Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 3) (2 page)

“Have you tried taking us somewhere else?” Keefe asked. “Maybe there’s some sort of security around the Sanctuary to keep Teleporters away.”

Sophie doubted that, since she was the only elf who could teleport. But it was worth a try.

She just couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Her mind was racing a million directions, and they all ended in a blank.

“How about home?” Keefe asked. “Can you take us home?”

An image flashed in Sophie’s mind, so sharp and clear it made her eyes water. Or maybe the tears were for the narrow crack that finally split through the darkness. She had just enough time to tighten her grip on Keefe’s hand. Then the air filled with the boom of thunder as they blasted out of the void.

They hit the ground hard, tumbling across sloshy grass before landing in a heap. Sophie sat up first, untangling herself from Keefe’s arms as she stared at the gray, overcast sky.

“Uh . . . this isn’t Havenfield,” Keefe said, squinting at the narrow street lined with plain, square houses.

“I know.” Sophie rallied her concentration, imagining an invisible barrier wrapping around her head to shield herself from the voices pummeling her brain. She’d forgotten how loud human thoughts could be. “This is San Diego.”

Keefe scrambled to his feet. “You teleported us to a Forbidden City? Okay. That. Is. Awesome! Don’t get me wrong—I could do without the whole almost-getting-trapped-in-the-endless-black-nothingness thing. But this is epic! I mean, that’s a human!”

He pointed across the street, to a mom in a bright blue tracksuit, jogging with her baby in a stroller.

“Yeah, and she can probably hear us,” Sophie whispered.

Surely everyone must’ve noticed the teenagers in strange clothes who fell out of the sky. But the few people outside weren’t even glancing their way, too busy walking their dogs or checking their mail.

“I don’t think they know we’re here,” Keefe said, pointing to a small black orb nestled in an overgrown daisy bush. There was another next to the trunk of the giant sycamore in the center of the yard. And three more along the path.

Obscurers.

Sophie had only seen the light-and-sound-bending gadgets once before, in the hands of her kidnappers when they ambushed her and Dex on a bridge in Paris.

One of them was the same blond elf who’d tried to snatch her months earlier, posing as a human jogger on the very street she was standing on.

She walked to the spot where she’d faced him, hoping it might help her remember something new. But all she could see was his face—and Alden had already entered his image in the Council’s database, which was supposed to have a record of every elf ever born.

No match had been found.

He was a ghost. Only real when he jumped out of the shadows, like the rest of the rebels in their dark hooded cloaks with a creepy eye in a white circle sewn onto the sleeve.

“Maybe we should go,” Sophie said, glancing over her shoulder, half expecting to spot the rebels jogging toward them.

“Are you kidding? I’ve been dying to see where the Mysterious Miss Foster grew up.” Keefe turned toward her weathered old house. “It’s . . . small.”

Compared to the crystal mansions of her new world, it was practically a hovel. But humans weren’t given a birth fund, like elves were. They didn’t get to start their lives with more money than they could ever possibly need.

“It smells weird too,” Keefe decided. “What is that?”

“Smog, I think.”

She’d forgotten how sour human air tasted. It made her not want to breathe. And the spots of oil staining the street and bits of litter in the gutters made her almost embarrassed to admit she used to live there.

And yet, it was the first place she’d thought of when Keefe had said “home.”

A lump caught in her throat as she made her way to the front door. Of course it was locked—and the shutters on the windows were closed tight. But one had a crooked blind, and when Sophie peeked through, she could see that the house had been gutted, right down to the concrete slab and the insulation in the walls.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew her family had been relocated—and she’d already seen where the elves had stored all her old things in an unmarked building in Mysterium, one of the smaller Elvin cities.

But staring at the empty shell of her old life made it seem like all her memories had just been a dream. There was nothing left to prove any of it had been real.

Unless . . .

She rushed to the top step on the path, dropping to her knees where her dad’s messy writing was still etched into the concrete.

W. D. F.

E. I. F.

S. E. F.

A. R. F.

She traced her fingers over her initials. “They didn’t erase me.”

Keefe squinted at the sloppy letters. “Does that say ‘elf’?”

“No, that’s an
I
. Emma Iris Foster. My dad was William David Foster, and my sister was Amy Rose Foster. I don’t think my parents realized her initials spelled ‘arf’ until it was too late. Not that it matters anymore.”

Now they were Connor, Kate, and Natalie Freeman.

Sophie wasn’t supposed to know their new names. But the Black Swan had given them to her, and she’d been careful not to let anyone know she knew.

“So this is where Fitz found you?” Keefe asked. “I always wondered where he was disappearing to on his ‘classified assignments’—and I would’ve found a way to follow him if I’d known he was off chasing girls.”

“He wasn’t
chasing
me,” Sophie said, feeling her face heat up. “Well . . . he did have to chase me the first time we met. But he was freaking me out.”

“Fitz
is
pretty terrifying.”

“Hey, when you’ve been hiding a secret ability for seven years and a total stranger outs you in the middle of a museum, you run. No matter how cute he is.”

She wanted to clamp her hands over her mouth as soon as the words left her lips, but that only would’ve made it worse.

All she could do was turn bright red and wait for Keefe to tease her.

He cleared his throat. “What about that other boy? The one who disappeared? Was that here?”

“I think so.”

Part of her hated that Keefe knew her secrets—most of them, anyway. But she’d had to tell him when they were working together to save Alden, and Keefe would never let her forget it. Not that she could remember much about the mysterious disappearing boy.

She knew he had to be important because she had a blurry memory of him vanishing when she was five,
years
before Fitz found her and showed her she was an elf. And she could remember him wearing a blue bramble jersey, a game only elves played. It was also right around the time Mr. Forkle triggered her telepathy, so there had to be a connection.

