Page 204 of Keldori By Daybreak

I’d just managed to choke down my last bite when Maxwell startled, bracing his hand against the driver’s side window and rising in his seat, looking around wildly.

“When did we get here?” he demanded, then looked at the half-eaten bagel in his hand. “You are drugging me! The blackouts! What did you put in this?”

“Why would I drug the person driving me up the coast?” I looked him up and down. “You don’t remember parking here?”

He glanced in the backseat. “Where’d your spooky friend go?”

“To get my other spooky friends. Are you on drugs?”

He shook his head and tried to relax in his seat. “I already told you. I get blackouts. They started when the nightmares did.”

Ciarán forced my attention away from Maxwell’s strange episode as he appeared at the top of the parking lot stairs. Fana carried Jonquil behind him in her new shirt and jeans. The ocean water had frizzed her hair magnificently, and her eyes were rimmed red. Iseult, back down to one leg, leaned on Orla for support. Her Skal-leg would’ve drawn too much attention. Otherwise she blended right in with her new clothes, tanned skin, and white hair that could be mistaken for a bleached blonde.

“Where’s Una?” I opened the passenger door.

“She ran into the ocean,” Orla said. Despite her new Keldorian attire, she kept her skal-goggles perched atop her head. She swiveled around, staring at the cars in the parking lot. “Wren, what are these things?”

The driver’s side door opened, and Maxwell stepped out to survey my friends with his mouth slightly agape. The way his brow furrowed told me their appearance brought him that much closer to believing they were from an alternate world, try as they might to appear otherwise.

“By the Frozen God, there’s two of you,” Iseult said, looking between me and my father.

“Meet Maxwell Brenton, PhD,” I announced. “World-renowned geophysicist, my father, and our ride to the Rift.”

Orla’s polite interest was replaced by careful disdain.

“Your father?” she repeated. “The one who abandoned you?”

“I didn’t abandon her,” Maxwell snapped.

“That’s right. You have to actually be present first to abandon someone,” I quipped.

I slid the van door open, and Orla, Iseult, and Fana all stepped back at the grating sound.

“Is it safe?” Iseult demanded.

“It’s safe enough.” I shrugged.

Fana climbed in first with Jonquil. Iseult was next, glaring at the fabric seats.

“What is this?” She pulled on a seatbelt.

“A seatbelt. You buckle it across you.”

“Why?”

“Because if we crash—”

“Crash?” Orla stopped mid-step as she climbed in.

“It’s just in case,” I insisted. “We aren’t going to crash.”

Ciarán was the last to climb into the van, and I swept my gaze over each of them, making sure they’d figured out their seatbelts. Ciarán nodded at me when they were all settled. Jonquil had abandoned Fana to climb into his lap, and he worked through the knots and mats the cave water had left in her long fur.

I slammed the door shut and then made myself comfy in the passenger seat.

“What is wrong with them?” Maxwell asked under his breath.

“I told you. They’re not from here.”