Chapter 3
3
WHEN I BURST through the trees, I slow down, all thoughts of the impossible disappearing.
Lights flash blue and red against the night sky, and dread, heavy and sour, fills my stomach. A Durham County Sheriff patrol car has pulled into the lot, and my friends are standing beside it talking to a deputy holding a notepad.
Charlotte and the deputy both notice me approach. The deputy, a white man in his forties, flicks his notebook closed and puts a hand on his hip, as if to remind me there’s no use in running away. The holstered gun on his other hip doesn’t go unnoticed.
Alice is tucked behind them, a quiet shadow with her head bowed. Her hair falls forward in a thick black curtain, hiding her face. The sight makes my heart ache.
When I reach the car, the deputy glances at Charlotte. “This your friend?” Charlotte nods, then continues rapidly explaining and apologizing.
I go to Alice and look her over. “You okay?” She doesn’t respond or look me in the eye. I reach for her shoulder, but she twists back, away from my fingers. “Alice—”
“Now that we’re all here…,” the deputy drawls. Aided by a long-suffering sigh, he strides around the driver’s side of his squad car—taking his sweet time on purpose, I’m positive—and leans on the hood. “Ms. Simpson, you’re free to go with a warning. The next time it’ll be a ticket. Ms. Chen and Ms.…?” He tips his head my way expectantly and raises a brow.
I swallow, my heart still racing. “Matthews.”
“Uh-huh.” He nods at the back seat of the squad car. “You’re both with me.”
Beside me, Alice’s hands shake in her lap. I glance at the squad car’s glowing blue digital clock. 10:32. We’ve been on the dark, empty back road to campus for eleven silent minutes. Neither of us has ever ridden in a police car. It smells like leather and gun oil and something sharp and minty. My eyes land on a round green-and-black tin of Classic Wintergreen–flavored Skoal in the cup holder between the front seats. Ugh. Beyond the metal mesh divider, a dusty laptop sits attached to the center console. Below it, there’s a pile of electrical equipment sprouting coiled wires and covered with dials and switches. The deputy, whose name tag says “Norris,” fiddles with the radio station until it hits the chorus of “Sweet Home Alabama” over the crackling speaker.
I’m sixteen. I pay attention. I listen to the stories from uncles, cousins—hell, my own father—about police run-ins and stops. I see the videos online. Sitting in this car and thinking about those images makes my heart pound. I don’t know if there’s a single Black person in this country who can say with 100 percent confidence that they feel safe with the police. Not after the past few years. Probably not ever. Maybe there are some, somewhere, but I sure as hell don’t know ’em.
Alice sits stiff as a board, gaze locked outside the window onto the endless wall of passing shadowed woods. In the front seat, Norris taps his thumbs on the wheel and mouths, “Lord, I’m coming home to you.”
“Alice,” I whisper. “Something happened—”
“Not talking to you.”
“Come on ,” I hiss. “Back at the campfire, there was a—” God, I don’t know where to start. “It was the fight, I think—”
“Quit the chatter,” Deputy Norris orders. I catch his eyes in the mirror. He raises a brow as if to say, Say something. I dare you. I shutter my gaze and look away.
After a few minutes, Norris speaks up. “So, Carolina. My kid applied couple a years ago—he didn’t get in. Tough school to crack. Pricey, too.”
Neither one of us knows what to say to that.
“How’d y’all swing it?”
We both hesitate. Swing what ? Getting accepted, or the cost? Alice answers first. “Scholarship.”
“How ’bout you, girlfriend?” Norris’s eyes find me in the mirror. “I’m guessin’ need-based?”
Alice stiffens, and my hackles raise. I’m not his girlfriend , and I’m not ashamed to have financial aid, but that’s not what he’s asking—“Affirmative action?” is written all over his knowing sneer.
“Merit,” I bite out through gritted teeth, even though it’s none of his business either way.
He chuckles. “Sure.”
I breathe through a surge of impotent rage. My fingers curl into my thighs, tensing with all of the things I can’t afford to say right now.
After a few minutes, the car slows. We’re still miles from campus and there’s no intersection or car in sight, just a straight two-lane road illuminated by the squad car’s headlights. Then I see why Norris is stopping. Two figures have emerged from the tree line on the other side of the road. As the squad car pulls closer, lights on full, the figures cover their eyes with raised hands. Norris rolls to a stop beside them, turns the volume down, and lowers his window. “Late to be out for a stroll.”