But the Black Swan had torn the pages out of her journal and wiped the memory out of her mind, save for the few vague details she’d managed to recover.

“He stood right here,” she said, moving closer to the sycamore and running her fingers along a branch.

He must’ve been taller than she’d realized. Not really a boy at all. More like a teenager. And there was something else—a detail so close she could feel it prickling her consciousness. But no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t reach it.

“Hey, no need to punish the innocent plant life,” Keefe said as she kicked the tree. “I’m sure the Black Swan will tell you everything soon.”

Sophie wished she could believe him. She’d thought the Black Swan would be working with her now, especially since she’d risked her life to let them heal her abilities. But two weeks had passed since she’d fled their hideout during the rebels’ attack, and she hadn’t heard a peep. Not a note. Not a clue. Not even the slightest sign that they were still watching her.

She turned to the pale blue house next door, where Mr. Forkle used to sit every day, looking bloated and wrinkled in his ruckleberry-induced disguise. He spent twelve years sitting in the middle of his lawn, playing with his silly gnomes, so he could keep an eye on her. Now all that was left were a few weathered figures, peeking through the weeds with their tiny, ugly faces.

“What are those supposed to be?” Keefe asked as he followed her over to the planter.

“Garden gnomes.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You should see what humans think elves look like. They give us bells on our shoes and pointy ears—though I guess they’re right about the ears.”

Sophie still wasn’t thrilled that her ears would grow points as she aged. But at least she wouldn’t have to worry about it for a few thousand years, thanks to the elves’ indefinite lifespan.

Keefe laughed as he squatted to get a closer look at the tiny statues with pointy hats. “Okay, I have to take one of these home. My agriculture Mentor will pee his pants.”

“Wait,” Sophie said as Keefe reached for a gnome that was sitting on a rainbow-colored mushroom. “What if it’s a clue?”

There was no rhyme or reason to the way the gnomes lined up, but something felt
familiar
about the arrangement. She let her eyes go out of focus, and as the shadows blended into a dark swirl, the memory slowly surfaced.

“Cygnus!”

“What’s a Cygnus?” Keefe asked as she dropped to her knees and started to dig in the planter.

“A constellation. Each gnome is one of the stars. We call them Aquello, Fuschaire, Rosine, Grisenna, Sapphilene, Scarletina, Nievello, Gildere, and Peacerre—but humans call them Cygnus.”

“Okay Miss I’ve-memorized-all-the-stars, no need to show off. And I still don’t see why you’re burrowing like a dwarf.”

“Because Cygnus means ‘swan,’” Sophie explained as she scooped out another handful of dirt. “And the constellation is made up of ten stars. But there are only nine gnomes. So I’m checking where the tenth star would be.”

Slimy mud squished under her nails, but Sophie kept digging. After another minute her fingertips brushed something cold and smooth.

“It’s . . . a bottle,” Keefe said as she unearthed a tiny green vial and wiped the crystal clean on the grass.

“And a note,” Sophie added, removing the stopper and tipping the bottle until a curl of paper slid free.

Keefe snatched the note before she could touch it. “Someone
not
covered in swamp sludge should read that.”

He had a point.

She wiped her hands on the grass as Keefe frowned at the note. “What?” she asked.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I usually don’t.” The Black Swan could be annoyingly vague with their clues. But she was happy to have them back in touch. Or, she was until Keefe showed her the message.

Wait for instructions and stick to the plan.

“They could’ve at least made it rhyme again,” he said, stuffing the note back into the bottle. “And what plan?”

Sophie took the bottle and sniffed the nozzle, gagging at the familiar salty smell.

It was the same green bottle she’d drunk an entire ounce of limbium from—and almost died in the process, thanks to her allergy—so she’d be able to heal minds again.

“Prentice is the plan,” she told Keefe, rubbing the star-shaped scar on the back of her hand. Mr. Forkle had injected her with tweaked human medicine to stop the allergic reaction, and the needle wound had never gone away. “They’re telling me to wait until they decide it’s time to heal him.”

“Yeah, well I still think they could’ve rhymed.
Wait for instructions and stick to the plan. Now get home safe as fast as you can!
”

Sophie was too disappointed to laugh.

She definitely wanted to heal Prentice. But she didn’t want to
wait
.

Prentice had been a Keeper for the Black Swan, and thirteen years ago he’d let his mind get broken in a memory break to keep Sophie’s existence secret from the rest of the elves. She hated knowing he was locked in a tiny cell in Exile, moaning and drooling and waiting for her to pull him out of the darkness.

Plus, every day that passed increased the chance that Alden would shatter again. His guilt over his role in Prentice’s memory break had already broken his mind once—and even though Sophie had healed him, the only way to ensure his safety would be to bring Prentice back.

But the Councillors were still deciding if they were going to allow Prentice to be healed. And apparently the Black Swan were content to sit back and wait.

“Hey—how did they even know we’d come here?” Keefe asked as Sophie shoved the bottle into her pocket a little harder than she needed to. “I mean, they’ve pulled off some crazy things—but I doubt even they could guess you’d have trouble teleporting and accidentally bring us to your old house instead of your new one.”

“No,” Sophie agreed, hating that the only new note the Black Swan had given her probably wasn’t new at all. “They must’ve just assumed I’d come here eventually.”

Still, she had a more pressing problem to deal with than the Black Swan being stubborn—again.

Neither she nor Keefe were old enough to have their own pathfinders, so they’d have to get to a Leapmaster—a gadget made of leaping crystals—in order to leap to the Sanctuary.

“Do you have your home crystal with you?” she asked Keefe.