Page 208 of Keldori By Daybreak

His eyes flitted from me to the craggy stone jutting from the door and windows, and then to Iseult, walking on a glowing leg of Skal as she inspected the shop with Fana and Orla.

“I can’t tell you shit,” Maxwell spat, “because you drugged me. And quite frankly, I’m not entirely sure I won’t wake up and discover this is all just another bad dream. You better hope for your sake it is, because as soon as I’m home, I’m calling every geophysics program on the planet to ensure you never get in anywhere.”

“You,” I seethed, “are not nearly important enough to drug. You can help us. Just look at the rock, tell us where it came from, what it—”

He raised a foot and, in a shocking display of flexibility, kicked me back so he could close the door.

It was more surprising than painful, but Ciarán charged at the van with an orange weapon in hand as rubber tires spun against wet pavement. I held Ciarán back, and Maxwell Brenton, PhD peeled out of Main Street to hightail it back up the hill.

“Are you okay?” Ciarán asked. “Are you hurt?”

I took a steadying breath and pushed rain-soaked hair back from my forehead. I didn’t need my father to figure this out.

“I’m fine.” I turned back towards the shop.

“It’s made of Skal,” Fana murmured, pressing her hand against the stone. She held Jonquil over her shoulder, and the cat meowed dolefully.

Iseult braced herself and put both hands against the rock. She gritted her teeth, and a ripple of light radiated out from her palms across the stone’s surface, but then she staggered back and shook her head.

“I can’t skalbreak it.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Ciarán’s words felt as hollow along our tether as they sounded out loud. “For now, we need food and shelter. Wren?”

I picked my backpack up off the wet pavement and led the way down the street. I glanced through every window, looking for signs of Mom.

“Wren, your home is beautiful.” Orla took my hand as I led the way down the road. “It is more incredible than I could have ever imagined.”

I glared down the barren, storm-weathered street. “Thanks, Orla. I’m glad you like it.”

On my other side, Ciarán matched my stride. I’d walked this path with him before, on my way to a dinner I didn’t want to attend while he did his best to annoy me. Back then, I had thought Skalterra to be a bad dream and Liam to be nothing more than an obnoxious coworker.

It couldn’t have been long past noon, but the oppressive clouds and rain made it feel later in the day. The harbor was dark when we caught snatches of it between buildings as we walked, and something green flashed out in the water.

“Una’s here,” Ciarán murmured, pausing to watch her jade coat slip along the water’s choppy surface. He grimaced and looked away. “Looks like she’s caught a seal.”

I stopped under the overhang that protected the entrance to Siobhan’s tavern. The door was still unlocked, as it had presumably been the day Ferrin had come and ashed all of Keel Watch Harbor, sending everyone back to their real bodies in Darragh’s Watch.

“There’s food inside,” I said. “And an apartment upstairs where you can rest and wash.”

“Are you not coming inside?” Orla asked.

I looked down the dark street the way we’d come. “I have to look for my mom. She wouldn’t leave Keel Watch. She’s here somewhere, and she might need help.”

Ciarán made as if to step towards me, but I shifted away. Even without the help of our tether, he got my message loud and clear.

I would like to be alone.

He held the door open for the others as they hurried into the tavern’s dark entryway, and I felt his eyes follow me as I moved on to the coffee shop next door to try the lock.

Mom wasn’t in Keel Watch Harbor. Every home, every shop was empty, untouched for weeks. If she were here, she was inside or under the giant rock filling Gams’s shop.

And if Ciarán couldn’t reach her through their Nightmare connection…

I tried not to think about it, instead focusing on trying every door along Main Street and shouting for Mom inside every shop.

Magick mounted with my growing nerves. I’d been breathing in Skal since arriving in Keldori, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to contain. It begged to be let loose, burning at my insides, but the Skalterran mountains pushed back, and I let my magick fester.

I wasn’t sure which was doing more to eat at my stomach—the volatile magick or the uncontrollable anxiety.