Casper screamed. The fangs closed down.
The street went quiet again.
From several feet away, an hourglass counted patiently, the lone witness to Casper’s fate. He disappeared that night, scrubbed clean from the world beneath the silent storm.
7
When Emrys awoke the next morning, the Atlas was gone.
He sprung up from his bed in a panic. He didn’t believe for a second that it had all been a dream—no dream could be so vivid. But he’d left the Atlas at his bedside, within easy reach and his immediate line of sight, just as he had when Sir Galahound had been a frightened little puppy in a brand-new home.
He might be an initiate of the Order of the Azure Eye—marked in some intangible way—but that book was Emrys’s sole physical connection to a world of myths and monsters. It was proof—not only that the unseen world existed, but that Emrys had a place there. Besides that, the Atlas was a living being in Emrys’s care. Had he failed his charge already? Had his mom found the book while he’d been sleeping? Or his dog? Or the—what were they called—the Yellow Court? Could they have tracked him down so soon?
In his groggy panic, Emrys took a few moments to realize the Atlas had been replaced by a notebook he’d never seen before. It appeared to be a standard composition book, with black binding, rounded edges, and a black-and-white speckled cover. It was gently used and thoroughly unremarkable—with the exception of a drawing, scrawled in blue ink, set right in the center of the notebook’s front cover.
It was a drawing of an eye.
“No way,” said Emrys, and, feeling only a little silly, he poked the notebook. “Uh, Mr. Van Stavern? Is that … is that you?”
The simple blue sketch bulged outward, like glass warping beneath a flame. A second later, Van Stavern’s uncanny eye was blinking, its pupil shrinking in the early morning light. The narrow spine expanded, and the cardstock cover rippled, seeming to sag before snapping into shape, taut and leathery.
“Hm?” said Van Stavern. “What is it? You look as if you’ve just seen an eldritch evocation.”
“I didn’t recognize you,” said Emrys. Of course, Van Stavern had mentioned the relics could disguise themselves, and the Atlas itself was clearly no exception. It was a convincing facade; no one would suspect a worn-edged composition journal of being a sentient spell book. “Were you … sleeping?” asked Emrys.
“Not as such,” said Van Stavern. “Just resting my eyes. Eye. But I’m glad you’re up early. We should take advantage of this respite, before the Yellow Court realizes that the Order isn’t quite as extinct as they believe. There’s much to teach you, and—I’m sorry, am I boring you?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Emrys said through a yawn. He wiped some spittle from the corner of his mouth. “I’m excited to learn more, honest. But my dad’s gonna knock on that door any minute and tell me to get ready to leave.”
“Leave?” said Van Stavern. “What do you have to do that’s more important than this?”
Emrys gave the book a wilting look. “Dude, it’s a Friday. What do you think? I’ve gotta go to school.” He opened his backpack. “And you’re coming with.”
In the end, Emrys opted to put the Atlas in a rarely used tote bag. The inside of his backpack was a mess of pencil shavings, old handouts, and candy wrappers. It wouldn’t have felt right shoving Van Stavern in there, wedged between well-worn textbooks.
He tried to keep a steady gait as he walked to school beside Hazel, determined to keep his hip from banging against Van Stavern with each step. He felt a momentary pang of jealousy; her relic had taken the form of an unobtrusive headband. It fit her perfectly and seemed downright fashionable, as far as Emrys could tell.
It seemed to Emrys that they should have a million things to talk about, but somehow, their walk was quieter than it had ever been. Emrys had the strangest feeling that everything that had happened the night before was just so tentative. Like a web of delicate gossamer, invisible unless you saw it at just the right angle, and no less fragile or impermanent once you knew it was there. Breathe on it wrong, and all that beautiful latticework was just ribbons on the wind.
“Have you heard from Serena?” he asked her. She shook her head.
“She’s not really a morning person,” Hazel said. “I’m sure we’ll talk tonight.”
“I hope she’s okay,” said Emrys, but he wasn’t even sure what he meant. Okay that their whole world had turned inside out? Fine with the idea that her best friend and the new kid had joined a club she wanted nothing to do with? Safe from the Yellow Court and whatever dark forces they revered?
Serena hadn’t seemed okay by any measure when they’d seen her last. At her insistence, Van Stavern had sent the three home the previous night, uttering a muffled incantation before the reliquary’s enormous, spired doorway. To their shock, the door opened back into Van Stavern’s trashed apartment. Once they’d passed through, it closed swiftly behind them.
Swiveling around, however, Emrys had found only a closed broom closet. Inside was an ancient vacuum cleaner and little else. Serena cursed the vacuum cleaner, gestured rudely at the Atlas, gave Hazel a perfunctory hug, and pointedly ignored Emrys as she’d stormed downstairs ahead of them.
He knew he wouldn’t see her at school. Serena went to a private school, the Academy of the Sacred Silence, which sat up on a hill, beyond the reach of the morning mist that clutched at Emrys’s and Hazel’s ankles as if seeking to trip them. Emrys had seen the Academy once, through a gap in the well-kept hedges that served as its border. It had a fountain!
Emrys and Hazel, on the other hand, attended Gideon de Ruiter Middle School, which sat at the city’s lowest point, so that the ever-present mist rolled downhill to gather around the school like smoke from a witch’s cauldron. The sign out front, a great stone slab bearing the school’s name and motto, resembled nothing so much as a great tombstone, and a rusty, sharp-edged metal fence enclosed the campus. The school looked altogether less like a seat of learning and more like a cemetery.
“You’re fidgeting,” said a voice, and Emrys snapped out of his reverie. He had momentarily forgotten Van Stavern was there.
“Weird,” said Hazel. “It’s like literally having an angel on your shoulder.”
Emrys had been fidgeting, tugging on the tote’s straps, which would have made it a bumpy ride for Van Stavern, despite his best intentions. He realized now that his anxiety had been quietly building all morning. His heart was racing, and his mouth was dry.
This was more than the usual school-morning jitters. The whole world had been flipped on its head last night. As the exhilaration wore off, the doubt crept in.
Secret societies. Cursed relics. Emrys had been vindicated for every uncanny belief he’d ever held.
But it all came with an unexpected edge. The Yellow Court. The whistling assassin. Other-dimensional beings trying to poke holes into the world? Emrys had already been plenty worried about the state of the world before all that.
Hazel instinctively touched the stone sign as she passed onto school grounds, and Emrys followed suit. The granite felt almost silky, worn smooth by the elements—and by the touch of thousands of hands over the years. As legend had it, the last sixth grader to pass the front entrance without touching the school sign had been cursed with spectacularly bad luck. No one seemed to agree on what exactly had befallen the student—in his short time at the school, Emrys had heard everything from “failed every pop quiz for a year” to “crushed by the retractable bleachers”—but the entire sixth grade seemed to make it a point to touch the entry stone each morning.
Emrys didn’t believe every superstition was true. But he also believed in being safe over being sorry. What could it hurt to touch the stone every day?
As long as he remembered to wash his hands.
“Look,” Hazel said, and Emrys saw immediately what she’d noticed. There was a police cruiser parked out front, in the lane reserved for buses. Two police officers stood beside the entrance—if not for the cruiser, Emrys would have missed them entirely, because they weren’t in uniform. They wore dark suits, their badges clipped to their belts and their guns hidden from sight. But Emrys could see the holster straps beneath their suit jackets.
Guns did not put him at ease.
