The woman slid her eyes over Ari’s entire body. “I’ve longed for a female Arthur,” she said, her voice like silt. “But you appear as foolhardy as the others. It will be your undoing.” Morgana stepped closer, even more translucent in the streetlamp than she was in the shadows. “I’m here to set you free. We will find your death this time, Arthur. I promise.”
“No more Arthur crap!” Ari raised the sword with one hand. If it had imprisoned this unnerving woman once, perhaps it could be done again. Morgana backed up with a snarl, and Ari used her free hand to haul the sobbing, skinny boy to his feet and secured his arm over her shoulder. He clung to her, and she felt a surge of protective feelings for this red-haired weirdo.
Morgana bared her white teeth, her eyes a fiery black. “You will listen to me this time. You will not fall for his chivalrous nonsense. I will make you listen!”
Merlin shuddered from Ari’s side, his face pressed into her neck. “Ashes, ashes,” he sang softly, “we all fall down.”
He pointed a finger upward. A bolt of lightning crackled forth, fracturing the dome.
Morgana shrieked and evaporated. Ari stared at the searing white lines high above. If the thermal shade broke, they had seconds before they were boiled in their skin. She ran, dragging Merlin. The evacuation alarms wailed, and Ari didn’t have to worry about Mercer because the streets filled with the chaos of a few thousand lives on the brink of obliteration.
Error’s cargo door opened with a mechanical gasp, and Ari dropped the still-faintish magician unceremoniously in the cabin. She placed the sword on the table and ran toward the cockpit.
“Kay! Time to get the hell out of Dodge!”
“You think?” Kay was already slamming controls, jarring them out of the lunar docks. Ordinarily, they’d have to request to leave the spaceport and receive a set time, but right now the entire colony was stuffed in tiny spaceships, bottlenecking the exit.
Although that wasn’t what froze Ari in her tracks. “Lamarack?” she asked, her voice unsteady. Kay’s childhood best friend twisted around in Ari’s command chair, even more stunning than the last time she’d seen them, all magnificent cheekbones and perfect dreadlocks.
They gave her a small wink, flashing golden mauve eyeshadow. “Hey, kid.”
She flung herself into a rather embarrassing back hug, not caring a bit, even when Lam chuckled. “What’s going on? How are you here? Are you all right?” Ari’s questions fought one another. Ari and Kay hadn’t made contact with their friends since their parents’ arrest; Mercer was always watching. “Is Val okay? What’s happening?”
“Lock your boots, Ari. We’re busting out of here,” Kay hollered.
Ari’s buzz of good feelings at seeing one of her favorite people turned to suspicion. She hit the lock on the ankle of her magboots, holding on to the emergency bar above her head. “Kay, what the hell are you up to?”
“Evacuations first, explanations second!” her brother yelled. Kay used Error’s odd canister-like shape to wedge them into the mass exodus, and a ship screeched into them from the left, and the right—and the top—as their little spaceship passed through several thrown-open gates and finally through a pinhole opening in the thermal shades.
“Error, my sweet girl, is the heat skin holding?” Kay asked.
“YES, KAY THE BEARDLESS WONDER,” the ship said in a stilted voice.
Lam laughed, and Kay turned at Ari, looking more affronted than furious. “When did you have time to reprogram my baby?”
“You sleep more than I do,” Ari said with a shrug, eyes on the commotion out the starboard window. The largest dome on the colony gave way to its Merlin-inspired fractures. Human paraphernalia expanded in a rush, only to tumble lazily in the vacuum—a slow-motion explosion.
“What now?” Lam asked, their voice as soothing as Ari remembered. Lyrical, sweet. It almost made up for whatever treachery Kay was peddling. Why hadn’t he told her he was meeting one of their only friends in the cosmos?
“We hide in the pack of evacuees for now,” Kay said. “We’ll drop you off, and then Ari and I will head into the void.”
Ari bit back rising anger, waiting for the right moment—and failing as usual. “The void? So we finally find out our parents are alive and you want to disappear into dead space?”
Kay swung around. “You want to know why Lam’s here, Ari? Because I called them from Earth. I asked them to meet us. To bring us a few supplies and the latest Mercer chatter. Do you want to know what that might be?”
Kay was glaring so hard Ari was having a hard time not punching him in the face.
“That they’re looking for me?”
“Looking? Oh, no, they’re beyond looking. They’ve put out a bulletin about Error. Anyone who spots this ship can report it and collect a reward. We have to get out of Mercer territory now, or we’re going to end up just like my moms.”
My moms. He did that sometimes. Ari knew it was not a purposeful exclusion of her from their family, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Kay knew he’d hurt her, too, but instead of gearing down, he revved up. “Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with that mess back there.”
Ari folded her arms over her chest. “Don’t say anything,” Mom used to tell her. “If you can’t lie and you don’t know what else to do, just… say nothing.”
“Ari!”
“A little help, friends?” a voice called out from the main cabin.
Kay’s face blanched to a gray that matched his hair. “You brought someone with you?”
He rushed out of the cockpit and Lamarack stood, giving Ari a one-armed hug. “Never boring with you two, is it?”
Ari smiled back but then hustled into the main cabin. Without magboots, Merlin was floating in the air, spinning slowly toward an upside-down position that would give them an unfortunate view of whatever he was—or wasn’t—wearing under that bathrobe.
“Who is this?” Kay asked, incredulous.
“I found him in a nightclub.”
“What were you doing in a nightclub?”
“You said to go somewhere Mercer wouldn’t expect to find me. Who goes dancing when the largest corporation in the universe is after them?”
Kay growled and grabbed Merlin’s leg, stuffing him into a chair and strapping him in.
“Greetings, latest Kay,” Merlin said.
“He says he knows us,” Ari added.
Kay stood back, studying him. “I don’t know you. I would remember… you.”
“I’m Merlin the magician, and I come to you now at the turn of the tides.” Kay stared openmouthed at this attempt at dramatic grandeur. “Well, that’s Gandalf’s line, but I had to try it at least once.”
Kay’s face puckered with annoyance. “Is this because I made you wear the smelly rubber knight costume and hide in the Arthur exhibit? You find some wacko to pretend to be Merlin to taunt me?”
Ari remembered the miserable old figure listed as Merlin. “No, but that would have been a great idea. He’s the reason the dome broke. I was merely a witness.”
Kay swiveled at his sister. “He broke the dome and you brought him on my ship?”
“He can do magic, Kay.”
Kay scoffed and spun at Merlin. “Right, sure, do some magic, then. Go ahead.”
Merlin puckered a frown. “I’m a bit tired. Being tortured will do that.”
“The fuck!” Kay’s eyes had found Ari’s newest love. Excalibur should have been floating along with Merlin, but somehow it was stabbed through the center of the crew table, rather majestically, Ari felt like adding.
“Huh. I didn’t do that. I dropped it on the table. Promise.”
“Do I look stupid?” Kay asked.
Oh, what a trap. Ari stared at Kay’s livid expression, his shoulders hunched to match his eyebrows. Lam chuckled from the corner. “Not any more than usual.”
Kay spun on Merlin. “So, you did that?”
“Not in the slightest,” Merlin said unhelpfully. “Excalibur has its own ideas.”
Kay yanked on the sword, first with one hand, and then with both. His face grew red and puffy, and Ari could tell he was about to bust something. “Excalibur only responds to the touch of King Arthur.” Merlin looked at Ari knowingly, and she felt distinctly uncomfortable.
“Don’t get your unders in a twist,” she told Kay. “It’s only a sword.” She pushed him out of the way and lifted the sword with ease.