Above the Ashen Clouds (Twisted Worlds #2)

Prologue

C uriosity killed the Cat.

That’s me. I’m Cat. It’s short for Catalina, and I’ve been the unfortunate recipient of endless and unoriginal jokes about my nickname since I was old enough to appreciate them. And no, my mother just liked the sound of my name—the ’90s were a dark time. No one in my immediate family has ever been to Catalina Island.

And yes, I’m too curious for my own good. But in my defense, how could I not be? The world is fascinating, if one only looks.

Five years ago, our world changed in an instant. While most of the country slept, familiar landmarks, cities, and counties were suddenly gone, replaced with lands that were certainly not from here. Where they came from, no one knew. There were now elves in Minnesota, fae whose bodies were metal melded with flesh, other fae in Alaska who were rumored to create new life from their dead, and nymphs, leshi, and pixies. It seemed as if every creature from folklore and fantasy now lived on earth.

Oh, there were lots of theories—and I mean lots—and they ranged from the promising to the outright belligerent. Aliens, government conspiracy, 5G, and lead poisoning were the main suspects, as well as the idea that the world was experiencing a collective hallucination. In the early days, I particularly enjoyed the theory that the earth had somehow crossed into the horizon of a black hole and thus our comprehension of the world had changed to reveal what had been here all along—until someone who actually knew about black holes squashed that theory.

But after the metaphorical dust settled, infrastructure was repaired, and people came to the devastating realization that those who were gone were gone for good, attention turned to who the new inhabitants were—and what that meant for those of us who remained.

I was lucky. I didn’t lose anyone close to me when the angels’ ash-covered mountain appeared near my erstwhile home in Princeton, New Jersey. I was also lucky I was able to use my education in political science at the university to be at the front of the latest research regarding human relations with these new occupants. And I was even luckier that the mountain appeared near the university and not on it, as that would've made my research quite difficult. Instead, the mountain removed a golf course and fields, so the location could’ve definitely been worse.

But what I was not lucky about was that our new angelic neighbors didn’t tell us anything about themselves after they arrived. At all. They remained in their mountain, all but shunning us entirely, leaving us to learn what we could by glimpses and rumors. In their self-enforced solitude, whatever storied glory they wielded in their original home was now confined to shadows and stone.

In a broken world, those within it are also shattered.