Chapter 13 #3
Ezra nodded. “And more. But yes.”
I stepped back and turned. My stomach twisted. On some level, by talking about scenario one, I’d finally admitted what happened to me might not have been a nightmare.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Ezra. The powerful commander who happened to befriend me.
No. It was too coincidental, all of it. And now I wasn’t sure what was worse: all of this was a setup by Miss Q to get me to embrace my magic, or that I’d woken up in a dystopian future and, once again, I’d trusted a man whose only goal was to use me.
Led filled every heavy step as I walked away.
Despite myself, I paused to look back. Ezra’s plum-purple gaze watched me.
His usual stoic face was white as a sheet, and his eyes swirled unhappily.
Guilt and anger flushed my stomach, but I shouldn’t be feeling either.
I turned, angling for the library and my work-study.
Because this might not be a series of delusions, this could be real. And if it was, I needed to do more than exist until I woke up.
Instead of continuing what was now a futile search for Moose, I hauled my ass to the library and did some old-fashioned digging. Every book I found, every detail in the fabric of my chair, as well as the smell of dusty paper, now fed my growing belief that this wasn’t all in my mind.
I didn’t know exactly what that meant or how I came to be here. Was this a different world? A different dimension? Or was this the future where society collapsed under the loss of technology?
Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. What was simpler, me waking up in the future? Or was I still lying on Doctor Oz’s table?
I leaned back in the faded striped wing-back chair.
…Which one did I want to be true?
In my reality, I was crazy and friendless. My dad loved me; I knew that in my heart, but his single-minded focus on making me normal destroyed my sense of self.
Here, magic, my crazy, was normal. Maybe I couldn’t quite work it right yet, but I could learn.
Everly and Cayden were already the best friends I never had.
But this mysterious Architect and the monsters who taught here scared me.
Ezra. My heart cracked all over again. I liked him a lot.
But I didn’t know if I could trust him. I hadn’t taken anything seriously from the start.
I’d been playful and bold in ways I didn’t know I was capable of.
I would never have bought a round for a packed bar.
That was irresponsible on a level old me couldn’t fathom.
I was moments away from making out with Everly, to see if her brother would kill me, because we thought it was funny.
Old me would have shut this down. I didn’t like to upset people.
But old me never engaged in life. My only goal was to blend in with everyone else and minimize the inconvenience I caused the world.
I was more alive here than I had in my entire life. And it wasn’t just the magic; it was freedom. Freedom, which was more limited than I’d thought.
I took a deep breath. Right now, it didn’t matter how I got here or when or where ‘here’ was.
I needed some control over my life. I dove headfirst into this world and created a mess.
Now, I needed to clean that up, which started with paying off the Happy Rooster and figuring out how to feed myself.
I’d been bumming off Cayden and Everly far too much.
A lovely librarian with frizzy candyfloss hair and a bounce in her step led me to a room of maps.
Paper and scrawl filled floor-to-ceiling shelves, while a large, chunky wooden table rested in the center of the space.
Although she showed me how to work the index, it required magic.
I asked for a demonstration, which she was very happy to do, leaving me with a stack of maps of Edinburgh.
It didn’t take me long to find the map of the castle with the streets below it.
With my work-study starting soon, I cursed my lack of picture-taking abilities and sketched what I could by hand with good old-fashioned paper from my pocket-void before noting the location to come back and finish later.
Assistant to a train conductor was the last thing I’d expect as a work-study in a magical world I’d created in my head, which fed directly into my new theory: this might be real.
Adam, the train conductor, had cream-colored eyes with a hint of blue, set in his broad face.
Three jagged scars ran down his left cheek.
Combined with hard lines of at least fifty years of life, he looked mean as hell.
I was now delighted we’d first met when I assumed everyone was a figment of my imagination.
Until this moment, I wasn’t sure I realized how much fear ruled my interactions with others.
However, as I learned last time, he was quick to laugh and had a passion for trains that rivaled hard-core football fans from my time. Our matching checkered shirts and overalls also cracked me up.
This morning, I must have resembled a train wreck. Train wreck. Adam would love it.
Instead of putting me right to work, he gave me time to breathe before we focused on the train’s control panel, a series of domed glass half circles glowing with swirls of color.
Pure magical energy moved from one to the next before flowing into the bit where a fire would have burned to make the steam engine work.
Because Miss Q knew exactly how steam engines worked. Except she didn’t. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d thought about trains.
“Focus, Quinn,” Adam said, waving his hands in front of my spaced-out face. “You can’t follow every train of thought, or you’ll derail.”
I groaned, making him laugh, and focused on his explanation. After magic did everything kinetic energy would have, with some key differences I didn’t understand, it flowed back out of the system.
Adam tapped a door at foot level with his toe, and a burp of rainbow fell out of it.
“Never forget to vent,” Adam said, spying my gaze. “We have to dilute power substantially so it doesn’t destroy basic components from the past. I know you’re not learning to drive, yet. But this is important. Trains weren't meant for magic, so they don’t use it efficiently.”
“Who thought to combine the two?” I asked as I grabbed my head and squeezed. “Why is any of this here?”
