I listen for the sound of fireballs and lightning, but all I hear is water lapping against a shore and a lone seagull cawing as it circles in the clear blue sky overhead. The air is misty and scented with salt.
Did I travel to the wrong place? Is that even possible?
I rise to my feet on shaky legs, then reach into my pocket for the roll of gauze I brought along. I’d thought it was plenty at the time I found it in the back of the medicine cabinet at home, but the small roll looks painfully insufficient now. I wrap the gauze tight around my arm until I’ve used up the whole thing. A red stain quickly blooms through the fabric.
Super.
I reach back into my pocket and pull out the two painkillers I brought, which also seem insufficient now. I pop them into my mouth anyway and swallow without water. They sit awkwardly in the back of my throat until I can work up enough saliva to get them down.
And then I sit back down, fighting to catch my breath.
Dark golden sand stretches for a half mile behind me, until it reaches cement seawalls set into a grassy ledge. There’s a lifeguard hut painted in a colorful seventies-flower pattern a few paces from me, and a small, red-roofed hut way off on the left. A modest mountain range speckled with houses rises up around the beach.
I’ve been here before, I realize. Torrance Beach. Bianca claimed it was the beach to visit and had forced me to come with her once. We’d quickly discovered it was filled with toddlers in soggy diapers instead of hot surfer dudes and never came back.
I panic as I realize I don’t know if Torrance is in sorcerer territory. Cruz said rebel territory stretched all the way to Redondo Beach. My heart races. I can’t believe I never thought of this possibility. If I run into Goth Woman or any of the other rebels again, my whole plan could be ruined.
I sit there for a few minutes, panicking and worrying and panicking, but no one comes for me. Of course, the one time it would be convenient to wake up near a battle zone, I get tossed onto an abandoned beach.
I stumble over to the lifeguard hut. The wood creaks as I climb the old steps. Once up top, I put my back to the ocean and shield my eyes from the glare of the sun, looking out over the horizon. But with all the mountains, I only get a better view of the parking lot.
I consider my options.
Shitty Option A: I fly into sorcerer territory. But the closest would be East L.A., and that’s still a major hike from here—I could easily get spotted by a rebel on my travels.
Shitty Option B: I get to high ground in the mountains and try to see if there’s activity anywhere around me. This seems like a solid plan until I consider that there could be rebels in the mountains.
Shitty Option C: I use my magic to blow something up and watch from hiding to see who comes. This would work best if sorcerers wore identifying uniforms so I’d know if I should come out or not.
Ugh.
A thought strikes me: I don’t even know if my magic still works. Who knows how long I was out for before I woke up? I’m hoping to get captured by sorcerers, but that wouldn’t be such a good idea if I had only my basic magic skills.
I decide to try something small to test it.
I focus my stare at the glistening waves a mile out. The heat of my magic moves up quickly into my chest. I think of wind pushing through the calm water, and a ripple, large enough that I know it’s unnatural, cuts through the blue. I have just enough time to smile at my success before the ripple grows so big it looks like a tsunami crashing toward the shore. Which is exactly what it is.
Awesome idea, Indie. A-plus decision.
I grip the beams of the lifeguard hut just as the massive wave arcs up over my head, casting me in its shadow.
I take a deep breath and hold on for dear life as the wave comes crashing down. It hurts worse than I expected, smashing into my body like a sledgehammer. In a moment, I’m completely submerged. The waves rip my body in every direction, pummeling me hard against the wood, churning me like I’m in a washing machine, but I cling to the beam with everything I have. The hut sways under the pressure, like it’s going to uproot from the sand. I’m desperate for a breath, but the water is so vicious I’m afraid that if I let go, I’ll be carried out to sea and pulled under with a current.
When my lungs feel like they’re going to burst, the wave finally recedes, and my head pops up above the water. I cough and sputter, black spots dancing in my eyes as oxygen slowly returns to my brain.
I don’t know if it’s my wet clothes, or fear, or both of those things, but my whole body is taken over by violent shivering that hurts the bruises quickly forming over every inch of my skin. My new bandage has been pulled loose and hangs in a sopping pile around my wrist, leaving my wound exposed and stinging from the salt water.
Awesome. I’ll probably die from a bacterial infection before I save Paige.
I’m pulling off the useless gauze when I see movement flash through the sky. Three people land hard in the wet sand across from the hut.
One guy wears an oversized T-shirt, and a bandanna over his shaved head. A man with huge dreadlocks that reach halfway down his back and a jaw almost as hard as the body visible beneath his white tank top glares at me with contempt (or excitement—it’s hard to tell). The lone woman wears a high ponytail, a sports bra, and a smirk I don’t have to try hard to decipher.
“And what do we have here?” Sporty Spice says.
Please be a sorcerer, please be a sorcerer.
Magic bubbles hot in my stomach, the instinct to fight them almost too much to ignore. But if the plan is going to work, I need them to think I’m a human, and so I bite down on my lip until I draw blood. The heat doesn’t go away.
“Wh-who are you?” I ask. The warble in my voice is a nice touch, though I didn’t plan it. I scrabble back as they approach, but there isn’t really anywhere I can go. They circle the hut like sharks scenting a bloody meal.
“Come on down, little girl,” Eminem calls up. The rest of them cackle.
“We promise we won’t hurt you!” Bob Marley says.
Yeah. Right.