“Stop that.” I heard Liv's voice and felt the weight of my body slam against the ground before I regained control of it. “For goodness sake, Ridley, don't be stupid.”
Liv and Ridley were standing face to face. Liv's arms were folded across her chest. Ridley held the lollipop between the two of them. “Settle down, Poppins. Short Straw and I are friends.”
“It doesn't look that way to me.” Liv's voice was rising. “Don't forget, we're the ones risking our lives to save Lena.” Their faces were lit with flashes of colored light. The Arclight was going wild, pulsing color through the trees.
“Don't get your knickers in a twist, Mate.” Ridley's eyes were steely.
Liv's were dark. “Don't be a bloody fool. If Ethan doesn't care about Lena, then what are we doing in the middle of these godforsaken woods?”
“Good question, Keeper. I know what I'm doing here. But if you don't care about Boyfriend, what's your excuse?” Ridley was standing inches from Liv, but Liv didn't back down.
“What am I doing here? The Southern Star has vanished, a Cataclyst is calling a moon out of time at the mythical Great Barrier, and you're asking what I'm doing here? Are you serious?”
“So this has nothing to do with Boyfriend?”
“Ethan, who is, in fact, no one's boyfriend, doesn't know anything about the Caster world.” Liv wasn't rattled. “He's in over his head. He needs a Keeper.”
“Actually, you're a Keeper-in-Training. Asking you for help is like asking a nurse to perform open-heart surgery. And according to your job description, you're not supposed to get involved. So the way I see it, you aren't a very good Keeper.” Ridley was right. There were rules, and Liv was breaking them.
“That may be true, but I am an excellent astronomer. And without my readings, we wouldn't be able to use this map at all, or find the Great Barrier, or Lena.”
The Arclight went cold in my hand. It was completely black again.
“Did I miss somethin’?” Link stepped out of the bushes, zipping his fly. The girls stared at him as I pulled myself up out of the mud. “Sweet tea in the toilet. I always miss the good stuff.”
“What —” Liv tapped on her selenometer. “Something's wrong. The dials are going crazy.”
Beyond the trees, a crashing noise echoed through the forest. Hunting must have caught up with us. Then I had another thought, fleeting, but it didn't make me feel any less guilty.
Maybe it was someone else, someone who didn't like us following her. Someone who could control things in the natural world.
“Go!”
The crashing grew louder. Without warning, the trees on either side collapsed in front of me. I backed away. The last time trees had fallen in front of me, it hadn't been an accident.
Lena! Is that you?
A few feet around us, great moss-covered oaks and white pines ripped up out of the mud, roots and all, crashing back to the ground.
Lena, don't!
Link stumbled toward Ridley. “Unwrap a sucker, Babe.”
“I told you not to call me Babe.”
For the first time in hours, I could see the sky. Only now it was dark. The black clouds of Caster magic had rolled in over us. Then I felt something, from far away.
More like, I heard something.
Lena.
Ethan, run!
It was her voice, the voice that had been silent for so long. But if Lena was telling me to run, who was tearing the trees out of the ground?
L, what's happening?
I couldn't hear her answer. There was only darkness, those Caster clouds rushing at us like they were chasing us. Until I saw the clouds for what they were.
“Look out!” I pulled Liv backward and pushed Link toward Ridley just in time. We fell into the brush as a shower of broken pines came falling from the sky like rain. The branches flattened into a great pile exactly where we had been standing. Dust stung my eyes, and I couldn't see anything. The dirt caught in my throat as I coughed.
Lena's voice was gone, but I heard something else. A humming sound, as if we'd stumbled across the hive of a thousand bees, all looking to kill for their queen.
The dust was so thick, I could barely make out the shapes around me. Liv was lying next to me, bleeding above one eye. Ridley was whimpering, huddled around Link, who was pinned by a massive tree branch. “Wake up, Shrinky Dink. Wake up.”
As I crawled toward them, Ridley shrank back. The look on her face was pure terror. Only she wasn't looking at me. She was looking at something behind me.
The humming sound grew louder. I felt the burning cold of Caster darkness on the back of my neck. When I turned around, the massive pile of pine needles that had almost buried us had formed some kind of bonfire. The pyramid of needles created a pyre, a giant burning platform pointing up into the black clouds. But the flames weren't red, and they didn't produce heat. They were as yellow as Ridley's eyes, and they emitted only cold, sorrow, and fear.
Ridley's whimpering grew louder. “She's here.”
I looked up as a stone slab emerged from the hissing yellow flames of the pyre. A woman lay on top of the rock. She looked almost peaceful, like a dead saint about to be carried through the streets. But she was no saint.