Page 61 of Cherish

REMY:To the satellite location of the Ancient Library. I’ll drop a pin

GRACE:I don’t know if it’s good or bad that you can tell the future

REMY:Welcome to my life

GRACE:How’s Izzy?

REMY:Ghosting my ass

GRACE:Sounds about right

GRACE:Thank you so much

REMY:You got this

I shove my phone back in my pocket and turn to the gang. “That was Remy,” I explain. “He dropped a pin on the Curator for us.”

“Damn, that guy is freaky.” Flint whistles.

I shrug. “Let’s do this, eh?”

“Come on, New Girl.” Flint grins. “You can say that with more enthusiasm. We’re just about to hop in a portal to who knows where in a prison realm to make a deal with an evil queen who loves to sic poison bugs on you. We eat no-win situations like this for breakfast.”

We all chuckle, as I’m sure he intended, and feel our bodies shrugging off our earlier hopeless inertia. As one, we head across the piazza to the center.

A minute later, Macy comes jogging over, skidding to a stop at the edge of the statue.

“I’m ready,” Macy confirms, staring at the sky above the horizon, where the soon-to-be-setting sun is casting a golden haze over everything, even the scary-looking statue at the center of the piazza. Then she reaches out and begins performing a series of intricate moves with both hands. “Let’s just hope this works.”

I swallow—there are no beans in sight. “It better.”

She does another set of complicated moves, and the water surrounding the statue begins to shimmer and vibrate.

“Where in the Shadow Realm do we want to go?” Macy tosses over her shoulder.

Hudson begins, “Ada—”

But I cut him off. “Our friends’ farm.” He turns and holds my gaze. “We have time,” I assure him, and we do. The farm is not that far from Adarie. “Oh, but don’t get us too close at first—we don’t want to scare them,” I add, though really I’m thinking of Hudson. He’ll need some time to prepare himself for whatever we find at the farm…or, worse,don’tfind.

Macy nods, then reaches out a hand to hold one of mine. “Focus on the farm,” she says. “Picture it clearly in your head. I’ll drop us a bit away.”

I remember the farmhouse where Hudson and I awkwardly shared a bedroom. Tiola, Maroly, and Arnst. The rows of purple vegetables. The lake…

The ring of water surrounding the statue turns a violent shade of purple and swirling black, the colors seeming to sink deeper and deeper into the ground.

My eyes widen. I kept waiting on a portal to appear in front of us, upright, like how Macy’s portals usually stand. But as I watch the water swirl faster and faster, it’s pretty obvious I had it all wrong. Macy isn’t making a portal appear—she’s justturning one on.

“The fountainisa portal!” Eden shouts, pointing to the stone circle surrounding the water and statue. “It’s been here the whole time.”

“Okay,” Macy says, letting go of my arm to gesture to the fountain/portal. “Jump in.”

She sounds like it’s the best idea in the world, but I’m not so sure jumping into a demonic-looking fountain in a piazza known to house the gateway to hell is really the best life choice any of us could be making right now. But when I glance at my friends, expecting them all to have as much trepidation as I do, I realize that they’re all grinning. Even Hudson looks excited to jump into a portal to God knows where, which makes me ask myself if it’s them or if it’s me.

I decide it’s definitely them, even before Flint rubs his hands together and walks forward, saying, “Oh, I’m definitely jumping in first!”

But Jaxon shouts, “You wish,” then fades over the edge of the swirling pond area—and is immediately sucked down into the swirling vortex.

“Damn you, Jaxon,” Flint grumbles with a laugh and then jumps over the edge, feet first, with Eden racing right behind him.

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