.

I crawled over to him as fast as I could and lay my head slightly on his chest

He was still breathing, then he gasped hard and sat straight up, taking in our surroundings through alert eyes. A painful grunt escaped his lips as he clenched his body.

“Are you okay?” I asked as he moan and cussed.

He finally nodded as he spat out some saliva. It was mixed with red, not a good sign.

“How about you?” He looked up and his eyes lingered on my chin. It burned as his fingers touched the scrapes softly. “We’ll fix that soon, but we need to get off this road.”

I nodded, got up and helped him up as well.

He limped with half of his weight pressing down on me, and I thanked the heavens for the farm house that was a couple of miles down the road.

I didn’t know if these people would be able to see us or not, and to be honest, for the first time, I wished that we could be invisible and just lay low without them knowing that we were there.

“So what now, do you have a plan?”

“Sort of.” He spoke fast and soft, still looking around.

He didn’t go directly for the farm house, and I got a bit scared as a large dog came straight for us.

He barked like crazy, and didn’t want to stop.

The door of the farm house opened and a huge farmer walked out.

“Jay, quiet, you silly dog.”

“He can’t see us?”

“No, but the dog can,” Max said and limped toward the barn with the dog barking still behind us.

“Will he attack?” I asked looking over both our shoulders.

“No, he just barks like he has no idea what he’s looking at.”

“You’ve experienced this before, haven’t you?”

“What, getting chased by dogs in the Domain?” He smiled. “All the time. It’s quite fun if you don’t feel as if a train has just smacked into you.”

Still the dog kept barking, even though the owner told him numerous times that there was nothing out there.

“I don’t like this, make him stop,” I begged Max.

“I can’t, not with John Boy watching.”

I smiled. I knew who John Boy was, it was an oldie about a farming family and the oldest son was named John Boy. It was one of my mom’s favourite shows and she even bought herself the DVD box set to watch them over and over again.

The dog went for us a couple of times, but he didn’t attack, just like Max said.

When we reached the barn, we opened it and went inside. A couple of minutes later, the dog’s crazy barking stopped as both of us just lay on the hay.

“So, what now?” I asked again.

“Rest Chastity, believe me we are going to need it.”

I sighed. I didn’t like not knowing if we were going to be safe inside this barn or not and hated the silence.

“Why here?” I asked. “North Dakota?”

“There’s a Compound close by. I’ve only been there once with Elliot. I’m sure I can find it again. James is the Guardian of that Compound and he’ll get word to Selene about our safety.”

“Our safety?”

“I doubt that they know about the Compound yet. But when they do, they’ll destroy it. It’s what happens to Compounds when their inhibitants die.”

I began to finally realise just how dangerous it was to live inside the Outer.

“So Margot was your sister?”

“Yes.”

“Older or younger?”

“Five minutes older and she never let me forget that.”

I looked at his figure lying next to me.

“She was your twin?”

“That would be correct once more.”

“I’m so sorry, Max.”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve said so many times. Now can you please shut up so I can get some sleep.”

“Sorry, I’m just nervous.”

“You are safe for now, Chastity, get some sleep.”

I smiled at him, wishing I could believe him but my gut was still all over the place, yelling at me to not believe anything that lived inside the Outer.

I closed my eyes and my mind wandered to Fox’s body staked against the wall as if she was some sort of rare butterfly species.

Tom and John, even Henry the owl. The others I didn’t know as well as Max did, but it was hard to get over the fact that Fox wasn’t there anymore.

Crickets were chirping away as if they were on steroids. It was a sound that would drive anyone insane, and I fell asleep faster that I thought would be possible.

“CHAS! WAKE UP.” MAX YELLED AND MY EYES FLEW open.

He was standing right in front of the barn, trying to block the entrance with all his strength. The door was making a huge racket and at first I thought it was the wind, but when another blow made the door crack, I knew that it wasn’t the wind, it was something huge, something with teeth and acid saliva, something really bad.

I got up and ran toward him.

“Get me that beam, the one over there.”

I followed his gaze and saw the wooden beam to my right, on the ground.

It was quite heavy but I guess with all the adrenaline pumping through my veins it wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be.

I put it against the door and Max moved it into place while still keeping the door closed.

“We need to get higher up, there.”

I turned my gaze and found a second level closer to the barn’s roof. My eyes trailed quickly down in search of a ladder and found one against the wall.

“Go get the ladder and stack it against the side of the wall so we can get up there.

“Okay.” I ran over to the ladder and dragged it back to the wall so we could get safely up.

“Climb!” Max yelled.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be right there.”