“Norris, is it?” The blood drains from my face at the sound of that voice.
Deputy Norris’s shoulders tense. “Kane.” His eyes slide to the left. “Morgan. Sorry about that. Didn’t recognize y’all.”
Alice leans against her own window to get a better look at who I know to be Selwyn and Tor. Nosy Legendborn.
“I noticed,” Sel says smoothly. He bends at the waist, and I direct my eyes straight ahead, face blank. In my peripheral vision I see his gaze linger on me for a moment, then move to Alice. His attention sets my nerves on fire. “Stragglers from the Quarry?”
“Yep,” Norris confirms. He hesitates, then clears his throat. “Anything to be concerned about there?”
Selwyn stands. “Not anymore.”
“Glad to hear it.” Norris’s chuckle is tight. Nervous.
Norris knows. He knows.
“Is that all?” Sel asks dryly. If Norris is offended that he, a Durham County Sheriff’s deputy and full-grown man, is being as good as dismissed by a teenage boy, he doesn’t show it.
“Just taking these two back to campus.”
Sel is already walking down the road, his attention withdrawn. “On your way.”
On your way. Not a request. Not a suggestion. An order.
Any ounce of security I could have felt in this car is erased in three words. Whatever higher power Deputy Norris answers to, these two teenagers outrank him.
Norris salutes Tor before she follows Sel; then he shifts the car into drive to continue down the road toward UNC. After a minute, he turns the radio back up and hums under his breath. I gather my courage and twist, as subtly as possible, to peer out the rear windshield.
Tor and Sel are gone.
Beside me, Alice slumps back against the seat. I don’t attempt to talk to her again. If I didn’t know what to say before, then I definitely don’t now that I’ve seen the way law enforcement interacts with these so-called Legendborn. I spend the rest of the drive reviewing my earlier words to Alice and end up both relieved and terrified. Relieved, because I said nothing in Norris’s presence to indicate that I knew what really happened at the Quarry. Terrified, because I witnessed something that I was not meant to see, and if Selwyn Kane had wanted to do something about that, Deputy Norris would not have stopped him.
Three thoughts chase one another the entire ride to campus until they bleed into a single stream of words: Magic. Real. Here.
Norris drops us off in front of Old East, the historic building that houses Early College students. We take the stairs up to our dorm on the third floor in silence. Once inside, Alice changes into her pajamas and climbs into bed without saying good night. I find myself standing adrift in the middle of our floor.
On her side of the room, Alice has a row of framed photos of her brother and sisters and parents on vacation in Taiwan on the shelf above her desk. Her parents declared early on that they would pick her up from the dorms every Friday so that she could spend the weekend at home in Bentonville, but that didn’t stop her from decorating like she’d live here full-time. Earlier today, she’d hung a few rom-com movie posters on the wall and draped a six-foot string of Christmas lights over her bed.
On my side, there are no pictures. No posters. Nothing decorative at all, really. Back home, it hurt beyond tolerance to walk the halls of my childhood home and see photos of my mother alive and smiling. I even hid her knickknacks. Any sign of her existence cut into my heart, so when it came time to move to Chapel Hill, I packed light. All I have here are a few plastic bins of books and stationery, a suitcase of clothes, my favorite sneakers, my laptop and phone, and a small box of toiletries.
After tonight, everything looks like an artifact from another world where magic doesn’t exist.
Real. Here.
Three other words join the thread: Merlin. Kingsmage. Legendborn.
I don’t expect to find sleep, but I climb into bed anyway, childhood imaginings colliding with the hellish reality I’d witnessed tonight. When I was little, I loved the idea of magic, the kind that lives in Percy Jackson and Charmed. Sometimes magic seemed like a tool that could make life easier. Something that could make the impossible possible .
But real magic includes creatures that feed on humans. A small voice inside me thinks that, if they hunt those creatures, the Legendborn must be good. They must be. But when the night slips into early morning, that voice grows quiet. By the time I fall asleep, my ears ring with echoes: that boy’s sharp cry of pain when Sel forced him to his knees; Dustin’s slurred mumble as he marched to the parking lot; and the isel’s scream when Sel destroyed it.