Page 121 of Phoenix Burn

“What does it say?” I asked.

Cara didn’t answer. Instead, she rolled the paper up again. It startled me when Sparkle twittered and launched herself into the air, vanishing with a puff of ash.

My mouth hung open. “Did she just—”

“Teleport. Yes,” Cara said. “It’s why she’s so valuable. Once she’s been somewhere, she can hop there even between realms.”

Matt stayed on target. “Is it about Talakai?” he gestured to the paper. When she still didn’t answer, he said, “We need to know.”

Cara sighed and handed me the paper.

I read aloud, “Meet me immediately. Urgent. About Dragon.” It was signed with a scrawledJ.

Talakai. Jacqueshadfound something.

Matt loomed over Cara. “If you’re going, so are we.”

For a moment, she looked as though she was going to argue. But then she met my eyes, and I glimpsed the chaos in her own.

“Ash said we have to find him,” I reminded her.

“Believe me, if it weren’t for that—” She rubbed her temple. “Don’t make me regret this. We’ll take the back gate.”

* * *

The gate spat us out into yet another forest. The trees here had long needles, much more like the pines back home.

I corrected myself. The human realm was no longer my home.

Matt finger-combed his hair into unruly tufts.

“Another day, another gate,” I noted.

He frowned at me. “Dodgy things happen to you in those bloody things.”

A narrow path ran into the forest. I eyed him as we followed Cara up it. “Like, what kinds of things?”

He raised a hand and wiggled his fingers. “Can’t you feel your cells being pulled apart?”

“I get all tingly,” I mused.

“See?”

“Youmake me all tingly.” I smiled.

His mouth opened and closed again, and his eyes glowed at me.

“Tingling aside, your cells are just fine,” Cara reported over her shoulder. “But if you don’t have a clear destination indicated, you could be forever lost between gates.”

I ripped my eyes away from Matt and took a deep breath. “Okay, that sounds like something that should have been clarifiedbeforeyou started bringing us through them.”

She shrugged. “You are always safe with me. To Watchers, traveling the gateways is like selecting a highway in the human realm—I see them as clear paths to a destination.”

“But what if we’re not with you?” I asked.

“Then you need an anchor point, which is usually a crystal with something of the destination realm implanted within it. The gatekeepers have a selection, one for each realm, that they use to activate and connect the gates for other travelers. Watchers also use them to travel to a realm we rarely visit—remote pathways are not always clear. Sort of like you traveling an overgrown path rather than a major thoroughfare.”

She grabbed one of her braids and waved it, and my gaze fastened on the crystals woven into it. I’d known they were there—but now I realized that there were many, and each looked as though it held something in the center.

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