“No,” I went back to Max and leaned against the door with all my weight. “You go.”

“Chas,” he protested.

“Max, I’m the best chance for us to both get safely up there. You’ll never make it to the ladder in one piece. Not in the state you’re in. Now go. I’ll be fine.”

He stared at me and finally nodded as he pushed himself to his feet and limp-ran toward the ladder.

Without his weight, I had to use all of my strength.

I moved a couple of inches forward with every push the Shadow Hound gave from the other side of the door.

When the wooden beam started to crack, I knew it was time to make my way to the ladder. Max was halfway up.

Another blow came and it left another crack.

I closed my eyes and prayed some more, but nothing helped. The hound could smell my fear from behind this door and he knew that this was an easy meal.

When Max’s feet touched the floor of the upper level, I pushed myself away from the door and ran as fast as I could.

The door smashed into a million pieces and one of the wooden pieces hit me straight in the back. I stumbled and skidded onto my stomach. I was covered with straw and my body ached again from new scrapes that covered my arms and legs.

“Get up!” Max yelled.

I pushed myself up and flew into the air as the dog’s paw connected with my body.

I smacked hard against the barn’s wall and a couple of shovels and garden tools fell to the ground, inches from my body.

“Use your sand, Chastity!”

I grabbed a shovel instead.

“Use your sand, a shovel isn’t going…” Max didn’t even finish his sentence as I swung the shovel toward the dog and it connected with his face.

The blow vibrated through my body. The Hound growled at me first and then it snorted before it turned and yelped.

It worked, the dog turned around and ran out of the barn like a deranged puppy.

Max just stared at me and stared at the yelping hound who was already a mile down the road, then back at me.

“How did you do that?”

I shrugged and waited for Max to climb down.

His gaze still lingered on me as I went to pick up a spade, and shoved it into my back pocket.

He found a huge bale of hay and fell backwards, covering his eyes with his hands.

I went to sit next to him and just stared at him. “I thought we were going to be safe tonight, Max?”

“I thought so too. We need to go, before more hounds come,” he said and pushed himself up from the ground.

I got up too and followed him

It was funny how none of the racket woke anybody, but then again we were still in the Outer and they were inside the real world, or Domain as they called it. We were invisible to them, and they couldn’t hear or see Casters at all.

Still it was pretty weird as I knew that tomorrow the farmer would see the barn and I doubted that he would rule it out as a strong wind.

We escaped through what used to be the door and part of the wall and started to move in the opposite direction.

My gut was yelling now, telling me not to run, but how did I tell that to a Caster who lived in the Outer when I hadn’t even reached Level One?

It felt like forever when we finally reached tall trees and Max told me to climb.

We found two branches high enough from the ground that were thick and strong enough to carry our weight. It was our bed tonight, which once again made me feel like I wss stuck inside one of favorite novels.

But this was far from a novel, it was real and a measure that would keep us safe for tonight.

“Give me your hoody.” I took it off and threw it one branch down to where Max was.

He started to rip it into shreds. I just gaped at him.

“I’ll get us some supplies tomorrow, but right now, you need to secure yourself to that tree. It’s the only way you will be able to sleep tonight.”

He started to tie the long shreds together and made some sort of rope before tossing it back to me.

I tied it around myself and around the tree and had to admit, Max was really smart, or maybe he loved to read too.

He did the same with his shirt.

“Try to sleep, Chastity,” he said one last time before a soft snore fell from his lips. He must’ve been so exhausted.

I stared into the sky.

The stars shone like small sparkling diamonds tonight, the moon was full and there were absolutely no clouds in sight. There were so many stars that it was hard not to look.

I didn’t know what tomorrow was going to hold but I knew one thing for sure, I wouldn’t be able to make it without Max.

We just needed to find this Compound fast and hopefully it would have a healer, just like his old Compound had.

He needed the healing badly.

I closed my eyes and hoped that tonight I would dream of Leigh again. He could tell me where exactly the Compound was and I knew that he would.

Max snored harder and I huffed. A part of me wished that I had his confidence in his dust, but I didn’t.

The shovel had worked, even though Max had stared at me as if he hadn’t expected that outcome. It was plain and simple, if an object hit you hard in the face, you would feel it, even if you were an oversized dog from Hell.

Then it hit me. I can be okay in this world, without letting anybody know what I desperately try to hide.

I didn’t have to experience it with my sand, but I definitely needed to learn how to fight with other weapons, even with Mom’s training, I needed more. I need to be stronger, better, faster if I was going to survive this trip.

Leigh was right. I would be able to do this, even though he’d been referring to a test and this was the real world, but he was right.