Adam turned from his controls. “The trains were the Architect's concept. Though, it gave a bunch of smart men a purpose, which is his true genius.”
I groaned, not actually wanting an answer to my rhetorical question. “I don’t want to hear more about the Architect.”
Adam shrugged. “Less nattering like old wives and more work, then? What’s the most important thing to do on the train?”
“Always vent the train,” I repeated. “You have to siphon out the extra energy, or the train goes boom.”
He grinned. “Very good. Let’s get you loading.” He gestured to the far side of the train. “Everything goes onto that round plate. Then each location will automatically suck them up.”
I walked the length of the train, finding it stacked high with milk crates full of books, mail, and a few objects. At the far side, far away from the oil and dirt of the front, a large round table, bigger than the circle on my desk but with similar markings, was bolted to the train.
“You can use magic or your arms,” he called out. “Everything’s already prepped in clockwise order.”
Right, well, when I tried to use magic, I destroyed things. I wasn’t doing that to all these books. Arms it would be. With a prod from Adam, I picked up the first milk crate. I shook under the weight, and my stomach growled, but I couldn’t do much about either, so I kept going.
It was hard work, but after two hours, my emotions calmed down, and I focused on the one thing that would give me control back over my life. Money.
My work-study didn’t pay in cash; it covered my housing and placement expenses.
My dish washing didn’t pay either. What could I do here that did pay?
With enough cash, I wouldn’t need a work-study.
Hell, I wouldn’t need anything. I could be Erick or Lady Moore.
I could buy my own fucking castle and fill it with hot mages who did whatever I said.
Smiling to myself, I slowly climbed the stairs to finish tracing the map. The market Horax mentioned was called Princess Street Gardens, located on ‘The Green,’ a large open space at the base of the castle cliffs.
With a break before my next placement, I found myself leaning against a building, definitely not thinking of Rowan, with my little hand-drawn map gripped in my fist. The castle supposedly only had one entrance or exit, but the map revealed two more.
One of those was in a location I’d spotted this morning.
I wasn’t huge on fate, but the coincidence was too perfect. I waited until the pair of enforcers currently patrolling the wall vanished toward the cannons before lightly crossing to the barred door I found this morning.
Fear prickled my back.
I only want you safe, Ezra had said.
By literally holding me prisoner. The phantom collar chilled my neck, and I clenched my fist. This prison might be better than dirt floors and shackles, but it didn’t change the fact I wasn’t free.
Any lingering fear vanished. I needed to do this. I hadn’t been drifting in a nightmare; I’d been surviving in post-apocalyptic Scotland for months on my own, for better or worse, long before I stumbled into this castle.
A black-clad enforcer came into my peripheral vision, and I pressed myself to the gate, trying to hide in its unique angle. Ezra’s men had my description and wouldn’t hesitate to stop me. Or worse, what if Brody came looking and found me alone?
Shit, I forgot about Brody.
I needed to get out of sight, fast.
Unlike everything else, I had no fear of destroying the old lock securing the door.
I gripped it and ‘willed’ it to open. It didn’t open, but my spine chilled, and the metal in my hand unraveled into chunks of alloys I couldn’t name.
This had to be my Majekah, and I had some control over it, which meant, with time, I could manipulate the general magic pool.
I needed to commune with Earth’s new energies, or whatever, after I solved my financial problems.
I threw my body weight against the door.
My aching arms shook. If I never lifted another crate of heavy books, it would be too soon.
After the third shove, the door inched open into the weeds.
I’d never been so happy to be underweight in my entire life.
I squeezed through and, as soundlessly as possible, shut it again.
An enforcer walked past the door, and I froze. If he turned even a little, he’d look right at me. Lady luck was on my side, and he continued past. I waited another heartbeat before venturing forward.
Foundations and weeds were all that remained of a small building on the cliff’s edge.
Beyond them, Edinburgh stretched into the dreary day.
I turned to the wall, expecting to see a set of stairs or a ladder, and my heart jumped in my throat.
A crumbling patchwork of stone that might have been stairs a hundred years ago filled half my view.
The other contained only a gray sky, extending down to what had to be at least a three-hundred-foot drop.
I stepped backward. My back hit the wall next to the gate.
The mortar between the bricks crumbled and rolled.
My breaths came out in short gasps. I didn’t think I was scared of heights, but I also wasn’t used to anything like this.
The uneven cobbled steps switched back on themselves so many times, I couldn’t count.
No railing. No handles. Only inconsistent steps, slightly wider than my hips, crumbling with age and disuse.
I looked down at the patch of green below me, and my stomach lurched.
The world spun, and I immediately looked back up. Shit.
I forced myself to breathe until my heart rate slowed. This was about facing my fears. If nothing else could be said about me, I was good at facing the unknown.
The sound of voices drifted. My next placement wasn’t until the afternoon. Was I trying to make it back by then? Or was I running?
I suddenly wasn’t sure. Either way, I had to move. Ezra could step into my shadow at any moment. If he found me here, maybe a physical prison was the next step.
Keeping my shoulders against the cliffside, I shimmied to the first step and lowered my right foot. Like the tree I climbed down as a kid, I could do this.